Have a good week

I didn’t really understand how it is possible to think about a changing physical process not on a time axis. As you noted later in your answer, I asked how one can speak about the invention of the universe without moving along a time axis on which there was no universe before a universe was created. And if the only axis around which the concept of creation ex nihilo revolves is time, then how can one say that time was created after previously not having been created? The term *creation of time* already contains within it a chronological relation.

Can you refer me to a place online where one can read about the two time axes?

Thanks,
Ron

It’s hard to think about a physical process apart from a time axis, so when we talk about physical processes we use temporal terms. But that does not necessarily mean that in reality itself there had to be time. We speak about creation in terms of an absence after which a universe came. But if in reality itself there was no time, then that way of speaking is an anachronism that stems from our conceptual framework.
I’m not familiar with treatment of this online. You can try looking for material or articles by McTaggart.

Isn’t it a contradiction to say first that before time was invented there was no time, and nevertheless there was an absence prior to the renewed existence? That is, can one speak of absence and renewal without having any conceptual platform on which such things can be discussed? Is this only an anachronistic problem, or is it a more serious problem?

Thanks,
Ron

I already answered.

Not that Stephen Hawking’s physical theories—who died today—obligate anyone or anything philosophically, but still they are interesting and call for explanation.

Can someone give an explanation of the things quoted here:

This subatomic point, which contains absolutely everything, is known as a “gravitational singularity.” On the Live Science website they explain that inside this tiny and extremely dense point of heat and energy, the laws of physics and time essentially cease to exist. That is, the concept of time as we understand it did not exist at all before the universe began to expand. Instead, the arrow of time contracts infinitely as the universe becomes smaller and smaller, but it never converges to a specific and clear starting point.

Hawking’s point is that there was no time before time began, but time was always there in some form, even if completely different. In an interview Hawking explains that before the Big Bang, time was a kind of alternative version of itself: “It always approached nothing but did not become nothing… There was never a Big Bang that produced something from nothing. It only appears that way from humanity’s point of view.”

The late Hawking spoke quite a bit of nonsense, and I would recommend not being impressed by everything that ever came out of his keyboard.
What is written here is brief and incomplete, so I don’t know what he meant here. But what is written here in itself lacks any real meaning. He uses terms like “always,” “before,” “forever,” “never,” about stretches in which there was no time. All this can have meaning only if you assume two time axes (see the fourth book of the Talmudic Logic series), and then the philosophical meaning of these claims is emptied out, because they deal with time as a physical parameter, which is not necessarily philosophical time.

Thank you for your comments.

Could you upload here some post or article you wrote about physical time and philosophical time? It sounds interesting. Thanks,
Zevulun

I don’t recall having written anything beyond the book.