This is like saying you dismiss salt because it requires religion to make sense of pepper. — Luke
Huh? I thought you didn't want to discuss this. Why make such a strange analogy? — Metaphysician Undercover
You dismiss eternalism because it requires religion to make sense of time passage. — Metaphysician Undercover
What I meant, is that you dismiss eternalism, because accepting eternalism requires that you also accept religion in order to understand the passage of time. — Metaphysician Undercover
You have been harping about how eternalism makes the passage of time unintelligible, and I explained how if you accepted a religious principle (the soul), you could make sense of time passage in an eternalist framework. — Metaphysician Undercover
This must be some sort of illusion, although nobody has offered any explanation of what type of illusion it is, or how the illusion of temporal passage in a static universe works. — Luke
That's because I don't think it really requires much additional explanation once you accept the basic premisses of eternalism, namely that all moments in time have the same 'existence'. If you accept that, you already assume that we don't see the entire picture, but only a slice of it at a time... and so you already accept that the way we perceive things is limited or 'illusionary'. That is the big one, and then it doesn't take that big of a leap that, given that assumption of limited perspective, we would experience things as moving through time. — ChatteringMonkey
This also strikes me as backward. You're not making an inference that this is how we should expect to experience things; this is how we experience things, regardless of any metaphysical theory. — Luke
So now you are claiming that when you originally said that I dismiss eternalism because it requires religion to make sense of temporal passage, what you meant was that I accept eternalism because it requires religion to make sense of temporal passage. Except this doesn't make sense, because I don't accept eternalism either. — Luke
The Moving Spotlight theory already makes sense of temporal passage in an eternalist framework so no "religious principle" is required. — Luke
So you accept that all moments in time have the same existence and you accept that our perception of this is limited or 'illusionary'. But how do you get from there to the inference that we should expect to "experience things as moving through time"? — Luke
So we only experience one slice or one moment of time, at a time. But we also have a memory, we remember some of those experiences of moments at a time. And then there is also entropy always increasing, giving the appearance of directionality, (the textbook example being layered coffee and cream always tending towards totally mixed cream-coffee, but not the other way around). — ChatteringMonkey
4d existence is not static, it has time and movement included in existence. — ChatteringMonkey
Under eternalism, we beings are worldlines, and experience every moment along that worldline. So iff I define 'me' to be my worldline, then I am present at some event in 1995 and also 2021, and I experience those events and all others. There is none of this 'privy to one moment', which again smacks of a preferred moment. — noAxioms
The spotlight defines a present (preferred) moment, which makes it presentism, just like all the other variants described in the OP. Eternalism asserts the lack of a present, — noAxioms
Do you agree or disagree with noAxioms earlier statement that "Under eternalism, we beings are worldlines"? — Luke
Do you agree or disagree with noAxioms earlier statement that "Under eternalism, we beings are worldlines"?
— Luke
To expand on this, if you exist at every moment of your worldline as a "space-time worm", i.e. you exist at every moment from your birth to your death, then what sense can it make to talk of moving through time from one moment to the next? Your physical existence, at least, exists as a four-dimensional object. What requires explanation in this scenario is why we have the conscious experience of time that we do; experiencing only one moment at a time in sequence, as though we are three-dimensional beings moving through time, and as though time actually does pass. — Luke
if we assume a limited perspective (which is what the assumption of eternalism entails) — ChatteringMonkey
if you exist as a static four-dimensional object — Luke
If we assume that time does not pass and that motion is not real, — Luke
This is what I'm objecting to. There is nothing static about a four-dimensional object, it's dynamics by virtue of it existing in a 'four'-dimensional space-'time'. It's can only be considered static when viewed from outside the time-dimension of 4d space-time, in relation to some other imaginary fifth time-dimension. — ChatteringMonkey
The B-theory of time is the name given to one of two positions regarding philosophy of time. B-theorists argue that the flow of time is an illusion, that the past, present, and future are equally real, and that time is tenseless. This would mean that temporal becoming is not an objective feature of reality. — B-theory of time - Wikipedia
According to The B Theory...there is no sense in which it is true to say that time really passes, and any appearance to the contrary is merely a result of the way we humans happen to perceive the world. — SEP article on Time
Or put in another way, you cannot simply treat a 4d object the same as a 3d object, in the sense that the entire 4d object has to move in time, like a 3d object does. The movement happens within the object because the time-dimension is already included in its existence. — ChatteringMonkey
Eternalism...is sometimes referred to as the "block time" or "block universe" theory due to its description of space-time as an unchanging four-dimensional "block", as opposed to the view of the world as a three-dimensional space modulated by the passage of time. — Eternalism (philosophy of time) - Wikipedia
And I think this assumption is not a good way to go about categorizing theories of time, because for this category it is already assumed that it cannot work. Why have a category for something that is impossible? I think, rather, we should only be looking at theories of time that could possibly fit our experience. Eternalist claim that the theory could fit our experience, I'm not entirely sure yet, but that is not because I think motion or passage of time are impossible under it... or assumed to be impossible even. — ChatteringMonkey
Eternalism...is sometimes referred to as the "block time" or "block universe" theory due to its description of space-time as an unchanging four-dimensional "block", as opposed to the view of the world as a three-dimensional space modulated by the passage of time. — Eternalism (philosophy of time) - Wikipedia
According to The B Theory...there is no sense in which it is true to say that time really passes, and any appearance to the contrary is merely a result of the way we humans happen to perceive the world. — SEP article on Time
It seems as though we are at an impasse — Luke
Or put in another way, you cannot simply treat a 4d object the same as a 3d object, in the sense that the entire 4d object has to move in time, like a 3d object does. The movement happens within the object because the time-dimension is already included in its existence. — ChatteringMonkey
Okay, maybe that is how some view the block-universe, I can't speak to how they view it of course. But still, I think using words like 'unchanging' or 'static' to describe the block-universe is misleading because it assumes a perspective from outside the 4 dimensions. — ChatteringMonkey
There is no movement within that 4d object because there is no passage of time. — Metaphysician Undercover
See, you're on the right track here. Now, do you see how your statement above, "movement happens within the object because the time-dimension is already included in its existence", is inconsistent with this? You cannot say that "movement" happens within the object, because it's a word classed with those others, "unchanging", and "static", which assumes something outside the four dimensions. — Metaphysician Undercover
I think using words like 'unchanging' or 'static' to describe the block-universe is misleading because it assumes a perspective from outside the 4 dimensions. — ChatteringMonkey
I think it's not so much that time doesn't pass in the sense that there are different moments of time, but that it doesn't flow in any particular direction. — ChatteringMonkey
If one says the block-universe is static or unchanging, one is looking at the whole picture, all the 4-dimensions, and says the 'line' or 'worm' in the eternalist graph as a whole doesn't change (thereby imagining another 5th dimension where that change would have to take place, i.e. 'viewed from the outside'). — ChatteringMonkey
So I've been told, over and over again, but I don't see why there is something fundamentally different about something existing at time t1, t2, etc ... and time passing (aside from the direction and the ontology which I already agreed with). The moments of times associated with past, future and present all exist in eternalism, but not at the same time, right? That's what the 4th dimension indicates. — ChatteringMonkey
No it precisely doesn't assume something outside the four dimensions, that's the whole point, that one should adjust the concept of movement to the 4d frame. — ChatteringMonkey
Again I'm not a metaphysician and I don't assume words to have fixed meanings... but if you want to insist that the word movement doesn't apply, fine, then i'll have to invent another word with basically the same meaning for things changing position over time. — ChatteringMonkey
If one says the block-universe is static or unchanging, one is looking at the whole picture, all the 4-dimensions, and says the 'line' or 'worm' in the eternalist graph as a whole doesn't change (thereby imagining another 5th dimension where that change would have to take place, i.e. 'viewed from the outside'). — ChatteringMonkey
(An odd but seldom noticed consequence of McTaggart's characterization of the A series and the B series is that, on that characterization, the A series is identical to the B series. For the items that make up the B series (namely, moments of time) are the same items that make up the A series, and the order of the items in the B series is the same as the order of the items in the A series; but there is nothing more to a series than some specific items in a particular order.) — Time (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
In case you haven't yet noticed, religion offers the most intelligent understanding of time. — Metaphysician Undercover
You dismiss eternalism because it requires religion to make sense of time passage. That says a lot about you. — Metaphysician Undercover
Time flows but not "in any particular direction"? — Luke
That's not what the B-theory is. This would imply that time flows when "viewed from the inside", but then it would be no different to the A-theory. — Luke
What does that have to do with anything...? — jorndoe
Hmm ... what is motion but a spatial path in spacetime anyway? — jorndoe
It's just that no particular time is considered (a special privileged indexical) now, hence the block-verse model is incomplete.
But wasn't that the idea in the first place, that a t parameter can represent any now, any time, on equal footing? That any direction only is implicit in the ordering and nothing else? — jorndoe
It's not that block-verse does not model motion as such (mentioned path with all of time internal to the model), it just sacrifices the special for general (non-indexical) descriptive prowess. — jorndoe
What might a complete model look like anyway? — jorndoe
I'm thinking that both duration and simultaneity would be part thereof, which seems to suggest dimensionality of some sort. — jorndoe
there is no direction of time... so the word flow doesn't apply — ChatteringMonkey
Again past and future existing and a direction to time is different... But ok fine, if you want to talk about theories that clearly don't apply to the world I or everybody else experiences, be my guess, but I have nothing to say about that. — ChatteringMonkey
You said in your last post that time flows but has no direction. You seem undecided? — Luke
Otherwise, I'd welcome an explanation of B-theory Eternalism which allows for temporal passage and motion and/or an explanation of motion without temporal passage. — Luke
I said time doesn't flow in any particular direction — ChatteringMonkey
But a lot of scientists believe in eternalism, and I'm pretty sure very few of them believe that there can be no motion under it. Are they just all that stupid for not realizing that motion is impossible under eternalism, or doesn't it have to entail that and the presupposed qualification sceme is simply misguided? I'm guessing the latter. — ChatteringMonkey
I was talking more about the fact that two days ago you said time flows (but not in any particular direction), whereas yesterday you said "the word flow doesn't apply". — Luke
And you seem to think that the definitions I've provided from the SEP and Wikipedia articles on the subject are incorrect. Do you have any support for your claims? — Luke
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