What do they change from/to? — Luke
Change in temporal position is the existence of a pair of values? What changes? — Luke
I guess my point was that the confusion comes from thinking about things "existing", which kind of implies an "already', or in other words 'at the same time'... and so it's hard to make sense of something changing position then. But the point is that they exist at different times in eternalism. — ChatteringMonkey
Agreed, it's useful in physics to think in those terms, maybe not so much in everyday life... not as long as we don't start venturing into space at relativistic speeds anyway. — ChatteringMonkey
the eternalist idea that there is motion when nothing is moving — Metaphysician Undercover
The passage of time is whatever makes motion possible and what doesn't exist in B-theory eternalism.
— Kenosha Kid
Fixed the definition. — ChatteringMonkey
But in Luke's defense if we take eternalism seriously as a metaphysical theory of time, and not merely as a description, then there does seem to be somewhat of a tension between change in temporal position and saying things already exist at all moments of time. — ChatteringMonkey
Where I seem to come down on all of this is that word 'what exist' or what is 'real' is in some way tied to our experience, and therefor presentism.... and rather then denoting something about metaphysical reality, it usually is used to differentiate between things that can have a direct effect on us. Or put in another way we invented those words because they has some utility to us. And so the problem is ultimately with the word 'real' or 'exist' really. Saying that something in the distant future and distant past exists doesn't seem very useful to us... whatever the metaphysical reality may be. — ChatteringMonkey
I forget the reasons brought forth by Forest; but aren't free will and determinism contradictory by definition?
Determinism: Given Cause A, Effect B always follows.
Free Will: The will has the ability to choose between multiple effects. — Samuel Lacrampe
What is the difference between passage of time and change in temporal position? — Luke
This is not me defining anything either. It's known as the B-theory in philosophy of time. — Luke
Aren't you simply defining temporal passage into existence? — Luke
You seem keen to saddle me with Presentist assumptions. I have not mentioned an objective present moment or a second time dimension. I am using the same definition of motion as you. — Luke
While relativistic laws are reference frame invariant (up to coordinate transformation), the same cannot be said about those things that the laws do not fix, such as the distribution of matter and radiation in the universe. — SophistiCat
If we take those other things into account, we can identify reference frames that are special in some way, such as the frame in which the cosmic microwave background radiation has the same energy profile in all directions. — SophistiCat
All the same,the need for a privileged frame is not fatal to presentism, although as you point out, no observation can help us identify this frame. — SophistiCat
What would the experiences of the people be? — RogueAI
But with the education system, we get an educated villain, but also an intuitively moral person with even better perspective on their moral intuition. — Christoffer
For me, philosophy is probably the least corruptable within academia. The reason being that one primary goal of it is to be skeptical of the knowledge you learn within it. While scientific educations may look unbiased, they can be corrupted. So philosophy is a great way to force people to see past their biases and if the praxis within the job they have educated towards feature a focus on philosophical unbiased rationality, it's even harder to maintain a bias. — Christoffer
If he’d made it just another few years, he might have been the one to notice tossing an object out the window of his railcar didn’t appear anywhere near the same to him as it did to his manservant watching him ride away. The guy was a peer-reviewed scientist after all, even if his legacy is philosophy. — Mww
Epistemic Democracy is in its simplest form a request for better parliamentary praxis and educational baseline for all at those power positions. To represent the people shouldn't be to represent stupidity, it should be to represent by interpreting the will of the people through rational thought rather than populism. — Christoffer
You still seem to be presuming that an object can change its temporal position (i.e. move through time). Eternalism rejects this. — Luke
Well, you don't seem to need my help; you've single-handedly come up with a near-scientific hypothesis on the issue. I appreciate your effort and ingenuity but, if you must know, I'd let time be the judge. I guess it's going to be a long wait... — TheMadFool
Having said that, a woman should be free to show some skin without being held responsible for ‘sending the wrong signals’ to men in whom she has no interest. If you hit on a woman and she brushes you off, the humiliation you might feel is not her fault for ‘putting it out there’. Even if her intention is to be noticed, she’s just as free to be choosy as if she had dressed modestly. — Possibility
That is, everything exists at all times. — Luke
The block universe in this case is not a model along which you can trace time with your finger — Luke
To anticipate the follow-up question, or the similarity of what I'm suggesting to the spotlight, it is not necessary to do this for the "change" with time to be there. It's merely a means of illustrating that the change is already encoded in the worldline. — Kenosha Kid
The block universe in this case is ... the actual universe in which nothing changes its spatiotemporal location. — Luke
this kind of behavior is aimed specifically at a certain range of "clients" - men whom they desire and wish to forge a relationship with — TheMadFool
Do you mean simply tracing out a path on a map — Luke
According to the principle of relativity, laws of physics don't privilege any reference frame. But that doesn't mean that a reference frame cannot be privileged in some other sense - like in the sense of indicating the absolute now. The absolute now would not be part of the known laws of physics if it existed; it would come as an extra fact about the world. But that's old news - it was as true for Galileo and Newton as it is for Einstein. — SophistiCat
I presented the MST mainly for comparison with the block universe. Perhaps that was an error on my part. — Luke
Does this imply that you acknowledge and find it unproblematic that Eternalism (i.e. the block universe) has no passage of time? — Luke
If so, then how do you answer my question of what it is that changes position over time if 4D objects (and/or their subdivided 3D parts) remain fixed at their spatiotemporal locations according to Eternalism? — Luke
I had in mind the "new atheist" thing and counter-thing, which seemed to generate some pissing. — darthbarracuda
They say "we just need to change the math a little on that one", admitting that they are changing, not describing, nature, which may be indescribable — Gregory
I think both Kant and Hawking would object to the notion that the models of science get us direct access to reality itself. Scientific models are good in so far as they allow us to make predictions. That does not allow us to say that science gives us an entirely, complete, adequate or satisfactory model of all of our experience of the world or of reality itself. — prothero
MST is a hybrid of Presentism and Eternalism. Presentism does indeed entail a "privileged history". However, I'm not here to defend Presentism, but to point out the nature of the (block) universe according to (B-theory) Eternalism, which, by definition, contains no temporal passage. — Luke
I'm not sure whether that's the "whole point of spacetime", but the laws of physics are considered to be invariant in spacetime, yes. — Luke
That only makes sense if there is a passage of time. — Luke
when does motion occur according to Eternalism? — Luke
A few scientists have a big dick and like to show it off. — darthbarracuda
It could be God or anything the human imagination can think of pulling the strings. Scientist think they understand matter, but can't prove that. Kant tried to defend regularities but it all fails. I think consciousness effects matter more than we know. Heidegger implies as much. This could explain how scientist make things. There i s no relation between sciences model and reality. They are wrong to think they can model reality anyway. Their statistics are flawed too. Something as basic as whether space-time push us into the chair, pulls us, or opens up to let it rest are still debated by scientists. Your senses can't feel the laws of nature, so there I no access to them even in they exist — Gregory
I'm in no way claiming "they had it coming" but I'm bothered by how women dress in ways that seem to attract all the wrong kind of attention to themselves and then seem offended by it. — TheMadFool
By what standard do you say science is successful. — Gregory
Who's to say it's successful enough — Gregory
that there aren't alternate reasons for how they created what they did? — Gregory
A woman can walk around naked and not want to be treated as just a sex object, partner, or what have you.
You are not realizing that someone can want to look appealing and want to be viewed as that AND so much more. — creativesoul
You can have morally sound politicians, great economists, great debaters, great diplomats, great lawyers, the works, and that melting point of experience and achievement would far outdo an identikit political education. — Kenosha Kid
Physicists with fat heads are saying this year that mathematics now can prove causation and not simply correlation. — Gregory
I feel like everything I do is insignificant, so small, my life is meaningless, in the grandest scheme of everything. So why should I live? Why should I keep living, if it’s all meaningless, futile, and pointless? Why should I just “accept reality” ? — niki wonoto
I think you view philosophy in another way than I do within the context of epistemic democracy. I focus on the practice of dialectical scrutiny, the focus on strong premised, unbiased arguments together with an understanding of moral theories, deeper ideological understanding as well as how the praxis of philosophical debate erases all populistic behaviors in parliament. — Christoffer
I think we should accept JacobPhilosophy’s premise for this thread and assume that both obligations and virtuous acts exist. — Congau