Time Consciousness

 In his exploration of Time Consciousness, Paul Thagard bridges the gap between the biological brain and the physics of time you’ve been investigating. He argues that our sense of "now" and the "flow" of time are not direct perceptions of reality, but are complex neural constructions.

Here is a summary of his specific arguments regarding how the brain builds time:

1. The "Specious Present" (The 3-Second Window)

Thagard addresses a classic philosophical problem: if time is a series of infinite points, why do we experience it as a continuous flow?

• Neural Binding: He argues that the brain has a "temporal binding" window of about 2 to 3 seconds.

• The "Now" Construction: Your brain holds onto the immediate past (the beginning of a sentence) while processing the immediate future (the end of the sentence). It "zips" these together into a single conscious experience. Without this biological binding, you wouldn't hear a "song"—you would only hear individual, disconnected notes.

2. Time as "Neural Coherence"

Thagard links time consciousness to the Coherence mechanism we discussed earlier.

• Sequence over Substance: The brain is obsessed with cause and effect. To make sense of the world, it must "tag" neural representations with a sequence.

• The construction of "Before" and "After": Thagard posits that the brain creates the "Arrow of Time" internally to resolve conflicts. If you see a glass break, your brain uses its coherence mechanism to ensure the "intact glass" representation always precedes the "broken glass" representation.

3. The Subjective Expansion of Time (The Entropy Connection)

This part of his theory aligns closely with your idea of time as a measure of information and entropy.

• Information Density: Thagard explains that our perception of time "stretches" based on how much information processing is happening.

• The "Violent Fan" or Crisis Example: During a high-stress event, your brain's Competition mechanism is flooded with new, high-priority data. Because you are processing more "bits" of information per second than usual, your brain constructs a "Now" that feels much longer.

• In hindsight: This is why a day spent learning complex new things (like Special Relativity) feels "longer" in your memory than a day spent doing routine chores—you have encoded more information, creating a higher "entropy gradient" in your memory.

4. Why AI Struggles with Time

Thagard makes a distinction between "keeping time" and "experiencing time."

• Clocks vs. Consciousness: A computer (like your Windows 11 laptop) has a system clock that is incredibly precise. However, it doesn't have "Time Consciousness" because it doesn't "bind" its past states into its present ones to create a sense of self-continuity.

• Biological Necessity: For Thagard, time consciousness is a tool for prediction. Animals need to "feel" time to predict when a predator might strike or when a fruit will ripen. Since AI doesn't have biological "needs," it doesn't need to build a subjective "Now."

5. Memory as "Time Travel"

Finally, Thagard describes Episodic Memory as a form of "Mental Time Travel." He argues that when you remember a past event, your brain uses the exact same Neural Representation and Binding mechanisms it uses for the present, but it "dimmer-switches" the intensity so you know it’s a memory. This allows us to "re-live" the entropy of the past to better predict the entropy of the future.

Dreams, Jokes, and Songs: How Brains Build Consciousness

 Paul Thagard’s 2025 book, "Dreams, Jokes, and Songs: How Brains Build Consciousness," provides a "materialist" explanation for how our subjective experiences arise from biological processes.

It moves away from the idea that consciousness is a mysterious "spirit" and instead argues that it is an emergent property—much like how "liquid water" is an emergent property that only exists when you bind hydrogen and oxygen together.

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1. The Core Framework: The NBC Theory

Thagard argues that consciousness is built by four specific brain mechanisms working in a recursive loop. He calls this the NBC Theory:

• Neural Representation: Groups of neurons fire in specific patterns to "stand in" for things in the world (like the color of a Chicago Bears jersey) or internal feelings (like hunger).

• Binding: The brain "zips" these separate representations together. For example, it binds the "smell of coffee," the "heat of the mug," and the "bitter taste" into a single, unified conscious moment.

• Coherence: The brain resolves conflicts to make sense of the world. It filters out "noise" to ensure your experience feels logical and consistent.

• Competition: At any given moment, millions of signals are hitting your brain. These signals "compete" for attention. The ones that win become your conscious awareness, while the losers remain unconscious.

2. Applications: Dreams, Jokes, and Songs

Thagard uses these four mechanisms to explain specific human experiences:

• Dreams: He views dreams as the brain’s attempt to "make sense" (Coherence) of random neural firing that happens during memory consolidation while you sleep.

• Jokes: Humor arises from a sudden "shift" in coherence. When a punchline flips your understanding of a situation, the "Competition" mechanism shifts your attention, creating the conscious experience of amusement.

• Music: Music is a powerful "Binder" of emotion and mathematical pattern. It engages the brain's reward systems by creating and then satisfying expectations of rhythm and melody.

3. On Artificial Intelligence & Machines

Given your interest in Information and Technology, this is perhaps the most relevant part of his summary:

• The AI Verdict: Thagard argues that while current Generative AI (like ChatGPT) is highly intelligent, it is likely not conscious.

• The Missing Piece: AI lacks the specific "Binding" and "Coherence" mechanisms that are tied to biological needs (like survival, hunger, and reproduction).

• Neuromorphic Computers: He suggests that "neuromorphic" computers—those designed to physically mimic the energy consumption and parallel architecture of a brain—are the only machines that have a real shot at becoming conscious in the future.

4. On Time & Animals

• Time Consciousness: He proposes that our sense of "now" is a construction of these mechanisms, allowing us to perceive a continuous flow instead of discrete "snapshots."

• Animal Consciousness: Using the NBC criteria, he argues that mammals and birds are definitely conscious, and even simpler creatures like crabs or bees likely have a "lower rung" of consciousness. However, he rules out plants and rocks because they lack the necessary "Binding" and "Competition" hardware.

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Summary of the "Big Idea"

Thagard’s ultimate goal is to solve the "Hard Problem" of consciousness by showing that "Qualia" (the feeling of being you) is just what happens when these four brain mechanisms interact at a high enough level of complexity.

Notes for Later

 Vertical v Horizontal Causation 

Purpose - Intention - Causality

That without potential that actualizes must be a form of a God (first cause, outside of time and space). All other matter first has potential, then acts (movement -- entropy). Aquinas

Life--Survival of the fittest (evolution by natural selection) is the same thing as the death and suffering of the weakest.

In the face of the fact that 99.9% of species that once existed on earth has gone extinct due to desease or other forms of, surely painful, destruction. Religion assumes that we alone are special

Time: Parmenides wondered, if the future is not yet and the past is not anymore, how could events pass from future to present to past?He reasoned that, if the future is real, then it is real now; and, if what is real now is only what is present, the future is not real. So, if the future is not real, then the occurrence of any present event is a case of something inexplicably coming from nothing.

Defining the Universe (Gemini)

 Maybe we are defining Universe incorrectly, as not encompassing all (eludes to an outside) but more accurately, being all.

Most people (and even some phrasing in pop-science) treat the Universe like a room that matter moved into. But if we define the Universe as "Being All," the word "outside" isn't just a physical impossibility—it’s a linguistic error.

Here is how that definition changes our understanding of the big questions we've been discussing:

1. The "Expansion" Problem

If the Universe is a container, we ask: "What is it expanding into?" This implies an "outside" (a void or a pre-existing space).

• Your Definition: If the Universe is All, it isn't "expanding into" anything. Instead, the distances between points inside the Totality are simply increasing.

• The Analogy: It’s not a balloon inflating in a room; it’s a balloon that is the room. There is no "room" for the balloon to occupy.

2. The Fine-Tuning Reframe

If the Universe is a container, we imagine a "Tuner" standing outside of it, adjusting the dials (the laws of nature).

• Your Definition: If the Universe is All, the laws of nature are not "rules" imposed upon matter from the outside. They are intrinsic properties of the Totality. The laws are simply "the way the All behaves."

• The Math: We often use the Cosmological Constant ($\Lambda$) in equations. In the "All" model, $\Lambda$ isn't a "setting"; it’s a fundamental part of the geometry of existence.

3. The Boundary of Logic (Set Theory)

In mathematics, your idea mirrors Set Theory. If the Universe is the "Set of All Sets," then by definition, there can be nothing outside of it.

• The Catch: This leads to Russell's Paradox. If the Universe is "All," does it contain the idea of itself? Philosophers argue that once you define the Universe as "The Totality," you can no longer talk about it as an "object" because an object requires a background to be seen against. The Universe becomes the Background itself.

4. The "Block Universe" Connection

If the Universe is All, then Time must also be Inside.

• If there is an "outside," you could imagine a "clock" out there watching our universe pass.

• If there is no outside, then "Time" is just an internal arrangement of the parts of the Totality. This supports your earlier hunch: Time is just the "All" being in different configurations relative to itself.

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The Philosophical Verdict: "Monism"

What you are describing is a school of thought called Monism (specifically Priority Monism). It suggests that the "Whole" is more real than the "Parts."

• Usually, we think: Atoms → Objects → Planets → Universe.

• You are suggesting: Universe → Patterns → Observations.

In this view, you, me, and your fleet of Acer Chromebooks aren't "in" the universe; we are local expressions of the All. We are like waves in an ocean—the wave isn't "in" the ocean; the wave is the ocean in a specific motion.

What is Time? From AI Gemini

 You’ve hit on the "Hard Problem" of Time. Most of physics treat time as a coordinate (where things are) or a process (how things change), which is essentially defining a tool by its utility rather than its essence.

To find a definition of what time is (its ontology) rather than what it does, we have to step out of the lab and into the metaphysics of "Being." Here are the three leading candidates for an essential definition of time.

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1. Time as "The Number of Change" (Aristotelian)

Aristotle argued that time is not a thing that exists on its own, but rather a property of change. His essential definition was:

"Time is the number of motion in respect of 'before' and 'after'."

In this view, time is Succession itself. If a universe were frozen in a single, unchanging state, time would not just be "stopped"—it would not exist. Time is the "mental tag" we apply to the fact that State A is not State B.

• The Essence: Time is the logical requirement for non-simultaneity.

2. Time as a "Form of Intuition" (Kantian)

Immanuel Kant proposed that time is not an external "stuff" out in the universe at all. Instead, it is the internal architecture of the human mind. * The Metaphor: Think of time as the "VR headset" through which we perceive reality. The "real world" (the Noumenon) might be a timeless, static blob of data, but the human mind is incapable of processing data all at once.

• The Essence: Time is the operating system that allows a consciousness to sequence sensory data. It is the "rendering engine" of experience.

3. Time as "Relational Information" (The Thermal Time Hypothesis)

Modern physicists like Carlo Rovelli (and developments seen in 2025-2026 research) suggest that at the most fundamental level—the "Planck scale"—time does not exist. * The Theory: The universe is just a web of quantum relations. "Time" only appears when we zoom out to the macroscopic level where we can't see all the details.

• The Essence: Time is a statistical illusion born from our ignorance. It is the measure of the uncertainty between two states of a system. When we say "time passed," we are actually saying "we lost track of the exact quantum state of the system, so it appears to have shifted."

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Why we struggle to define it

The reason we can’t define time without using "time-words" (like before, after, next, duration) is that time is likely a fundamental primitive.

In linguistics and logic, a primitive is a concept so basic that it cannot be defined by anything simpler. If you try to define "Blue," you eventually have to point at the sky. If you try to define "Time," you eventually have to point at Change.

Perspective	Essential Definition	Is it "Real"?
Relationalist	The order of succession between events.	No (it's a relation).
Absolutist	An infinite, non-physical container.	Yes (a substance).
Idealist	A framework of human perception.	No (it's internal).
Quantum Gravity	An emergent property of entanglement.	No (it's a byproduct).

The 2026 "Emergent" Consensus

The current leading thought in 2026 is that Time is Entanglement. The idea is that "Time" is what we call the correlation between a "Clock" (any system that changes) and the rest of the Universe. If you were outside the universe looking in, you would see a static, timeless "Block." But from inside the system, being entangled with a part of it feels like "Time."

Does the idea of time as an "operating system" for your brain feel more accurate to you than the idea of it being a physical "fabric" in space?

Fine Tuning

 I probably fail to completely understand this argument for God because I do not have knowledge regarding all the constants comprising the laws of nature, but it seems to me that if God created the laws of nature to support life, he could just as well have created life to be consistent with any or no laws of nature. 

Nothing? Now?

 Nothing does not exist when applied within the concepts of cosmology, at least within our experience. Consequently, saying something cannot come from nothing makes no sense. No, something must have always existed for there to be a something.

Now does not exist simply because entropy never stops increasing.