Dear Dr. Barbour,
I enjoyed very much your lectures posted on youtube. Being
neither a mathematician nor a physicist but rather a humble biochemist and
translator of technical and scientific literature, I certainly cannot grasp the
mathemathics decorating different learned opinions on the structure of
Universe, the essence of Time etc. Nevertheless I am interested in these
matters and use them as a sort of gymnastics for my brain.
I would like to comment on one particular subject, which you
spoke on just at the end of your lecture "Does Time exist?" at The
Perimeter Institute, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkjXuS_Z1ds
. It is the problem of so-called sense of time. Or in other words, why time -
an illusion according to the QM theory - is so overwhelmingly real in practice.
Being a biologist, I would like to assure you that this problem is trivial when
approached from an appropriate scientific position. In this case we require
neither "a deeper understanding of conscience", nor appellating to
Rev. Berkeley, nor meditating on "conscious memory", "logical
necessity" etc. etc.
This is the approach of late Prof. B.F. Skinner, who was
known as "the father of radical behaviorism". This approach sweeps
away as nonsensical rubbish the whole bumptious verbiage of
cognitivism-mentalism - the pseudo-science which regrettably is fashionable
nowadays.
When considering the problem of the sense of time we should
keep in mind the operant nature of behavior discovered and studied by Prof.
Skinner. Operant is the universal mechanism of seemingly
"spontaneous" animal and human behavior which roughly speaking
consists of:
- operant contingencies, i.e. the specific environmental
situation in which the sequence of events and actions comprising a given operant
can probably start and "develop in time",
- operant signal informing some properly conditioned animal
or human that:
- if it/he/she instantly emits the specified act of
behavior,
- then with some probability either the positive
reinforcement (reward) of this act, or non-appearance of (otherwise inevitable)
negative reinforcement (punishment) will follow.
I would like to repeat that the operant nature of animal and
human behavior was firmly established by Prof. Skinner and his followers on the
basis of extensive experimentation. Operant behavior is a fundamental mechanism
of adaptation of individual organisms to their environment, no less fundamental
than the Darvinian evolution by means of natural selection which is the
mechanism of the environmental adaptation of species.
Being such an important instrument of the individual
adaptation of animals, operant behavior as a process taking place on time schedule
inevitably involves the "sense of time" as an "inner clock"
- the fact also firmly experimentally established by Prof. Skinner.
It is therefore quite obvious that such things as
"conscious memory", "consciousness" and especially
"self-consciousness" are not necessary pre-requisites for this
"sense of time". All of these entities are the result of social
behavior of humans and very often involve verbal communication which is a
marvellous instrument of social life and the only thing differing mankind from
other animals.
Sincerely yours,
behaviorist-socialist
