3 Interesting Philosophical Questions About Time

Time is something that people never seem to have enough of and that they never fully understand. Throughout history, there have been several attempts to understand time better. Philosophers have asked questions and had philosophical debates over the nature of time. Today, the topic remains one of the greatest philosophical mysteries. Here, we explore some of the most interesting philosophical questions about time.

Science Already Solved This

Most people are at least a little bit curious about time. Before philosophy, you might want to turn to science for answers. However, while science has attempted to answer these curiosities, there are specific questions outside the abilities of science. Science can answer questions about the measurement of time while leaving a grey area about its nature. After all, there are limitations on what an experiment or equation can solve. 

The Future is Unavoidable

Many questions about time arose out of discussions about determinism and free will. Some people worried that the future was unavoidable and questions about time looked to better understand if this was true. The idea that we cannot change the future or that the future is unavoidable is the philosophy of Fatalism. There are different types of fatalism. Logical fatalism is a philosophy of fatalism that argues there is a group of true statements regardless of the time someone made them.

Questions About Time

Questions about time look to understand more about the human experience. Here are a couple of the most curious questions.

Is it Possible For all Change to Stop?

What if one day, all change around us stopped? What if everything stopped for one year? People stopped talking mid-sentence, and everybody stopped what they were doing, frozen at a standstill. Could this ever happen? If the answer to this question can ever be yes, then time is somehow independent from events that occur in time. Another way to ask this question is to think about the processes that happen in time. Can specific processes happen faster or slower in time? Or can a particular event happen earlier? Again, if the answer is yes, then time is independent of its events. 

While this might sound confusing, these questions are essentially asking if time is something other than the events that take place within it. Some philosophers, such as Aristotle and Leibniz, argued that the answer to these questions is no. They believed that time is not independent of the events occurring. This perspective of time is often called "reductionism with respect to time.” In this view, time is just a series of events that occur.

What Shape Should The Line For Time Have?

Most people think of time as having a line; this shape for time only seems natural. However, what should the shape of the line be? One answer to the question is that time should be one long continuous line without any branches. The line would extend in two opposite directions. This philosophical view is the “standard topology” for time. 

If we imagine time as this straight line, this brings out other questions. For example, should the line representing time have a beginning? According to philosophers such as Aristotle, time cannot have a beginning. In order to have a beginning, there would have to be a first moment of time. The first moment would have to come at a period of time, which is inconsistent with being the first moment of time. Aristotle used this same argument for the idea that time does not have an end and cannot.

While some people might find Aristotle's argument unsound, most people will agree with his idea that time has no beginning or end. 

Is Time Even Real?

Asking questions about the nature of time might lead you to wonder if time is even real. If you are asking yourself this, you aren't the first person. In a famous paper from 1908 titled "The Unreality of Time," philosopher McTaggart asked this very question and concluded that there is no such thing as time. He argued the appearance of order to time was an illusion and that our idea of time is a contradiction. His argument involved looking at time in terms of an "A series" and a "B series." The A series corresponds to how most people look at time as having a past, present, and future aspect. In the B series, events have an order in relation to one another. Both series look at time in a different way. The A series looks at time as flowing on a timeline from past to present to future. By contrast, the B series looks at time as ordered events on a fixed position only defined by their relation to other events. 

Since all events have a relationship to other events, McTaggart argued every event will be a past, present, or future event. For example, if you are currently taking your dog for a walk, that is a present event. However, thirty minutes earlier, this event was a future event. And in two hours, this event will be in the past. This causes a contradiction in defining events strictly on being past, present, and future since all events will be this at some point. Whether or not Mcaggart's series A is a contradiction is one of the most hotly debated subjects in the philosophy of time. 

Time's Enduring Mystery

Besides the questions mentioned above, there are several other philosophical questions looking at time. Some people wonder about other dimensions or if time travel is possible. There is also a crossover between philosophy and physics. People try using different theories from physics to understand the nature of time better. Questions looking at time are interesting since they force us to think about our perceptions of our lives. As much as we think about time, we may never get concrete answers to our questions. However, some things are better left unknown.