The time notes

A collection of philosophical essays on the subject of causality, determinism and time in general

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Introduction

What do we know about time, and what can we know about it? The short answer is “Not much”. The notion of time is very tightly bound with the way that we perceive the world. Knowledge is accumulated through time and it mostly presupposes the notion of time. And perceptions compose time - they are the material from which time is made. So in order to understand knowledge, we must understand time. But it is also the other way around. This is why this text does not have a very precise structure - it just not possible to describe paradoxes in a precise manner, in fact, this lack of precision is probably the main reason why people don’t study this subject more - why devote our (ahem) time to try to understand these subjects when the research is so hard and the results, so meager? My response is because it’s important - time is related to knowledge, to aging/youth, to perception itself. And although most “results” that I have obtained are basically variants of the Socratic “I know that I know nothing”, the writing of these essays has been great for me.

That much we do know about time: the principle of cause and effect is essential, if not for time itself, then for our ability to comprehend it. There is hardly any way around it - almost all of our knowledge is “causal knowledge”. And this is the starting point of my text. So sit back, pour a glass of wine (you might need something harder for the last chapters) and enjoy it.

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