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Cogito ergo sum

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B Theory Of Time...

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  • #91
    Originally posted by Boxing Pythagoras View Post
    There is absolutely a direction of Time on the B-Theory! As Sparko noted, that Arrow of Time seems to be a function of entropy, with rising entropic states of a system being that which defines the progression from earlier-than to later-than. In a purely physical theory of mind, it would seem reasonable to think that the neurology underlying psychological states follows this same entropic pattern.
    well if memories are built by neurons and connections, then every new "frame" has new connections in the brain, as well as the old ones, so the brain remembers the past, but can't remember the future because those connections don't exist in the brain at that time frame.

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    • #92
      Originally posted by Sparko View Post
      One way is if what is "fixed" is your free will action. Just like when you look into the past, your fixed actions in the past are due to your free will actions in the past.
      That would require that you have already lived your entire life span in A-theory. The future would only be closed because you've already lived it, just like your past is closed because you've already lived it. Have you already lived your future? If so, what are you still doing here?
      Another way is if there are parallel universes that branch off for every decision. Then you would have infinite block universes that encompass all choices you could make.
      If B-theory were true then so too would be the branching off choices into multi-universes.

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      • #93
        Originally posted by JimL View Post
        Not seeing it BP, that looks like a logical contradictiohn on its face.
        Let me try.

        Looking at the fixed past. Let's say you ate a burrito for lunch yesterday. Thus the block universe shows you eating a burrito yesterday. As you say, it can't be changed. Now. BUT let's say you chose to eat a taco instead at that time. Then from your viewpoint now, that is what you would remember you eating. It would be what is fixed in the block universe. You would be complaining that your choice was fixed and determined that you had to eat a taco. Yet if you did choose to eat a burrito, you would still be here complaining that you were determined to eat a burrito. Either way, it was your choice. Your "input" to the formula that BP was talking about. Your free will decision created the fixed past you remember today. Your free will is the input variable that BP is talking about.

        While all decisions are "fixed" past, present and future, they are our own free will decisions that are fixed. If we chose (or will choose) differently, then that is what is fixed.

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        • #94
          Originally posted by Sparko View Post
          well if memories are built by neurons and connections, then every new "frame" has new connections in the brain, as well as the old ones, so the brain remembers the past, but can't remember the future because those connections don't exist in the brain at that time frame.
          Why don't those future connections exist since the future does exist now in B Theory? The 2026 me exists as we speak.
          Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

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          • #95
            Originally posted by seer View Post
            Why don't those future connections exist since the future does exist now in B Theory? The 2026 me exists as we speak.
            And he has those connections and memories of his past up to 2026, IN 2026. You don't. You seem to think every moment has to be exactly the same. that is what would need to be in order for all moments of you to have the same memories.

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            • #96
              Originally posted by Sparko View Post
              And he has those connections and memories of his past up to 2026, IN 2026. You don't. You seem to think every moment has to be exactly the same. that is what would need to be in order for all moments of you to have the same memories.
              That does not make sense in the B Theory since there is no flow of time - time is tenseless. There are no moments.
              Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

              https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

              Comment


              • #97
                Originally posted by JimL View Post
                Forever fixed and compatible with free will is a logical contradiction on its face.
                I see no good reason to think that this is the case.

                You can't be the agent of an act if the act has never not existed. The Block Universe doesn't evolve, time doesn't flow, it's all there, forever fixed. So, how can anyone within a changeless, fixed, Block Universe, be responsible for changing anything that's always been fixed?
                What do you mean by "change?" If you mean that some particular thing has different properties at one point in time than it does at another point in time, then change is just as coherent on a Block Universe model as on the A-Theory.

                As I mentioned in my own thread on the B-Theory, the only thing that is changeless on the B-Theory is the universe as a whole, because that necessarily implies looking at all of Time, as well. Change requires comparing one state of a thing to another state of that thing, but the universe as a whole doesn't have multiple states on a Block Universe model.

                If they are free willed agents, sure. But B-theory is as if every thing exists before we actually experience it. Like Einstein said: "I know that it isn't the fault of the ax murderer that he is an ax murderer, but I wouldn't want to sit at tea with him."
                I'm not sure I've ever read such a quote in any of the works of Einstein with which I am familiar. However, it's certainly not the case that everything exists "before we actually experience it" on the B-Theory. For one thing, the word "before" is a temporal descriptor making the statement strictly incorrect. For another, you seem to be trying to superimpose A-Theory understandings of the psychological experience of temporal progression onto the B-Theory which is obviously going to lead to incoherency.

                Originally posted by seer View Post
                BP, so there is an arrow of time? Again how is that possible if time is tenseless? And how would entropy be possible if time is tenseless? What is actually becoming more disordered?
                This is one of the reasons I despise the popularization of the notion of entropy as "becoming more disordered." At best, "disorder" is a poor analogy. At worst, it is an outright misconception.

                First of all, the concept of entropy does not rely on the passage of time. A physicist can speak perfectly cogently about the entropy of a system at a single moment in time.

                Secondly, entropy is certainly not "disorder." I can very easily think of a model with two states which both look quite orderly despite the fact that one state has a far higher entropy than the other.

                Entropy is a measure of the statistical likelihood of a given state with regard to a large possible statespace. Even that is an oversimplified definition, unfortunately. However, there's no good way to really describe the notion accurately without appealing to mathematics with which most people are unfamiliar. Hence, science popularizers tend to throw up their hands and appeal to "disorder," making a good many of us cringe every time they do.

                God chooses to do things like create, but I would not say He has freedom to not act according to his moral character. When one speaks of freedom we usually mean one has a genuine choice. I can choose to eat that extra piece cake or not. Both options are logically possible.
                So are you saying that you WOULD claim that when God chooses to do something good he has not made a free-will choice?
                "[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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                • #98
                  Originally posted by Sparko View Post
                  One way is if what is "fixed" is your free will action. Just like when you look into the past, your fixed actions in the past are due to your free will actions in the past.

                  Another way is if there are parallel universes that branch off for every decision. Then you would have infinite block universes that encompass all choices you could make.
                  But forever fixed time, whether there is a direction to time or not, is forever fixed time. In the Block universe each point along thefixed dimension of time is extant with every other point along the fixed dimension of time., Those points in time don't come into being, all the points in the time dimension always have been. The entire time dimension and every event at every point along that dimension has always been. According to B-theory there is a futue you in his "now" that is extant with his/your present "now." The present you is not going to arrive in the future to make a choice as to what to have for lunch, you're already there having lunch, and to top that off, the future you has always been there having lunch, just like the past you is somewhere doing whatever he is doing, and has always been there. Nothing in the B theory universe ever changes, it's all there and has always been all there.
                  I think you guys are still confusing B-theory, a static, fixed, time dimension, with A-theory, in which time actually flows from past to future.

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                  • #99
                    Originally posted by Boxing Pythagoras View Post
                    This is one of the reasons I despise the popularization of the notion of entropy as "becoming more disordered." At best, "disorder" is a poor analogy. At worst, it is an outright misconception.

                    First of all, the concept of entropy does not rely on the passage of time. A physicist can speak perfectly cogently about the entropy of a system at a single moment in time.

                    Secondly, entropy is certainly not "disorder." I can very easily think of a model with two states which both look quite orderly despite the fact that one state has a far higher entropy than the other.

                    Entropy is a measure of the statistical likelihood of a given state with regard to a large possible statespace. Even that is an oversimplified definition, unfortunately. However, there's no good way to really describe the notion accurately without appealing to mathematics with which most people are unfamiliar. Hence, science popularizers tend to throw up their hands and appeal to "disorder," making a good many of us cringe every time they do.
                    How ever you define entropy I think we can agree that it includes change. How can we have change if time is tenseless? How does something go from state A to state B if time is static? And how can a physicist speak of a moment of time when moments do not exist?
                    Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

                    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

                    Comment


                    • Originally posted by JimL View Post
                      But again, that is a logical contradiction. The logical fact is that only one of the two theoretical perspectives could be the reality. How coult the future be both closed from an outside perspective and open from an inside perspective?
                      If God is in a timeless state, or let's say part of his nature is not conditioned by temporal categories, I don't see why that fact would necessarily influence anything happening within time. (I'm using God as an illustration. You can take God out of it if you want.) The nature of events in time would be unaffected. So God could know every event, without that knowledge influencing the nature of any event. "The future being open vs. the future being closed" is still approaching the problem with temporal categories. If those categories don't apply, then those antinomies wouldn't apply either.


                      The past would be closed from either perspective. But in B-theory, the future is the same as the past in that respect, it's not open to change. T2 would just be another point along the timeline, but not another time.
                      Right. I'm trying to understand why it is that "now" and "the future" hold such primacy for conscious beings, that "now", although admittedly a fuzzy concept, is not just another neutral point along the time line, to try to reconcile these stubborn existential and psychological points with physics. Probably can't be done.


                      That's kind of the point, imagine that the entire history of the universe existed, from beginning to end. That's B-theory. It's all there and always has been. You're existence and actions along that timeline has always been there. How can you be said to be the chooser of that which has always been?
                      But you're already using the copula "is," and variations of it, which I admit is unavoidable, but could be confusing. You're writing in a tensed way. It may not be that it "has always been there" but that there's something grounding it beyond time.

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                      • Originally posted by seer View Post
                        How ever you define entropy I think we can agree that it includes change.
                        No. I literally stated in the very post which you quoted that entropy does not rely on the passage of time, and that it is a perfectly cogent concept even when talking about a single moment. Change is not necessary for entropy.

                        How can we have change if time is tenseless?
                        Change over time refers to the fact that a thing has different properties at one moment of time than it does at some other. Nothing about this requires the notion of temporal becoming.

                        How does something go from state A to state B if time is static?
                        We are talking about the state of a thing at time A compared to the state of a thing at time B. This is perfectly cogent even when times A and B are entirely coextant.

                        And how can a physicist speak of a moment of time when moments do not exist?
                        Who has ever said that moments don't exist? That's exactly the opposite of the B-Theory. In fact, that smacks of Presentism of the sort professed by William Lane Craig. On the B-Theory, there are a multitude of moments of time which are all coextant with one another, in exactly the same way that there are multiple positions space which are all coextant with one another.
                        "[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)

                        Comment


                        • Originally posted by seer View Post
                          That does not make sense in the B Theory since there is no flow of time - time is tenseless. There are no moments.
                          Yes there are. Time exists as a continuum. Think of it as a line stretching back and forth. Each point along that line is a moment. But just like a film, each frame is not the same. It builds on the frame before. So your brain has all of the memories it has accumulated from past moments, but none of the future ones.

                          Or if you want to think of it as a film, what you perceive as "now", your consciousness, is where the light is shining through the frame as each frame passes by. You have already seen the past frames so you know what was in them, but you haven't seen the future ones yet, even though they exist.

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                          • All of you A-theorists were just predetermined to believe in the A-Theory of time. It's not your fault.

                            Comment


                            • Originally posted by Sparko View Post
                              Yes there are. Time exists as a continuum. Think of it as a line stretching back and forth. Each point along that line is a moment. But just like a film, each frame is not the same. It builds on the frame before. So your brain has all of the memories it has accumulated from past moments, but none of the future ones.

                              Or if you want to think of it as a film, what you perceive as "now", your consciousness, is where the light is shining through the frame as each frame passes by. You have already seen the past frames so you know what was in them, but you haven't seen the future ones yet, even though they exist.
                              But your analogy depends on the image of a strip of film passing in front of a light and one frame 'presently' being illuminated by consciousness.

                              Comment


                              • Originally posted by Jim B. View Post
                                But your analogy depends on the image of a strip of film passing in front of a light and one frame 'presently' being illuminated by consciousness.
                                it's not a perfect analogy. Just using it to explain why your consciousness only remembers the past. I suppose you could imagine a film strip with an infinite number of projectors all watching the film pass by them at the same time. Each moment of your life believes it is in "now" and sees the past as gone and the future as ahead of them with no knowledge of it yet.

                                The you who started reading this post thought he was in "now" and so does the you who is reading this word right now. Yet that Jim who started reading this post is now in the past. Same with the you of 5 minutes, or 5 years from now.

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