Time & Mind: Was Einstein Wrong About Time?

Published 2024-02-11
The role of time in mainstream physics—as it arises in Newtonian theory, relativity theory, quantum theory, and the 2nd law of thermodynamics—is relatively well understood. However, there is a profound mystery concerning the passage of time associated with consciousness. Many physicists maintain that this passage is purely a feature of mind, going beyond physics itself, while others argue that it points to some new physical paradigm, perhaps associated with the marriage of relativity theory and quantum theory. Certainly, the status of time in any final theory of physics remains unclear.

The possibility that physics may eventually accommodate and elucidate the nature of consciousness and associated experience suggests the need to address issues that are currently viewed as being on the borders of physics and philosophy. It also impinges on developments in neurophysics, cognitive science and psychology. So this is an interdisciplinary problem and this conference brings together experts in all the relevant fields. There are contributions from the physicists Bernard Carr, Paul Davies, George Ellis and Lee Smolin, the neurophysicist Alex Gomez-Marin, the cognitive neuroscientist Julia Mossbridge, and the psychologists Jonathan Schooler and Marc Wittmann.

Although the conference is organized by Essentia Foundation—which is associated with the philosophical tradition of Idealism—it covered a wide range of approaches. Our vision is to cover topics that are relevant to Idealism, but not to exclude alternative views from the conference.

Timestamps

00:00 Brief overview
04:20 Bernard Carr - Introduction talk
15:50 George Ellis - There is no way a physical block universe can have come into existence: the future not yet determined!
54:34 Lee Smolin - The role of qualia in temporal naturalism
1:28:46 Bernard Carr - Making space for time and consciousness in physics
2:02:11 Jonathan Schooler - Could postulating three dimension of time address assorted disparities between physics and experience?
2:45:15 Panel discussion

Bernard J. Carr, host and co-organiser of this conference is Professor of mathematics and astronomy at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL)

George F. R. Ellis is emeritus Distinguished Professor of complex systems in the Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, this is the paper Ellis presented during the conference: arxiv.org/abs/2210.10107

Lee Smolin is faculty member at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, and adjunct Professor of physics at the University of Waterloo and a member of the graduate faculty of the philosophy department at the University of Toronto. See this paper on temporal naturalism: arxiv.org/abs/1310.8539

Jonathan Schooler is distinguished Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Copyright © 2023 by Essentia Foundation. All rights reserved.

All Comments (21)
  • @DrFuzzyFace
    What a monochromatic world it would be without such resources as the Essentia Foundation and its quorum of brilliant and informed thinkers. Thank you all.🧡
  • Thank you for hosting this conference. Though I am just a curious layman, I find that these inquiries and discussions add value to all of us even if I am just barely able to understand the ideas presented. It leaves me in awe and stretches my mind
  • Time as a Superposition in Higher Dimensions: This notion suggests that our perception of time as a linear progression may be an oversimplification of a more complex reality. Instead of time unfolding linearly as we experience it, it could exist in a superposition state within higher-dimensional spaces. In this view, time would not flow strictly from past to future but could encompass multiple potential timelines or configurations simultaneously. Elaboration: Consider time as a dimension similar to the three spatial dimensions we perceive, but with additional dimensions beyond our comprehension. In this framework, time could exist in a superposition of states, analogous to how quantum particles can exist in multiple states simultaneously until observed. From our limited perspective, we perceive time as progressing linearly, but in higher-dimensional reality, time may exhibit a more intricate structure, encompassing multiple possibilities and configurations.
  • @aaphantasiaa
    The inconsistency and uniqueness of Smolin’s slides is truly a work of art 😂
  • @user-ji1zr7mz1t
    Maybe consciousness originates in a higher or lower dimension and so it may not be included in our theory of everything in our dimension. And maybe time is actually in a superposition in a higher dimension and we perceive it linear in ours.
  • @goran586
    The Escher hands imply that the experiencer creates the experience that is then experienced in a recursive loop out of which reality rises.
  • All truth is relative and dynamical. Change is absolutely fundamental. Patterns of change ( in magnitude and angle) manifest in infinite dimensions as energy, matter, consciousness, and the passage of time. The world of everyday experience is , given the constraints, a three - dimensional sum over histories in the infinite.
  • I’m sooooo happy these conversations are happening! I just wish they had been when I was in academia years ago and I had been a part of it! So grateful to the Essentia Foundation for putting this out there to keep us all thinking and wondering and delighting in the journey!
  • @spandon
    This is so good, many thanks. Keeping Don Hoffman and Bernardo Kastrup in the wings, ready for the next one....hopefully...
  • @ronaldbolton7338
    An interesting aside to the specious time idea is the great American baseball player who claimed back in the 40's, when he played the game, that time "slowed down for him to the point that he could see the rotation of the ball as it approached and could react to it in ways that others couldn't. Interestingly he claimed to be able to smell the impact of the ball against the bat the horsehide of the ball striking his bat. Many have claimed he was full of it, but there is little doubt he was most likely the greatest hitter of all time. And perhaps his explanation is an example of this phenomena.
  • @dughlasmont
    Bernardo, Thank you. You have my sincere respect and gratitude for the work you have done. You have made a tremendous impact on my understanding of important philosophical concepts concerning the nature of reality.
  • @Robinson8491
    Awesome, was really looking forward to this one. Much appreciated guys/gals!
  • @walkabout16
    In realms where physics intertwines with thought, Where time's elusive dance is deeply wrought, The scholars gather, minds ablaze, to ponder, The mysteries of time, its spell we're under. Einstein's legacy, a towering might, Yet shadows linger, questions taking flight, Was he mistaken, in his grasp of time's embrace? Or does the truth reside in a subtler space? Newton's clockwork universe, precise and grand, With time as a river, flowing at its hand, But relativity whispers, bending the stream, A dance of spacetime, in a cosmic dream. Quantum mysteries, where particles entwine, In a dance of uncertainty, where time may redefine, Do they hold the key to consciousness's sway, Or is there more to time than we dare say? The second law, a decree of entropy's reign, A arrow of time, flowing against the grain, Yet within our minds, does time find its home, A subjective journey, where moments roam? Idealism's gaze, casting shadows long, Philosophical ponderings, a timeless song, Neurophysics, psychology, the mind's terrain, In search of answers, through each winding lane. Essentia Foundation, a beacon bright, Guiding seekers through the depths of night, In the convergence of minds, a symphony plays, Time and consciousness, in an endless maze. So let us journey, with open minds unfurled, Exploring the mysteries of this time-bound world, For in the union of science and thought, we find, The essence of existence, in the tapestry of Time and Mind.
  • Is it a variation of where a 'cut' occurs? The event of activity of a participant (of any participantly available scale) determines (in a scalar way) experiencable change (at scale of participant)? inherently? All 'is' as registering of change? And therefore a constant & complexly participantly unique registering of activity/change but only ever referential or indicative at scale of participant register?
  • Why do we corroborate each other’s experience? Under classical physics, the simplest explanation was that mentality is a map of physical territory. With QM, the Born Rule, Bell’s inequality, the invocation of internal symmetries in abstract Hilbert space, etc, this hypothesis of a physical world to explain our mutual corroboration is the no longer the simplest one; in fact it's become impossibly complicated (many worlds etc). Maybe QM suggests that we’ve been confusing the map and the territory. Maybe the realm of Mind/Qualia/Experience is the territory, and QM is the map, and then there’s no remaining impetus to invoke anything physical/objective at all. I suspect the mathematical models of physics are the best-yet attempt for predicting our mutual corroborations/constraints in a purely mental domain, and that's it. I wonder more people don’t entertain this “zero worlds” idea. This view is entirely scientific, if you reframe science as the most sophisticated and rigorous method for prediction of experience, rather than any description of a "natural world".
  • @techteampxla2950
    I enjoyed = The Setting of the talk felt very traditional and was welcoming and warming. The Guests where amazing and every one was epic and information presented in the time given was amazingly compacted by each guest very well, finally the topic did center on TIME but I was happy it felt very investigative and thus not to dismiss all areas of our reality, like philosophy, psychology, physics, and so many more subjects involved it was great!
  • @garygoldberg9906
    The issue of 'separate identity' and the fundamental privacy of personal experience in the context of that which is inaccessible and internal is addressed in the work on 'quantum information' by Federico Faggin and G Mauro D'Ariano which also has deep implications for an understanding of time as a fundamental mediator of trans-action within the hidden relational realm of the quantum substratum. Which can be found in a paper titled 'Hard Problem and Free Will: an information-theoretical approach' co-authored by Faggin and D'Ariano which incorporates quantum information.
  • @andrebenoit283
    Been reading some Heidegger and Bergson lately. What a timely recommendation.
  • might branching in quantum time be based on conscious experience rather than choice?