I’m holding out for the discovery that no matter how hard we try, how far the technology specializes, we’re not going to be able to probe the mass of concentrated neurons looking for the one, or the interconnected plurality, that tells me why I crashed the car. — Mww

We all are, that's the beautiful journey :)

It was one of those iOS typos, where I mis-typed the word and iOS corrected it to the wrong word, which I only noticed when I re-read it. — Wayfarer

Autocorrect is actually the devil

Why did you crash the car can only be answered empirically when posed as, “why did the car crash?”. But these are different questions, each with its own proprietary meaningfulness. — Mww

That's the contention, isn't it. The car crashed because of conservation and momentum and electrostatic repulsion. But why did you crash the car? As I said, my gun-to-head response is that this is also a scientific question, not entirely in a nerds-in-lab-coats way, but in a materialistic, determinist, and ultimately empirical way. In principle.

Yeah, well, when I was 12, my dad sure wanted to know why I wrecked the car. And he was quite adamant about obtaining an answer.

It may be the case there are no meaningful questions for science that don’t have scientific answers, but Everydayman isn’t the scientist, and non-scientific answers for him belong legitimately to meaningful questions he himself generates. — Mww

I know you were joking, but what I mean is that "why did you crash the car?" would have a scientific answer, not that it's a question for scientists per se, although on a thread about Materialism and Consciousness, I had mental phenomena more in mind. It is a question about historical fact. Science can weigh in on some of it (the effects of alcohol on hand-eye coordination, for instance :p ), but you can explain the presence of the lamppost without nerds.

Well, as I said, the idea is not to get a closeup view with discernible fine details of the doctrine of karma but to look at it from a distance and appreciate, hopefully marvel at, how karma is a good, if not perfect, fit in re the axiom of causality. — TheMadFool

Yeah, I'm not really asking for an answer so much as pointing out what would be required for karma to be a possible fit for an axiomatic causality. Things like "action + reaction = 0" and "magnitude of cause = magnitude of effect" need karmic definitions. Without this, there's no basis to say it is a good fit. That is what I meant by this being an analogy.

Is the question of whether there are meaningful non-scientific questions a scientific questions? — Pfhorrest

:rofl: I suspect so, unfortunately. That is the answer we'd wish to avoid: the one given by science if and when it finally gives answers to the others. It's just a gut feeling though, not a belief, certainly not an argument.

In QM there are two processes... the Schrodinger Equation and the Born Rule. The former is deterministic; the latter is where indeterminacy comes in. The second process is controversial; MWI, for example, just "rejects" it (it's still there, it's just emergent... it's an anthropic consequence rather than something real)... when Schrodinger opens the box, his wavefunction just entangles with its contents (measurement is entanglement in MWI), leading to a world where Schrodinger sees a living cat and a world where he sees a dead cat (and to MWI, the wavefunction itself is physical; I'm guessing you mean what I tend to call classical?) — InPitzotl

Butting in, there are five postulates of QM, one of which is the Born postulate, and that is not rejected by MWI. The Born rule does not dictate collapse, it just maps solutions of the Schroedinger equations to statistical outcomes. How those outcomes individually arise is the measurement problem, which lies outside of scope of QM. One proposal is spontaneous collapse upon observation (Copenhagen). Another is branching (MWI). Then there's all the others.

Bohm theory is mathematically identical to QM, to that extent is the same theory, but does not contain indeterminacy*, so has no fundamental use for the Born rule. For the Bohm interpretation, the Born rule is simply a way of predicting statistical outcomes of a large number of experiments whose starting conditions are exactly knowable in principle but unknown in practise. I'm not aware of any other interpretation that doesn't include indeterminacy.

*ish

Indeterminacy doesn't seem an obvious way of getting non-materialistic phenomena in by the back door. For instance, I've heard that God selects the outcome of every measurement, which rather confines God to adhering very strictly to predictable statistical patterns.

Actually, as I'm sure Wayfarer would point out, he did say speculation, but edited it to specialization after the fact. So we both should slap Wayfarer on the wrists, but that might stop him typing which would be no fun.

In actual fact, Wayfarer and I do agree on his point. There does exist a common language to discuss meaningful but not necessarily scientific questions, and this might be improved upon. I think his schema excellent. What doesn't exist yet is a schema by which to identify meaningful non-scientific questions within that schema. I think whoever came up with such a thing would be the next Karl Popper. (Just to reiterate, by "scientific question" I mean a question whose eventual answer is a scientific one.) My gun-to-my-head answer would be: there are no meaningful non-scientific questions.

Next comes finding oneself experiencing a rewarding or harrowing time at the hands of people but with no clear history of one having done anything to deserve either. The question, "to what do I owe this fortune/misfortune?" draws a blank. This condition of being undeserved of happiness or suffering, as the case may be, coupled with the fact that in the real world people return favors and retaliate to offenses (establishing the reality of karma) leads to the possibilty of past lives - these past lives serving to explain what one thinks is gratuitous joy/suffering. — TheMadFool

I understood, but again you're using inexact phrasing. If the karmic principle could be proven true, that is, without recourse to past lives, it would provide evidence for past lives. The possibility of past lives must be established on its own. But I think for your purposes this suffices?

So the first thing I want to know when I hear of a universal (albeit anthropocentric) law like this is: what are its mechanisms? Putting aside the past lives for the moment, if I punch a little girl in the head today and run away laughing, which I am not wont to do because of my own morality plus the very real ramifications I would suffer both from society and from the law, by what mechanism does the universe punish me later?

This isn't just asking for detail for the sake of it. If there is, for a moral action, an equal and opposite moral reaction, what is conserved by this and how? Can you construct a scale along this moral dimension so that we can say, Punching a little girl in the head + Getting kicked in the balls by a donkey + Coming home to find my house burgled = 0?

Unfortunately communism, like it's foundational father socialism, is grounded in covetousness and theft. Regardless of whether or not those in authority in this form of government were hypothetically not greedy or unable to er, the moral-ethical dilemma still remains. Theft. — Contra Mundum

Theft is unambiguously the basis of capitalism. Our ancestors could walk the land and hunt to provide for themselves and their families until someone had the wicked and clever idea of saying, "Actually this is mine now. If you want to eat, work for me." That is the great theft, the single greatest heist in history. Your "theft" is taking it back from the thieves, or the inheritors of thieves.

Which makes me sound like I'd vote for communism, and yet... I'd just rather be an honest capitalist than a dishonest one. My preference is for stable, non-growth-oriented capitalism with UBI (there, someone mentioned it), the latter based on the fact that stolen shared land and resources should be paid for. The thieves disagree, but that's criminals for you.

The notion of karma is fundamentally causal in character but in the moral dimension. It basically claims our moral actions have moral consequences and this system operates in a hedonistic setting with pain and pleasure performing the function of karmic currency in which form moral debts are paid off.

To add, causality is like an overarching principle and all other theories based on causality, like the Buddhist doctrine of karma, must, as of necessity, be a subset, an offshoot, of causality. — TheMadFool

This is all fine, pending a sensible moral dimension. But if you have a set X that contains (x1, x2, x3, ...}, X does not logically imply x1. Nor does the axiom of causality logically imply karma. That was the point I quoted and took issue with, the sense that karma had been proven with the axiom of causality. It has not. First, the element of the set needs defining properly. Then whatever needs adding to the axiom to derive that element needs defining. Then you have a logical implication.

What is motion in 3D? How does that work without time? — Luke

Allow me to fix the ambiguity:

Motion in (3D + time) = geometry in 4D. — Kenosha Kid

doesn't the very concept of motion assume that a 3D object moves from t to t' in some fashion akin to temporal passage? — Luke

No, it just depends on position being a continuous function of time. What you're talking about is a kind of propagator. That can be made consistent with kinematics, but not derived from it.

the concept of motion is based on Presentist assumptions, I would argue. — Luke

Which, again, means that the concept of motion is not that of normal kinematics, which contains no knowledge of a 'now'. Past motion, future motion, present motion, all are describable. If anything, kinematics' natural home is eternalism. It derives from the sorts of graphs you did at school, where you have the height of the ball (or whatever) on the vertical axis and time on the horizontal. This is just a simplified spacetime, the sorts of geometry I and Phforrest have been talking about.

Or are you saying that "history is laid out there and real" somehow provides this motion? If so, how? — Luke

This. As I've said before, motion is the geometry of the 4D object. Any point on that object will have a coordinate (x, y, z, t). If two points (x, y, z, t) and (x', y', z', t') on the same 4D object have different time coordinates (t' != t) but the same spatial coordinates (x'=x, y'=y, z'=z), the object is not in motion. Otherwise it must be by definition, since its position is different at different times.

If you're just going to assume that motion is possible because it's "in the model", then I suppose there's nothing to discuss. I guess your model contains no assumptions. — Luke

It contains the 4D geometry of eternalism and the kinetic model of motion, but nothing else.

Why is it sufficient? — Luke

Because any continuous geometry has well-defined gradients in any dimension with the respect to any of the others at all coordinates. The geometry of the object will dictate, for instance, dx/dz for all times (x,y,z,t), or dy/dx, or dx/dt, dy/dt and dz/dt. The first two are spatial slopes, like the gradient of a mountain side. Those last three are its velocity. It's all the same kind of thing in 4D.

Motion in 3D + time = geometry in 4D.

So it's the same cup from t to t', but not the same you? — Luke

No, it's the same you, but the "you" in "you, or your consciousness, moves from one temporal cross section to another". "you" are laid out in 4D like everything else.

The impression of presentism when you are laid out in 4D is a different question that does not bear on whether or not motion is possible.

If more and more scientific theory is predicated on mathematical proofs, but fails in the empirical proofs that justify the mathematics.......isn’t that ever-increasing speculation? — Mww

I wasn't denying that speculation will tend to increase with time. The response was in the context of:

There might be some scientists who do that, and some scientific areas where it happens — Wayfarer

itself in the context of:

You are bang on target to say that bridging the gap between philosophy and science, even if it is just to categorise questions as scientific or unscientific, requires casting questions in some mutually understandable way, and phenomonology is a great example of how to do this because it is part of both science and philosophy (as the two do influence one another). — Kenosha Kid

I was denying that this is some kind of retreat from empiricism. Science is empirical, albeit involving a lot of theory work to make empirical predictions. String theorists did look for testable hypotheses. The last scientific question ever answered will be a fricking difficult one, probably requiring technology beyond our imaginations, and will be on the back of a huge graveyard of abandoned and disproven hypotheses, not because science doesn't deal with phenomena, but because easier questions get answered sooner, leaving only the toughies.

The trend has been the other way round in terms of application of phenomenology to scientific propositions, as my "photons are clicks in photon detectors" example illustrated. We've had to become more phenomonologically robust as the objects have study have become less amenable to direct study.

If you want to refer to them as the same part, then you are ignoring the Eternalist reality and may as well be a Presentist — Luke

Not remotely. There's nothing inconsistent with eternalism in saying that the apex of the mountain at time t is the same apex of the same mountain at time t'. That is not a problem for eternalism to resolve.

An Eternalist can just reject that and attribute it to something else with an identical effect? — Luke

No they can't. If the entire history of an object is laid out, i.e. if the past and future are real, then events in that history are connected. Again, it is yourself bringing non-eternalist ideas into the eternalism picture.

What you need to account for as an Eternalist, which you have simply assumed here, is how you, or your consciousness, moves from one temporal cross section to another. — Luke

No you don't, that is precisely what the eternalist viewpoint doesn't need. You don't need to account for how you get from an event at time t to one at time t', because it's all just laid out there and real. The continuity of 4D objects purely as geometric objects is sufficient, and that geometry is sufficient for motion. There's no "you" to get from one point to the other (presentism).

Unless you main one must account for the subjective human experience of presentism in an eternalist universe. But understand that is not needed for motion: motion is geometric in 4D just as shape is in 4D.

I haven't been here very long, so all of my experience is recent. I don't see a correlation between experience and bullying behaviour. The stalwarts are mostly patient and helpful, or else just ignore you. I see a correlation between the weakness of the bully's argument and bullying behaviour, whether said bully is new or experienced. I think the worst case I've seen is of an theist bullying a different theist in a manner that made me wonder what the community guidelines here actually mean. [Edited as inaccurate.]

I think a safe space for newbs would just result in less intelligent bullying by other newbs if I'm honest.

Momentum requires only space? — Luke

This is quantum mechanics now. We are far from Galileo. The momentum of a quantum mechanical body at a particular time is a feature of its wavefunction's geometry at that time. Precisely, it is, in a given direction, proportional to the number of wave peaks per metre in that direction. It is still related to time, but indirectly, via something called the dispersion relation, which is energetics not kinematics.

Eternalism logically entails that the cup at time t and the cup at time t' both co-exist as separate objects/parts. They exist as different 3D parts of the same 4D cup, but always as different parts. You can call them the same cup if you like, but you can also say that time passes if you like. — Luke

If it is irrelevant in eternalism whether consider the cup at time t' to be the same cup as the cup at time t, then it cannot form part of your argument one way or the other. (So here we agree.)

The additional variable is motion? That is, what is this "something"? — Luke

No, just whatever it is that connects the cup at t' to the cup at t. It's not something I postulate. I know the cup at t' is the same as the cup at t, that they are different cross sections of the same 4D object. But if you want to postulate they are not, then there needs to be some explanation for why, if I stare at a cup for a given interval of time, the cup at the end not only appears indistinguishable from the cup at the start, but appears continuously. Whatever causes that, whatever replaces continuity of identity, is c(t), and motion rears its ugly head once more via the chain rule: d/dt = (d/dc)*(dc/dt).

In other words, you can't escape motion by claiming that the 3D object at t' is different to the one at t. In 4D, it is still a continuous geometric object, and that geometry is motion.

Your argument does not prove that no god exists, merely describes a theory of how non-existent gods came to be. Even in that respect, it is incomplete in places and unjustified in others. For instance, "first known religion" is not the same as "first religion", so as an origin story it allows evidence that is not really there. We have no evidence for how the first religion formed, because we do not know what it is.

However, we do have an idea of how culture forms generally. Dennett, citing Rogers & Ehrlich, citing Alain, used the story of the boat builders. I cannot recall the particulars, but it goes something like this. A tribe of people use boats to go out fishing for food. The boats are much of a muchness, not very good, with each boat builder learning how to build boats from other boat builders, e.g. by observation or by teaching. One boat builder makes a boat that lasts longer than the other boats. The boat builders don't know why this boat is better than theirs, but they want good boats too so they copy that boat. If that boat had, say, a U-shaped hull, they would copy the U-shaped hull. If it had a particular feature in the wood that vaguely looked like a banana, they would look for wood with banana shapes or else daub on a banana shape in the same place. They find these new boats better if the new design is an overall improvement. (Overcome my laziness and read Dennett.)

This is one of the ways in which mystic symbols, including non-graphical ones like prayers and sacrifices, gain their potency. An anthropologist can study these cultures and say, "Well, the U-shaped hull is for better fishing, but the banana shape is an arbitrary local cultural artefact: it is art". A scientist can show that the banana shape is irrelevant by building U-shaped and flat-bottomed boats with and without them and demonstrate it makes no difference. But the tribe knows that U-shaped hulls with the banana motif are the best boats through generations of pedagogy, mimesis and experience.

There is then the possibility of recognising such cultures by examining their "art" or "irrelevancies". We can, and have, tested that prayer doesn't work. We can, but ought not, test that human sacrifice doesn't work. These are irrelevancies that give us some idea of their origins, if not a complete description of their copying mechanisms (the above is different to indoctrinating children, and is very different to "convert or die" ultimata) and allow us to put them in a category of unjustified beliefs. This does not preclude a god, though, a listening deity who genuinely would make your life better if only you knew who to negotiate with and how. In principle, someone could have a revelation that we were doing it wrong and you must pray with your hands behind your back and your nose always touching the floor. If this alone proved to be efficacious in getting one's way, it would not fit into the above schema, though how two prayers with mutually exclusive requests would get resolved, I don't know. ("Tell me how does God choose? Whose prayers will he refuse" -- Tom Waits.)

There are a lot of other factors. Humans are prejudiced to infer agency where none exists. We are not natural materialists. We are extremely anthropocentric. We are hugely ignorant. If belief in something grants anyone power, someone will exploit that power and defend its authority. We are slow to negate long-held, unjustified beliefs, especially ones forced upon us in childhood, be it the belief in Hell or the belief that Communism is inherently evil. A major religion probably hasn't had a new cultural artefact that it recognises to be utilitarian for a very long time, but even in the last hundred years new religions have formed (based on e.g. copying the design of runways so that the great metal bird will bring food) that are analogous to features in major religions.

If I decide that an invisible spirit exists and several other people agree with me, then we have all simply made the decision to believe it, even though this invisible spirit does not actually exist. — BBQueue

It doesn't even necessitate that the originator believes in the god either, look at scientology. L Ron Hubbard must have known he was making it all up on some level, even if he claimed it was revelation, and yet people still believe in it. It doesn't even necessitate that the originator intended for others to believe in it.

OK, I understand, you seem to be of the opinion, shared by quite a few philosophers and scientists it must be said, that every time we see anything, mental imaging is occuring. — jkg20

That is an understatement. :rofl: I'm not specifying a means of mental imaging; I simply mean that I see a red wall. It does not preclude images generated without visual stimuli.

Don't read too much into it. It was just a potential example of "a meaningful scientifically-unanswered question". If it is not meaningful to you, or you feel it is sufficiently scientifically answered, feel free to replace it.

Or is your point that this is an example of a meaningless question, as evidence that there are no meaningful unscientific questions?

Hence the word 'deities' also only means something as defined by 'that what atheists don't believe in". — Tomseltje

Language need not be circular, it is mostly hierarchical. Deities is defined without the need for atheism. Whether a deity is believed by one, most, all contingently, or all necessarily, the word can be rendered meaningful, the meaning depending on the claim, not its sceptics.

Could you be clearer about the two questions you imagine to be here please, because under one understanding of what you are saying the "why" questions both have exactly the same, entirely mundane response: "because it is daylight and your wall is painted red", which would seem to indicate that they are, in fine, precisely the same question. — jkg20

Sure, the distinction is between "why this colour" and "why is it always the same colour". The latter is answered by the limited wavelengths of light a material body can emit when illuminated: its emission spectra. This is scientifically well understood. But I still don't know why I see that particular wavelength as that particular colour, i.e. how mental imaging occurs. I know how the brain differentiates colours, I know why it is consistent, but the actual experience of colour for a particular wavelength is unknown to me.

This could just be my ignorance, but tmk the question is not scientifically answered. (If it is answered, just replace with an unanswered one.) It is for consideration then if it is scientifically answerable. Of-the-gaps arguments are of the form: it has not been answered, therefore it is not scientifically answerable, which is not rational. What's desirable from a logical non-materialist's PoV is a schema for determining whether this scientific-seeming question is in fact scientific at all, without relying on what future science will illuminate. And from a materialist's PoV whether there is any reason to doubt that it is. That is, both parties are invested in this endeavour.

but overall the story in science is ever-increasing speculation - ‘knowing more and more about less and less’, one saying has it. — Wayfarer

I don't think that's a reasonable point. Science deals with more unverified theory as time passes for no other reason than that these are the hardest questions to answer and will take the longest time. The Higgs boson was speculative until we had the technology to answer it. The speed of light was an easier question because the technology was available sooner. The acceleration of falling bodies even easier. To use the success of science at answering easier questions as a criticism for focusing on harder ones is disingenuous. The trajectory of science is inevitably toward harder questions with more incorrect hypotheses.

Overall, I do agree that science is becoming more holistic and less materialistic — Wayfarer

Considering myriad material phenomena on different scales is not less materialistic, it's just less narrow materialism.

Apologies, it was all I had time for at the moment. — Wayfarer

Haha no, I didn't mean you, I meant the general discourse. I think your point here was great.

You mean to say that deities are defined as those things atheists don't believe in? — Tomseltje

No, hence that is what I did not say.

I have no argument with those who admit science can’t explain everything. — Wayfarer

That is not what I said though. The characterisation of scientists within a field as believing their field explains everything is pernicious. There are examples, usually in the softer sciences, of a refusal to accept the necessity of holistic approaches, but even Skinner didn't believe his nurture-over-nature position explained e.g. the tides.

There are meaningless questions: What time is an apple? What colour is speed? There are scientific questions: How old is the Earth? How is sound created and mediated? There may be meaningful unscientific questions. You are bang on target to say that bridging the gap between philosophy and science, even if it is just to categorise questions as scientific or unscientific, requires casting questions in some mutually understandable way, and phenomonology is a great example of how to do this because it is part of both science and philosophy (as the two do influence one another).

But science already does this. I cannot personally explain why I experience a particular hue of red when I look at my dining room wall -- that is a scientific-seeming question that is unanswered -- but I can explain why that perception persists under fixed lighting conditions -- that is a scientific question that is answered. It becomes a problem in that mutual area to justify why one question is scientific and another not. The obvious and usual recourse is that science has not answered it yet, which is an 'of-the-gaps' argument. A better justification for meaningful unscientific questions needs to be put forward.

Wait... Are you saying you are satisfied that Eternalism logically precludes motion (according to our agreed upon definition of motion)? — Luke

No, for two reasons:

1) Eternalism does not say that the cup at time t is a different cup at time t', so the above is unnecessary
2) It still yields motion, just via an additional variable.

There is something that turns the cup at t into the cup at t'. Let us identify the temporal cup slices as c(t), such that c(t') = c(t) only if t'=t. Which 3D cup we speak of depends on when we speak of.

We can then define the positions of a history of cup transformations as x(c): where the cup is depends on which 3D cup it is.

Motion still falls out: dx/dt = (dx/dc) x (dc/dt)

So as long as x, c, and t are continuous, i.e. so long as objects don't disappear then later reappear, motion is still possible.

Indeed. Note that Einstein, who knows very well that Pythagoras' theorem does not work in non-Euclidean mathematics, introduces the clause "approximately". That opens the door to anything. If you don't like my principles, I have others. — David Mo

:up: So there may be a sanity clause?!?

It is stated that human ideas (scientific or otherwise) coincide with reality but "approximately". — David Mo

That's putting it strongly. Whether scientific ideas correlate to reality is tested. The idea can be wrong, there's no obvious difference in terms of their ideas. But well-tested ideas, yes, are thought to describe something about reality to some (presumably higher than previous) level of approximation.

But let’s note, again, that in this case, that of the nature of the mind, we are what we seek to know. This is the sense in which the problems of philosophy are radically different from scientific problems generally. In those, you have a hypothesis or prediction (left hand side) and outcome or observation (right hand side) and you refer to the latter to refine and inform the former. It’s a very powerful methodology but it doesn’t apply to every subject matter. — Wayfarer

This isn't any different than the usual dualist argument, insofar as it defines mind to be not amenable to scientific method and then claims therefore that therefore science cannot answer questions about it. The end result is that we'll be using the same word to describe two different things, only one of which exists, and you're stuck with the problem of whittling down your definition of mind to exclude anything science can illuminate, i.e. a mind of the gaps.

This kind of approach is found in phenomenology, in existentialism and also non-dualist philosophies that originated in Asian cultures and have begun to percolate through Western culture. All of these require consideration of the human condition (as for example via Heidegger’s dasein) and not just as an attempt to resolve every problem by fitting it into the Procrustean bed of Darwinian materialism, where reason is dictated by the exigencies of survival (‘the success of the phenotype’). — Wayfarer

First, modern physics is already phenomenological. There is a gap between how things are modelled and how those models can be found to to correlate to those things. This is true classically although was not always fully appreciated. But these days it's mundane. There was a conference some years ago which tried to agree answers to a set of questions. One of the questions was: What is a photon? The agreed answer was: A click in a photon detector.

Second, this forwards the fallacy that any proponent of one scientific theory believes they can explain everything with that theory. Darwinism explains inheritable biological characteristics with respect to environment. There will be some biological characteristics, that distinguish ourselves from other species, that give capacity for either a mind or an illusion of a mind. If there is an inheritable drive for mind, that too will have a Darwinistic explanation. But it cannot answer questions about what an individual or group will do with those capacities. For instance, if it transpires that language creates mind, the biological bases are valid evolutionary theoretical questions, however the functioning of mind is not, nor does anyone pretend it does without prejudice.

This underlies my whole view of the matter (although somewhat vaguely): that Eternalism is all position and Presentism is all momentum. — Luke

Space is present in both, so therefore momentum is possible in both.

Motion implies that the same object moves from t to t'. This is a Presentist assumption which makes no sense in Eternalism. — Luke

As defined, yes. But you can define something else, xotion for instance, as moving one object in one place and time to another in another, if that process is continuous. This would look identical to what we call motion, obey the same equations, have the same causes and effects, but it would start with an x instead of an m, and have a different definition.

I don't understand your use of the word "redundant" here. — Luke

If motion were impossible, then x(t) = x, which a constant. We could write a position as (x, y, z, m, n, t). But since (x, y, z, t) fully determine position, i.e. (m, n) don't do anything, this is merely describing a 4D something in a 6D space for no reason: it is still 4D. Likewise if nothing moved, (x, y, z) cannot change thus those coordinates define everything.

The 4D object can be broken into its constituent parts, just like a mountain can. — Luke

It's an interesting idea. We could consider something like the object over one Planck time as a sort of temporal "atom". We're far from classical kinematics then. Moving to QM, you don't even need time to have momentum: it is a purely spatial geometric feature.

If the 4D object is the entire spatiotemporal existence of the mug, and if the 4D mug is made up of its constituent parts, then how are the two parts you mention above not different and co-existing parts? — Luke

They are, but now we can consider the 4D geometry of the part, see that it has one, and motion again falls out.

In that case, how do you intend to calculate your Eternalist motion between one part and another? You will need to pick out these two different parts in order to do so. — Luke

You'd need some information about what parts exist where and when. This would replace a history of one object in 4D with a history of different 3D objects transforming into one another, building up the worldline that you say is not one object but different parts at different times. Then it's the same story: 4D geometry = motion.

And this has been your mistaken assumption all along: that the existence of time automatically implies the existence of motion. — Luke

No, the existence of time-dependent positions necessitates motion, by definition. You can have an eternalist universe without motion, but then the temporal dimension would be redundant.

But that's exactly the difference between Presentism and Eternalism. — Luke

No, the difference between presentism and eternalism is down to whether the past and future exist, not whether motion exists. Your OP attempts to derive a stationary universe from eternalism, but you have to put that in by hand, viz:

Eternalism is a motionless existence. — Luke

In addendum, one man being bald is not orthogonal to another man having hair.

But "a classical state" is definitionally not a superposition. — Pfhorrest

It is. a = 1, b = 0. There's nothing inherently special about these values. Everything is in an eigenstate of something (Hohenberg-Kohn theorems).

If it makes the analogy better for you, imagine that instead of having one king, or being a republic, France had a council of many co-kings, who all had hair of different lengths, some of them completely bald. Still "the" king of France does not have a specified hair status, because there is no "the" king of France, even though that's for a different reason (more like a superposition) in this hypothetical than in reality.

No fancy quantum anything needs to be invoked to explain how there is no hair-status of the king of France in such a scenario, yet the LEM is still not violated there. The LEM is not violated by superpositions for the same reason. — Pfhorrest

Yes, I can see you're fond of the analogy, however, as I said:

There is no extent to which he is bald as he doesn't exist. There is no extent to which he has hair as he doesn't exist. There is an extent to which an atom has decayed or not decayed, right there in the wavefunction. The decayedness or not-decayedness is not an unanswerable question, it just doesn't have a binary answer. — Kenosha Kid

That is a superposition, not a classical state. — Pfhorrest

I was talking about a superposition, not a classical state. The classical states are on the right.

If someone asks about the decay status, a classical state, of an unobserved atom, neither “decayed” nor “undecayed” is true, but not because the LEM had failed, just because there is no classical state of an unobserved atom to be “decayed” or “undecayed”. — Pfhorrest

There is, though.

|atom> = a*|decayed> + b*|not decayed>

They're on the right. :)

I’m pointing out that the same apparent problem of the LEM violation occurs in entirely non-quantum situations too — Pfhorrest

But it isn't the same kind of problem. We can agree on the non-existence of the king of France, and it is his non-existence that makes the question meaningless. There is no extent to which he is bald as he doesn't exist. There is no extent to which he has hair as he doesn't exist. There is an extent to which an atom has decayed or not decayed, right there in the wavefunction. The decayedness or not-decayedness is not an unanswerable question, it just doesn't have a binary answer. Otherwise quantum computing is gonna be screwed.

What then is the analogy? Perhaps you could spell it out because I'm not seeing it. — elphidium55

I didn't see your post earlier, sorry. Apparently @ing someone doesn't notify them.

Sure, it is analogous insofar as the the causality of karma is like the axiom of causality, having something like equal and opposite reaction (what I do to the world, the world does back to me), without actually being derived from it.

The precise mechanics of a causal chain require more than than the three propositions listed. The second amounts to the conservation of energy. The third is underdefined. If you add conservation of other physical properties, you get physics. If you add something else, perhaps some postponeable conservation of personal harm, you could get something like karma. But it has to be added to the list, it can't be derived from it.

Couldn't sleep. — Luke

I have a remedy. Lie back, close your eyes, and in your mind say... "Motion is possible in eternalism. Motion is possible in eternalism. Motion is possible in eternalism..." You'll be out like a light, I promise.

However, different objects exists at these two locations in Eternalism - the different parts of the 4D object. — Luke

"different objects exists at these two locations in Eternalism" is such a assumption. My counter would be that this is not generally held to be true by eternalists, nor is it a component of any typical definition of eternalism, i.e. this is now a special kind of eternalism.

That said, motion may still be recovered in this eternalism, even if we assume the object at t' to be different to the object at t, so long as there exists another continuity connecting the objects at t and t'. This is at least sensible: we do not see an object disappear then be replaced by a different but indistingushable object.

Then we can define a new kinematics over that continuity, identical in mathematical form to the previous kinematics except maybe from some replacement of dummy variables (e.g. t -> i), and giving exactly the same net result. This thing would look identical to what motion looks like in normal eternalism, where the object at t' is just another part of the same object at t. It would allow you to calculate velocities as gradients with respect to some continuous labeling system for identity, i.

Which is a complicated way of changing some labels at the end of the day.

Wrote a guide here. It's essentially LateX if you're familiar with it, though without lots of the standard packages. — fdrake

$\lt3$

There isn't. What you're looking for is the infinity symbol above the Sigma.

Need to figure out that sexy equation mode.

The atom, in my thought experiment, does exist.
— Kenosha Kid

Yes, but a classical state of the atom does not. — Pfhorrest

Yes, but I'm not talking about people who are considering classical states only; I'm not even talking about collapse interpretations of QM. I had in mind more theorists. But even experimentalists after observation can establish facts about superposition.

Superposition is not a logically indeterminate answer to the question of what classical state is true. It’s there being something other than any classical state at all. — Pfhorrest

It's neither, it's a probability amplitude distribution over classical states. When the atom is in a 50/50 admixture, it is not "neither decayed or not decayed" and it's CERTAINLY not "undecayed until classical"*. It is an admixture.

*This would actually make little sense. If the proposition "is the atom decayed" were false until collapse, the would be no quantum entanglement. Cat would never be in a superposition**.

**Not that it would anyway.

We all gotta sleep. Have a good one.