In a four-dimensional reality, all lower dimensions would appear as abstractions from the totality in the same way that a line or a plane presently have no actual existence to us and are abstractions. There are no perfect lines or planes, in the mathematical sense, except in mathematics. Every line also has width and is therefore potentially a plane and every plane has depth and is potentially a solid.
The Russian philosopher, P. D. Ouspensky developed these and other ideas in his book Tertium Organum. He became a mystic and disciple of Gurdjieff and his ideas were somehow transmitted through Gurdjieff to the theoretical physicist David Bohm (later collaborator with J. Krishnamurti) whose efforts to find a common reality that would explain the quantum-relativity dilemma resulted in Bohm's theory (published in his book "Implicate Order").
It's mind-blowing, the idea, the likelihood, that time is pseudo-emergent, an illusion born of not being able to step outside ourselves. We always find ourselves in one 'frame' of the movie of our lives. But we would experience that movie of our lives in exactly the same way even if there was no projector and the 'frames' were jumbled in a heap on the floor. There's no need for an outside mechanism like the 'flow of time' to make sense of that bundle of frames, because there's only one possible order in which they make sense. And we exist in each frame, with particular memories and expectations. Our minds would experience what we call the flow of time even if time is fundamentally an illusion.
The problem has historically been seen in an inability to identify/find/pin-point.... the "self". Several philosophers have sought the "self" and have not to found it. Mostly (I think), like Hume, they have decided that there isn't one.
Indeed the idea that there is a Self that is independent of the body that its inhabitants seems to me to be just recreating the" Ghost in the machine". A quantum leap, such as from the lowest to the next level of an electron in a hydrogen atom is actually the smallest change of energy possible. Sure, time doesn't exist for photons, because they are massless. A photon that was created shortly after the Big Bang doesn't differ from one which was emitted from the lightbulb in your room a fraction of a microsecond ago. But iff (if and only if) you have mass, time exists, see next paragraph. Determining if time exists for neutrinos is something I'll leave to experimental physicists - as solar neutrinos change state on their way to detectors on earth, this would tend to suggest that time *does* exist for *some* massless particles, or that they aren't massless after all (But they carry momentum. E = pc for photons. Einstein's often misquoted equation is E^2 = m^2.c^4 + p^2.c^2 . They have energy, and thus momentum, but no mass.). Theoretical physicists and experimental physicists are like men and women, i.e., we may not always understand each other, and sometimes we disagree, but for the most part we get on fine. We've known about neutrinos since the 1930s, at least theoretically, but they're slippery little beggars and I'll leave the nature of whether time exists for them to the experimental physicists.
If time doesn't exist, I would suggest that that you try this experiment: simplified into only one dimension your position is given by the equation s = ut + 1/2.a.t^2. This is an equation involving time, t. Now if your position is up the embankment of a motorway, because you just ran there, I would suggest this makes quite a big difference than if your position is directly in front of a 38-tonner doing 100 km/h. You may, for example be able to take acid and do physics rather better in the former case than the latter.
Do I mean all of these a la Poincairé or a la Gödel? The “point of a pyramid” intersecting 2 space is the pyramid, but it isn't. That's what David Bohm's book is all about. Perception is to some degree your map...not the territory...the point to that is if your experience is limited so is your mapping...mathematics is a closed/abstracted system...that neglects certain points in order to proceed....some of those neglected points are things that define this system. Plato said that this world descended from a world of forms...that the world of forms was used to construct this reality...along with other intersecting worlds of ideas...I was pointing out that although they exist conceptually, they don't exist in reality...because of the entangled warped nature of space there is no such thing as a straight line...parrots see in the ultraviolet as well as the full range of humans.
Bohm’s book is all about perception and reality and maps. I think of it as perception may not be reality but it is based or derived from reality. Perception is my map and my map was derived from reality. I can't separate the two, except in abstraction, which is not necessarily real. The neglected points that I can think of are 0 & 00 and they bracket the universe. Plato's idea that this world is descended from a world of forms, would need to show that a world of forms exists in reality. I think he was high on something when he said that, IF he said that. Some things get lost in the translation. Worlds of form intersecting with worlds of ideas. Too deep for me. Done spun off into never never land I guess. Same as the point of a pyramid intersecting 2 space Is the pyramid I wrote about above.
This is dangerous...what if they prove our universe doesn't exist?! Then we aren't here and are not having this conversation which is a contradiction. Don't worry, we do exist. Existentialism had its day and has come to an end.
