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Single Idea 22975

[filed under theme 27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 2. Passage of Time / g. Time's arrow ]

Full Idea

If the world comes equipped with a time orientation, where does it come from? If it doesn't, what explains our psychological feeling of a direction for time?

Gist of Idea

We must explain either the existence of a time direction, or our psychological sense of it

Source

Huw Price (The Flow of Time [2011], 3.5)

Book Ref

'Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Time', ed/tr. Callender,Craig [OUP 2013], p.286

A Reaction

The chances of 'explaining' either one look slim to me. That is, the fact would explain our experience, but the experience without the fact looks ridiculous, and I cannot conceive of any time-free entity which could explain the fact.

The 24 ideas with the same theme [that time seems to have one fixed direction]:

22954 Newtonian mechanics does not distinguish negative from positive values of time [Newton, by Coveney/Highfield]
22908 When one element contains the grounds of the other, the first one is prior in time [Leibniz]
14935 The direction of time is grounded in the direction of causation [Reichenbach, by Ladyman/Ross]
22947 An ordered series can be undirected, but time favours moving from earlier to later [Le Poidevin]
22952 If time's arrow is causal, how can there be non-simultaneous events that are causally unconnected? [Le Poidevin]
22953 Time's arrow is not causal if there is no temporal gap between cause and effect [Le Poidevin]
22951 If time's arrow is psychological then different minds can impose different orders on events [Le Poidevin]
22948 There are Thermodynamic, Psychological and Causal arrows of time [Le Poidevin]
22949 Presumably if time's arrow is thermodynamic then time ends when entropy is complete [Le Poidevin]
22950 If time is thermodynamic then entropy is necessary - but the theory says it is probable [Le Poidevin]
22975 We must explain either the existence of a time direction, or our psychological sense of it [Price,H]
13440 Causation is the power of one property to produce another, and this gives time its direction [Esfeld]
22910 To define time's arrow by causation, we need a timeless definition of causation [Bardon]
22909 We judge memories to be of the past because the events cause the memories [Bardon]
22904 The psychological arrow of time is the direction from our memories to our anticipations [Bardon]
22906 The direction of entropy is probabilistic, not necessary, so cannot be identical to time's arrow [Bardon]
22907 It is arbitrary to reverse time in a more orderly universe, but not in a sub-system of it [Bardon]
19951 Entropy is puzzling, so we may need to build new laws which include time directionality [New Sci.]
20470 Only heat distinguishes past from future [Rovelli]
23003 Static theories cannot account for time's obvious asymmetry, so time must be dynamic [Baron/Miller]
23004 The direction of time is either primitive, or reducible to something else [Baron/Miller]
23005 The kaon does not seem to be time-reversal invariant, unlike the rest of nature [Baron/Miller]
23006 Maybe the past is just the direction of decreasing entropy [Baron/Miller]
23010 We could explain time's direction by causation: past is the direction of causes, future of effects [Baron/Miller]