I'm not sure if your counting me as "one of these people". I merely think Biden has a responsiblity to put forward a coherent message of his vision for the nation and I do not see that he is being successful at that. I am optimistic that a message of hope would prevail over a message of fear and division but I am hearing a message from Trump and from Biden there is barely any message at all getting through. Surely a candidate for president does have an obligation and responsiblity to articulate his vision for the future.

Joe Biden as far as I can see is "missing in action" "without a message". I think Trump is bad for the country and bad for the world but Biden is sadly mistaken if he thinks being "not Trump" is sufficient.

The second amendment was ratified in 1791. At that time the U.S. had a standing army of about 800 individuals so a "well regulated militia was necessary to the security of a free state". Advanced personal weaponry at that time was front loading pistol or musket, capable of firing 2 or 3 rounds a minute in experienced hands. Times have changed and the reasonable purpose and implementation of the amendment should probably change with it. I don't think the founders could have foreseen the types of personal weapons now available.

I support an individuals right to possess firearms for personal defense, hunting and sport but "the right to keep and bear arms" has never included grenade launchers, tanks or surface to air missiles (there are restrictions). I think those restrictions should include military assault weapons.

I am going to be late to the party as usual. Philosophy like politics has a wide variety of viewpoints and a number of different proposed solutions to the same problems (assuming one can agree on the problem to start with).

I promote a variety of panpsychism although I prefer the term panexperientialism for the form of panpsychism which fits into my larger worldview. I think language is important and I try to avoid using terms like “consciousness” in ways that violate the common uses and understandings of the term. Language is imprecise and it is important to try to agree on definitions lest discussions become more disputes about usage of words than about ideas.

I come to panpsychism via a more fundamental philosophy which is basically Whiteheads process philosophy. In that philosophy the most fundamental units of reality are “events” (occasions or droplets of experience) what Whitehead calls “actual occasions”. Thus one talks about “quantum events” not “quantum particles”. About the world as a continuous creative becoming not a “being”, about properties as relationships between events not as inherent aspects of inert entities. The distinction between primary and secondary properties is thought of as a fundamental mistake in philosophy, an artificial bifurcation of nature.

Coming from this type of process ontology as a fundamental worldview a form of panpsychism is almost an inevitable conclusion. Having given this brief introduction and cursory overview of my fundamental worldview, I will comment on some of the posts from the thread just to try to give a different perspective, use of language and point of view. I am not here to convince anyone of anything. I do not think the purpose of philosophy is to win arguments only to familiarize yourself with different possibilities or explanations for “reality”.

If you want to be a panpsychist, the best way to do so is to attack emergentism as hard as you can. If you can say that emergentism isn't true, and that consciousness is real, then you can say that consciousness is fundamental.
— Pneumenon
I regard consciousness to be a relatively rare form of unified integrated (self aware and self reflective experience). I think humans and other higher animals can be regarded as “conscious” in the way we usually use the term. I think all of nature is “experiential” and thus experience is fundamental and consciousness or mind differ not in kind from experience but in degree. Different physical arrangement give different physical properties and the same can be said for arrangements of experiential units. Thus human consciousness requires an intact functioning human brain. I am a neutral monist of sorts the fundamental units of nature “occasions of experience” are unified integrated physical-protoexperiential units. To say they are conscious is to twist the usual interpretation of the world “conscious”.

So a sophisticated panpsychist might point out that if a cognitive scientists were to say "At X time, in this part of the brain, there is an "integration" that is happening which causes the emergence of consciosness".. the part about "causing emergence" becomes its own explanatory gap that needs to be explain. What is this emergence of consciousness itself besides that of being correlated with the integration of brain states? Schopenhauer1
This is the “combination problem” of panpsychism. How do the individual units of experience or mind combine to form a higher level of awareness or mind. I do not see it as fundamentally different from the way in which different physical combinations (like molecules, have different properties than their individual constituent “atoms”). Consciousness is a form of unified integrated experience and requires a complex integrated structure, system or process to support it.

@Pfhorrest said that the three basic options are:
1) Nothing is conscious (eliminativism)
2) Some things are conscious (emergentism)
3) Everything is conscious (panpsychism)
I do not think experience, mind and consciousness arise from fundamental constituents which are inert entirely physical and devoid of any psychic subjective or affective aspect themselves. So I fund panpsychism to be more plausible (in some form) than the alternatives.

That is the equivalent of what is being claimed of neuro-biological processes. You see.. physical, chemical, physical chemical physical chemical, more physical chemical physical chemical. WHAM!!! EXPERIENCE!!! Something is not right there.-Schopenhauer1
Which is why I think experience (non-conscious experience) is an aspect of the most fundamental units of nature “events” or “actual occasions” in Whiteheads terms.

So whilst the panpsychist holds that mentality is distributed throughout the natural world—in the sense that all material objects have parts with mental properties—she needn’t hold that literally everything has a mind, e.g., she needn’t hold that a rock has mental properties (just that the rock’s fundamental parts do)." Italics added.- Tim Wood
Rocks are simple aggregates that lack the integrated or complex structure which would give rise to any form of unified or integrated, or conscious experience. Hardly any serious presentation of panpsychism would hold that “rocks are conscious” and as an argument against panpsychism it represents a failure to grasp the fundamentals of the philosophical presentation.

If one assumes there are degrees of consciousness, from zero to partial to full, then one may conclude a rock has zero degree and a bright, functioning human has over ninety degrees when fully awake. If one assumes partial consciousness does not exist, then when we awaken there is no continuity and its like a light being switched on instantly. Is that possible? More likely, consciousness underlies everything, always there, and we become aware of it. Jgill
I think most experience is non- conscious experience, there are long presentations about “Whiteheads Unconscious Ontology” and “Non Conscious Experience in Whitehead” that I will not bore you with. Experience comes in forms and degrees but not differences in kind and experience is fundamental to a process view of nature. Most human experience I would argue is non-conscious experience. Our conscious experience is only the tip of the iceberg (the flashlight) of our mental processing and perception. Most of our mental processing is non-conscious and not under conscious control and outside the realm of conscious awareness.

I also brought up the idea that maybe properties are not "real" as in, inhering in the matter arrangements or matter itself, but observer-dependent. I've also mentioned this theory goes back to Locke and earlier, but Locke arbitrarily split primary and secondary properties. Of course, Kant has a full blown theory of it, but his "categories" are a bit too much of speculative idealism. Schopenhauer1
The division of properties into primary and secondary is one of the fundamental mistakes in the interpretation of nature an “artificial bifurcation of nature” as Whitehead would phrase it. The red and warmth of the sun are as “real” as much a part of reality as wavelengths and photons (perhaps more), you cannot pick and choose. There is always more to “reality” than what can be objectively measured and quantified.

From that principle ‘panpsychism’ is a no goer. Any rational approach would be more willing to accept that the interactions of certain cells leads to ‘consciousness’ at some point. I’m willing to be open to the suggestion of some proto/pre-conscious states leading to the emergence of what we term as ‘consciousness’. I like sushi
Precisely there are different degrees and forms of experience just as there are different measured physical properties depending on the structure of the system under observation.. Using the term “consciousness” causes an unnecessary resistance to the concept of panpsychism because the way we usually use consciousness is to describe our own self aware, self reflective, language oriented awareness and we do not attribute that degree or form of experience to all of nature.

It is not just a matter of clocks running at different speeds. It is also a matter of physical (and hence chemical and biologic processes) running at different rates due to differences in acceleration and gravitational systems. Thus the traveling twin (given sufficient acceleration and gravitational) effects indeed does age slower in biological terms than the stay at home twin. One can show such changes in the lifetimes of accelerated atomic particles, in atomic clocks taken on airplane trips or placed in space at altitudes where the gravitational field is weaker. It brings up the whole question of what is the nature of time and the fact that there is no universal fixed eternal time or present moment. The rate of all processes are affected by acceleration and gravity not just the running of a clock.

Censorship is sign of weakness and mistrust of community intelligence.

Censors fear truth, censors fear rationality and compromise. — Spirit12

It is hard to see the free speech value of "kill all the $$$ (pick you favorite minority or ethnic group).
It is hard to see the free speech value of denial of the moon landing, the efficacy of vaccines or the reality of climate change. It may be necessary to impose some limits on speech to ensure a society cohesive enough and rational enough to function.

There are limits to what science can explain.
There are limits to what language can describe.
We should explore what those limits might be but philosophy, reason and even logic tell us there are limits. Godels incompleteness and Kants noumena. Consciousness may lie in the boundries.

Time, Change and Space

I do not think one can separate these concepts in any meaningful way. In modern physics space is not a fixed, empty, void. Space is QFT and there are constant random fluctuations in the energy value of any location in the field, with virtual particles appearing and disappearing (the Dirac Sea). Thus change (and its abstraction time) is built into the very structure of space. The universe is not, never was, cannot be, a static being. The universe is a continuous becoming and thus change (time) is built into the very structure of the world.

I too do not believe that god intercedes to alter the laws of nature of behalf of those who engage in petitionary prayer. "The rain falls on the just and the unjust alike". I do think that prayer is useful to those who engage in it, for it alters the petitioner not the universe.

I was looking at your essay, do not have time to read it in detail now but we would seem to have a lot of common ground, philosophically speaking. For instance I do not believe in objects with inherent properties. Objects are repetitive patterns of events and properties are relationships.

Ok but that is a unique understanding of the term "physical". Most regard the physical as the empirical, the measurable that which science and not philosophy deals with. I generally say events are fundamental and that events are physical-experiential units and science only deals with the physical aspect of the event. Just an attempt at clarity and more in keeping with the usual understanding and use of terms and Whiteheads terminology.

Whitehead used the term "occasions of experience" as the fundamental units of nature and thus occasions were temporal and had prehensions of the past and of future possibilities. None of these aspects of "occasions of experience" were purely physical or could be explained in purely physical, empirical, mathematical and measurable terms. There are efforts to minimize these aspects of his philosophy by some but reading Whiteheads Concepts of Nature and other works should dispel any notion that he adhered to an entirely materialist, deterministic, physicalist view of nature. On the other hand he thought science was fundamental to philosophy and felt his process philosophy entirely compatible with the "science" of the day assuming one does not equate science with mechanistic determinism.

The Europeans have a decidedly different approach to "free speech", "libel" and "censorship". Use of hate symbols, incitement to violence or racial epithets are banned in many European countries and censorsed on the internet in Europe. I do not see that speech for political purposes is much affected by this and perhaps in the days of social media we should consider rethinking our approach.
In any event good reading:https://magazine.areweeurope.com/stories/the-ocean-between-us/sticks-and-stones

The problem of evil (POE) is the question of how to reconcile the existence of evil with an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient God (see theism)
— Wikipedia — TheMadFool

The problem of evil (as a religious problem) stems from the assumption that "God" is omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent. I think we should questions the assumptions about God as a starting point for religious philosophy. None of these divine attributes are required in order to have a fundamentally religious outlook or inclination about nature and they give good grounds to doubt the existence of such a god and subsequently of all gods when stated as divine requirements.

I don't believe in time. Time is an illusion, an abstraction from the events, the change, the becoming of the world.
I believe in change, in process, in events, in the creative becoming of the world. Can't find time in physics. Can't find time in experience, just the relative ordering of events as seen from a specific point of view. Time is just the relative rate of change, nothing more and that is why philosophers and physicists keep searching and finding not.

Forced to choose between scientific determinism, divine omniscience and free will, I pick free will everytime.

Scientific determinism is at a best a theory which can not be demonstrated, and for any complex system is useless. The formulas (abstractions and idealizations) may be deterministic but the world is not.

Divine omniscience is a pernicious idea but if the future does not yet exist, then even God cannot know it and it is a small loss to postulate that.

Free will exists although we are not nearly as "free" as we suppose. The will is not "free" and many of our decisions occur at a sub or non conscious level. Still I don't think all of our behavior is predetermined and I am certain it cannot be empirically demonstrated that it is.

Obviously there is no consensus agreement on a solution to the so called “hard problem of consciousness”. In fact there is little agreement even on a definition of “consciousness”, “mind”, “experience” or “qualia”. There is also no agreement on which sorts of structures (organisms or systems) possesses any of the above forms of qualia. The exception being “ourselves” our “inner lives” and thus we have first hand knowledge that such a form of experience as consciousness is present in the universe.

Just to clarify, I think consciousness is form of integrated unified experience. I think experience is universal. Mind (a less unified and integrated form of experience) is widespread in nature and “consciousness” is a fairly rare form of mind and experience. I thus fall into the category of panexperientialism or a form of Whiteheadian process philosophy which some classify as a variety of panpsychism.


I think the “problem of consciousness” is a philosophical problem not a scientific problem. The problem arises precisely because we think we should be able to detect and explain “consciousness” using the scientific method. This stems from the dominant materialistic, mechanistic view of nature. In the materialist mechanistic view most of nature is inert, unfeeling, non experiential and psychically inert. From this point of view experience, mind, consciousness, qualia are rare in nature and confined to humans and at most a few higher animals. In the materialist view our scientific, empirical descriptions are complete and accurate descriptions of all aspects of the phenomena which they seek to describe and explain. This strikes me as false for even the most basic of scientific phenomena such as quantum events, entanglement, non locality, and superposition. There are aspects to even these most basic natural phenomena which elude us.
Thus I do not think any purely empirical, mathematical or scientific explanation which is entirely complete and absolute for experience, mind, consciousness or qualia is possible.

This is not a position against the continuing advances of neuroscience, This is not a position against the utility of science in gaining useful and meaningful knowledge of reality. It is a position against the position that science will completely and satisfactorily explain all of nature including our experience.

Now from my philosophical position (process philosophy and panexperientialism), mind and consciousness is not something unexpected for it has not “popped into existence” from inert mindless non experiential matter, for that would truly be a miracle. Instead “occasions of experience” are the fundamental units of nature and we should not talk of “particles” but of “events”

As for Descartes, it was the splitting of nature into two distinct but separate substances (dualism) that began the whole mind body problem (which gives rise to the hard problem of consciousness) in the first place. We are part of nature, our experience is part of nature. We cannot, we should not attempt to explain it away as a purely physical materialist empirical phenomena. Whitehead argues strongly against this “artificial bifurcation of nature” into “nature of awareness and nature as the cause of awareness” the song of the birds, the warmth of the sun, the hardness of chairs and the feel of velvet” these are all part of nature, of reality “ you cannot pick and choose and call quarks real and consciousness an illusion.

). For James, experience is the sole criterion of reality; we live in “a world of pure experience.

There will be some degree of human activity induced climate change now no matter what we do. There have been irreversible changes to polar ice, permafrost thaw and ocean currents and a self reinforcing system is now in operation. We still could at least in terms of science and technology takes steps to keep this from getting even worse. In terms of our political and social systems it is not clear that we will be able to plan far enough ahead or fast enough to keep from continuing to raise atmospheric CO2 and thus cause an even worse scenario in terms of global warming.

A warmer planet is a more energetic planet. Warmer oceans and atmosphere have more energy to impart to storms and thus stronger more violent weather and storms lie ahead. Changes in climate will change crop and agriculture patterns and regions.

There will be major dislocations of populations from many costal areas and as always the poorer sections of the planet will suffer more disruption, political unrest and economic stagnation.

We have not even taken the most basic steps of stopping subsidies for oil exploration, closing off federal land and wildlife preserves to exploration, in fact movement has been in the opposite direction. We should cease new oil and fossil fuel exploration immediately, allow the price of oil to rise and make competing renewable energy sources more cost comparative as well as expend large sums on battery technology and renewable sources. See any evidence of that?

Having said all this, life on the planet will not cease to exist and humans will not likely go extinct. The planet and life on it have survived more severe disruptions in the climate due to natural cycles. That is not an excuse for doing nothing for there will surely be major loss of life and severe stress on our political and social structures and human civilization as we currently know it is not assured. We have arisen and thrived in a certain climatic and geological environment and we should be much more careful than we are being, and have been about altering that environment in this way and this rapidly.

IMHO.

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill

Ours is an imperfect union and doubtless there is much room for improvement but over time things have actually been getting better not worse. Should we reform the electoral college, establish open primaries, make it easier to vote (not harder) and remove corporate money from our politics, definitely. Are there movements to accomplish these things, yes, Will it be easy, no. There is a mechanism for change and our history shows that change is possible, so all this pessimism seems unfounded.

Thanks, prothero. I ran into the article you linked to yesterday, always thought it was well written. :-) — rachMiel

He is a really good lucid writer, I have a couple of his books. Lots of philosophy writing just seems dense and arcane to me, but his writing is fun to read and informative at least for me.

For the "eternalists" and "block universe" advocates on the thread.
I want to know the status of "dinosaurs"? Are they truly extinct and vanished from the universe (except for their bones and descendants)?
Or are they still moving and inhabiting the earth in their region of the 4D space time block and the only reason we can't get back there is because our timeline won't curve enough to take us back? — prothero
Dinosaur world-lines exist in the distant past. — Inis

And that just seems to be a deliberate dodge of the question. The eternalist stance (as I understand it is the past, the present and the future all have equal ontologic status. They all exist and are real in the same manner.
The problem is virtually no one actually believes that. It arises from treating time as just another physical dimension and then drawing block diagrams to illustrate ones passage through the time block. Which is a useful tool (just like train routes on a map) but no more represents the actual passage than the line a train will take drawn on a map is of the actual train ride.. One can not empirically directly demonstrate the continuing reality of the past. It is all a fallacy of misplaced concreteness mistaking a mathematical formula (always an abstraction and idealization and which fails at the extremes) for reality itself. One cannot derive the concrete from the abstract in its full measure.

First of all, an idea proposed by the early church scholars is that God is of necessity outside time/space/being and this characteristic is what enables him to be a First Cause and ongoing Sustainer of reality within our being and universe. He is thus the Uncaused Cause of all. He is thus not subject to temporal causation Himself. Such a God is of necessity beyond human comprehension. — Elrondo

The classical description of God as eternal, changeless, immutable, perfect being does seem at odds with the notion of God as personal, loving and involved in the affairs of the world.

Likewise the notion of God as omnipotent engenders the problem of evil and God as omniscient engenders the problem of the future and of free will.

We can of course just proclaim God is mystery, is transcendent of our understanding, or is known to us only “through the veil of perception” or “through a glass darkly”

Of course people seem to like to talk about God quite a bit and to speculate about his nature or to develop a conception they feel worthy of worship and belief.

Personally I use the conception of God found in Process Theology and inspired by the writings of Alfred North Whitehead in process philosophy.

Under this conception, God has a dipolar nature. God has both a primordial (eternal changeless aspect) and a consequent nature (taking in and responding to the experience of the world).
The primordial nature of God corresponds to all of the possibilities for the world of beauty, creative and experience. These possibilities are actually “deficient” and must be actualized or realized to be complete.

The Consequential nature of God is the taking in of the experience of the world (its joys, its sufferings) preserving this experience in its presentational immediacy (objective immortality) and then providing possibilities for creative advancement for each near event or occasion of experience..
God is not omnipotent for other entities and actualities have their own agency, freedom and independent but God is a powerful influence on the progress of the world providing for continuous creative advance but the future is open and creation is an ongoing process..

Anyway this is a form of panentheism (the world in God) and this particular variety is derived from process philosophy and is found under the category of process theology in the philosophy of religion.
God is your companion, fellow traveler and fellow sufferer. The notion of God suffering is antithetical to much of traditional religion but Jesus on the Cross is certainly compatible with such a view.

I have been doing just that, reading Elizabeth Kraus's book The Metaphysics of Experience and focusing in on Whitehead's take on persistence, eternal and enduring objects. Here's a quote from Process and Reality — rachMiel

See the short dissertation by Shaviro (who is much more lucid than most writers on Whitehead and much better at explanation than me)
On eternal objects.
http://www.shaviro.com/Blog/?p=578

As I understand it "eternal objects" are the "patterns and forms preferred by nature". We cannot discern them (as pure potentials or possibilities) until they have ingressed into or been substantiated as actualities in nature. They ingress in during the formation of events, when the developing event prehends elements of the past and possibilities of the future. They play a similar role to Platonic forms but have much less "actuality" to them.

For the "eternalists" and "block universe" advocates on the thread.
I want to know the status of "dinosaurs"? Are they truly extinct and vanished from the universe (except for their bones and descendants)?
Or are they still moving and inhabiting the earth in their region of the 4D space time block and the only reason we can't get back there is because our timeline won't curve enough to take us back?

A 6-month-later followup to this thread, the answer to which might require familiarity with Buddhism. Is this accurate:

Buddhists say true existents have an unchanging essence.
Processists say true existents do NOT have an unchanging essence.

Though apparently opposed, they're actually pointing to the same thing:
Stuff doesn't have an unchanging essence. One just calls this stuff
non-existent and the other calls it existent, a matter of semantics. — rachMiel

I am not sure where you are getting this but the impermanence of worldly things or emptiness in Buddhism and the flux, flow and change of process have some similarities. You might want to look at the notion of "eternal objects" in Whiteheads version of process philosophy for notions of form or essence.

However, whether presentism is indeed ruled out by relativity depends on exactly what claims are made in the name of presentism. Lots of arguments have been put forward for and against compatibility - go and look for them, if you are interested. (But who am I kidding...) — SophistiCat

I freely admit, I do not have the time or the expertise to fully evaluate the arguments for and against presentism and its various forms. It is just I am aware of these arguments and the issue seems far from absolutely settled.

There are versions of relativized presentism, cone presentism and point presentism. There are those who questions the metaphysical assumptions of the STR but not its empirical consequences. There are versions of Quantum Gravity (held to be a more fundamental physical theory than STR) with fixed foliations which allow for presentism. There are very reputable physicists and cosmologist who argue against a block universe and for forms of presentism. There is the expanding block universe models which although they preserve the reality of the past allow for an open or crystallizing future.

My point is not that I am correct and everyone else is wrong, my point is we do not know for certain and so absolute dogmatism and brusque dismissal of other points of view is unwarranted.

I am aware that the standard interpretation of STR and particularly the notion of "simultaneous events" leads to problems for standard naïve versions of presentism.

I fully understand Feynmans point in his lecture about what is "now
"What we mean by “right now” is a mysterious thing which we cannot define and we cannot affect, but it can affect us later, or we could have affected it if we had done something far enough in the past. When we look at the star Alpha Centauri, we see it as it was four years ago: we might wonder what it is like “now”. “Now” means at the same time from our special coordinate system. We can only see Alpha Centauri by the light that has come from our past, up to four years age, but we do not know what it is doing “now”: it will take four years before what it is doing “now” can affect us. Alpha Centauri “now” is an idea or concept of our mind; it is not something that is really definable physically at the moment, because we have to wait to observe it; we cannot even define it right “now”. The “now” depends on the coordinate system. If, for example, Alpha Centauri were moving, an observer there would not agree with us because he would put his axis at an angle and his “now” would be a different time. We have already talked about the fact that simultaneity is not a unique thing.……………….. There is no one who can tell us what is really happening right now, at any reasonable distance, because that is unobservable.

There is no view from everywhere; there is no view from nowhere; all views are localized and limited.

The eternalist view (B theory, block, static, iron universe, 4D representation of time as a physical dimension) would seem to imply that dinosaurs still exist (are actual) at their location within the spacetime block and that the results of the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election already exist at their location in the future and these are interpretations which I just do not believe can be true; our current interpretations and theories not withstanding, so I look to the alternatives present within reason and science..

There is also a lot of misunderstanding about clocks, proper time, correct time, time dilation and other forms of nonsense in the thread but I do not participate to endlessly banter, mostly looking at threads just inspires me to research the subject elsewhere, to play with ideas.

Because it is talking about "the flow of time, or passage through space-time," rather than motion. There is no difference in dynamics between eternalism and presentism. In fact, there is no physical difference, period. The difference is entirely metaphysical and has to do with metaphysical notions, such as the objective present, the passage of time, the existence of past and future, etc. — SophistiCat

Nope. Presentism is falsified by several well known experiments, including time-dilation, twin paradox, and the fact that your GPS actually works. — Inis

We all have our metaphysical preferences when it comes to time (eternalism, presentism, possibilism). What we should not be doing is claiming that our preferences have been verified by the only possible interpretation of physics (either general relativity or quantum mechanics). This since there are several solutions to the equations of general relativity and several interpretations of the equations of quantum mechanics and the two sets of equations are not compatible and have not been reconciled. They both break down at the extremes.

In truth, clocks have little to do with metaphysical or philosophical notions of time and very little to do with time in physics. There is no clock which represent the "metaphysical present" or the correct "present time". Agreement about the correct time on a clock has to do only with consensus or agreement; to allow us to catch trains, planes or buses and appear at a given location to meet or decide world records in track events.. Clocks do not keep track of the "present". We synchronize our watches and divide the day up into 24hr, 60 minutes and 60 seconds only by convention not by some universal law of physics. There is in fact no universal present time. There is in fact no universal now or present; about this physics and experience can agree. All of this fails to discount the notion that the relative present at each space-time location is all there is. The past has perished and is incorporated into the present and the future is open and yet to be determined. There is no experimental evidence, empirical date or experiential phenomena which proves this to not be so.


True the universe is sometimes represented by a block universe in which time is given a physical dimension but this is merely a illustrative tool to help visualize spacetime paths not an actual representative of our "reality". Mistaking mathematical formulas and tools as anything other idealized abstract conceptualizations of "reality" is the "fallacy of misplaced concreteness". So at least a little humility is called for in assertions about the nature of time and the reality of the present versus the past and the future.


My personal convictions are that time (as commonly spoken about and conceived) is an illusion. Time does not exist independently, is not absolute, is not fixed and is really only an abstracted artificial concept based on the change, flow and flux that is the most universally observed and experienced aspect of reality. Others are welcome to their iron block frozen eternalist universe but such a conception is not confirmed by observation, experience, reason or physics.

I'm also anti-realist but carry along a working scenario. I stress things you don't. — frank

I am not sure I would classify as an anti-realist but I am interested what you mean by the term, what things you stress and your working scenario for dealing with "reality".

As for time (a complex subject), I strongly reject the block universe (eternalism) interpretation of general relativity. Time is change nothing more, and change is the most consistent feature of reality, not fixed or static being.

So our concepts bring us to the realization of oneness, but fail to take us onwards into it? — frank

Well this a speculative philosophy discussion about ontology (being) and so you will not get definitive truth or proof. It is about developing concepts and language which you help you explain or approach all of your experience of the world which encompasses both the physical and the mental or experiential.
This is no finality of statement to be achieved.

For me the world is not composed of the static or the inert but is process, change and flux it is a continuous creative becoming, not a being.. There are no independent objects with inherent properties but societies or organisms with interactions and relations to the rest of the world. The entire world is an integrated, interactive system of relations. The choice between monistic materialism or physicalism and monistic idealism, is a false choice, the world is both (not as separate substances but as one substance with both properties). As to what the nature of fundamental units or substance of nature are, they are events (quantum events) not enduring particles (which are only repetitive events).

I think using our usual conceptions of locality and causality it is difficult to explain phenomena like "quantum entanglement". I think using our usual conception of the nature of atoms and atomic particles it is difficult to explain why special arrangements of them have "experience" or are "conscious". It is not that the experiential and the physical are separate things which "mingle", it is that they are the same thing "events" viewed from different aspects or points of view.
"what it is to be like".

I was just looking to understand how your view is different from Chalmer's naturalistic dualism, if it is.

I think we all agree that there are events and that events are somehow related. If there is a psychic aspect to an event, how does that work? — frank

I have not read much Chalmers but a brief scan indicates there are some similarities. I am more familiar with Strawson arguments about physicalism and panpsychism. My basic position is reality is more (much more) than external observation and empirical measurement can reveal, exactly how that works is available only on the basis of rational speculation and analogy to our own internal experience.

In truth I am more a fan of A.N. Whitehead process philosophy and David Ray Griffith panexperientialism. There is some subjective (mental, experiential, choose your term) aspect to all events (miniscule for say quantum events) but very significant for complex integrated, unified systems such as ourselves. We should start with what we cannot deny (experience) and work down from there. The assumption that creatures such as ourselves are built from particles of matter which are themselves entirely devoid of any experiential, mental of psychic quality seems much less likely than the reverse assumption.

One could level that accusation but I am not saying rocks are conscious, if that is what you mean? I am saying that events have relationships and interactions with other events which are more than just physical in nature (panexperiential) would be more accurate.

Perhaps you don't, but you cannot explain, given an objective present, why the clocks diverge. — Inis

Even if there were no clocks, the present still "exists" and change still happens and therefore time (a derivative concept of change) passes. If there were no change there would no time.

True, so what's your view? — frank

Well as I stated earlier, I am a neutral monist of the process philosophy type. The fundamental units of nature are events in spacetime and such events have both material (physical) and experiential (mental) aspects. Language is always a problem and post modern language is especially a problem.

Is there no room in the house of materialism to accommodate the world such as it is?
— StreetlightX
Of course if one defines "matter" broadly enough to include mind and experience i.e. one attributes experience to matter; then one is redefining our typical notions of matter and using language to avoid the problem.

Frankly we never attach as much value to potential as we do to actual and existent. So we value oak trees more than we value acorns. We value children more than we value embryos. One can argue against this but in general confronted with a choice between saving an established experiential living person (a child say) or a potential person (an embryo say) virtually everyone will place higher value on the child.

From Wikipedia : Time Dilation

According to the theory of relativity, time dilation is a difference in the elapsed time measured by two observers, either due to a velocity difference relative to each other, or by being differently situated relative to a gravitational field. As a result of the nature of spacetime,[2] a clock that is moving relative to an observer will be measured to tick slower than a clock that is at rest in the observer's own frame of reference. A clock that is under the influence of a stronger gravitational field than an observer's will also be measured to tick slower than the observer's own clock.

Such time dilation has been repeatedly demonstrated, for instance by small disparities in a pair of atomic clocks after one of them is sent on a space trip, or by clocks on the Space Shuttle running slightly slower than reference clocks on Earth, or clocks on GPS and Galileo satellites running slightly faster.[1][2][3] Time dilation has also been the subject of science fiction works, as it technically provides the means for forward time travel.[Experimental testing[edit]

Hafele and Keating, in 1971, flew caesium atomic clocks east and west around the earth in commercial airliners, to compare the elapsed time against that of a clock that remained at the U.S. Naval Observatory. Two opposite effects came into play. The clocks were expected to age more quickly (show a larger elapsed time) than the reference clock, since they were in a higher (weaker) gravitational potential for most of the trip (c.f. Pound–Rebka experiment). But also, contrastingly, the moving clocks were expected to age more slowly because of the speed of their travel. From the actual flight paths of each trip, the theory predicted that the flying clocks, compared with reference clocks at the U.S. Naval Observatory, should have lost 40±23 nanoseconds during the eastward trip and should have gained 275±21 nanoseconds during the westward trip. Relative to the atomic time scale of the U.S. Naval Observatory, the flying clocks lost 59±10 nanoseconds during the eastward trip and gained 273±7 nanoseconds during the westward trip (where the error bars represent standard deviation).[39] In 2005, the National Physical Laboratory in the United Kingdom reported their limited replication of this experiment.[40] The NPL experiment differed from the original in that the caesium clocks were sent on a shorter trip (London–Washington, D.C. return), but the clocks were more accurate. The reported results are within 4% of the predictions of relativity, within the uncertainty of the measurements.
The Global Positioning System can be considered a continuously operating experiment in both special and general relativity. The in-orbit clocks are corrected for both special and general relativistic time dilation effects as described above, so that (as observed from the earth's surface) they run at the same rate as clocks on the surface of the Earth.[41]

The rate at which a process occurs, mechanical clock ticking, biologic or chemical is affected by the gravitational field in which it occurs. Again nothing much to do with presentism and very little to do with the nature of time itself except to show that keeping time is just measuring the relative rate of change. Time itself as we typically talk about or conceive of it does not exist. There is no absolute universal fixed time (Newton), passing at a uniform rate.

Clocks around the world have 24 different times representing the different time zones. Before agreement clocks in different towns had different times, rail travel made synchronizing clocks necessary, etc. The time reading on any particular clock has nothing to do with presentism or with the philosophical notion of time.

One problem with roe vs wade is it was decided in 1973 and there have been significant advances in medical technology (contraception, sex education, medical terminations and fetal imaging and understanding of fetal development) since that time. So some of the reasoning is now outdated.

If we could employ the best technology and methods for pregnancy prevention and for early intervention in unwanted pregnancy, the number of troublesome or late term abortions would plummet.

Bright lines (before this OK and after this date or stage of development not OK) really do not work. Abortion is always troublesome and prevention of unwanted pregnancy should be the first priority and early intervention to terminate a poor second option. Forcing women to carry unwanted pregnancy to term is tantamount to taking control of another persons body without their consent (a form of slavery or imprisonment..

It is not possible to have a rational or philosophical discussion without acknowledging the science and facts behind fetal development and the technologies available to address the problem.

How about doing a simple time dilation experiment? Synchronise atomic clocks, and take one on a flight around the world. When the clocks are reunited, they no longer agree on the time. How is that possible under presentism? — Inis

That has been done many different times and many different ways and the result is the same, clocks run at different rates under the influence of gravity and acceleration. The time reading on a clock however has nothing to do with presentism. Time is not fundamental, what is fundamental is change and process, and the rate at which a clock runs, or humans age, varies with gravity and acceleration. There is a fundamental misunderstanding about what time is (a derived concept from change) and what clocks do (they are processes that run at different rates under different conditions).