The same way my thermostat turns on the heat in the winter despite the fact that it's warm in mid-May. No need for a 'measurment' spotlight to crawl up the thermostat's worldline in order to allow it to function. — noAxioms

Sorry, I don't understand the analogy. A "measurement spotlight"?

If that's how it works, it is still a form of presentism, with the consciousness (not part of the block) acting as the spotlight and defining a present. — noAxioms

Yes, that's my criticism.

It would be rather absurd to say that the 1997 portion of me is not conscious of the events of 1997. — noAxioms

How does that work if your consciousness is not crawling up a worldline?

As noted in the OP: 'According to The B Theory, time is very much like the dimensions of space. Just as there are no genuine spatial properties (like being north), but, rather, only two-place, spatial relations (like north of), so too, according to the B Theorist, there are no genuine A properties.'

Again, unless we are talking about the Moving Spotlight theory (i.e. the combination of Eternalism and the A-theory), then Eternalism naturally defaults to the B-theory and eschews the passage of time.

But for those who maintain that Eternalism allows for temporal passage and motion, perhaps they will argue along the lines of the spatial analogy mentioned above. They might say that there is no special present moment or "now" such as the one we currently find ourselves in, but instead it's all relative; people at 3000 BC consider their time to be now, just like we consider our time to be now, just like people at 3000 AD consider their time to be now. It's simply an indexical usage, like saying that it's "here" for me wherever I am and it's that it's "here" for you wherever you are.

All well and good, but how does that work exactly? The present moment for us involves temporal passage through, e.g., the year 2020 AD. What's happening at other times during our temporal passage in our present? Are things in 3000 BC frozen in time from our point of view, or are people at those times living out their lives just as equally as we are here now? Does what happened yesterday replay over and over again? Are all events on eternal replay, and if so, when are their start and end points, or at what scale do events recur? I mean it's possible, I suppose, but it strikes me as absurd and I doubt William of Ockham would be too pleased. But maybe that's not how it works. Hopefully someone can help to explain how motion works in (B-theory) Eternalism.

The reason why I call a perspectival interpretation of the B series "presentism", is due to the fact that tenses are treated as indexicals, where an indexical can be considered to be an act of pointing to something — sime

Sorry, I don't understand this. The A-series is indexical; the B-series is not. See A series and B series.

I disagree that presentism entails the reality of passage — sime

If Presentism does not entail the reality of passage (i.e. the A-Theory), then are you arguing for the position of Presentism + B-Theory, i.e. that only present objects exist and that temporal passage is not real? I have never heard of this before. This is like the converse of the Moving Spotlight theory (Eternalism + A-Theory). I can only note this is at odds with the definition of Presentism given in most places, including the SEP article on Presentism:

presentism can be understood as the following conjunction:

(PC) (i) Only present things exist,
&
(ii) What’s present changes.

Under eternalism, we beings are worldlines, and experience every moment along that worldline. — noAxioms

Or as, Hermann Weyl puts it:

The objective world simply is, it does not happen. Only to the gaze of my consciousness, crawling upward along the life line 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, Philosophy of Mathematics and Natural Science (1949)

All that is left to account for is the motion of one's consciousness crawling upward along the worldline.

That's fine, and i'm just saying I don't think they are really problems for the eternalist. — ChatteringMonkey

Maybe you should read up on the Moving Spotlight theory then. Tell me how it is different from your view of B-theory Eternalism.

With 'experience of passage' or with 'passage that is real'? — ChatteringMonkey

If passage is not real, then the experience of passage needs to be accounted for by Eternalists. It could be an illusion, but then illusions would need to be explained where there is no passage.

it's derived from special relativity... and explains human experience after the fact. — ChatteringMonkey

Okay, and I am pointing out some problems with it.

Eternalism with passage (i.e. with the A-Theory) is the Moving Spotlight theory. Eternalism proper (i.e. with the B-Theory) does not include temporal passage.

Yeah but existence in the block-universe is defined in four dimensions, that is probably what you are not realising? — ChatteringMonkey

I'm well aware, thanks.

No, the moving spotlight theory give a special metaphysical status to the present — ChatteringMonkey

What do you mean by 'special metaphysical status'? Is it any different to what you mean when you say "we are beings that only experience one moment in time"? When else can we experience things except in the present moment?

What do you thing that dimension signifies otherwise? — ChatteringMonkey

Existence only. The existence of all things, minus passage.

Do you consider Eternalism and the Moving Spotlight theory to be equivalent?

If understood indexically, the past is always the past and the future is always the future, for yesterday is always yesterday, and tomorrow is always tomorrow.... — sime

But yesterday was a different day to today, just as tomorrow will be.

Sorry @Sime, but this might be better suited to a new discussion, as I would like to focus here on Eternalism, motion, and the Moving Spotlight theory.

But the block-universe incorporates motion, in space and time? Isn't it a given that things change in space and time in a 4-dimensional block-universe? — ChatteringMonkey

How can it be, when B-theorist eternalists reject the reality of temporal passage?

If B-theorist eternalist are right, and we are beings that only experience one moment in time, then we would experience the block-universe as passage of time. — ChatteringMonkey

But that passage is not real, right? Eternalists don't believe that time really passes, right? So, I want to know how motion is supposedly accounted for under Eternalism (by those who believe that Eternalism allows for motion).

Quoting from the OP:
'The difference between A-theorists and B-theorists is often described as a dispute about temporal passage or 'becoming' and 'progressing'. B-theorists argue that this notion is purely psychological.'

I do not mean by it "that time is an independent metaphysical thing acting on the universe."

I believe that McTaggart was making a similar deflationary argument when he concluded the unreality of the A series. — sime

McTaggart's argument is that a time cannot have the properties of being past, present and future, but with temporal passage it does have all three properties (over time). The flaw in the argument is that it doesn't have all three properties at the same time.

For similar reasons I disagree that a denial of passage of time involves the denial of past and future, since "past" and "future" can similarly be interpreted as indexicals.

We can say that the state of the river has changed relative to the state of a photograph. But if the state of the river is also our notion of "the present", then we can no longer say that the river has changed relative to the present. — sime

You say that a denial of passage need not involve a denial of the past and future, but if "the state of the river is also our notion of "the present", then isn't this a denial of past and future? This seems to imply that we have no 'notion' of past or future states by which to judge that the present has changed.

I disagree that presentism entails the reality of passage, because presentism might interpret the word "now" as being an indexical that cannot refer to the same set of affairs twice. If that is the case, then temporal passage cannot be referred to. — sime

I tend to agree that a true presentist who rejects the existence of the past and future would be unable to judge which time is present. However, in reality, I think we are all able to ascertain this and can talk meaningfully about temporal passage. But this is not the focus of this discussion.

Edited to add: Actually, I think a presentist can discuss the past and future without believing that things exist at those times.

What do you mean with the reality of temporal passage? — ChatteringMonkey

See the OP section on The Passage of Time.

The difference with presentism is mostly that an eternalist wants to say that the past and future are equally real as the now, whereas for a presentist only the now exists. — ChatteringMonkey

I addressed this in the OP.

Presentism is not just about existence; it also entails the A-Theory and the reality of temporal passage. Eternalism eschews temporal passage (A-Theory) and with temporal passage it becomes the Moving Spotlight theory.

Moving spotlight (and pretty much the rest of your list) has a preferred moment. Eternalism does not. — noAxioms

What do you mean by "a preferred moment"?

At noon, the mug has coffee in it. At 1pm the mug is in the dishwasher. How is that not motion of the mug? — noAxioms

How does the mug move from, let's say, your desk to the dishwasher?

"It cannot be at the present moment, because motion or temporal passage at the present moment implies the A-Theory, making it not Eternalism, but the Moving Spotlight theory instead. So, does Eternalist motion occur in the past or the future somehow?"
- Luke

There's the begging I smelled. Everything here are A-series references which assumes the conclusion you're trying to demonstrate. — noAxioms

Please enlighten me as to the difference between Eternalism and the Moving Spotlight theory. You seem to be implying that temporal passage is possible under Eternalism? How so?

No, but the statement of a belief is not what causes the tendency to act either, is it? — Isaac

Might it be better to think of belief as an explanation of behaviour? Therefore, that the individual holds the (stated) belief is an explanation of the tendency to act.

You seem to be saying that beliefs are necessarily a different kind of thing where the fact that we have to render them into statements carries some additional burden not applicable to physical laws or features. It's this step that I'm not understanding. — Isaac

Maybe something got lost along the way. I agree with @jamalrob's statement that a belief is the linguistic rendering of an attitude or a mental state.

So how do you see this differently from, say, laws of physics? — Isaac

The laws of physics are not typically what we say 'causes a tendency to act as if something were the case', unless you want to try and reduce language use to physics.

It wasn't so much that we talk about beliefs in terms other than linguistic renderings, just that we don't, in other areas, infer this to mean that they consist of linguistic renderings. — Isaac

I think we must do so here because 'that which causes a tendency to act as if something were the case' is something linguistic, or at least can only be attributed (especially to other animals) in those terms; in our linguistic community's terms.

The problem I have with restricting the term to statements is it just leaves us wanting of a term for 'that which causes a tendency to act as if something were the case' when it is not rendered as a statement. — Isaac

Not sure that I follow. Can you name any cases where we talk about beliefs in terms other than 'the belief that B', where B is a linguistic rendering of the belief?

So you agree that it is a linguistic rendering of an attitude or mental state?

But isn't this just begging the question? If a belief is "an attitude to the world (or a mental state if you like) when rendered as a statement." then it obviously follows that it must be linguistic, but this is no more than to say "if a belief is linguistic, then it is linguistic — Isaac

As I asked, if that's not a belief then what is? Is it something that cannot be expressed in language?

I found @jamalrob to be quite clear:

A belief just is an attitude to the world (or a mental state if you like) when rendered as a statement. — jamalrob

Therefore, beliefs are not pre-linguistic or non-linguistic. Unless a belief is something else?

Aging is real => Time is real

You'll have to explain this a bit more. — Sam26

I'm not sure what you're asking me to explain, but I don't think Wittgenstein had any interest in exploring the "prelinguistic" or "non-linguistic". I'm not going to try and prevent you from doing so, but I have to admit I still don't know what point you're trying to make in this thread.

Glad you liked the article too.

I do see the connection, albeit rather vaguely, with what this thread is about. — Sam26

At least part of the reason for my posting this was because I tend to agree with what others have said re: your comments on beliefs not being in line with Wittgenstein's philosophy; or a "shifting away from your Wittgensteinian core", as @mcdoodle put it.

So, if I understand that article, Moore's propositions lack sense in that they don't properly reflect the rules of grammar — Sam26

I think what Moyal-Sharrock is saying is that Moorean propositions lack sense because they are rules of grammar (in the "thick" sense). As I quoted in my previous post, propositions such as Moore's "cannot meaningfully be said in the flow of the language-game as if they were open for discussion because they are bounds of sense (rules of grammar), not objects of sense."

I like this because it expands my thinking a bit more. — Sam26

Me too. :smile:

You've now switched back to Wittgenstein's early philosophy, which really has nothing to do, or very little to do with his last work called On Certainty. — Sam26

I posted this in another discussion here recently but got no response. Perhaps it will find more readers here since it refers to the common thread of grammar that runs throughout all of Wittgenstein's work. I find this quote especially salient in terms of this discussion:

The later Wittgenstein will extend the list of the sayable to include non-truth-conditional uses of language (e.g., spontaneous utterances, questions, imperatives), but he will never give up the idea that some things cannot be said in the sphere of language – that is, 'in the flow of the language-game'; or the idea that some things cannot be put into words at all but can only show themselves through words (and, he will add, through deeds). In fact, he will add certainties to the list of the ineffable – the grammatical ineffable. Like regulative nonsense, certainties cannot be said because they constitute the scaffolding of sense, not its object. Basic certainties (e.g., ‘There exist people other than myself’, ‘I have a body’, ‘Human beings need nourishment’) are 'removed from the traffic' (OC 210); they cannot meaningfully be said in the flow of the language-game as if they were open for discussion because they are bounds of sense (rules of grammar), not objects of sense.

In fact, the Tractatus sets the stage for what Wittgenstein will later call 'grammar': grammar is that which enables or regulates sense (and so is itself nonsensical) and cannot meaningfully be said in the flow of the language-game but only heuristically articulated. — Daniele Moyal-Sharrock

The system is broken, and it is depressing and nauseating. I am not sure if those living in countries other than the USA really can completely feel that. — 0 thru 9

We can.

Another great article from Daniele Moyal-Sharrock, which includes this concise summary of the Tractatus:

I see now that these nonsensical expressions were not nonsensical because I had not yet found the correct expressions, but that their nonsensicality was their very essence. For all I wanted to do with them was just to go beyond the world and that is to say beyond significant language. My whole tendency and, I believe, the tendency of all men who ever tried to write or talk Ethics or Religion was to run against the boundaries of language. This running against the walls of our cage is perfectly, absolutely hopeless. Ethics so far as it springs from the desire to say something about the ultimate meaning of life, the absolute good, the absolute valuable, can be no science. What it says does not add to our knowledge in any sense. (LE 44)

At this early period of his thought, Wittgenstein viewed as nonsensical any expression that did not 'add to our knowledge' that was not a proposition of natural science (6.53). The nonsensical included ethics and aesthetics (6.421), the mystical (6.522), and his own Tractarian sentences (6.54). None of these have sense – none are bipolar propositions susceptible of truth and falsity – and cannot therefore add to our knowledge. Indeed, even his Tractarian sentences do not inform; they elucidate (6.54), which is the rightful task of philosophy (4.112). It is their not adding to knowledge that makes Tractarian Sätze technically nonsensical, devoid of sense.

But let's imagine that we happened to find some irrefutable meaning in this world. Would it really matter in the grand scheme of things? — Cidat

Yes, obviously. If what it means to "matter" is to be significant, important or consequential, then "to find some irrefutable meaning in this world" would surely be that.

Putting aside these hypotheticals, to lose your life or the lives of your loved ones is most likely to be of at least some consequence to yourself and/or others, "the grand scheme of things" be damned.

It may simply be that the qualitative consciousness hasn't been detected yet, or can't be, using the experimental tools we have at our disposal. — RolandTyme

Just wanted to note the contradiction or silliness of the position that the existence of qualitative consciousness might be ruled out because "we" can't "detect" it.