B Theory Of Time...

[Sparko]

Wrong. You showed no such thing, because you can't, so you are running away. Anyone reading your explanation knows it makes no sense, and I have a feeling you know it as well. Your argument is more in the form of 2+2=3 because I said so and if you can't understand that it's because you're an idiot. Or more to the point, 'Even though I'm in the present, god can see me in the future because I said so, and if you can't understand that it's because you're an idiot.' An outside of time observer can no more see the future than you can, unless it actually exists, and if it actually exists, if you've already lived out your future, then what are you doing in the here present? To that you answer, well the future exist, my future choices exist, just like my past choices do, because they've always existed. Well, if your future choices have always existed in time, then obviously they weren't free choices. Your argument isn't logically grounded.

No, Jim, 5+5 is not 55.

[JimL]

No, Jim, 5+5 is not 55.

Okay, run along now. And no need to reply to this post in the future since the future has always been.

[Just Passing Through]

[David Hayward]

If the B Theory of time is correct, why would we have access (by memory) to past events but not to future events?

I rather like the viewpoint of the late, great Terry Pratchett: if you can see the past but not the future you are going through life backwards.

[Sparko]

I wish I could answer all that, but I am not a physicist.

As far as your last comment goes, you are trying to add another duration to each moment in time, so you imagine a single instant "lasting" forever. Each moment just is. At that moment. It doesn't "last" because then you would need some meta-time for it to last in. This is one of the problems I was trying to explain to JimL about his use of "always existing"

[Jim B.]

B-THeory still doesn't make that much sense to me in terms of my experience of my self. That experience is based on tensed categories, the present, the past, the future. As with consciousness, physics has to be missing something essential. If all of that is an 'illusion,' that poses even deeper problems, IMO.

[Tassman]

B-THeory still doesn't make that much sense to me in terms of my experience of my self. That experience is based on tensed categories, the present, the past, the future. As with consciousness, physics has to be missing something essential. If all of that is an 'illusion,' that poses even deeper problems, IMO.

[Jim B.]

My subjective experience is not the measure of all things, but it is a measure of this feature of reality called my "self". If this feature is not real, then nothing that it perceives, including the deliverances of science, is real either. The world that you or I perceive, which includes the theory of special relativity, is only as reliable as the percipient of that world. It is a fact that the universe contains subjective experiences as a feature that stands in need of explanation. If "I" am not real, then the criteria that give meaning to the words "illusion" and "illusory" dissolve and go away.

[Tassman]

My subjective experience is not the measure of all things, but it is a measure of this feature of reality called my "self"

If this feature is not real, then nothing that it perceives, including the deliverances of science, is real either. The world that you or I perceive, which includes the theory of special relativity, is only as reliable as the percipient of that world.

It is a fact that the universe contains subjective experiences as a feature that stands in need of explanation. If "I" am not real, then the criteria that give meaning to the words "illusion" and "illusory" dissolve and go away.

[JonathanL]

I don't ascribe to the B-theory of time, but I don't think this is as much of an issue as you believe it to be. 2 Peter 3:8-13 has the following to say:

Scripture Verse: 2 Peter 3:8-13 ESV

8 But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. 9 The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. 10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.

11 Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, 12 waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn! 13 But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.

© Copyright Original Source

In Hebrew thought, "the heavens and the earth" is a merism signifying the entire cosmos, or universe. If the specific version of B-theory is correct that states that time is a fourth dimension of the universe, then this would seem to suggest that in destroying the universe, God will also destroy this current universe's dimension of time and in doing so, completely erase every moment of time for the current universe.

And in God doing so, that "worst moment of agony and pain [you've] ever experienced" will cease to exist.

[Jim B.]

Your “subjective experience” is a measure of what you personally perceive and understand as a consequence of the physical activity of your brain as programmed by your genes, your social conditioning and your level of education.

As is your experience of the theory of special relativity, as well as all scientific theories. My knowledge of the kind of thing that I am is MORE certain than the veridical nature of my observations. The nature of the thing that I am is given to me directly; it constitutes my self-knowledge without causal mediation. I know that I am conscious, and that knowledge is the most certain item of knowledge I have, more than any observation or any scientific knowledge because it's given directly and self-evidently. Scientific and observational knowledge comes at the end of a long, causal process that can easily result in deception or misapprehension. You can be a brain in a vat or you can be in the 'Matrix.'

The ‘theory of special relativity’ is as “reliable” as scientific methodology can demonstrate it to be with multiple testing and successful predictions. Whether or not it is “reliable” according to your own subjective perception of it has no bearing on its empirical reality.

But that's irrelevant, of course, when we're talking about the foundations of empirical reality itself, unless you beg the crucial question from the outset. You wouldn't be doing that, would you?!

Please keep in mind the two different meanings of the word 'subjective': as an ontological category and an epistemic mode. It is an objective fact that the world contains (ontologically) subjective points of view. It is an objective fact that I am constituted as a certain kind of thing with a certain kind of access to the world. It's important to differentiate subjective attitudes and opinions from objective facts that constitute the nature of objects.

The meaning to the words "illusion" and "illusory" will “dissolve and go away” if you enter a coma or in some other way become mentally incapacitated. Otherwise they will have the meaning to which your life-experience has given them.

An illusion requires a 'subject' upon which the illusion is perpetrated, a 'reality' behind the illusion and some mechanism generating and explaining the illusion.

[JonathanL]

An illusion requires a 'subject' upon which the illusion is perpetrated, a 'reality' behind the illusion and some mechanism generating and explaining the illusion.

The only "mechanism" or explanation I can think of that would explain the illusion of the passage of time if B-theory is true would be that the mind exists in a second A-theory version as a disembodied entity (a soul) that travels through each moment of time sequentially and experiences each B-moment of time in chronological order, from the beginning of it's conception to the time of it's death. As far as I'm concerned, basically only two alternatives are plausible to me, at least for now, either the passage of time is a real facet of material reality, in which case A-theory is true, or the passage of time in the physical universe is just an illusion, in which case something like the above is the only available explanation we has so far for how this illusion can arise, which would mean that there is actually a second "meta-time" in which non-physical entities like the mind exist.

[Tassman]

As is your experience of the theory of special relativity, as well as all scientific theories.

No, our subjective experiences are the consequence of the physical activity of our brains as programmed by our genes, our social conditioning and level of education. This need not apply to objective empirical knowledge such as "the theory of special relativity, as well as all scientific theories".

My knowledge of the kind of thing that I am is MORE certain than the veridical nature of my observations. The nature of the thing that I am is given to me directly; it constitutes my self-knowledge without causal mediation. I know that I am conscious, and that knowledge is the most certain item of knowledge I have, more than any observation or any scientific knowledge because it's given directly and self-evidently. Scientific and observational knowledge comes at the end of a long, causal process that can easily result in deception or misapprehension. You can be a brain in a vat or you can be in the 'Matrix.'

What can much more easily result in

Please keep in mind the two different meanings of the word 'subjective': as an ontological category and an epistemic mode. It is an objective fact that the world contains (ontologically) subjective points of view. It is an objective fact that I am constituted as a certain kind of thing with a certain kind of access to the world. It's important to differentiate subjective attitudes and opinions from objective facts that constitute the nature of objects.

that need concern us here.

An illusion requires a 'subject' upon which the illusion is perpetrated, a 'reality' behind the illusion and some mechanism generating and explaining the illusion.

[Just Passing Through]

[Jim B.]

No, our subjective experiences are the consequence of the physical activity of our brains as programmed by our genes, our social conditioning and level of education. This need not apply to objective empirical knowledge such as "the theory of special relativity, as well as all scientific theories".

But that is all premised, again, on the assumption that your perceptions accurately correspond to an objective reality. There is no way to empirically confirm such a reality. You cannot step outside of your perceptual/empirical experience to confirm or disconfirm its validity. Such an assumption of an objective reality corresponding to your perceptual experience is an assumption that results from a very long, complex causal/inferential chain. It can never be nearly as certain of a datum as that I am conscious or that I am a certain kind of conscious being.

You're confusing the certainty or reliability of some given conscious experience or other with the fact that there are conscious experiences at all. I am talking about the latter. The former are always uncertain. The latter are not.

What can much more easily result in “deception or misapprehension”

And that's the confusion I just referred to above. If I were a brain in a vat or in a sim world, I'd have to live AS IF it were real, in a way corresponding to a methodological, not a metaphysical, commitment to its 'reality.'

‘Objective knowledge’ can simply refer to knowledge of a factual objective reality. ‘Subjective knowledge’ would then be knowledge of any subjective reality. This is the only “mode” that need concern us here.

You're confusing the two meanings. It is an 'objective' fact, ie it is a fact that doesn't depend for its truth on the stance, attitude or opinion of any observer, that the world contains 'subjective' points of view.

“An illusion” merely requires a deceptive appearance or impression. When it comes to B-Theory the passage of time is an illusion in a universe where one’s entire life span, from birth to death, exists in its designated locations in time and can’t be changed.

Who or what is being deceived and how is that illusion being created? That would be like saying that the illusion of another kind of dimension were possible, that the people of "Flatland" could be 'deceived' that there was a 3-D world.