God and time.
I am going to present two arguments for a divine conception of time. One of these arguments goes forwards - that is, it assumes God and shows how from this assumption, time must be something God created and then draws insights from this into the nature of time. The other goes in the other direction - that is, it starts by examining time, and concludes that time is divine.
First, the argument from God. God is all powerful by definition. From this we can conclude that God created time. Why? Because if time exists, then one is subject to it. And so if God did not create time, then God would be subject to something he did not create, which is incompatible with being omnipotent. So, given that God would be subject to time if time exists, something which would be incompatible with his omnipotence were he not to have himself created time, God created time.
But if God created time, then time was not needed for that initial act of creation. We can conclude, then, that there can be creation without time, for otherwise time itself could not have been created.
And as time involves an event changing in its temporal properties, we can conclude as well that change does not require time either. For how could God have changed an event's temporal properties if time needed already to be on the scene for him to do so?
If God created time - and he did, for he wouldn't be omnipotent otherwise - then neither causation or change essentially require time. It is the other way around: for time to exist, there needs to be causation and change, controlled by God. It is God, not time, that changes an event's temporal properties.
Now an argument in the other direction (though it does not lead to God per se, but to a person who could potentially be God). We are aware of time via our sensations. There is a sensation of pastness and of futurity. When we have that sensation of pastness about an event, we say we are 'remembering' that event (or if we are more careful, that we 'seem' to be remembering it). And when we have the sensation of futurity in respect of an event, we say that we are 'anticipating' it (or that we 'seem' to be anticipating it, if we are being careful). And when we have neither sensation in respect of an event, we say that we are experiencing it - that is, that it is present.
Of course, that one senses an event to be past does not entail that it is, and likewise for future and present. So those sensations - our sensations of pastness and futurity and the absence of those sensations which constitutes the appearance of presentness - are not constitutive of time itself. They are, rather, the means by which we are aware of time.
Nevertheless, in order to operate as the means by which we are aware of time, those sensations - and I will focus just on pastness for ease- would have to resemble the actual property of pastness in some or other respect. How else could the sensation of pastness give us any awareness of actual pastness?
So, though my sensation of pastness does not itself constitute the pastness of anything I am having it about, it nevertheless resembles the actual pastness of a thing.
A sensation resembles another sensation and nothing else. Smells are like smells; tastes are like tastes; sounds are like sounds, and so on. So, if my sensation of pastness resembles the actual pastness of a past event, then the actual pastness of a past event is also a sensation.
Sensations can exist in minds and nowhere else. Minds and minds alone have sensations. Thus, the actual pastness of an event exists as the sensation of a mind. It's just not my mind or yours. Indeed, as the pastness of an event seems radically external and unitary, then it is the sensation of one mind.
Time, then, exists as the sensations of a mind. And of course, that mind will be the mind of God if God exists (which he does).
First, the argument from God. God is all powerful by definition. From this we can conclude that God created time. Why? Because if time exists, then one is subject to it. And so if God did not create time, then God would be subject to something he did not create, which is incompatible with being omnipotent. So, given that God would be subject to time if time exists, something which would be incompatible with his omnipotence were he not to have himself created time, God created time.
But if God created time, then time was not needed for that initial act of creation. We can conclude, then, that there can be creation without time, for otherwise time itself could not have been created.
And as time involves an event changing in its temporal properties, we can conclude as well that change does not require time either. For how could God have changed an event's temporal properties if time needed already to be on the scene for him to do so?
If God created time - and he did, for he wouldn't be omnipotent otherwise - then neither causation or change essentially require time. It is the other way around: for time to exist, there needs to be causation and change, controlled by God. It is God, not time, that changes an event's temporal properties.
Now an argument in the other direction (though it does not lead to God per se, but to a person who could potentially be God). We are aware of time via our sensations. There is a sensation of pastness and of futurity. When we have that sensation of pastness about an event, we say we are 'remembering' that event (or if we are more careful, that we 'seem' to be remembering it). And when we have the sensation of futurity in respect of an event, we say that we are 'anticipating' it (or that we 'seem' to be anticipating it, if we are being careful). And when we have neither sensation in respect of an event, we say that we are experiencing it - that is, that it is present.
Of course, that one senses an event to be past does not entail that it is, and likewise for future and present. So those sensations - our sensations of pastness and futurity and the absence of those sensations which constitutes the appearance of presentness - are not constitutive of time itself. They are, rather, the means by which we are aware of time.
Nevertheless, in order to operate as the means by which we are aware of time, those sensations - and I will focus just on pastness for ease- would have to resemble the actual property of pastness in some or other respect. How else could the sensation of pastness give us any awareness of actual pastness?
So, though my sensation of pastness does not itself constitute the pastness of anything I am having it about, it nevertheless resembles the actual pastness of a thing.
A sensation resembles another sensation and nothing else. Smells are like smells; tastes are like tastes; sounds are like sounds, and so on. So, if my sensation of pastness resembles the actual pastness of a past event, then the actual pastness of a past event is also a sensation.
Sensations can exist in minds and nowhere else. Minds and minds alone have sensations. Thus, the actual pastness of an event exists as the sensation of a mind. It's just not my mind or yours. Indeed, as the pastness of an event seems radically external and unitary, then it is the sensation of one mind.
Time, then, exists as the sensations of a mind. And of course, that mind will be the mind of God if God exists (which he does).
Comments (199)
[emphasis added]
Just because God created something that exists does not mean God is subject to it.
Anyway, I refer to God as All, or A, but I'm fine with using God. I think that God is capable of being a singularity and heat death at the same "time", and every place in between and then some. It's my understanding there is no time in a singularity. I would think there would be no time at heat death, either, especially if each particle could not influence any other particle, either with gravity or heat, then it might as well "pop" out of existence. Regardless, where God can be both, then God can be with time and without time and whatever else we can't comprehend.
Time is for those who are subject to it. Or Gods who want to be. Or Gods who simply want to watch.
I didn't say it did. I am talking about time specifically. If God - hell, if I - create a chair, I am not thereby 'subject' to the chair. So chairs can exist without God having created them.
But time is different. If time exists, then we are all subject to it, God included. And that would mean that for time's existence to be compatible with God's omnipotence, God would have to have created it. For then though God would be subject to it, this would be no more than for God to be subject to an aspect of his own will, which is in no conceivable way a constraint on one's power.
Quoting Bartricks
Yes you did. And you did it again when you said:
Quoting Bartricks
I'm merely saying God is not subject to time unless God wants to be. If God was subject to it, that would violate your initial proposition that I agree with:
Quoting Bartricks
God doesn't even have to be subject to Gods will. God is All. All, by definition, accounts for the absence of itself. If it did not, then it would not be All.
No I didn't and no I didn't. I didn't say that if one creates anything one is then subject to it. I said that if one creates time then one is subject to it (and, indeed, if one has not). And then I said it again.
There are some things that, if they exist, an omnipotent person would have created else not qualify as omnipotent. And there are a whole load of things that are not like that. Indeed, there are some things that
Yes you did and yes you did. Whereas I did NOT say "anything." You imputed that to me. You and I were both talking about time. So forget "anything" and focus on what you said about time. You said what I said you said. Now if you want to move past that, we can continue. Otherwise, we aren't going anywhere.
Quoting Bartricks
I have no disagreement with that. But we are NOT talking about any of those things. We are talking about time. You believe that, having created it, God is subject to it. I disagree. God is not subject to it. If God were subject to time, God would not be God.
Quoting James Riley
See? You said 'something' not 'time'. So you - you - imputed to me the absurd view that if one has created something, one is subject to it, a view found nowhere in anything I have written.
I said that if one has created time then one is subject to it (and if one has not one is subject to it). If time exists, God would be subject to it. Ok? Time. Not 'something'. Time specifically. Not only time - there are other things like that too, such as the edicts of Reason. But time is what we're talking about here, and time is something that God would be subject to if God and time exist.
What is the subject of this thread? Time? DOH! That is the "something" we are talking about. I did not say "anything". I said "something" in the context of what we are talking about.
Quoting Bartricks
I don't need to impute an absurd view to you. You have embraced it outright. You have carved time out as something special, something different from everything else. I just pointed out that you are wrong, that's all.
Quoting Bartricks
Yes, you did. I never said you didn't. I just said you were wrong.
Quoting Bartricks
No, not okay. It's God, after all. God isn't subject to time.
Quoting Bartricks
Glad we got that cleared up.
Quoting Bartricks
No. If God were to be subject to time (or something or anything else; but forget that, because it apparently distracts you) simply because God created it, then God would not be God. Which, of course, in my A = A and A = -A analysis is true, but we aren't talking about that. We are talking about:
Quoting Bartricks
Indeed! God doesn't need time to create the universe, even if it is a temporal infinite one, as I think. This is the problem of modern physical attempts to explain the origin of the singularity. What happened before the emergence of our universe from a singularity? How could it have occurred if no time was available yet? Analogies are put forward to circumvent this paradox, like comparing the problem with the North Pole. That it doesn't make sense. Well, it doesn't, but in the case of the big-bang it does. Hawking used complex time to address this question, thereby effectively introducing a second time to place the creation of our time in. But how comes this second time into being? The situation can be solved more easily by taking into account an existence of time before the big bang. But then still the problem remains from where that eternal time comes. God's did the job, though cannot understand that process in spatiotemporal processes.
I like your style of writing and responding!
Particles taken away and given back. Universal mass might grow or shrink; for a second we may be longer or more further away, this illusion is available.
Time sleuth occurrences seem to mimic this procedure.
Good job too in addressing nothing argued in the OP. God is timeless. Ok,if you say so. That's how philosophy works. You say something and it's true. No need for arguments.
Quoting Bartricks
That’s what you seem to think yes.
You merely try to capture other POV by means of your old trick. Making these conform to yours and then calling them a self proclaimed invention of the basic stuff that reigns your own POV.
Amen.
@Bartricks
It's clear to me that you derive your ideas from the abrahamic concept of god. That is:
1. There is one God.
2. God is all powerful.
3. God is an entity, a person that can be subject to something.
4. God makes decisions.
I strongly disagree with any of those ideas. That's your premise though, I'll accept it as a hypothetical.
What doesn't hold up to your model of God is the idea that it would have to be subject to time.
An omnipotent being, as far as omnipotency goes, could simply chose whether it would want to be a subject of time or not.
Your entire argument fails on the assumption you decided to pick as your premise.
So, if time exists, you think Godwould not be subject to it? Explain. Explain how God can exist, yet not in the present, past or future. I am all ears. Take me to school dadio
Good point.
But I think the crucial question is who it is that experiences time.
God's experience of time may be (totally) different from human experience of it.
So, you don't know what you were talking about? Not too clever. Either that, or time is nothing. So you were talking about nothing? Why didn't you say so?
Quoting Bartricks
Oops! You just stepped on your dick again. So you are saying that when I said something I was addressing nothing? Get your shit together, son. Time is either something or nothing. First your don't know what your talking about, then you claim I'm not talking about something, then you claim I"m talking about nothing. Which is it? I thought you were talking about time. Is time something, or nothing, or neither?
Quoting Bartricks
Wait, now you say I said something? I thought you just said I said nothing? WTF? You need to go back to school. Only this time, pay attention.
I'm on to expose your view. It's a nice view, though I can easily show it to be wrong. From my POV, that is. To God, time can exist or not. I think it does, but it's a different, godly and holy kind of time. In that time, still ticking in the outerworldly, extra-spatiotemporal, eternal godly realm, he can can create a universe like we live in. Even, as I think, it is a spatiotemporally infinite one, with our universe being a finite intersection with it, having a total dimensionality of one less than the full 7-dimensional extent (that means six, in layman's terms).
Whether God created time or not, from religious point of view is debatable, because "In the beginning God created..."
That in the beginning could mean the beginning of universe or it could mean the beginning of time.
Scriptures literary talk about first version, the beginning of universe (heavens and earth) rather than the beginning of time.
From scientific point of view we know the mechanics of universe involve time, ex. space time.
This gives us conclusion that the beginning of universe implicitly also means the beginning of time as we know it.
Logical question is, is there some other time in addition to time that we know?
Science has some theories such as multiverse, while from religious point of view, God is unfathomable because human wisdom can not reach the wisdom of God beyond what is revealed trough scriptures.
According to scriptures (ex. 2 Pt 3,8; Ps 90,4) we know God's time is different from our time therefore our version of time (space time) is useless to measure subjectivity of time and God.
But one is sure, God did create time that we know as human beings.
:100: Yeah, whenever someone says the universe is 14b years old, I immediately want to know what happened 1t years ago. Then they say there was no time so there could be no 1t years ago. To me, that means God is not separate from that which God created; rather, God is that which God created. God is creation. God is All. In order for All to be All it must account for (I hate the word "include") the absence of itself.
I'm no bible thumper but when it says something like "I am the alpha and the omega, I am the beginning and the end" it's not wrong.
Spacetime can be infinite. How the hell could he have created that at a moment in our time? Any moment in time has a predecessor. How could he have created spacetime if it had a definite beginning? In our time, that is. Conclusion:he experiences time too. A heavenly spacetime, of which the worldly spacetime is an expression, to make life possible. He is not subjected to it. How can you be subjected to spacetime?
And physics doesn't study time, but sensible events. Thinking physicists study time is akin to thinking clockmakers do as well.
Note too that picking up a stick and repeatedly hitting yourself with it while shouting 'take that Bartricks!' does not amount to thrashing me.
Changeless = Time doesn't exist.
There must be some definition of God and time, or background literature of either, how else do you define God and time then?
Or within what framework should one interpret your question regarding God and time?
And time is made of the properties or relations of pastness, presentness and futurity.
God being omniscient is the opposite of us being limited in knowledge.
If we are limited in knowledge (compare to God's knowledge) we can conclude the knowledge of God is unlimited or infinite.
The opposite of infinite is finite, therefore saying God's knowledge is finite is contrary to it's omnipotent nature.
My point here is I see no problem with assigning infinite property to God compared to finite one. (God is not God if limited)
Same way, we can't say time is finite, because of the question "what was there before that time?"
God and time are therefore infinite in every aspect, however obvious is, while God is omnipotent this does not apply to time.
So yes God made time and is not subject to time.
We came to same conclusion without scriptures or scientific view of time.
Time is the background or context in which human experience takes place. If God is eternal, then his experience cannot relate to time in the same way as human experience does.
However, if God is omnipotent, then I think he should be able to experience things both in and outside of time.
One difference, then, between God's temporal experiences and ours, is that his constitute time, whereas ours are 'of' time. However, this difference, though great, would not amount to an experiential difference, but rather a difference in their metaphysical status. For an analogy, looking at a superb fake of the mona lisa and looking at the actual mona lisa may be experiential indistinct. However, there remains a significant difference - in one case I am looking at a Leonardo, in the other I am not.
I don't see how there can be a total difference experientially between God's temporal sensations and ours, for if there were such a radical difference, our sensations wouldn't be 'of' time at all,but something quite different.
I am not entirely sure what it means to say God is eternal. If it means that God exists for all time, then yes - for if time is made of God's sensations, then those sensations will depend on God to exist and thus God will exist for all time. In that sense, God is eternal and is eternal by don't of being time's creator and sustainer
I don't think anyone knows, to be honest. I'm guessing it refers to an entity that is unaffected by time?
This reminds me of the comparison with a magician that performs some trick in front of an audience like, say, sawing someone in two. The audience know it's just a trick, but they don't know how the magician does it and it looks very real. In contrast, the magician knows what he is doing and remains unaffected by the whole thing.
Something similar may occur in the case of time. If God creates time, then he must be aware of this and he remains unaffected by it, though he may see it as an "optical illusion" that affects others.
But from the others' perspective time is real and it affects them profoundly in many respects.
But that's false, as I argued in the OP. If time exists, then an event will change in its temporal properties. So change cannot require time, but is instead something time requires.
If, as I have argued, God created time, then it is God who changes his temporal sensations about an event and, in so doing, brings it about that the event goes from being future, to being present, to being past.
I don't see this. Being 'omniscient' means being in possession of all knowledge - that is, to have beliefs in the truth of all justified true propositions. We - most of us - are in possession of some justified true beliefs. So we are not unknowing, we just do not have all knowledge.
Quoting SpaceDweller
I do not see how that follows. Consider: God is all powerful. Thus, he can do anything. And that means that, if he so chooses, he could furnish us with everything he knows.
I do not understand what 'infinite' knowledge means - there is not an actual infinity of known propositions. At any one time, there will be a finite amount. God beliefs in all of them - indeed, it is due to him that they qualify as knowledge in the first place - but the point is that God's knowledge is not 'infinite' in any meaningful sense of that term.
Quoting SpaceDweller
I see a big problem, namely that it conflicts with what God himself tells us (via our reason), which is that there are no actual infinities in reality. Note, if God had infinite knowledge, then he could become ignorant of half of what he believes and would still have infinite knowledge - which seems incoherent. That is, our reason tells us that this is not so.
Quoting SpaceDweller
And this just ignores the arguments I gave that appear to demonstrate the precise opposite.
Time is not infinite. What does that mean? That there is an actual infinity of past events? That makes no sense - for half infinity is still infinity.
Time has a beginning. A believer in God is duty bound to believe this on pain of rational incoherence. God is all powerful by definition. And that alone tells us, if we just reflect on it for a moment, that God created time. And thus time had a beginning.
But we can go in the other direction as well: if time did not have a beginning, then one would have to posit an actual infinity of past events. But again, there can be no actual infinity of anything and to suppose otherwise is to affirm absurdities. Thus, as there are no actual infinities in reality, there is not an infinity of past events. If there is a finite number of past events, then time had a beginning.
So, reflection on God reveals time had a beginning; and reflection on time reveals time had a beginning.
But time exists, for God thinks. And so God is in time, but does not have to be.
One can create something and then be in it. If I knit a jersey, I created the jersey. And if I then envelope myself in it, I am in what I created.
So, God is in time, for God created time and his creating it placed himself in it, for about his own thoughts he is either having the past sensation, the future sensation, or neither (in which case his own thoughts are either past, future, or present respectively). But God does not have to be in time.
:up:
In law school, a professor tried to describe the relationship between states/Indian tribes and the Federal Government. In typical legal fashion, he used the phrase "quasi-sovereignty." I asked if that was anything like limited infinity. I got a raised eyebrow.
Anyway, I can't think of an equivalent for quasi-eternity. There is no beginning and there is no end.
Oh, I am sure you don't care. It's just that I don't care that you don't care. I just care to point out that what you said was false and ignorant. There is a big debate about the nature of eternity. And I know about it and have read some of the literature on it - though no doubt not as much as I should - and you have not.
Nonsense. Time has a beginning - see OP for details.
Some things have no beginning, for some things exist with aseity. Unless this were so, we would have to posit infinite events, and there are no actual infinities. Thus, some things exist without ever having begun to exist. And of course, there is also no beginning to your talent for philosophy.
But time has a beginning.
And everything can end, even though nothing has to. For God exists and is all powerful and thus can end anything and everything whenever he wants.
Why are you so sure I don't know what I am talking about?
I take it you've read McTaggart? Maybe you'd like to say something about McTaggart's view, as I know you're keen to teach me things.
I was going to address your second argument, which I actually found more intriguing, with only one correction I would make: Instead of bottom up, the same result could be achieved top down. That top down angle tracks, somewhat, with my own notion that we are the Universe experiencing itself.
But in the end, I decided to not pursue that with you because you acted like an obstinate, petulant little child who refused to admit he was wrong on the issue of time/something and then, later, nothing.
Anyway, the record, above, speaks for itself. So again, I cede the floor.
I believe there's something wrong here. Time is usually not regarded as a property of an object just as spatial location is not. So, "an event will change in its temporal properties" doesn't make sense. Consider an object A in location L1 at time T1. It moves to point L2 and arrives there at time T2. Do you say A has acquired new properties L2 and T2?
It's interesting nonetheless to think of time and space as a property. Change would need a new definition and change would always occur because time is always flowing.
What's the standard definition of change? An object X changes if at one time it is something and at another time it is something else. As you can see, change uses time as kind of a backdrop, a frame of reference as it were. Basically, what happens, if anything does happen, to an object as time passes by. Notice here that time isn't treated as a property of objects.
What do you suppose God creating time means? What does it look like?
My second argument tells you: time is made of sensations and their absence. That is, pastness is a sensation, as is futurity, whereas presentness is the absence of either.
God creates time, then, by creating in himself those sensations about things. And in so doing, time is thereby created, for now all things God is thinking of will either be ones about which he is having the past sensation (and thereby they will be past), or the future sensation (and thereby they will be future) or neither (and thereby they will be present).
Re properties: temporal properties are properties, it's just they're not intrinsic properties. The same is true of spatial properties. My location is a property of my body. It is not an intrinsic property of my body, for my body would be the same body in a different location. But nevertheless, it is a property of my body that it is in the location that it is in. And temporal properties are the same, I think.
The claim that time 'flows' is a metaphor and, I think, a misleading one, as it invites us to think of time as a kind of liquid. Yet if my arguments are correct, that is quite the wrong way to conceive of time. Time is relevantly analogous to, say, pain or love. We might talk of the ebb and flow of pain or love, but we mean by this the manner in which they become more or less intense. That is how things are with time too. An event becomes more past, not by 'flowing' further down the river of time, but by the sensation of pastness becoming more intense in God.
If time is a property, define changeless.
Quoting Bartricks
Ok. What's the ticking of a clock if time doesn't flow?
And there you are wrong. Time is just a coordinate on an apparently 4d-d curved spacetime. It can be associated a number, called the coordinate time. The proper time (eigentime, the own time, which is the one we measure usually in our rather spatially fixed positions, and which in a gravity field loves slower than in flat spacetime, which seems locally to be the case if we fall in a gravity field), is a value that is independent of coordinates values, and it's the time that is measured when you are not moving in the space, I.e, when the spatial coordinates are constant. So in a sense it is coordinate dependent. You make the spatial part of the metric, explicable in all kinds of coordinates, vanish, and the result is the Lorenz-invariant proper time, meaning just that it's the same in any coordinate system. No matter how fast you go, or where you find yourself, the proper time is always the same. If you are at rest in a gravity field, then the proper time you measure (I.e, the time between two points on your time-like path) goes slower than if you would make such a measurement in outer space because the timeliness metric component is different for you then (in flat spacetime, that component is just 1, or -1, or sometimes even I, if we set c=1). For a spacelike path, followed by light, there is no associated eigentime, as the projection of that path onto the time-axis is zero. So there can be no measuremt of two times. So there is no eigentime of light, which is reasonable as there is no restframe in which light doesn't move. I can remember having a hard time (there you go!) imagining this. On a rocket through space.
This unstoppable character of light, lies at the bottom of SR (and GR, for that matter, which is nothing more than accelerated SR). In a sense you could say that interaction by light is instantaneous, as there is no time passage for light. So in a sense, all thing happen at the same time. Luckily there is space to prevent this.
Note that I use entropic time as the ingredient of this vision. A value can be assigned to it, it's entropic time quantified.
So in this light, can time (so not our subjective experience of it) be assigned to God? It depends. If he is part of this universe, then obviously yes. If they are outside of it? Maybe. It could be that there is a higher dimensional realm, of which our universe is an intersection. While time out there continues, the time at the big bang could have been fluctuating, giving rise to the big bang at their time-like command. Let the be a philosophy forum!
This makes sense to me. However, we have strung together some symbols here viz. God created time but what does that look like? When I say Rapheal created The School of Athens (painting), I can picture him working with a paintbrush on a canvas, palette nearby, etc. I can't seem to do that with the statement God created time. I have nothing I can turn to in my experience as to how such an act of creation would look like. It doesn't seem to refer to anything I know of and this is probably true for others as well.
Nonetheless, I have no issue at all with the logic of your argument.
About your second argument. It seems as though you're claming that true/actual time in terms of past and future are also real sensations and being thus, it requires a being whose sensations they are and that being is God. Thus, God exists.
How do you prove that time (past, present, and future) is a sensation? Oh! I see because the past is memory and the future is "anticipatory" or, in my book, imagination) - very mental in nature.
But then if all mental creatures, including God, were to somehow perish, time would cease to exist but then that means you're trying to say time is simply up here (TheMadFool points to his temple), in our heads, it's imaginary. Where do you want to go with this?
Omnipotence: Can do anything.
So, sorry posters to this thread, no use saying Bartricks is an idiot if by that you mean Bartricks'theory is riddled with contradictions. Bartricks is rejecting the law of noncontradiction from the get-go.
Indeed, that's what renders it unassailable. Pointing out any further contradictions is beside the point. As I understand him, he thinks LNC is true, but only contingently so. Hence he can accept contradictions when they suit his purposes, but reject them where they do not suit him.
But back to time....
But we are aware of time via sensations. There is a sensation of the past, then. That is, pastness feels a way.
In order for that to be the case, the past itself would be a sensation, else our sensations of pastness would not be able to tell us about it.
That, combined with the facts the past is unitary and that sensations are always the sensations of a mind, entails that the past is made of a single mind's sensations of pastness.
And this means that of course we can imagine the past being created. It's really no different, in terms of an imaginative exercise than,say, imagining being in pain.
So, one has not successfully analysed change if one says that change involves something having a property at one time that it lacks at another. For then one has invoked a change to explain a change, which gets us no closer to understanding change.
This - this conflation of time and change - is at the heart of McTaggart's confused reasoning about the matter. Or so I would argue. But Pue and others who know so much more about the nature of time will surely correct me on that.
If I recall correctly, you think that the Law of Contradiction is true. However, the Law of Contradiction states that: [quote= Aristotle]it is impossible for anything at the same time to be and not to be[/quote]
So if you think contradictions can be true, then you are thereby denying the LNC, because to assert that a contradiction can be true, is the same as to assert that it is not impossible for something to both be and not be, at the same time (and in the same sense), which is the negation of the LNC.
In fact, this shows that it is impossible to accept the LNC contingently rather than necessarily, because to say that the LNC may be false in the future is to say that it is possible that it is possible for something to both be and not be, at the same time and in the same sense.
In modal logic we would have: ??C ? ?C (If C is possibly possible, then C is possible). [Axiom 4 corollary].
This can also be seen by the definition of possibility in modal logic:
¬? ¬C ? ?C
So, just remove 'impossible' from Aristotle's description (well,you know, rewrite it without it - so rewrite it as, say, no thing that is, is also not, or whatever).
That's what I affirm: no true proposition is also false.
If you don't want to call that the law of non contradiction, that's fine. What's in a word? The point is that I think no true proposition is also false.
I don't understand the squiggles and squoggles (but Banno loves them - makes him feel clever).
I don't think there are any necessary truths. Truths, yes. But no necessary truths. I don't think necessity is a thing. However, I still think no true proposition is also false. It's just I don't think adding 'necessarily' to 'true' does anything, then. It's just a kind of underlining. So, 'necessary' functions expressively, not descriptively. That's how we tend to use the language of necessity in every day life. 'You must' means 'do it!'
A premise in the proof:
Quoting Bartricks
Shortened to: "If time exists, God would be subject to it"
In philosophical circles that's called begging the question. You probably don't think it's begging the question and will accuse me of not knowing what I'm talking about. But that's just the dunning kruger effect.
Also you want to be really careful here:
Quoting Bartricks
God IS a mind according to you (he isn't, I'm just going by what you say). Remember one of your brilliant arguments for why the mind is different from a body is that we can say "I have a body". You make a point of making fun of any materialists by lines such as: "I have a car I am not my car". You wouldn't want someone to start saying "God has a mind, God is not his mind" right?
You don't know what a circular argument is. Like most of the bozos on this forum, you mistake validity for circularity.
This was not the original formulation. If your intent was to say this, what you actually said was way off the mark.
So, where's your proof that if time exists all minds are either past, present or future?
Quoting Bartricks
Fair enough. For once you're right.
Quoting Bartricks
But you think there could be.
Quoting Bartricks
Or God could've made it so that she paradoxically did not create time, while still remaining omnipotent (since you think contradictions are possible). And furthermore she could've made it so that our reason would lead to the above conclusion. What makes you think that she didn't do that combination instead of what you're saying here? What if your God was a deceiver?
And yes, I think it is possible - metaphysically possible - for there to be true contradictions. But I believe there are none. If a proposition is true, it is not also false.
And to the last bit, yes, she could do all that. But as a philosopher I am interested in what is actually the case, which one finds out by listening to what reason actually says, not what reason could say (the latter being anything at all). Understand yet?
No no no. Sure if a mind were to exist and were to be subject to time, it would have to be either past, present, or future. But what is the proof that minds are all subject to time in the first place?
Quoting Bartricks
What makes you sure?
What if, God has actually made it so that propositions can be true and false at the same time, and tricked us into thinking that if a proposition is true it is not false?
You have no evidence that what she tells you is reality, because she told you the laws of reason, so you cannot use those laws to argue that she's not lying, they're precisely what's under suspicion.
To the second bit, I am so sure because my reason, like the reason of most others, tells me that no true proposition is also false. As with Aristotle, it tells me that a true proposition 'cannot' also be false, much as john McEnroe used to say you cannot be serious!?!". Of course, McEnroe did not mean that it is metaphysically impossible for the umpire to be serious. And likewise, when Reason tells us that a true proposition 'cannot' also be false, she is not saying that it is metaphysically impossible for it also to be false, but expressing the strength of her feeling on the matter.
No it isn't. I'm not definitively saying that a mind can exist outside of time. You're the one that's definitively saying it can't. The one pushing a position has to prove their premises. I don't care if a mind can exist outside of time or not because I find your formulation of mind idiotic in the first place, so I don't care to investigate.
Quoting Bartricks
Why do you trust your reason? Why is reason trustworthy?
Normally these would be very stupid questions, but your definition of reason is unlike most. Reason, to you, is a mind, a person, who tells you the rules of thought. Why do you trust them?
They're capable of contradictions, they can make it so that a proposition is true and false at the same time, and NOT tell you that they have done so. So why do you trust that they haven't done so?
As you have asserted that the one who asserts something has the burden of proof, will you discharge that burden in respect of that assertion please. Do that before we move on
Quoting Bartricks
You're right, I can't.
Now why do I have the burden of proof? What's your standard by which you determine that I have it? If "the one that pushes a position has burden of proof" isn't what you're using, what are you using?
You have the burden of proof. Why? Because one has the burden of proof when what one is claiming is contrary to the appearances.
Now, once more, describe to me how a mind and time can exist, yet the mind not be present, future or past. That is to say, generate that appearance. You are unable to, yes? Thus, I am right and you are wrong. If time exists - and it appears to and thus we are justified in believing it to - then all minds that exist are subject to it, including God's. Got it?
Well the point is, it doesn't appear to me that minds must all be in present, future or past. Because the existence of minds as you describe them appears to me to be clearly contrary to reality.
What is your policy when following one appearance leads to a conclusion that clearly appears to be false? Like, for example, it being true that the rape victim deserved what happened to them (which you think is true, yes?) being a consequence of you reasoning from what appears to be true. What do you do then?
Quoting Bartricks
A disembodied head looking at a timeline of events, while not itself being at any one time.
Now, do you plan to address this:
Quoting khaled
Why did you do that? We all have stupid thoughts. The key is to keep them in your mind and not blurt them out. That's the value of recognizing they're stupid, stupid.
Anyway, either you think there's a reason to think reason is not trustworthy- in which case you trust her about that at least (which is irrational as of all the things an untrustworthy person might say, they are unlikely to tell you they are not trustworthy!) - or you think there is no reason not to trust reason,in which case you trust her.
Note too, that I trusted reason 'before' I came to the conclusion she was a mind, for that was how I arrived at it: I listened and trusted what I was told.
Oh, and your silly attemp failed, for I could only picture a head existing at a time, not one existing but at no time.
False. I said that normally it'd be stupid but your definitions make it important.
Quoting Bartricks
No. I think your formulation makes it so that there is no reason to trust or distrust. I'm not definitively saying she is lying, you are saying she is definitively not lying, and I'm pointing out that your framework does not allow you to make that case.
Why can't you just address a comment in its entirety?
Quoting khaled
And add to that, what do you do when people don't see the same appearances.
Quoting Bartricks
What would this accomplish? Even if I couldn't, what would that prove?
It's intrinsically stupid, for the reasons I outlined - reasons, of course, that the stupid can't recognize.
This is the well known problem with the stupid. Those who ask stupid questions are the least able to recognize why those questions are stupid. Indeed, a stupid person asking a stupid question will only really be satisfied when they receive a suitably stupid answer.
I'll give it a go then. Why should you trust Reason? Because she's pretty, that's why. Happy?
Really? What does she look like?
Now, for the rest? What happens when appearances contradict, like by having "The rape victim deserved it" come out as a conclusion? What happens when people have different appearances? What's the point of the tree?
Note too that you asked me why I think the law of non-contradiction is true. To which my answer was that my reason and virtualy everyone else's represents it to be. Which is damn good evidence, yes?
So, Reason is to be default trusted - indeed, trying to default distrust Reason is a rationally self undermining task.
And the law of non contradiction is true, beyond any reasonable doubt.
Now address the OP and stop driving the discussion into the sands of broader issues in epistemology.
No question is stupid, only answer can be stupid.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_such_thing_as_a_stupid_question
I explained why. But again, someone who thinks there are no stupid questions is someone ill equipped to be able to understand the stupidity of the many stupid questions that there are.
Ah, that makes more sense. That's certainly more agreeable. The way you defended her trustworthiness made it seem like you believe she never lies.
Quoting Bartricks
Well I did. I asked you to prove why all minds are subjects of time. You asked me to make the appearance of a mind that's not in time. I did so. Now we're pending your proof.
And broader issues in epistemology tend to come in a lot in any argument. You rely a lot on appearances so you must have some consistent way of sorting through what to do when appearances contradict, either your own with each other, or your own with others'.
For instance, you came to the conclusion that a rape victim deserves to be raped (because God wouldn't allow someone innocent to suffer unnecessarily so they must have not been innocent/they deserved it), which I dare say is very contrary to appearances, by logically following the consequences of different appearances. But instead of doubting your conclusion, you decided that indeed, rape victims deserve to be raped. Why that decision?
And it is very clear that much of what appears true to you doesn't appear to be true to a majority of people but at the same time you frequently make points about how some statements appear true to a majority by referring to expert opinion and whatnot. How do you decide when to trust what appears to you to be the case, and when to revise your position in light of what appears to other people?
I'm going to sleep now. Nice chat bart.
What you need to do - and this will be difficult - is resist the temptation to think my thoughts with your mental vocabulary. It isn't up to the job.
Oh, andi explained how your head example didn't work. To imagine the head existing and time existing I had to imagine the head existing in time.
Why are you talking about rape victims deserving to be raped? That's not my view (it's your interpretation of my view, not my actual view, which is subtler than you could possibly handle and involves deserving to live in ignorance in a dangerous world with dangerous people), and even if it was, why mention it here? Focus on time.
Quoting Bartricks
Then we should be in agreement! I was arguing against this position which you deny supporting, what's the issue?
Quoting Bartricks
But I always thought so (note, this is a very different claim from the one I was arguing against which is that everything reason says is true). I thought you had said that we should always trust reason. I was mistaken in that regard and admitted so:
Quoting khaled
You tell me to:
Quoting Bartricks
But here you are still dwelling on a point about broader issues in epistemology, when I had already returned to our discussion of the OP here:
Quoting khaled
Is this characterization inaccurate somehow?
What am I being crude about exactly? I don't understand what you want me to address.
Now, on the topic of broader issues in epistemology:
Quoting khaled
Or do you want to get back to the significance of a tree out of time? Up to you, but I bet these "broader discussions in epistemology" will come up sooner or later so I'd address them now.
And I explained why your example failed. You might as well have said 'imagine that time exists and a mind exists, but the mind doesn't exist in the present or the future or the past. Done. Over to you".
As to these broader issues - you'd bring them up no matter what the topic. This thread is about time. I have appealed to rational representations. All arguments do. All philosophical cases for anything do. It's not an eccentricity on my part. My view about the nature of reason is certainly eccentric (though demonstrably true). But to keep asking me to defend it when what I M appealing to is the content of reason and not Reason's nature is just derailing.
I'm a late-comer to this thread, and haven't read much of the subsequent discussion following the OP. But I may have something to add, relevant to the quote above. I don't have any direct knowledge of the Creator of our temporal world -- it could have been a tower-of-turtles in a time-bound Multiverse, for all I know. But I think it's more reasonable that the creator of Space-Time & Matter-Energy was independent of such limitations. In other words, whatever caused the hypothetical initial Singularity to explode into space-time must have existed in some sense prior to Space-Time.
So, it seems that the Creator (which I label ambiguously as "G*D") could only have existed as Eternal-Potential, instead of Temporal-Actual. Admittedly, Aristotelian "Potential" does not exist in any physical empirical sense. You can't examine it under a microscope. But as a metaphysical theoretical Platonic "Ideal", it encompasses unlimited infinite Possibilities. In the Real world, only lawful things are possible, By that, I mean, Natural Laws are the boundaries of Nature. In which case, only something not subject to those laws --- not natural ; unbounded --- could create the laws themselves : The Lawmaker.
Therefore, I conclude that the Singularity, and its subsequent Big Bang blowup, was not a physical thing --- subject to limits & laws --- but a program (design ; plan) for world creation, existing as an ethereal idea in the timeless Mind of G*D. And that is what I would call "creation without time". Real world Space-Time --- an ideal mathematical model --- exists only in the presence of Matter-Energy --- the physical elements of the real world. Hence, the Eternal Cause of our Temporal World cannot be Real ; so must be Ideal : existing only in unbound Potential. That is the assumption of PanEnDeism. :cool:
"Turtles all the way down" is an expression of the problem of infinite regress.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down
Aristotelian Potential :
In philosophy, potentiality and actuality[1] are a pair of closely connected principles which Aristotle used to analyze motion, causality, ethics, and physiology in his Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, and De Anima. . . . The concept of potentiality, in this context, generally refers to any "possibility" that a thing can be said to have . . . Actuality, in contrast to potentiality, is the motion, change or activity that represents an exercise or fulfillment of a possibility, when a possibility becomes real in the fullest sense
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potentiality_and_actuality
Platonic idealism usually refers to Plato's theory of forms or doctrine of ideas. It holds that only ideas encapsulate the true and essential nature of things, in a way that the physical form cannot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonic_idealism
Panendeism is an ontological position that explores the interrelationship between God (The Cosmic Mind) and the known attributes of the universe. Combining aspects of Panentheism and Deism, Panendeism proposes an idea of God that both embodies the universe and is transcendent of its observable physical properties. https://panendeism.org/faq-and-questions/
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page16.html
Quoting Bartricks
And I apologize for misinterpreting you, for the third time. You won Bart! You actually have an idea that makes sense! Good job! Now, here is your homework.
1- Getting back to the OP:
Quoting khaled
And what is the significance of your question about a tree out of time?
But since you apparently don’t want to get back to the OP:
2- What do you do when appearances lead to apparently false conclusions, like rape victims deserving it:
Quoting khaled
3- What do you do when what appears to you is different from what appears to others:
Quoting khaled
Have fun!
Now, you don't seem able to focus and can't resist wider epistemological issues not directly relevant to the question. But I am nice, so I will say something about them.
First, I do not believe all rape victims deserve to be raped. I believe that we all deserve to be exposed to the risks of harm that living in ignorance in this world exposes us to. That's different. Why? If you buy a lottery ticket, then you deserve to have a chance of winning. That does not mean that if you win, you deserved to win,or that if you lose, you deserved to lose. The bad things that happen to us are like that. We deserved to be exposed to the risk of them. But it does not follow that the particular harms that befall us were individually deserved. Importantly as well,our job is to treat others as if they are innocent.
That's my view, a view arrived at by rational reflection - a view that simply follows from the fact God exists and the fact that God would not suffer innocent people to live in ignorance in a dangerous world like this one.
It is not, then, contrary to any rational appearances, or at least not when one realizes that we ourselves are to view others as innocent. It simply conflicts with a widespread assumption - namely that we are born innocent and that the world is consequently an unjust place.
But anyway, if or when appearances conflict, then our faculty of reason appears to be unreliable on that matter, yes?
You have previously insisted that my position commits me to affirming an actual contradiction. Yet you have been unable to show this. All you can do is huff and puff and insist, but you can't show it. Show it. And do so using premises I will accept - that is premises that do not presuppose that some truths are necessary. .
Understood.
Quoting Bartricks
I'm not just telling you, I am demonstrating it:
So, where does this argument go wrong? Want me to do it for you?
Quoting Bartricks
The contradiction is in your claim that the LNC is true in all possible situations but not necessarily true. You will have to explain this by digging yourself a deeper hole, and claiming that ?p is not the same as ~?~p.
Quoting Bartricks
Quoting Banno
It's question begging (and has other faults beside).
You need to show that my claim - that no true proposition is also false - generates a contradiction, due to the fact I have omitted any mention of necessity. Remember: I do not think that any true proposition is also false. And remember that I do not think that is necessarily true, just contingently true. Now, once more, without just assuming that it is necessarily true - which would obviously be question begging - show how I am committed to affirming a contradiction. Without squiggles and squoggles.
I don't claim that the law of non-contradiction is true in all possible situations! Christ. You literally just said you understood. You don't. I think it is contingently true, not necessarily true.
And stop - stop - squiggling and squoggling. I haven't the faintest idea what they mean. Box wiggle triangle. It's mental.
And again, I am thankful to @Bartricks, for without his diatribe I might not have found this work on Logical Nihilism, nor this on Inconsistent Mathematics, as well as several other interesting topics.
No, it is fair comment - you 'think' he made an actual criticism. He didn't. Find it. He just went 'hoity toity' and 'hotium totium, as we said in my old school' and sneered at minds far greater than his dusty musty own. (He's dead, he won't care).
Quoting Banno
No I don't. I think it is true. True. It doesn't have to be. It is. There are no centaurs. I don't think there are no centraurs in any possible situation (whatever that means). I think there are no centaurs. I am quite certain of it. But I don't thereby think it is impossible for there to be centaurs. I think propositions that are true and false at once are like centaurs in that respect as well. There aren't any. None anywhere. (Although perhaps there are, in fact, some - such as 'this proposition is false'.....but that's another issue...that's like a glimpse of what looked for all the world like a centaur).
A better one. Obviously.
Indeed.
Quoting Banno
There are no true propositions that are also false. None. (Well, there might be - but we'll ignore those).
There are no centaurs either (apart from the one that seems to be in the trees over there, but we'll ignore that as it's probably just someone dressed up).
Now, sticking to the centaur claim for a moment - I have not just said that there are no situations in which there are centaurs. That is, I have not said it is impossible for there to be centaurs. Someone who thought I had, would be a bit of a wally. Yes? Centaurs can exist. I have just said that there aren't any. I've done a survey of reality - and it seems centaur free. That, I assume you would agree, is a claim that does not generate a contradiction.
Now just exchange the word 'centaur' for 'true proposition that is also false' and you'll get the idea. Only you won't, because, you know, you won't. Stop being a wally and explain - without squiggling and squoggling - how my claim that there are no true propositions that are also false generates a contradiction. Methinks you won't be able to do so. That is, I think your conviction that my claim generates a contradiction is equivalent to a conviction that there are centaurs. It is possibly true, but actually false.
Then address something in the OP. This thread is about time, for goodness sake!
No, this is the problem with you - you think that 'logic' is squiggling and squoggling. No, that's just a language that some of those who are using logic employ. I don't know the language (and I don't care to learn, for it seems to me that I am better at reasoning than many of those who know the language, for when I ask them to stop using it, they either can't, or it becomes clear that their reasoning is poor; so why would I take the time and effort to learn a language that, so far as I can see, would not help me reason better than I actually am?). But that doesn't mean I don't know how to reason. That's like thinking someone who doesn't know French, doesn't know anything when they are in France. It's dumb. I know the same things, I just don't understand what the French are on about.
Now, I think your squiggling and squoggling is a parrot saying 'hello, who's a pretty boy then?!" That is, I don't think that in your case you are using a language at all, rather you are simulating using one.
You can show me wrong by dropping it and speaking in English. It has the largest vocabulary of any human language - so if you can't say it in English, you probably don't know what you're on about.
You don't know the same things as the French. Ýou don't know the French identity. The French kitchen. The French language. The French history. The French attitude towards nuclear power. The French popular singers of these days. French rap lyrics. French antique. French painters. French folk-music and dance. The political atmosphere. The feeling of walking through La Drome or French kissing beneath the Eifel tower. Or in short, you will feel a stranger upon walking through Paris, no matter how omnipotent you or God is. No matter if God's or your will is free or not. No matter if your visit is determined by faith, or by determining structures.
This thread is about the nature of time and God's relationship to it.
We can get it back on topic by, say, focussing on the claim, made by some, that the past is unalterable - the so called 'necessity' of the past. A claim that I deny, of course.
:up: But, as an American, I have a God-given right to be Ugly. :wink:
I didn't say nothing about language. Only that you can't speak it.
Quoting Bartricks
Then give a good definition of time first. I'm sure God will be "subjected" to it. How else could it be? They created it all. Call it divine time.
Quoting Bartricks
The past is unalterable. Our perception of it can change. An neo-nazi will have a different view on nazi- Germany than a black-red anarchist.
:grin: Always a good rhetorical strategy when someone starts to draw uncomfortable implications from your OP. Nice.
It's about time that you define time.
Point is, of course, that you do understand ?p and ~?~p. You pretend not to for rhetorical purposes.
But here it is in English, so as to undermine your rhetoric.
If something is necessarily the case, then it is not possibly not the case. And similarly, if something is possibly the case, then it is not necessarily not the case.
Now that means that necessity and possibility are different ways of saying the very same thing.
That looks like a very bad conclusion. You've just separated necessity and possibility such that they are completely distinct, one having no part of the other. Necessarily means "not possibly...". And possibly means "not necessarily...". Now you say that they are different ways of saying the same thing. I don't think so.
Have you met @Bartricks?
For instance, let's just say that some truths are hoity truths. What are they? Why, a hoity truth is not a toity truth, that's what a hoity truth is. And what is a toity truth? A toity truth is a truth that is not hoity.
Seems to me that in your hands the word 'necessarily' adds no more to 'true' than hoity would. That is, nothing at all. Which if true, means that you agree with me that we can dispense with it, just as we can with hoity and, indeed, toity. Do you? That is, do you agree that both 'necessarily' and 'possibly' add nothing and we can dispense with them and just stick to talking about what's true and what's not? If so, welcome to my view. You are now a guest in the land of the intelligent - don't steal anything.
Now, I do not know what 'possibly' means. I really don't. And I don't think it adds anything to 'true'. However, I can use it to convey to others that I do not believe in necessary truths. And that is how I use it. The English language was developed long before i came here, and by people more ignorant and less dedicated to following reason than I. As such I am fated to have to express myself using the tools of fools. But whatever. If I wish to convey to you that I do not believe in necessary truths - and by extension, do not believe that the law of non-contradiction is a necessary truth - I say that I believe it is contingently true, or possibly true, even though I think 'contingently' adds no more to 'true' than 'necessarily' did.
So, now that you are using English and not squiggles and squoggles, explain to me how my claim that the proposition 'no true proposition is also false' is true - just true, note - generates a contradiction....and do that without popping the word necessarily in
Quoting Bartricks
This is precisely what I disagree with. I already said that it is possible for a mind (God) to exist outside of time and gave an image of it. So no, not everything must exist in time. Restating that over and over doesn't make a case. And the reason I make an exception for your God is that he's capable of exempting himself. He can make it the case that he created time, and is also not subject to it. So it's entirely possible that he is not subject to it, that wouldn't even violate any laws of reason (it's not a contradiction, it would just show that the premise that everything exists in time is wrong). Certainly one of the more tame things your God can do.
It doesn't at all appear obvious to me that God must be subject to time, because it doesn't appear obvious to me that all minds, or all things are subject to it, possible exception: God. Remember, I'm not making the case that God is indeed not subject to time, I'm saying you haven't shown he is.
It seems what appears to me to be the case is not what appears to you to be the case. Which brings us back to when you decide whether to trust what appears to you or what appears to others.
Quoting Bartricks
Bullshit. That's not what you were originally saying.
Quoting Bartricks
Quoting Bartricks
You just came up with the "risk of harm" bs to avoid an uncomfortable conclusion. "No matter what I do to someone else they deserve it" applies to everyone in your system, which means that rape victims deserved it, all of them.
But ok, let's say you didn't. That you intended to say that we simply deserve to be exposed to risks (though I really don't see how "no matter what I do to someone they deserved it" can be reinterpreted to that). You also believe this correct?:
Quoting Bartricks
Thus it is possible there will be rape victims that did not deserve to be raped, who have to suffer it (and some deserve it, apparently). God knew this too correct? He is omniscient after all. Even if free will implied that he doesn't know the future if you and me can reason to it surely God could too.
So why is God being lazy? Why put people who deserve different degrees of punishment in the same spot? God could have created a private world for each person where they would be punished exactly as deserved, but he didn't do so. Instead he either chose, or was only able to, make a world to send different degrees of sinners. But this will result in some being punished too hard, which is wicked, and some being punished too lightly which could also be thought to be wicked. So despite having the ability to make it otherwise, why did God choose to make it possible that some people are punished much more than they deserve? That's clearly wrong, and would mean God is not omnibenevolent. Or was he actually incapable of making these private worlds so settled on a less optimal solution, making him not omnipotent?
Quoting Bartricks
I didn't say this, what? When appearances conflict for me I try to find to what extent each is true.
Tell me, do you suppose you might have written that sentence differently?
While your first conclusion is right, the answer to your "Why?" Is nonsense. If God is omnipotent, he will not be subjected to time, as being omnipotent means escaping the limitations of space and time. He can create something without being subjected to it. Thoughvthis act will be difficult to conceive for us, because we tend to think about creation in spatiotemporal terms: "If He created time then isn't the very act of Him creating it a proof that He is subjected to it?" No. If He is all powerful, He is subjected to nothing. Hence, a creature to have pity with. Being all powerful means being all powerless at the same time, speaking of which. You might question this but think about it. How would you decide something, being all powerful? If He could create an infinite number of universes, which one would He choose? Is the choice to create the universe we life, being seemingly infinite in both space and time, a random one? Like in the string landscape our universe is accidentally the one in which all works out perfectly to be suited for life? If he created this stringy world, with about [math]10^{500}[/math] possible universes, still being nothing compared to infinity, this would have to be a random choice, for in His all-powerfulness, being not subjected to the laws of space and time, He won't have a means to contemplate them all, though you might claim that in His all powerfulness He has a way. If so, then what His all powerfulness still means? Nothing at all, and the very concept of being all-powerfull is meaningless. Meaning that you can do anything without actually being able to. Unless being subjected to irrational, anarchic, random whimps. Finding your way in a disoriented state of infinite confusion.
Quoting Bartricks
Here you show some sense. If He created time, then time was not present before He created it. Indeed. But if He's all powerful, can't He make himself being subjected to time, trying to grasp its meaning? Or does He understand time already before He creates it, in which case He is subjected to it. Being omnipotent includes omnisapience (He has omnipotence, so He can make Himself omnisapient), so He would be perfectly able to understand what life needs to develop, what people need to live. In the act of creating time He must at least have had some knowledge of it. Or can His omnipotence prevent this?
Quoting Bartricks
Abracadabra! Time involves an event changing in its temporal properties? You mean a relativistic event in spacetime? Or what? How can change not involve time? You ask:
"For how could God have changed an event's temporal properties if time needed already to be on the scene for him to do so?"
How? He is omnipotent! Here you are contradicting yourself.
Quoting Bartricks
Here you are plainly wrong. The fact that God created time doesn't mean that neither causation or change require time. Physics can be defined without time, by positing a block universe, but then you take away the entropic time that lives on the block universe.
I quit. Must fetch some stuff. Nice thread! But I'll return with a vengeance.
Your grasp of the English language is a bit disconcerting (but nothing unusual there, it's common place in our society). It seems you've taken principles of logic and attempted to apply them to language use in general, exactly what Wittgenstein warns against. And you accuse me of adhering to principles of essentialism! You say possible is what is not necessary, and necessary is what is not possible, concluding that you have said something about "necessary" and something about "possible", by saying what each is not, therefore nothing about each of them. Saying what something is not, says nothing about what it is, because that does not qualify as a description.
Your question of the relationship between God and time demonstrates that we have a faulty conception of time. We tend to associate time with physical change. Furthermore, some even equate the two. But really, the relationship between time and physical change can be proposed in numerous ways. We can say that physical change is required for time, which puts physical change as prior to time, we can say that the two are equivalent, which is to assign no priority, or we can say that time is required for physical change.
The latter, that time is required for physical change, is unacceptable in modern physics, because it allows that time could be passing without any physical change (no way to measure it), but it is the most intuitively coherent proposal. This proposition allows that observable physical change is the result of time passing, and that there could be time passing, prior to physical change (at which time God creates the physical world). But in relation to our conventional conception of time, which ties time to physical change, this would put the activities of God outside of "time" (eternal), rendering such "activities" as unintelligible.
This is why we ought to reject that conception of time, because it makes activity outside the realm of physical activity impossible, as unintelligibly incoherent. Activity is temporal, so if we want to understand the activity which is the cause of physical existence, we need to allow that whatever exists when there is no physical existence, which could act as the cause of physical existence, is really temporal, and therefore not eternal.
Nobody can show you anything about a statement you made which statement is syntactically not English.
:fire: :smile:
What a powerful image. The only way to beat him is becoming a body of water yourself. Like an aikido fighter is able to beat his opponent by making use of the fighting energy radiating from him. If the energy flow is reversed, the energy won't harm you but the warrior you stand in front of all the more. Leaving him beaten and confused, wondering what the hell happened. But as we are human all, we sit down beside him, pet him over the back, and give him consolation and an understandable nod. We will offer him a paper handkerchief to wipe away his tears. Telling him we will give him a second chance.
So what shall we do? What must we say? Howcshall we move or proceed? Confined as we are by the computer we sit behind, being able to use language only, complemented by a small amount of visual information, if necessary, we must adopt his language and make a thorough self-critique first, the result of which can subsequently be used to redirect the flow in the polemic.
So what does this imply in practice? It's easy. There are inconsistencies to be found in every language used, be it the language of logic and pure math, the language of the mystic, that of the astrologist, or of the physicist. Denying your formal system is inconsistency-proof, would be to deny reality.
Note, I think A is identical with itself. I don't think that's a necessary truth though. It's just true.
Now, once more, without assuming that necessity is real, demonstrate that by claim that it isn't commits me to a contradiction. For I accept that no true proposition is also false, and so I accept that if you can do that, then you have demonstrated my view to be false.
Yet Quoting Bartricks
But you cannot see this, as your answer to shows.
But really this has been pointed out to you before; that to deny there are any necessary truths is to assert the necessity of there being no necessary truths, and hence to assert a contradiction.
I don't believe there are any necessary truths. So why do you keep asking me if I think this or that might have been otherwise? Of course I do! Consult your own definition of necessity!!
Necessary means 'not possiby' yes? And possibly means 'not necessarily' yes? That was your definition.
I also think hoity truths are, by definition, not toity truths. And a toity truth is a truth that is not hoity.
Was it hoity true that I might have said something different, or toity true? I know you like symbols as they persuade you you're doing something sophisticated. So, the symbol for a hoity truth is a chiliagon and the symbol for a toity truth is a testicle riding a horse into battle.
One can also arrive at it without mentioning God. For if an object undergoes a change by having some properties at some time that it does not have at another, then we have invoked a change in temporal properties, and so temporal properties themselves can change. And one cannot explain change by invoking time, as time itself changes, and thus we would have a change in one domain being explained by a change in another, but no analysis of what change itself is.
As for those quotes, I explicitly said that God would not suffer innocent people to live in ignorance in a dangerous world- and thus, God's existence implies we are not innocent and deserve to live in ignorance in a dangerous world.
That's consistent with us deserving everything that happens to us, and it is also consistent with us deserving to face the risk of harm the ignorance exposes us to. The context from which you took the second quote was one in which I was illustrating a point that, as ever, you were having trouble understanding due to its relative subtlety. And that point was that deserving something does not entail that it is right for someone else to give it to you. Indeed, you can deserve x and it can be very wrong for someone to give you it.
I do not know if we deserve every specific harm that befalls us, or just the exposure to the risk. But God does not have to know what happens to us here. Indeed, why would he care? I don't think God knows much of what goes on here, though my view is hardly settled on the matter. And that's consistent with being omniscient, so far as I can see. For being omniscient involves being in possession of all known propositions, not all truths.
No, that's not how possibility and necessity are related. You left out a negation.
But see Varieties of Modality for other uses.
Now, which sense are you using? It seems that you do not wish to use an extensional semantics.
Again, which sense of necessity are you using? It seems that you cannot use an extensional semantics.
I too don't know what necessity means, at least not when it is used descriptively.
Did you know that a hoity truth is a truth that holds in all toity worlds? Do you believe in hoity truths?
You should read Toity Worlds
Indeed, it is a point of some discussion. The usefulness of the part possible worlds play in possible world semantics is undeniable.
Except apparently by you. And Meta. Birds of one feather.
You have still yet to show how my claim that there are no necessary truths entails a contradiction. Come along - do so without begging the question (so, no assumption of the reality of necessity). All this time, and you haven't done it. Just squiggles and squoggles.
Now Banno, do you believe in hoity truths? You haven't said. Do you? I would draw the symbol for hoity, the chiliagon, but it takes about a day.
You've also not explained to me what Geach's criticism of mine and jesus' and Descartes' notion of omnipotence was. Why? Could you not find it either?
Could god not exist?
Why do you keep asking me questions that you know my answer to, yet do not answer any of mine? Is it that you somehow believe you have me on the ropes? You, sir, are on the mat having your head pummelled, yet you persist in gurgling 'do you give up yet?'
I believe it is a toity truth that God exists. The symbol for toity is a testicle riding into battle on a horse. So imagine that in front of the proposition 'God exists'. But like I say, best to read Toity Worlds by Professor Boule Sheet.
Could god not exist?
If you think not, then you have claimed that god exists necessarily.
But you claim there are no necessary truths.
So are you obliged to conclude that god exists only contingently? What's the plot twist here?
Cheers, then.
Just as question: does "all truth is contingent" mean "relativism is true"?
Well can a contingent truth be certainly true?
It is certainly true that I exist. Yet I exist contingently.
Similarly, I deny that God is subject to time. So you have to generate a contradiction without assuming that God is subject to time.
Quoting Bartricks
Quoting Bartricks
Assumes God is subject to time. Try again. Or is there some explanation I'm missing that doesn't assume God is subject to time? Quote it then.
Quoting Bartricks
You should because you just said:
Quoting Bartricks
So it must be the latter.
And this belief also implies that you accept that some people suffer more than they deserve (unsupervised exposure to risk will eventually result in someone suffering more than they deserve, rape victims for example). If so:
Quoting khaled
Choosing to make it possible for people to suffer unjustly, when you could just as easily make it otherwise is evil, correct? Not something an omnibenevolent being would do, correct?
So it's either
1- God is not omnibenevolent.
2- Everyone deserves each specific harm that happens to them.
Which is it?
Quoting Bartricks
Because he's omnibenevolent so should care to ensure that no one is suffering too harshly, as that would be unjust. If he doesn't care to make sure that people aren't suffering too harshly for what they deserve, that's evil, making him not omnibenevolent. And as he's omnipotent he can choose to make it so that he knows what happens here. So the two attributes combined mean that he should indeed know what's going on here.
Neat.
God being spiritual being is the opposite of physical being.
Is time spiritual or physical?
How can God be subject to time if time is not spiritual?
Otherwise, how can God not be creator of time if time is physical?
If time is product of a mind then it's irrelevant to compare it to the nature of God, because "mind" is own to human nature.
You concluded:
Quoting Bartricks
Plus it is easy to generate a contradiction. If time exists, then everything that exists will exist in the present, or the past, or the future. Time exists. God exists, but not in the present, past or future. Therefore God exists in the present or past or future and God does not exist in the present past or future.
Subtle and not so subtle distinctions seem lost on you. First, believing something is not the same as knowing it. I don't know if we deserve every specific harm that befalls us or just the risk of them. That's consistent with not believing every rape victim deserves to be raped.
Second, if we deserve to be exposed to a risk of harm, then even though this may result in some receiving more harm than others, it does not follow that any injustice has been done. Again, consider the lottery example. In exchange for your dollar, you deserve a chance of winning the jackpot. However, if you lose, you do not thereby deserve to lose, even though your losing was no injustice. Likewise if you win; you do not deserve to win, but no injustice exists if you do. A good person who set up the lottery would not redistribute the winnings among the losers.
Why would God trouble himself to know what is going on with each of us?!? We're all bastards. That's why we're here. He hates us. Why would he monitor us? More efficient and less mentally harrowing just to put us aside and let us wallow in each other's company. Note, the very arbitrary nature of the harms that befall one, and the ignorance are all part of the punishment. Note too how little here seems fully knowable, a fact exploited by sceptics, but that also implies that God, the arbiter of knowledge and possessor of all of it does not know much of what goes on here.
What's I'm saying is God's mind is not our mind.
If time is only sensation in God's mind as you said, then why do we have sense of a time?
You also said:
Quoting Bartricks
Which contradicts to:
Quoting Bartricks
But what they are sensations of, will themselves be sensations, for sensations resemble sensations and nothing else. And thus though time is not made of our temporal sensations, it is made of someone's.
:up:
1. Then he can't be described as immortal whatever that implies.
2. God's omnipotence is related to His beyond-time nature. Contradictions don't apply to him, a contradiction being defined as a compound statement that something is and is not in the same sense and at the same time. Nice! :up:
So, by Dummo's logic - which you are persuaded is good because you are either as bad at it as he is, or you are impressed by symbols you don't understand and words like 'calculus' - if it is possible for you to be 6ft total height, then you are. And as it is also possible for you to be 5ft total height, then you have a 5ft total height too. And so now you are 5ft tall in total and 6ft tall in total at the same time. Which is a contradiction. Good reasoning?
No. It's shit. Obviously it doesn't follow from you being possibly 5ft that you actually are. And likewise it does not follow from a contradiction being possibly true that it is.
McTaggart "proves" time is not real by showing it leads to a contradiction. If time isn't real then there can be no contradictions.
Such false impressions are not universal but relative from person to person.
Quoting Bartricks
Time isn't just sensation, time is real and core part of Einstein's general relativity.
Time can be measured and calculated without any involvement of sensations.
Quoting Bartricks
Which you claim to be God's sensations in our mind. :pray:
McTaggart thinks that our concept of time contains a contradiction and thus does not have anything answering to it in reality.
But this, I think, is a result of thinking that change essentially involves time. Which it doesn't
Let's start with a statement.
G = God exists.
If I deny God exists then ~G = God does not exist.
If God is beyond time and since time plays a crucial role in contradictions, God is able to defy the law of noncontradiction.
This means that it's possible that God exists AND God doesn't exist is true.
However, if time doesn't apply to God, the "AND" operator loses meaning. If I say "I am in Paris AND I'm happy" what I want to convey is the conjuncts ("I am in Paris", "I am happy") are to be understood as happening at the same time.
For a contradiction, the AND operator, its meaning as outlined above, is critical. Without the AND operator, the concept of a contradiction is meaningless. That means God can't do contradictions. Right?
My hazy intuitions warn me that you somehow both recognize and confound various times here and there. Plato seems to read as speaking of three types of motion: translation, rotation, and flux which I think of as any sort of change over time. But Plato also thought that time and change are interchangeable,
Modern entropy is the slime that the slug that is the universe leaves in its trail. Statistically it is a steady increase (like the tons of plastic bottles in the middle of the Pacific Ocean,) but locally there are greater outbursts depending on the strength of local flux (from rivers of pollutants). But time itself does nothing in modern physics any more than space does except to keep each other inflated. Therefore it seems to me that entropy is independent of physical time.
I think God can create true contradictions. That is, he has the power to confer truth on any proposition whatever.
That doesn't mean there are any true contradictions.
Dummo thinks it does, though christ only knows why as he won't say, he just squiggles and squoggles and asks supercilious questions.
Without time as 4th dimension change is said to be instant, which is unreal in real world.
Your position goes against general relativity.
No, but it sounds interesting.
:lol:
Quoting Bartricks
No, He can't if He is beyond time. The logical AND (&) operator becomes meaningless. Therefore, p & ~p is also undefined.
Oh! Well, if He's within time, then of course, being all-powerful, He can generate contradictions!
My question would be, what else can generate contradictions? There are no true contradictions in the world as we know it. So, where's the proof that God exists? Show us a true contradiction.
There are no centaurs.
Madfool: well in that case, show me one.
What? That makes no sense at all
Hahah :grin:
Which is contradictory to God also being omnibenevolent.
Quoting Bartricks
I think he would just to prove you wrong lol
I wouldn't be so sure. :grin:
Dummo thinks that if it is possible for there to be true contradictions, then there are some. Do you agree?
Where did I say anything even approximating this?
Quoting Bartricks
Well, that's probably true. There's much you haven't understood.
So you accept, do you, that if it is possible for a contradiction to be true, then it does not follow that it is?
And so you accept, do you, that it is entirely consistent with it being possible for a contradiction to be true, that none actually is?
And so you accept, do you, that my position - that it is possible for there to be a true contradiction, but in fact there are not any - is coherent and does not generate a contradiction?
Or do you think it does generate a contradiction? In which case, HOW?
Don't say 'this - a principle you don't accept because it includes the claim that contradictions are necessarily false - entails, via squiggle squoggle calculumus calculartum - that contradictions are necessarily false and therefore if you accept that there is a possible world in which there is a true contradiction, then ipio nipio fallatio calculatumio, there is a true contradiction in the actual world'.
Actually explain. Come along. In English. Don't say you have. You haven't. You've just squiggled and squoggled
Ah, is that an argument from ad nauseum?
You're confident I'm wrong, yes? Odd. Why so confident?
Of course.
Quoting Bartricks
No. Contradictions cannot be true, even in paraconsistent logic. This is some weird invention of your own, that mixes Dialetheism with modality without much by way of explication.
Quoting Bartricks
I don't accept Dialetheism. There are too many problems. The main issue is that Dialetheism does not give grounds for excluding anything. Now Dialetheism functions by denying the law of noncontradiction. But perversely, you insist that LNC is true, while also insisting that it is only contingent.
That's a whole heap of confused shit right there.
Quoting Bartricks
For perhaps the sixth time...
Here is the reason that LNC is taken as necessary:
This contradicts your unsupported assertion that LNC is contingent.
You simply have not understood the nature of necessity.
So your whole case against me is not that my view can be shown to generate a contradiction, but simply that it is false. All you are doing, again and again, is asserting that it is impossible for contradictions to be true - the very claim I deny.
Yet what you have claimed is that my view generates a contradiction. It doesn't. If you think otherwise, show it without assuming that there are necessary truths (and without assuming that if something can be the case, it is).
You can't. All you can do is reiterate your conviction that it is impossible for there to be true contradictions and then to put a label on that.
Once more: there are no necessary truths. I have an argument for that. And I know full well that there is apparently good evidence that there are necessary truths. I have an argument undercutting that evidence.
But you think that the claim is incoherent: that by making it I am committing myself to affirming actual contradictions. Yet at no point have you shown this. All you are doing is repeating, in stupidly grandiose ways that you don't fully understand, that it is impossible for there to be true contradictions, which is precisely what I deny. It's called begging the question. Stop it.
again, here's the contradiction:
Quoting Bartricks
again...
God you're thick.
How does that follow? Pray tell, Dummo. All things are possible, dummo, remember?
Quoting Bartricks
How does what follow? That you are thick? It follows from your inability to follow a simple argument.
But presumably you will not be able to follow that.
There are no centaurs. Thus, every actual proposition that asserts there to be some is false. By Dummo logic that presumably means it is necessarily the case that there are no centaurs. Sounds a bit thick to me!
...there's the equivocation, again.
You are going to protect your ineptitude regardless of my, or anyone else's, response.
That's an inherently, profoundly anti-intellectual position.
Dummo logic says that there are necessarily no centaurs if there are actually no centaurs - yes? Or no?
If no, then why does Dummo think that if there are actually no true contradictions it is necessarily the case that there aren't?
Please locate for me my thickness and bring it into the light. It is the only way I will learn. FOr at the moment I am quite convinced you're the thick one, yet surely you are not for you can squiggle and squoggle (not that i could tell if you were squiggline and squoggling properly, of course, for I do not speak squiggle-squoggle).
It's here:
Quoting Bartricks
follows from this:
Quoting Banno
You are just saying again the very thing I want explained, yes?
I deny that there are any necessary truths. So I deny that it is necessarily true that there are no true contradictions.
Thus, I hold that all actually true propositions are true contingently. By which I mean, of course, simply that they are not necessarily true.
Now, how does it follow from that, that it is not possible for a proposition to be anything other than just plain true?
Again, I hold that as there are no centaurs, no proposition that asserts their existence is true.
Does it follow from that that I am committed to the view that necessarily no such proposition is true? No. So why do you think it does follow when it is true contradictions that we are talking about?
Explain. Explain without assuming any necessary truths. Come on. (Time to throw your arms up in exasperation, yes? I'm thick, yes?)
Indeed; you can't see this.
You asked me to show you your thickness. There it is.
Look, this argument is not valid:
1. If a proposition is true, then it is contingently true
Conclusion: Therefore, necessarily if a proposition is true, then it is contingently true
Put some squiggles and squoggles in if it helps. I'm sure there's a squoggle for necessity, and it'll be turning up in the conclusion, but it won't be in the premise.
Indeed, without being able to squiggle and squoggle, it seems plain that the reverse follows. For if 1 is true, then 1 itself is contingently true, not necessarily true.
Here:
1. If a proposition is true, then it is contingently true
2. Premise 1 is a true proposition
3. Therefore, premise 1 is contingently true.
So how do you get to the conclusion that it is not possible for a proposition to be anything other than contingent? That is, how do you get to 'necessarily, all true propositions are contingently true' from a premise that makes no mention of necessity? It's still looking for all the world like you're the thick one. Odd.
God is alive, Magic is Afoot Recited by Leonard Cohen
God is alive, Magic is Afoot sung by Buffy St. Marie
William Lane Craig style arguments only. You must reformat your post. :monkey:
Neither will @Bartricks.
(1) Why do the sensations of futurity and pastness become less and more intense in God? Why does their intensity change? Is it so because this just is the nature of time (as God created it)?
(2) Is this what you mean when you say that God is subject to time, that these sensations change in intensity? Or that they change in a specific way, futurity always lessening, pastness always increasing? Or is just that God has these sensations at all?
Yes! To say something is possible means that that something is in at least one possible world.
May I talk with the same right about toity worlds? Have you read Toity Worlds by Professor Boule Sheet?
There's a toity world in which there is a centaur. And there's a toity world in which there is a true contradiction. Might that centaur come and get me from the toity world in which it is living? Should I be afraid? Will it bring the true contradiction with it?
Because what you write is moronic. As I was reading your last response I couldn’t go 3 words without thinking of a paragraph in response to your stupidity. I don’t want to write a book just to convince a muppet, especially if I’m getting berated the whole way for trying to help it.
You seem to equate someone giving up on responding to you with proof that you are right. When in reality the reason people stop responding to you is that they lose patience and can no longer deal with your attitude, and sheer stupidity. You should publish this nonsense. Then when everyone tears it to shreds you might want to rethink your position. Though I bet if the whole world was convinced you’re wrong you still wouldn’t budge. You’d argue with each person individually until you tire them all out, then think you’re right.
I hope for the sake of everyone that you’re just trolling.
It appears that the idea of possibility is more nuanced than I thought.
A possible world: A world that can be real. There's nothing about a possible world that makes it impossible. So a centaur world is a possible world - nothing about centaurs is impossible.
Two different senses of possible:
1. Possible 1: It's possible there'll be light rain tomorrow. Not true that it has to rain tomorrow.
2. Possible 2: It's possible that God exists. God has to exist in one possible world. Hey!, we've just proved that God exists.
:chin:
Yes, that's an argument that Dummo would - or should, if he had a clue - be impressed by. Whereas I think it's stupid.
Why is it stupid?
Modality had a very bad press up until Kripke used possible worlds to give us a semantics that makes coherent argument possible. So we see things like Geech's scepticism toward modality in the article I cited above.
A possible world is no more than a way of saying that something might have been different. So saying god exists in some possible world is just saying there might have been a god.
Bart's particular flaw is that he doesn't see the link between possibility and necessity - as mentioned previously.
Now you've started a new thread, with a question. Contrast that to Bart's insistence that he is correct, despite numerous, varied and cogent arguments against his position.
Kudos, Mad.
Argumentum ab lassitudine?
it would be an error to think there is some chance of changing Bart's mind.
Second, if something possibly exists, then it does not have to exist. I mean, that's what one is expressing by saying that it possibly exists. And so go from 'possibly exists' to 'must exist' seems obviously fallacious.
Here's an ontological argument for moral realism. If it is possible for Xing to be wrong, it is wrong. For if it is possible for it to be wrong, then there is a possible world in which it is wrong. But it is a necessary truth that if two situations are identical non-morally, then they are identical morally as well (this is known as the supervenience thesis). Thus, if it is possible for an action to be wrong, it 'is' wrong. Somehow the mere possibility of an act being wrong, makes it actually wrong.
Now I take it that this argument is not persuasive. It is possible that morality not exist. Moral realism is true: some acts are wrong. But morality does not 'have' to exist, it just does. Moral nihilism is not incoherent. False, yes. Necessarily false, no.
Note, the recognition that virtually all of us have that there is something dodgy about ontological arguments for God - or indeed, morality - is just a dim recognition that it is fallacious to go from 'possibly' to 'actually' (I don't say 'all' ontological arguments are like this - Descartes' Cogito is an ontological argument and it is fine - but most are).