From Physical Time to a Dualistic Model of Human Time

There is a long standing debate as to whether or not time is ‘real’ or illusory, and whether or not human time (the flow/passage of time) is a direct reflection of physical time. Differing spacetime cosmologies have opposing views. Exactly what human time entails has, in our opinion, led to the fail...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Foundations of science 2020-12, Vol.25 (4), p.927-954
Main Authors: Gruber, Ronald P., Montemayor, Carlos, Block, Richard A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Analysis
Computer applications
Education
Human motion
Information processing
Mathematical Logic and Foundations
Methodology of the Social Sciences
Montemayor, Carlos
Philosophy
Philosophy of Science
Relativity
Spacetime
Virtual reality
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:There is a long standing debate as to whether or not time is ‘real’ or illusory, and whether or not human time (the flow/passage of time) is a direct reflection of physical time. Differing spacetime cosmologies have opposing views. Exactly what human time entails has, in our opinion, led to the failure to resolve this ‘two times’ problem. To help resolve this issue we propose a dualistic model of human time in which each component (e.g. change, motion, and temporality) has both an illusory and non-illusory (‘real’) aspect. With the dualistic model we are able to provide experimental tests for all of the human time assertions of 10 chosen spacetime cosmologies. The illusory aspect of the ‘present,’ i.e. a ‘unique present’ was confirmed. An information gathering and utilizing system (IGUS) was constructed using a virtual reality (VR) apparatus allowing the observer to experientially roam back and forth along the worldline ad lib. The phenomenon of ‘change’ was experimentally found to be illusory at high frequency observation and non-illusory (‘real’) at low frequency observation, the latter phenomenon coinciding with ‘change’ referred to in the ‘Order of Time’ and ‘Relativity Refounded’ views. Additional experiments are presented indicating that both motion and temporality are dualistic. In sum, the dualistic model of human time allows for the existence of both illusory and non-illusory (‘real’) aspects of human time that are not in conflict with one another. It also provides experimental evidence for various spacetime cosmological assertions regarding human time.
ISSN:1233-1821
1572-8471
DOI:10.1007/s10699-020-09670-4