See: http://arxiv.org/abs/1509.08981

From Gustavo E. Romero:

I shall offer a view of the topic in which a kind of substantivalism, relationism, and eternalism can coexist on the basis of emergentism, the doctrine that qualitative systemic properties arise from more basic ontological levels devoid of such properties. The mechanisms that enforce emergence are composition and interaction. I hold that there is a level for each of the three ontological positions to be considered as a good option for a description of the way the world is.

–  Spacetime substantivalism: Spacetime is an entity endowed with physical properties. This position is clearly expressed by Einstein (1920). The exact nature of this entity is open to discussion. I shall defend an event substantivalism.

–  Spacetime relationism: Spacetime is not an entity that can exist independently of physical objects. Spacetime, instead, is a system of relations among different ontological items. The nature of these items is also open to discussion. I shall propose that there is a level where a form a relationism provides an adequate framework for current physics and that this is not in contraction with event substantivalism when the latter is applied to a different ontological level.

–  Eternalism (also known as Block Universe – BU –): Present, past, and future moments (and hence events) exist. They form a 4-dimensional ‘block’ of spacetime. Events are ordered by relations of earlier than, later than, or simultaneous with, one another. The relations among events are unchanging. Actually, they cannot change since time is one of the dimensions of the block. I have defended this position in Romero (2012 and 2013a). The reader is referred to these papers as well as to Peterson and Silberstein (2011) and references therein for further arguments.

–  Presentism: Only those events that take place in the present are real. This definition requires explanations of the terms ‘present’ and ‘real’. Crisp (2003, 2007) offers elucidations. See also the mentioned paper by Craig (2008), and Mozersky (2011). Presentism has been subject to devastating criticisms since the early attacks by Smart (1964), Putnam (1967), and Stein (1968). See Saunders (2002), Petkov (2006), Wu ̈thrich (2010), Peter- son and Silberstein (2011), Romero (2012, 2015) for up-dated objections. 


Some further objections against presentism:

Most of the arguments against presentism are based on the Special Theory of Relativity; see the references cited in the previous section and the discus- sions in Craig and Smith (2008).

Metaphysical arguments can be found, for instance, in Oaklander (2004) and Mellor (1998). Recently, several arguments based on General Relativity have been displayed against presentism. Romero and P ́erez (2014) have shown that the standard version of this doctrine is incompatible with the existence of black holes. In Romero (2015) I enumerate a number of additional objections based on General Relativity and modern cosmology. Wuthrich (2010) discusses the problems and inconsistence of presentism when faced with Quantum Gravity. Here, I offer a new argument based on the existence of gravitational waves.

The argument goes like this:


P1. There are gravitational waves.

P2. Gravitational waves have non-zero Weyl curvature.

P3. Non-zero Weyl curvature is only possible in 4 or more dimensions.
P4. Presentism is incompatible with a 4 dimensional world.

Then, presentism is false.

The One continually transitions such that it could return to itself, such as in a topological way.

So far, I've made a circle with two sides, and I'm almost done with the third and fourth sides, and it will still be a circle, too. — PoeticUniverse

OK, it's done. How do you think it looks?

forms most beautiful — Darwin

We, of the endless forms most beautiful,
Are stunned that our glass to the brim is full,
Life’s wine coursing through us, as ‘magical’,
On this lovely, rolling sphere so bountiful.

Most of evolution is rather all too slow, even numbingly slow to us… for to be lucky enough to see a new species come about now, but, as you say, it happened and there is one tree of life of all the species (see the newer 'Cosmos' TV series).

The Earth at first wasn't much to speak of, as you indicate, with no plants, no oxygen, and nothing organic, but we can know that between then and now that life arose, so we have evolution surrounded.

For two billion years, bacteria created the atmosphere, by exuding oxygen that was useless to the, as a poison to them, really, and later plants did so, too.

Two chromosomes fused way back, giving 'us' 23 instead of 24; we could not longer mate with our old kind… https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/science/bioscience/the-origin-of-the-human-species-a-chromosome-fusion/

Or does your reason represent you to have it? — Bartricks

What appears as going on 'now' to us is like a slightly tape-delayed broadcast. Who's going to notice that?

Hm, a square circle isn't nothing, rather it is an object that is both square and circular. — Bartricks

So far, I've made a circle with two sides, and I'm almost done with the third and fourth sides, and it will still be a circle, too.

And because by your definition 'god' is 'all that is' then after the big bang, all of that is still 'god'? — ZhouBoTong

Yes.

Couldn't the lower case 'existence' capture everything you are saying in simple everyday language? — ZhouBoTong

Yes, and that is looking more and more as what 'god' really boils down to, without us making big unwarranted jumps to more. Instead of "I am what I am", "Existence is what it is."

How do we know that all that 'is' is eternal? — ZhouBoTong

Since it cannot be made from the impossible 'Nothing' nor can it make itself, it just 'is', as ever, without beginning or end. If we still really want to have something from nothing, then there had to be some way, some potential or capability, which is something, and so we didn't really have nothing in the first place as we claimed. That's just to doubly close the idea, for 'nothing' cannot even be meant, which is Parmenides' great claim.

Eternalism nor presentism serve the purposes of arguing for free will, so the notion of a growing block universe is what were left with. I can't claim to know how time actually works but since choice requires the future to be undetermined or not exist yet feel free to throw any other ideas that would fit the bill my way. — Pathogen

Yes, a growing block is a combination of presentism and eternalism, with the past being kept and the future not yet existent. Growing block is probably the theory some say is supported by the expansion of the universe. So far, no one really knows the mode of time.

Titles thread: "Obfuscatory Discourse".
— StreetlightX

hehe, what, does that seem a pedantic title to you? — ZhouBoTong

The use of "Obfuscatory" was probably intentional, a kind of joke on the OP.

I once attended a pretentious, cultured art lecture at Vassar College in which they went on and on and raving about the sticking to the 'canon' and especially pointing out the exquisite use of "particulate matter"—which turned out to be 'sand'.

I think there's a new support group for sophisicate babblers, called 'On and on, anon.'.

So you are saying one necessary description of 'god' is that it must be eternal? And "complete' throughout all of eternity? — ZhouBoTong

Yes, as not a smart evolved alien but as Fundamental and First, intact and complete, with no beginning and no end, as eternal, since something exists, obviously, and that Existence has no alternative that can be. Even if we were only philosophically discussing what 'IS', not 'God', those attributes would still apply, and so it's a good starting point. It's like Parmenides’ unity in multiplicity idea sort of.

I won't allow myself to euthanaze and now I'm not even allowed to euphemize??? — Janus

Better to pass them away painlessly and gently.

physical — fishfry

Yes.

The Intro to Rubaiyat II:

euthanaze — Janus

You mean 'kill'?

I think there's probably infinite variation. — uncanni

Or at least all that's possible, which is still a heck of a lot.

perniciousness — fresco

Holy smokes! An obscure word! And just after the pleasant old country mill image. What a shock.

In this thread, I guess we mostly aim only for the plans for a workable 'God' for all, but perhaps the grinding of the axe at the mill toward religious belief's harm ever slips in. I think that 'God' is highly improbable. Live and let live, unless asked for an opinion.

What do you make of infinite-dimensional spaces? An example would be the set of all continuous functions from the real numbers to the real numbers. This set is an infinite-dimensional vector space. — fishfry

I think that math infinities don't count as actual infinities, they just being potential infinities, and that actual infinities are impossible since they can't complete, much as the definition of 'Infinite' hints at, plus that 'infinite' is not really an amount or a number, also because it cannot be capped.

Ten dimensions, or eleven, if we want to allow (0) as a point, seems to cover Everything, and perhaps this is why string theory also has those number of dimensions.

That is probably why eternalism is thought in spatial terms as a "block universe". — Janus

Externally, if one could see it from the outside, which one never can, the block universe is 4 distances with no time or change, as dddd, dimensionally, as a hypercube, the past and the future both real, but, somehow, internally, to us, in space-time, one of the distances converts to what we call 'time', as if the speed of light, d/t, was a fundamental dimensional equivalence ratio; so, then, dddd / d/t = dddt = space-time.

It is to us as if the pages of a 3D flip book of 3D spaces are turning or a 3D DVD is playing. Each 3D image is as of a new 3D space, that is of a new universe going by. Our time, then, is as the differences of these spaces, making time to be a kind of index to these 3D spaces, although we can't use the index to go anywhere but have to always go on to the next 3D space.

Others liken it to the expansion of the universe being the 4D part, somehow.

Presentism looks the same to us, in that a whole new 3D space appears at every 'now', but that the 'now' was just manufactured from the immediate past, totally consuming the just past 'now'.

Einstein's relativity of simultaneity puts a big dent in presentism's claim that it is 'now' everywhere.

In my fun video below, a human in Tahiti asks a djinni to show him 'Eternity':

I will drink and vape to that. Essentially, infinitely and eternally, God is quantum mechanics and so much more. — uncanni

Yes, indeed, hail to the Source. We didn't arrive at 'infinite' though, at least not yet.

THEY are the proverbial ghost in the machine. — Mww

In the otherworld of the haunts of thoughts, the neural activities go on in the dark, which we can't introspectively know, and don't like the idea of, but neurologists poked around and got some correlations and so we've been informed from that, but still not liking it, emotionally, and so we still wished for what sounded good, as free will, but couldn't logically define it deeper.

The ghosts rise from the deep, into our conscious world as qualia, the results from the spooky unknown workings of the machine that is the will, and therein in the conscious mind ever float the mysterious objects in the sea in which we see, and also in our imaginations beyond the present as even more faint and ghostly 90% reduced qualia to the point of just barely appearing in our imaginings, so as not to be confused with the actual qualia of our present reckonings.

We only ever 'see' the insides of our heads, as the mind, those specters already selectively painted in a useful way, as the glimmers, semblances, shadows, and whispers of reality, all toward the aim of us to be able to best continue on.

So, from there definitely being something, a lack of anything is precluded, and from existence having no opposite that can be, we get that there is an Eternal Existence, this matching God's nature as First and Fundamental, with all else then being of it; but, we can't reason the desired jump from the Eternal Existence to be a complexity of a system of Mind, for only the partless simplex can be elementary, such as the simple continuous wave of a field.

Compounding the above, what is eternal has no input, making its outputs to be random, as we note in Quantum Mechanics, but which we can still presume as everything possible happening from it, this granting creatorship and the resultant transitions by laws that get formed at higher and higher levels.

In the superpositions of all that is possible, as our logical and new 'God', although reduced from our ultimate imaginings, all the paths get followed, but some don't amount to much, while others continue on, this brute force necessity of a method not having to impossibly foresee any specific, workable direction, but still ensuring that one will be found, as ours was.

This new 'God' works for the essential notions as a kind of a lowercase god but at least the contradictions are gone, making for more satisfaction.

Let us praise the creative potential of the Eternal, if that still does something for us, or at least be awed.

What I struggle to verify is how that experience claims to be a ‘free’ agent based on what we can measure in time. — Possibility

I haven't been able to show consciousness to even be an agent, which I would have to first do, I guess, and then go on to show that the conscious will is 'free' from the will's directives based on the nature of the person.

My view is that subjective experience, and by extension, the will, is not bound or structured by spacetime. — Possibility

The will is in an inner space, anyway, and space-time is just the gradational field, but maybe you mean that the will is spaceless and timeless, being more fundamental. Chalmers posits consciousness as be as fundamental as other elementals, with information in physical neural form automatically also being able to get represented in consciousness form. That explains the explanatory gap, a bit, but this doesn't seem to get us to be free of the information having to be such as it is for individual person's make-up and get followed accordingly.

I'm just pointing out that the events are not pre-made, already existent or previously carved from either the point of view of temporality or from the point of view of eternity. — Janus

In presentism, there is only the dynamic now, just generated from the past, with the past then totally gone, and the future not yet created. In eternalism, the future and the past both exist (block universe) and always did. General Relativity suggests the 4D static block universe made of events. We can't tell them apart, so far.

thinking in terms of temporality — Janus

All my references are to the block universe of eternalism derived from Einstein. I am for fixed will, but fairly trying to find if free will can be; I've only gotten as far as trying to make conscious free will instant and productive and thus not just showing what is past due to figurings having to take time. The block universe is eternally as it is, predetermined, so to speak. The traversal of it by consciousness is a kind of eternalistic 'time', at least seemingly to us.

I don't see how ideas like those listed above can possibly lead to any type of consensus. — ZhouBoTong

Right. If only belief and saying could make something true, but it doesn't. One needs to establish a sound ground first, such as the necessity of eternal existence, and build on it from there, which informed us that there can be no information coming into what had no beginning and was never made.

life has meaning in an intrinsical way. — Daniel C

It does, in our temporary parentheses, but overall, none to speak of.

A being who is able to create stones too heavy for him to lift, and lift them, is surely more powerful than one who can't? — Bartricks

You already discarded that old saw as logically impossible.

And, yes, an omnipotent being can, by definition, do anything logically possible.

snide — Pathogen

Nothing 'snide' here, just support and advancing the probabilistic quantum mechanic wave function:

Yes, for the wave function is deterministic before the collapse into a unitary probabilities that add adds to one, giving all a chance, eventually, and the "observation" probability probably means interactions of any kind.

So I think it means that things could have turned out differently if we could have rerun the universe, but is this enough to free the will the way the proponents would want it? Who knows, without a meaningful meaning of what they are calling 'free'.

(Your long post was great, indeed.)

'Free' is the key to what free will is.

human eyeball — Hanover

Sorry, but this is long, although on topic, as poetry after Dawkins:

The Intelligent Designer

I approached a semitransparent,
Theistic Embellishment, quite well lit,
Who was holding out an eyeball—a shove
Of His hand for me to take note of.

“Who might you be?” He mimed,
“For I am the God of Intelligent Design,
The One who was made by the signs discerned,
When the creationists noted them all, unlearned.”

I answered, “I am Austin, Earth’s flower,
Although not ‘Powers’, but ‘Higher Powers’.”

“Ha. Lo, they saw inexplicable complexity in Nature,
And thus they leapt and promulgated that Nature
Must have a Grand Designer of its mechanical dance,
For how could life have come about by ‘chance’?”

I replied, “You’re right about ‘chance’s’ stance,
But wrong about ‘chance’ too, for little greatness,
If any at all, comes about by mere ‘chance’,

“Especially as some giant leap in one bound,
Up the sheer cliff-side of Mt. Improbable—
To find on its top a great complexity
Of something like the eye that You show me;

“However, it is actually an error to suppose
That ‘Chance’ is the scientific alternative
To Intelligent Design, for that’s quite negative.

“Natural Selection is the means of the design,
For it, unlike a one-shot ‘chance’, being not in kind,
Is a cumulative effect that ever winds,
And slowly and so gently climbs

Around the mountain’s other side, behind the sight,
To eventually arrive at the great height
Of complexity—from which we can then view
The beautiful sights through our eye anew.”

“But the widespread Watchtower Zines
Always pronounce that the biological Designs
Were created by Me instead of by ‘chance’!

“Just look at these eyeballs—take a glance—
And the optic system hanging behind them!
How could that come about by ‘chance’, these gems?”

“You, like your followers, may listen,
But You do not hear, writing with untruth’s pen.
IDers deceive by this wrong approach,
Whether they mean to or not; I give reproach.

“‘Chance’ is not the opposite of Nature’s design;
Evolution of the Species through the graduality
Of Natural Selection is the path to complexity;
Your ploy falls as flat as an imaginary line.

“A flatworm has but an optical system’s spark
That can only sense but light and dark;
Thus it sees no image, not even a part;

“Whereas Nautilus has a ‘pinhole camera’ eye
About as good as half a human eye
That sees but very blurry shapes;
Thus these are examples of intermediate stages.

“‘Rome’ can not be built in a day by ‘chance’;
‘Chance’ is not a likely designer at all!

“Really now, could a 747 ever be
Assembled by a hurricane blowing free
Through Boeing’s warehouse of all the parts?
Now is this the sum of Your conversational art?”

“No, Austin—it’s quite unlikely—’tis just to confuse,
And that’s why we always so misleadingly use
The 747 argument as the contrast to ID…

“So then, Austie, ‘chance’ and Intelligent Design
Are not the two candidate solutions we’ll find
To the riddle posed by the improbable?
It’s not like a jackpot or nothing at all?”

“‘God’, Your ID ideas persist, as repetition,
But again, ‘chance’, for one, is not a solution
To the highly improbable situated Nature,
And no sane anti-creationist, for sure,
Ever said that it was; your tale is impure.

“Intelligent Design, is neither a solution—
Because it raises a much bigger question
Than it solves, as You will soon see, in a lesson.”

“Well, I’ll be darned,” replied the Designer.
“Natural selection is a good answer;

“It is a very long and summative process,
One which breaks up the problem’s mess
Of improbability into smaller pieces, less,
Each of which is only slightly improbable,

“But not prohibitively so, thus it’s reasonable,
As the product of all the little steps of which
Would be far beyond the reach of chance—it’s rich!

“The creationists have been looking askance,
Seeing only the end product, perchance,
Thinking of it as a single event of chance,
Never even understanding
The great power of accumulation.

“Such they didn’t know much else—their fall,
Not having any other natural ideas at all,
So they outright claimed that ID did it, as the Tree
That can magically grow the All, namely Me.”

“So ‘God’ You have now seen the light
Of the accumulative power’s might;
This is the elegance of Evolution’s ‘sight’.”

“Yes but what is to become of Me, the Person,
For I only ‘exist’ through their speculation.

“In fact, the improbability of Me is so High,
And so much more so from where I lie so ‘sure’,
Compared to that of ‘simple’ Nature,
That My own origin…”

“…Is a near-infinitely Larger dilemma, Mate,
For the creationists—the problem they love to hate;
That being that You, therefore, can only be explained
By another, Higher Intelligent Designer claimed!

“Far from terminating the endless regress,
They’ve aggravated it with a vengeance
That is way beyond repair or redress—
As beyond could ever be yonder of! Out west!”

With that, the poor Guy faded toward oblivion,
Which remarkably was the very location
I was visiting, but hence he soon reappeared,
Although in another guise, but quite well attired.

…

24. Many oppositional-transitional schemes, such as the 4 fundamental forces having the strong vs weak in opposition and the electric to magnetic in transition, plus our ‘being’ perhaps basically having space vs matter in opposition and past to future in transition. — PoeticUniverse

The chain is forged that links a thousand deaths
To a thousand future-generated breaths
When lips ripe as fruit gently part in pain:
The smile of a corpse is life touched by death.

The important part is that randomness only occurs at the observation. That randomness undermines the fully deterministic worldview. — Pathogen

Yes, for the wave function is deterministic before the collapse into a unitary probabilities that add to one, giving all a chance, eventually, and the "observation" probability means interactions of any kind. So I think it means that things could have turned out differently if we could have rerun the universe, but is this enough to free the will the way the proponents would want it? Who knows, without a meaningful meaning of what they are calling 'free'.

But the temporal structure of the world is not that of presentism. — Carlo Rovelli, ‘The Order of Time’

Rovelli is against presentism, while his good friend and collaborator on Loop Quantum Gravity, Lee Smolin is wholly for it. Each have compelling arguments.

...We do not have a grammar adapted to say that an event ‘has been’ in relation to me but ‘is’ in relation to you.... — Carlo Rovelli, ‘The Order of Time’

The relativity of simultaneity favors eternalism

what the relations may be between these variables — Carlo Rovelli, ‘The Order of Time’

Relations are paramount.


“The objective world is, it does not happen. Only to the gaze of my consciousness, crawling along the lifeline of my body, does a section of this world come to life as a fleeting image in space which continuously changes in time.”

― Hermann Weyl

So, then, in the new free will attempt, fundamental consciousness traverses already existent world-lines of events previously carved, although this doesn't seem so 'free'. I am failing…

Which is easier to accept, that there is no intelligence in the design or that it is wrong to conclude that everything was made solely for humans? — BrianW

Humans became way later on, and that even within 5% of the types of energy in the universe.

How do you mean ‘worse’? — Possibility

Seems like there's more hope to intervene in the actions of the 'now' production rather to the same that was carved in stone, but presentism has problems, so I went with the block idea in order to have events already there to pick from, although I suppose that should still work with brain memory. I'm not surprised about running into contradiction with this new free will approach, but I'm leaving out bias as best can do.

‘Totally connected’ doesn’t take into account the structure of these connections in consciousness. While they appear “to be everywhere in no time”, as you say, these events are nevertheless interacting with experience according to some form of structure: value/significance. — Possibility

Yes, in this new free will approach, consciousness contains all experiences and their relations and has real time access, somehow, in order for consciousness to be the instant cause. It is disconcerting, though, that the pre-made occasions of eternalism's experience would be even worse that presentism determining events as it went along.

There is no stasis; there is transition. — uncanni

These transitions point to that there can't be anything particular remaining even for an instant, and this kind of matches the supposed nature of the Eternal that of course can't have anything particular designed into it, given it has no beginning.

Round and round the Great Wheel turns, bang after bang, it being as impotent as you and I.

And what of the Everythingness about it? Its information content would be the same as not having any: zero, so, again, 'God' gets a revision but can still seem Great, minus the person-hood aspect..

There is no stasis; there is transition. However, we humans can devolve if we don't keep learning deeply. — uncanni

We could all go away in a flash; there is now a strain of bacteria resistant to even the last ditch antibiotic, it, too, as what had to transition.

We can also devolve if low-life's have more children than better people, but, of course, what happens pretty much has to, short of China-like limitations on offspring, and, now, lately they allow two.

'God', then, seems to not intervene, or can't. Seven near extinctions have already come and gone.

I like to think of the cosmos as a giant womb, forever birthing and re-birthing big bangs.... — uncanni

Yes, for if there could be one Bang, then there ought to be others

This insistence on gendering God is a definite sign of an utter lack of understanding. — uncanni

Not only that, but the making of 'God' to be a Person, but who makes us people, without a larger PERSON having then to have made 'God'. They didn't know about life from molecules becoming bacteria, etc., so they posited a 'God' in their image.

all connected and interdependent — uncanni

Quantum entanglement far apart in space shows that connections are more primary than distance.

women's language must disrupt and confound until men are able to tune into a different frequency and understand — uncanni

Women, plus all good philosophers, don't just pull out a specific, labeled box, and talk only about that and put the box back in, but speak to connections not obvious to the straight and narrow thinker.