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The Nature of Time: A-Theory vs. B-Theory

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  • #61
    Originally posted by JimL View Post
    But, afaics, agent causation doesn't fit into the B-theory of time. All of time exists in B-theory, the future is as real as the present and the past. In other words the future is closed, people don't flow with time into the future, they, their future selves, already exist. The B-theory is like the Block universe in which the whole of time is real.
    I wasn't assuming a B-Theory there when I was talking about agent causation. But even on a B-Theory, is it necessarily incompatible with freedom? I'm not so sure. When you say "already exist" you're assuming that it exists ahead of time, but it actually exists tenselessly. Why couldn't it be the case that 'free' actions are tenseless, that I tenselessly and freely choose chocolate at 1 pm today?

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    • #62
      Originally posted by Sparko View Post
      What part of "I am ignoring you in this thread because you say dumb stuff" do you not understand?
      Well, in my opinion, and most everyone else's here, thinks it's you that are saying dumb stuff. B-theory is pretty cut and dry, the future is closed, you only experience the future in time, you don't create it. You're confusing the 2 theories. It doesn't work that way. The future is either open to choice, A-theory, or it is closed to choice, B-theory. You're trying to fit the former into the latter.

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      • #63
        Originally posted by Jim B. View Post
        I wasn't assuming a B-Theory there when I was talking about agent causation. But even on a B-Theory, is it necessarily incompatible with freedom? I'm not so sure. When you say "already exist" you're assuming that it exists ahead of time, but it actually exists tenselessly. Why couldn't it be the case that 'free' actions are tenseless, that I tenselessly and freely choose chocolate at 1 pm today?
        ^that.

        What is "embedded" in the "block universe" is a "record" of all of our free will choices. Past, present and future.

        We see this instinctively when looking at the past. Yesterday I chose to eat Cheerios for breakfast. From my current vantage point, I know I ate cheerios yesterday. It is a fixed fact. I can't change it. Yet it was a free will choice. The past is fixed from our current viewpoint, so why can't our future be just as fixed from the viewpoint of someone 100 years from now? It doesn't mean our choices aren't free, any more than my choice yesterday wasn't because of free will.
        Last edited by Sparko; 05-19-2020, 03:12 PM.

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        • #64
          Originally posted by Sparko View Post
          I was just explaining Molinism and how it could relate to B-theory and the multi-worlds theory in such a way that we both have free will, and God is completely sovereign.
          I guess I'll have to actually look up Molinism! God's complete sovereignty was the hidden variable.

          And if you don't hate butterscotch, then you are of the devil and I can't listen to you any longer.
          I let it slip again! Curses!
          Last edited by Jim B.; 05-19-2020, 03:21 PM.

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          • #65
            Originally posted by Jim B. View Post
            I wasn't assuming a B-Theory there when I was talking about agent causation. But even on a B-Theory, is it necessarily incompatible with freedom? I'm not so sure. When you say "already exist" you're assuming that it exists ahead of time, but it actually exists tenselessly. Why couldn't it be the case that 'free' actions are tenseless, that I tenselessly and freely choose chocolate at 1 pm today?
            Not ahead of time, in time, and all of time in B-theory is real. You don't arrive in the future, the future you already exists. In B-theory both your child hood and adulthood, your birth and your death, are real, and have always been real. You experience it as though it were A-theory, the illussion of time flowing, but in B-theory time doesn't flow, all of time exist, the future is as real as the past. Einsteins block universe!
            Last edited by JimL; 05-19-2020, 03:28 PM.

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            • #66
              Originally posted by Sparko View Post
              ^that.

              What is "embedded" in the "block universe" is a "record" of all of our free will choices. Past, present and future.
              And how are your free will choices embedded in the future if you only exist in the present?
              We see this instinctively when looking at the past. Yesterday I chose to eat Cheerios for breakfast. From my current vantage point, I know I ate cheerios yesterday. It is a fixed fact. I can't change it. Yet it was a free will choice. The past is fixed from our current viewpoint, so why can't our future be just as fixed from the viewpoint of someone 100 years from now? It doesn't mean our choices aren't free, any more than my choice yesterday wasn't because of free will.
              You're still confusing A-theory with B-theory. Yes you can't change the past because you already lived it, did you already live your future as well?

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              • #67
                Originally posted by Jim B. View Post
                Of course, but then does that mean as far as God is concerned, any theory is as plausible as any other? The principle of parsimony goes out the window?
                Parsimony as a guiding principle has worked well for science. Agnosticism about the existence of divine beings has as well. If you want to throw out one of these due to the existence of God, then you end up throwing out both and, in the process, take a big piece out of the foundation of science. In sheer practical terms, i think that would be a large mistake.

                Looked at from a different angle, any conception of what a divine being would prefer in terms of how humanity understands reality's structure would necessarily be a social construct. And pretty much every time we made science subservient to social pressures, it's not produced good results.
                "Any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from trolling."

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                • #68
                  Originally posted by JimL View Post
                  Not ahead of time, in time, and all of time in B-theory is real. You don't arrive in the future, the future you already exists. In B-theory both your child hood and adulthood, your birth and your death, are real, and have always been real. You experience it as though it were A-theory, the illussion of time flowing, but in B-theory time doesn't flow, all of time exist, the future is as real as the past. Einsteins block universe!
                  Yeah, I got that part. I don't see how that responds to my point though. And what would the meaning of "me" be if it exists at all moments equally of my life? My "Me-ness", my sense of identity, is bound up in the existential fact of becoming, of who I am now in terms of who I was and who I might become. Maybe this could be reconciled with B-Theory, but how?

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                  • #69
                    Originally posted by Jim B. View Post
                    Yeah, I got that part. I don't see how that responds to my point though. And what would the meaning of "me" be if it exists at all moments equally of my life? My "Me-ness", my sense of identity, is bound up in the existential fact of becoming, of who I am now in terms of who I was and who I might become. Maybe this could be reconciled with B-Theory, but how?
                    That's the problem that most people have with accepting B-theory. As Einstein put it, And I paraphrase: "I realize that it's not the fault of the ax murderer that he is an ax murderer, but I wouldn't want to sit at tea with him."

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                    • #70
                      Originally posted by JimL View Post
                      That's the problem that most people have with accepting B-theory. As Einstein put it, And I paraphrase: "I realize that it's not the fault of the ax murderer that he is an ax murderer, but I wouldn't want to sit at tea with him."
                      That has more to do with moral responsibility and 'free will,' which I see as conceivably compatible with some type of B-Theory. I was talking more about personal identity across time.

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                      • #71
                        Originally posted by Jim B. View Post
                        That has more to do with moral responsibility and 'free will,' which I see as conceivably compatible with some type of B-Theory.
                        Well that is the discussion, does B-theory allow for personal/moral responsibility and free will or not. Einstein obviously didn't think so, and I don't see any way in which it could. Time is static, the universe doesn't expand and evolve, that's an illusion according to B-theory, the future, the future of the universe, your future, it all already exist. Your past and future selves are still experiencing their present. Caesar is crossing the Rubicon in his "now" along the static timeline, and Jesus is being crucified in his "now" along the timeline, you are a young man, I assume, reading this in your" now", and you are a retired old man in his "now", and all of those "nows" are all just as real. It doesn't change, its only somehow experienced as change.
                        If you want free will, I think your best bet is if A-theory is the reality, the theory in which the past is gone, only the present is real, and the future is open. Unfortunately, the physics as far as I understand it, says that time is a dimension, it doesn't flow.

                        I was talking more about personal identity across time.[/QUOTE]

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                        • #72
                          Originally posted by JimL View Post
                          And how are your free will choices embedded in the future if you only exist in the present?

                          You're still confusing A-theory with B-theory. Yes you can't change the past because you already lived it, did you already live your future as well?
                          yes

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                          • #73
                            Originally posted by JimL View Post
                            But, afaics, agent causation doesn't fit into the B-theory of time. All of time exists in B-theory, the future is as real as the present and the past. In other words the future is closed, people don't flow with time into the future, they, their future selves, already exist. The B-theory is like the Block universe in which the whole of time is real.
                            This is an example of why I do not believe in either the A theory not the B theory of time, because both are based on philosophical assumptions of time from a subjective human view of time. We have no objective basis that 'All of time exists in B-theory, the future is as real as the present and the past. In other words the future is closed, people don't flow with time into the future, they, their future selves, already exist. The B-theory is like the Block universe in which the whole of time is real.'

                            I do not believe whether 'Free Will' exists or not, or whether there is a degree of 'Free Will' related to whether the Theory A nor Theory B of time is true.

                            The physical nature of time and the time/space relationship in our universe is indifferent to our philosophical theories of time.
                            Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
                            Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
                            But will they come when you do call for them? Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1, Act III:

                            go with the flow the river knows . . .

                            Frank

                            I do not know, therefore everything is in pencil.

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                            • #74
                              My apologies, everyone! I haven't been able to get to a proper computer to check this thread in a few days, so I haven't weighed in, but I am happy to see that the thread has been continuing in my absence.

                              Originally posted by Jim B. View Post
                              Excellent post, BP. I'll have more to say about it later, but one point in passing: If I recall, Boethius, in his "Consolation of Philosophy" argued that basically the B-Theory (from a theist perspective) is compatible with libertarian free will. He wrote that all moments of time are equally present to God and that God eternally knows everything that we have ever done and will ever do, but that this knowledge doesn't mean that we are determined to do those things. (Knowledge doesn't = metaphysical determinism.) Polkinghorne makes the same point that the nature of time is logically distinct from questions of what happens within that frame of reference. Intuitively it seems that the B-Theory entails determinism, but I'm not sure if it really does.
                              Awesome reply, Jim! Thanks!

                              Honestly, Boethius' position is pretty much exactly how I thought when I was a Christian and quite similar to my current views (despite my lack of theism). This actually brings up a rather interesting subtlety which can be easily overlooked. There are a couple of different ways in which Determinism can pan out, and much of the confusion about the matter (especially insofar as free-will is concerned) stem from the equivocation of these. On the one hand, there is a camp of Determinists who would argue that some prime agency controls the whole of time, actively determining what everything in time has done, does, and will do. This camp might include, for instance, certain Calvinists who believe that God actively plotted all of history including the actions of personal agents; or certain Panentheists who argue that the divine source of the universe created all of it (including past, present, and future) at once. On such a view, any form of free-will (whether Libertarian or Compatibilist) is difficult or even impossible to defend.

                              On the other hand, there is a camp of Determinists who would simply say that the world behaves deterministically. That is to say, given perfect knowledge , it is possible to perfectly predict how things behaved, behave, and will behave. This does not imply that those things are actively controlled by some agency, as is the case in the first camp of Determinists. Rather, those things behave according to their own natures and wills (in the case of agents with will); it's just that this behavior is perfectly predictable. So, for example, Boethius' notion that God has perfect knowledge of past, present, and future, allowing him to perfectly predict any future action, would fall under this camp. Similarly, most Deterministic Naturalists would fall into this camp, arguing that things behave according to predictive patterns but that these patterns are not themselves instituted or designed by any prime agent. If it's not obvious, this is the camp into which I fall.

                              On the latter camp, Compatibilist notions of free-will are preserved. A person's actions may be perfectly predictable, given perfect knowledge; however, that does not imply that those actions are any less a result of his or her own will.
                              "[Mathematics] is the revealer of every genuine truth, for it knows every hidden secret, and bears the key to every subtlety of letters; whoever, then, has the effrontery to pursue physics while neglecting mathematics should know from the start he will never make his entry through the portals of wisdom."
                              --Thomas Bradwardine, De Continuo (c. 1325)

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                              • #75
                                So I have been cogitating more on the nature of spacetime and such.

                                I am starting to like the growing block universe theory.

                                Basically the universe is 4 dimensional bubble of space-time that started at a point and started growing.

                                The "space" part of spacetime is constantly expanding the universe larger and larger, more "space" is being created all the time.

                                Well since time is just one of the 4 dimensions of spacetime, it also is expanding, more time is being created which allows space to expand. So you can think of spacetime as a bubble that grows from the big bang to now.

                                From any selected time period in the history of the universe, you would see a different size bubble. At 1 minute after the big bang the universe might be 1 light year across. Now it is much larger, 93 billion light years in diameter.

                                So the bubble contains the present and the past, but there is no future because it hasn't expanded there yet.

                                The expansion is caused by whatever energy started the big bang. The universe has a set amount of energy, which means as it expands that energy is "diluted", (the further back in time you go, the denser it is.) That is what causes entropy. Which means it would be very hard to travel into the past because you are trying to go to a higher energy state. That is why time is one way. And the future doesn't exist yet (from your point of view) so you can't travel to it, and you have free will.

                                But let's say I am here in 2023 and I can see the past and I have enough energy to overcome entropy and travel to the past. 1973.

                                Poof I do it. But then I have a problem. I am now in a universe that is only 1973 sized in expansion. It hasn't expanded to 2023 size yet. The 2023 future doesn't exist for the 1973 universe. So I can never go home. My 'now' is now 1973.

                                It still allows for God who is outside of all of this to see the future, even though for people stuck in the bubble at any given point, the future doesn't exist.


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