Eternalists should be Stage theorists
I am currently writing a paper for a philosophy class, and I am looking for some feedback/critique on what I am planning to write about. It's a little messy so far (like I said, it's in planning), but hopefully it'll be clear enough to convey what I am talking about.
Eternalism is the view that all times in the universe exist and are equally real. The passage of time, under this view, isn't real and the universe is taken to be a static block universe. Eternalists usually subscribe to 4-dimensionalism as a result, which can be broken up into two separate groups, the worm theorists and the stage theorists.
According to the worm theory, I am a temporally extended being who has all of the times of my life as temporal parts. In other words, I am the whole which constitutes my life. The stage theory, in contrast, states that I am merely a being who exists at one time, and am not numerically identical to other times in my life. Instead, I have counterparts who identify with each and every time as I do with my own. I will be arguing that, based upon our limited experience, the worm theory is false, and that Eternalist 4D-ists should be stage theorists as a result.
So here is my argument in a nutshell against the worm view:
P1. The worm theory requires that we are temporally extended beings.
P2. If we are temporally extended beings, then we must have all of our experiences at every time in which we exist together*.
P3. Our experience is limited to only one time.
____________________________
C. The worm theory is false.
* Note that by saying that I should have all of my experiences "together", I do not mean that we have all of our experiences "at once" as in "at a time of the universe's history". Our experience can extend across multiple times within the existing eternalist block universe and need not be restricted to a single time of that universe, just as much as our bodily experiences at a single time is spatially extended (I see through my eyes and feel through the nerves in my body for example). The point is that we have them all.
P1. is based upon the definition of the worm theory as stated above, so I believe it should not be problematic.
P2. seems to me to be a straightforward result of what it means to be a temporally extended being who has temporal parts. If we consist of multiple parts, each of which has an experience on its own, then we should have all of them. After all, at every time we, as spatially extended entities, have all of our bodily experiences together, so I believe that for a temporally extended being it is merely an extension of that case.
The support for P3. is simply based upon introspection about our direct experience. My judgement I am not experiencing any other times shouldn't be illusory any more than my judgement that I am not in excruciating pain, or that I my judgement that I am having a red experience, which I take to be pretty certain. For me, I find that my experiences are only limited to me sitting here typing up this post at this time and nothing else, and I believe that a similar finding would hold for you too. This experience of me sitting in my room in front of my computer is not had as part of any other experience or together with other experiences at other times.
If anyone were to disagree with P2. , then they must not only show why (in light of the reasons I've given), but also, in light of P3., propose an explanation of why we only experience one time. Though I do not know all of the possible explanations, I doubt that this can be done without privileging a specific time (which isn't allowed for an eternalist), in particular the time in which we only experience, since that is ultimately what needs to be explained.
So, if my argument succeeds, the worm theory is shown to be false, and Eternalists should give it up in favour of the stage view. I believe that the stage theory elegantly avoids these issues pretty easily since according to that view our existence is limited to only a single time and in turn our experience. Thus, they are able to accept that our experience is had in accordance with P3.
Thoughts? Comments? Objections?
Eternalism is the view that all times in the universe exist and are equally real. The passage of time, under this view, isn't real and the universe is taken to be a static block universe. Eternalists usually subscribe to 4-dimensionalism as a result, which can be broken up into two separate groups, the worm theorists and the stage theorists.
According to the worm theory, I am a temporally extended being who has all of the times of my life as temporal parts. In other words, I am the whole which constitutes my life. The stage theory, in contrast, states that I am merely a being who exists at one time, and am not numerically identical to other times in my life. Instead, I have counterparts who identify with each and every time as I do with my own. I will be arguing that, based upon our limited experience, the worm theory is false, and that Eternalist 4D-ists should be stage theorists as a result.
So here is my argument in a nutshell against the worm view:
P1. The worm theory requires that we are temporally extended beings.
P2. If we are temporally extended beings, then we must have all of our experiences at every time in which we exist together*.
P3. Our experience is limited to only one time.
____________________________
C. The worm theory is false.
* Note that by saying that I should have all of my experiences "together", I do not mean that we have all of our experiences "at once" as in "at a time of the universe's history". Our experience can extend across multiple times within the existing eternalist block universe and need not be restricted to a single time of that universe, just as much as our bodily experiences at a single time is spatially extended (I see through my eyes and feel through the nerves in my body for example). The point is that we have them all.
P1. is based upon the definition of the worm theory as stated above, so I believe it should not be problematic.
P2. seems to me to be a straightforward result of what it means to be a temporally extended being who has temporal parts. If we consist of multiple parts, each of which has an experience on its own, then we should have all of them. After all, at every time we, as spatially extended entities, have all of our bodily experiences together, so I believe that for a temporally extended being it is merely an extension of that case.
The support for P3. is simply based upon introspection about our direct experience. My judgement I am not experiencing any other times shouldn't be illusory any more than my judgement that I am not in excruciating pain, or that I my judgement that I am having a red experience, which I take to be pretty certain. For me, I find that my experiences are only limited to me sitting here typing up this post at this time and nothing else, and I believe that a similar finding would hold for you too. This experience of me sitting in my room in front of my computer is not had as part of any other experience or together with other experiences at other times.
If anyone were to disagree with P2. , then they must not only show why (in light of the reasons I've given), but also, in light of P3., propose an explanation of why we only experience one time. Though I do not know all of the possible explanations, I doubt that this can be done without privileging a specific time (which isn't allowed for an eternalist), in particular the time in which we only experience, since that is ultimately what needs to be explained.
So, if my argument succeeds, the worm theory is shown to be false, and Eternalists should give it up in favour of the stage view. I believe that the stage theory elegantly avoids these issues pretty easily since according to that view our existence is limited to only a single time and in turn our experience. Thus, they are able to accept that our experience is had in accordance with P3.
Thoughts? Comments? Objections?
Comments (169)
P1. The worm theory requires that we are temporally extended beings.
OK, I'll buy that.
P2. if we are temporally extended beings, then we must have all of our experiences at every time in which we exist together.
Why? That seems like too strong an assumption to me.
Just because something is temporally extended needn't imply that every temporal slice of the extended thing is identical to every other temporal slice. Differences between one slice and another would represent change in this this kind of scheme, and we obviously change during the course of our lives. (That introduces the problem of how to define personal identity. It clearly isn't strong logical identity.)
Here's an analogy: My arm is spatially extended and it has fingers down at its end, but it doesn't need to have fingers all along its entire length.
P3. Our experience is limited to only one time.
I'm going to argue with this one too.
Assuming that we are conscious throughout our lives (which isn't likely to be true) we should probably say that our consciousness at time T-1 is consciousness of T-1, while our consciousness at time T-2 is consciousness of T-2. So we can say that our time-slices are experiencing throughout, but only experiencing the time in which that particular slice resides (plus accumulated memories).
So I'd say that I don't see any contradiction in your premises and your C doesn't seem to me to follow.
If we replace P2 with the expectation that different time slices will differ from each other depending on the changes that the temporally extended being undergoes during the course of its existence, and replace P3 with the expectation that the experience represented by a particular time-slice is limited to awareness of that time-slice, then the worm-theory would still seem to work.
Maybe I'm not understanding the distinction between worm-theory and stage-theory properly. It's conceivable that my amendments to your premises and my interpreting personal identity in something other than a strong logical way has moved me towards being a stage theorist and I'm actually conceding your point without realizing it.
But it seems to me that if we imagine worm-theory as requiring that each cross-section of the worm be absolutely identical to every other cross-section of the worm, that reduces worm-theory to a straw man. I'm not sure that anyone who has proposed this conceptual model has argued for such a thing. They acknowledge that change happens over time and that temporal cross-sections of the same individual can differ radically. (Me at one week old and me at 80 years old.) Certainly anatomical cross-sections through spatially extended biological worms won't all be anatomically identical either.
Quoting Mr Bee
This note is indeed an important concession for you to make to the proponent of the worm-view, (which is a view about identity also called perdurantism). But its seems to me that it is hard to make consistent with your defense of P3. (See below)
Quoting Mr Bee
I think the worm-theorist would readily accept the way you are characterizing the content of your experience (i.e. what it is you are experiencing) but she would question your portrayal of what it is to be the subject of a singular experience. The worm-theorist would claim that each separate content of experience had by you over time is being had (which denotes a singular event rather than an ownership relation) not by "your" perduring worm as a whole, but rather by just the one contemporaneous temporal stage of your worm that is occurring at the time when this experience is being had. Hence, the fact that you (the whole worm) are truly only experiencing one thing at a time just reflects the fact that those episodes (or events) of experiencing something or other characterize your own temporal stages separately. In yet other words, your saying that you only experience one thing at a given time only boils down to saying that only one single temporal stage of yourself (i.e. just one time-slice of yourself) is involved directly in this experiencing. (There may still be indirect involvement through the exercise of memory and anticipation).
I am not saying that every part is identical to every other part, or that it is a requirement for composite objects. Certainly such a view would be clearly false because that would mean that there can be no objects with heterogeneous parts.
I am merely saying that the whole, which is identical to the sum of every part (but not identical to each individual part) should itself have the sum of the experiences which every part has. That is, if a time slice has experience x at T1, and another one has an experience y at T2, then, as the being who is composed of both time slices, I should have an experience x at T1 and y at T2. In other words, I have them both together.
Even if that weren't the case, we are certainly still conscious for a fair amount more than a single instant, so it doesn't seem to matter for the purposes of my argument.
This probably has more to do with P2. than P3 IMO. From the looks of it since you don't seem to be disputing what I claim to be experiencing (or really not experiencing) as a conscious subject and are instead focused on what we should be experiencing.
In any case, I think your objection is missing some context. Sure a consciousness at a time has conscious experiences of that time, but what does this say for a temporally extended spacetime worm that is the sum of multiple consciousnesses at multiple times?
Sorry if my explanations aren't clear enough. The wiki on perdurantism distinguishes between both views, so perhaps you can check that out for a quick reference.
Hello and thank you for welcoming me.
It seems that this type of response collapses to the stage theory does it not? Cause if we are going to grant that there are multiple different conscious subjects who exist at every stage of our lives anyways, then why not just adopt the stage view? As far as I know, the worm theory claims that there is one only entity, one conscious subject which identifies with the whole spacetime worm. Although it is conceivable to argue that such a being could also exist on top of the multiple conscious subjects at every time it would seem unnecessary to do so.
That's because the eternalists (or the perdurantists) aren't saying that there are different conscious subjects along your world-line. You are the whole worm, and your temporal time-slices are temporal parts of yourself just as much as your hands and feet (or rather, their own worms), say, are "spatial parts" of yourself. What the eternalist may argue is that your having experiences one at a time doesn't contradict your being a worm who is having those experiences anymore that your being touched by someone on specific parts of your body, say, contradicts that it is you, the same individual, who is being touched in each case.
Agreed.
Agreed. The defense that I mustered on behalf of the eternalist doesn't need that.
As I sit here typing, my existence is infinitely small in terms of space and time and the only thing I can say is that this experience, which includes not only of me typing, but of countless other extraneous experiences (like what I just ate, the temperature, my knowledge of my family, my drive in this morning, etc.) is all that is me.
So here I am at T-1 with experiential state E-1 and then there is someone else at T-2 and E-2. We'll call T-1 at E-1, person 1, or P-1 and then T-2 at E-2, P-2. So now we have P-1 and P-2 eternally existing simultaneously, as time is eternal and not sequential. That means what we really have is P-1, P-2, P-3.... all simultaneously existing. We have no reason, of course, to believe that P-1's experiences are at all similar to P-2's. What we have are an infinitely large (or finitely massive) number of people spread out throughout all of eternity with fixed thoughts at a fixed moment thinking that thought forever and ever.
My objection to this theory is that it sure as hell seems like I have thoughts that change over time and not that I'm stuck in my single thought. The concept of change seems impossible under an eternalist theory because there is no becoming, just existing.
I quite agree. But I think both the views of endurantism (closely associated with stage-theory) and perdurantism (closely associated with eternalism or 4-dimensionalism) make it hard to account for the metaphysics of change. I used to be committed to endurantism, myself, but Sebastian Rödl (see his Categories of the Temporal, HUP, 2012) made me realize that everything that the perdurantist may want to say can be translated without loss in the language of the endurantist, and vice versa. What is really missing to both from those view about time, objects and predication, is the Aristotelian concept of a substance.
On edit: contrary to what I said above, stage-theory is more commonly viewed as a variety of perdurantism. This makes sense, since endurantism entails that when a "stage" is present, then the whole objects is present, although its past "stages" don't exist anymore, and its future "stages" don't exist yet. Hence, worm theory and stage theory are two varieties of perdurantism.
I think you are misinterpreting what I mean in my P3 since you seem to be emphasizing the fact that I am only having an experience "at a given time". When I say that I am only experiencing a certain set of experiences, I am not saying that my experience is limited to a certain set of experiences "at a time", I am saying that I am only having those experiences in general. Nowhere when I introspect upon my experience does the notion of my experience being had "at a time" even come in. I, as the entity that should be a temporally extended conscious subject, only have an experience of sitting in my room in front of my computer simpliciter. This is just how it feels to me.
SImilarly, if I told you that I am only seeing red in my vision and you reply by saying that I am "really" saying that I am only seeing red at a particular part of my visual field, then I will tell you that I am not making any such claim at all and that I am only referring to my visual experiences of seeing only red in a general sense simpliciter.
Yes, and the worm theorist need not dispute that. But then, at a later time, you go out and see a tree in the garden. You are having another experience with a different content. The worm theorist says that those two events relate you, the very same individual (or space-time worm) to the two separate contents of those experiences. But just because the same individual is thus related to two separate experience contents doesn't contradict the fact that, as part of the form of those very experiences, you are picturing yourself as having them in isolation (in the "present time" when you are having them). All this goes on to show, from the point of view of the worm theorist, is that the different segments of the "worm" are, indeed distinctive parts of that worm with distinguishable properties.
P3 seems easily deniable by the worm-theorist, who can claim that we experience all times in which we exist (it's just, as you note, that this experience is temporally extended). At best you have only the trivial premise that we only experience one time 'at a time,' which can of course be granted.
In other words, given the fact that we expect the experience to be temporally extended, this:
won't cut it, since you need the conclusion 'I will not experience any other times,' which isn't made plausible by introspection in the same way.
I disagree. The claim that I am having an experience of sitting in my room only is simply inconsistent with the claim that I am also having another experience that is not of me sitting in my room (as you later claim). You cannot have both facts be true so one of them has to be false.
If that was indeed the case, then I should not be introspecting myself as only having one of those experiences (again, not specified as being "at a time"). So much as I have an experience of one of those times, I should've found that that particular experience is had as part of a larger experience which also contains the experience of the other time along with any other times I may have (at least if my introspection on my direct experience is supposed to be certain). This is what it would mean to have both experiences together after all.
It's easy for someone to claim that you experiencing all of your times, but do you really find yourself having all of them? I can claim that you are in excruciating pain right now despite your protests to the contrary, but I imagine that that is not gonna be convincing if you simply do not find yourself as being in pain.
Quoting The Great Whatever
Like I told Pierre, when I say that I find myself as only having the experience of, say, me sitting in my room, I am not saying that I am having them "at a time". Nowhere does such a notion come into my description of what I am experiencing. I only say that I am only having this experience in a general sense.
But this is just to say that the time at which you are having an experience doesn't figure explicitly as part of the content of this experience. You can distinguish, though, right now, between your relating to experiences had by you in the past, in the present, or in the future. You can say, and believe: "I saw my friend earlier"; "I am seeing my friend now" and "I will see my friend later". In those forms of expression the words "earlier", "now", and "later" function as indexicals. The times that they refer to are functions of the time when the expressions are being uttered. (Likewise, the word "I" can refer to you by dint of the fact that it is being used by you; and the word "here" refers to a specific place by dint of its being uttered by someone located at that place.)
When you are enjoying the visual experience a tree, you need not be thinking of this experience under a mode of presentation (i.e. a Fregean sense) that could be expressed thus: "I am seeing this tree at 4:16 PM on April 10th 2017". You could also be expressing the same content under the different mode "I am seeing this tree now", which is equivalent to the content of "I am seeing a tree". In the latter form of expression, the temporal reference of the expression "now" is tacitly encoded into the tense of the verb "seeing" (together with the progressive aspect). It thus has the same Fregean sense. You can't really have a visual experience while being agnostic regarding the time when you are having it (i.e. regarding its being either present, past or future). If you are doubting whether an experience is a present visual experience or a fuzzy memory, for instance, then you are doubting its very status as an experience as opposed to its being a product of your imagination, say.
Not that you are experiencing all of them, but that you have or will experience(d) (or are experiencing) all of them.
Quoting Mr Bee
But it does, via the present tense, which is anchored to the time of the speech act.
Quoting Pierre-Normand
There's more to it than that actually. If an experience is had as part of a larger experience, then I believe that this fact should figure into the content of that experience itself. Let me give an example of what I mean by that.
Take a visual experience of seeing only blue. Now take an experience of seeing only red. Imagine the two cases where you have them separately, and not together. Now imagine having them both together as parts of a larger visual experience. I imagine that in the latter case, you will probably see the red experience differently in this context then if it were had alone. More specifically, I imagine you will find that the red experience is had at a particular portion of your visual field (of course there are various configurations in which you can imagine this, perhaps the red experience is to the left side of your vision, or perhaps in the centre, while the rest of your vision is engulfed by blue). The same goes for your blue experience as well. The red and blue experiences can no longer be described as being seen simpliciter as they are when they are being had alone. In fact, when I ask myself whether or not I am seeing each of them in that way, I simply find that I do not have such an experience (in fact it seems impossible for me to even imagine what it would be like to see both red and blue simpliciter together). Instead I find that these colour experiences of mine are had "over there" occupying their own particular regions of my experience. Unlike when I have them alone, I have to specify a location to describe precisely how I experience them. In essence, as a result of both experiences not being had alone, they each feel differently.
Of course, I don't believe that this sort of interdependence is limited to just visual experiences. We also have this sort of experience with regards to our other senses as well (for example, I may be having a feeling of coldness in my left hand and heat in my right), but I think it's more general. I believe that any set of experiences had together would exhibit this sort of feature in some form, which also includes having multiple experiences over time. If this is true, then given that the worm theory requires that we are a subject which has all of our experiences, then our experiences at every time should similarly feel distinctly different as opposed to how they would feel if they were had alone. If this sort of distinct feeling can be characterized as the feeling of "being at a particular time" then I would have to disagree with you that the time of an experience does not feature within is felt content.
I'm in a rush right now, but I just want to say that the worm theory is an eternalist theory. The notions of "experienced", "will" and "present-tense" do not make sense under that sort of view since there is no such thing as a flow of time.
Quoting Mr BeeAs a worm being, I exist in 2010 as much as I exist in 2017. You're saying I cannot have experience of 2010 despite my existence there? That makes no sense. 2010 is not a year of sensory deprivation for me.
Pierre-N articulates the issue with a spatial analogy, and pretty much hits the mark. I exist from head to toe, but don't expect to feel at my feet an itch at my shoulder. Each part senses its own input. Our experience is not limited to one spatial location on the body, as the logic behind P3 would imply.
Shouldn't this read:
P2. If we are temporally extended beings, then we must have each of our experiences at each time in which we exist.
And if so, your conclusion does not follow.
Likewise, the reason given in the OP: “P3. Our experience is limited to only one time” also appears to be an attempt to reconcile the dynamic nature of our experience of time with the assumed scientific reality of a static 4-D block universe. However, an easier way to reconcile them is to drop (or else fully embrace) the assumption of the 4-D block universe, which is simply a model of (static) existence over time. However, if our dynamic experience cannot be considered illusory (because it would undermine the meaning of the terms “experience” or “illusion” - as illusions and other experiences can only be had “in” time), then dynamism must be real, and the problem must lie with the static block universe model.
Quoting Pierre-Normand
Quoting The Great Whatever
Maybe I don't understand indexicals well enough, but even if we were to assume that there was a present tense that attaches itself to my claims, I still don't see why it should only refer strictly to the time of the utterance itself and not, say, something less restrictive, like the time in which the person making that utterance exists. It might sound weird to distinguish the two, but that is because in usual cases where we use the term "now" we do not explicitly assume that we are temporally extended beings, and the speaker of a phrase always exists limited to a single time in which they make these utterances (in accord with the common sense views of time). But here, there is a distinction between the time in which an utterance occurs and the temporal region in which the person uttering it exists. I see no reason why we should use the former usage over the latter. In fact, I think the latter is a more reasonable view to take if we consider the similar case for "here".
Just as much as you can say that there is a present tense anchor to all of our experiential claims, you could probably also say that any claim about my experience should have a spatial anchor to it. This requires me to always describe an experience as being had "here". But what is meant by "here"? We can say that it is limited to the location in which the utterance is occurring, more specifically the location of the words themselves coming out of my mouth, but that sounds too limited IMO. It seems more reasonable to me to assume that when I say"here" I mean the spatially extended in which I, as the speaker of the phrase, exist. Similarly, it sounds more reasonable to assume that when I say "now" , I can only be referring to the temporally extended region in which I exist. If this is the case then I as a temporally extended worm cannot mean "the time of this utterance" when I use the phrase "now".
I don't think this is an assumption – it's a plain fact.
That is written in the present progressive, and means that you are not experiencing any other times at the time of utterance. That's just a fact about English, not a metaphysical claim.
Quoting Mr Bee
Because that is not what the sentence means, because that is not how the present tense in English functions.
If instead you opted for something like
(as a habitual), then this simply rings false, since you do habitually experience other times (viz. you tend to experience whichever time it happens to be). And same with 'will not,' 'have not,' etc.
Quoting noAxioms
I am not saying that you cannot (in face, P2. explicitly states that you must have them). I am just saying that you do not have them (or maybe you do, but I don't). If part of me really did exist at 2010, then I would've felt the experiences of 2010 as part of my overall experience. But I simply do not. The pains the joys of that year should be present as part of my total experience, but I simply do not find them to be there.
Quoting Banno
I don't see how that is any different from my P2. Suppose I have three bank accounts, each of which hold a certain sum of money. There doesn't seem to be a difference between these two claims:
- If I own all three bank accounts, I have all of the money that is had in each account together.
- If I own all three bank accounts, then I have each dollar that is in each of the bank accounts that I own.
Maybe this is what you want to say anyways. If so, then please tell me how the rest of my argument fails.
Quoting Banno
Just as much as for any bank account, I own only the money in that account. But that doesn't stop me from owning all the money in every account simply by owning all the accounts themselves. I still don't see how this is different from my P2. for our temporal experience since I am perfectly willing to say that at any one time we experience only the experiences at that time. Still doesn't stop someone who is composed of all of those times to have all of those experiences (in fact seems to be a straightforward consequence of having them as parts).
As far as I know, my experience is simply not like that. I only find myself having the experience of being in my room in front of my computer and nothing more. You could object like others that what I am "actually" saying is that I am only having these such experiences "at a time", but then I wouldn't see that as being anything other than dictating what I should claim to be experiencing.
But this is just false, right? Read that back to yourself and ask whether it's true. The only thing you experience is being at your computer? No: you experience plenty of other things as well.
Oh, but you mean right now...?
Quoting The Great Whatever
Like? Certainly my experience of being in my room describes a complex set of experiences. My visual experience of me of the computer screen in front of me, the feeling of sitting in my seat and the feel of the fingers typing on the keyboard, and the silent hum of the background noise. What more do you expect there to be?
My first inclination is that this is simply false. I experience all sorts of things, not only my experience of being in my room in front of my computer. I also experience being outside, for example.
This is the reading I get when 'I only find myself having the experience' is read habitually.
I can also read the sentence as pertaining to what I am now experiencing. Then, it looks true, as you've said – but you've insisted that this is not how you intend the sentence to be construed.
So I'm stuck. The only way it sounds plausibly true to me is on the reading that you insist you are not interested in. And so on neither reading is your argument plausible, since there is no reason to accept P3, or any of the permutations of it you've offered (indeed, P3 simply sounds false, if not read as pertaining to the present time).
Quoting Mr Bee
Is obviously a description of what your experiences were at the time of typing, not what they are in general or at different times. Surely you experience different things at different times?
So you seem to be in a dilemma: either construe your claim as plausibly true, and thus restrict it to one time, making your premise trivial, and so not getting the conclusion you want; or construe your claim as obviously false, invalidating the argument.
Quoting The Great Whatever
So much as I have disagreed with you, it had more to do with the restricted definition of what you want "now" to mean. What I have insisted is not true was mainly the identification of "now" as "the specific moment in which this utterance is had". Nowhere does that notion come up when I say that I only have a certain set of experiences and nowhere do I even mean anything like that.
I have proposed an alternative conception of "now", describing the "temporal region in which I exist" as a better description of what I would mean when I would have to use the word now. I even gave an analogy involving our use of "here" to support it. After all, "here" simply specifies my location, not that of the utterance, and it seems like "now" should similarly specify the location in time, not of the utterance, but of myself, whatever that may be.
Apparently that didn't sit well with you because that is not how the word "now", as commonly construed in our everyday language, is used. Technically, under something like a layman presentist framework, the word "now" can refer to both the time in which I exist and the time of the utterance, but that is certainly not true under something the worm view (or really any view that allows for a temporally extended experience). If you want to convince me that this usage of "now" is somehow mistaken, then you would need to give me more in way of an argument.
Quoting The Great Whatever
But I was describing them in general, at least I wasn't intentionally specifying a specific time in which something like "I only experience x" rings true. I just mean "I only experience x simpliciter". Just because the set of experiences I have in general happens to be limited to the contents of a single time does not mean that I am saying they are limited to those contents only within that specific context, so I am not sure how you made that connection.
This strikes me as a very sharp diagnosis of the motivation of the stage theory.
I would have thought that "here" refers to the location of the speaker at the time of utterance. (This is how, at any rate, I would make explicit what the reference of "here" is, in particular occasions of its use, without this being meant as an explanation of its Fregean sense.)
For instance, Sue could be teaching Max how to tidy up the workshop. She tells him: "Go fetch the hammer over there and bring it back here". Then, she accompanies him to the place where the hammer is. It would then be odd for Max to insist that the hammer now is located where Sue wanted it to be on the ground that "here" refers to the place Sue (now) is standing. Of course, if both Sue and Max are stage theorists (and not just armchair stage theorists, but people who strive to live up to stage theory in everyday talk) then they may want to reform the way in which they use indexicals. In that case Max's later counterpart may take himself to be committed to obey the instruction that had been given by Sue's younger counterpart to Max's younger counterpart. In light of Luke's earlier suggestion in this thread, this may be seen as a way of construing the semantics of indexicals that attempts to retain the dynamicism of ordinary presentism within a 4-dimensionalist framework. (Incidentally, Gareth Evans's neo-Fregean account of enduring thoughts that can be re-expressed at successive times without loss of meaning with the use of inter-related classes of demonstratives or indexicals (e.g., "here" and "there"; or "yesterday", "today", "tomorrow"...) characterize such thought as dynamic thoughts).
If ordinary language is to retain a pragmatic use (and some of its meaningfulness) as interpreted within a stage theoretical framework, then, although indexicals may be taken to make no (direct) tacit reference to the time of the utterance, they would still have to make tacit reference to the specific stage of the individual to whom later stages of this individuals (and of other people) are referring back to while interpreting the original utterance. This still seems to amount to making a tacit (albeit indirect) reference to the time of utterance. To completely give up on such tacit references to past and future times would lead to the disintegration of 'dynamic thoughts' and the narrowing down of experience (and of the acts of reference therein) to a narrow Cartesian space of private sense data, it seems to me.
You should perhaps understand the view before writing a paper on it. It is merely a different interpretation, and the view is entirely consistent with your empirical experience.
The only difference between eternalism and presentism is the existence of a preferred present that moves through time. Such an entity is undetectable in the exact same way that one cannot determine which point is 'here' except that the measurement always takes place 'here'. But similar to being unable to determine by any experiment where 'here' is tomorrow, one also cannot detect where 'now' is in a place that is not here. That suggests (not proves) that both have the same ontological status: they both exist or both don't. Lack of proof for the nonexistence of this undetectable thing is why it is an interpretation.
Quoting Pierre-Normand
I can grant that. "Here" would refer to the spatio-temporal location of the utterance event (or alternatively the speaker of that utterance as I have been trying to argue for).
Quoting Pierre-Normand
If we are talking about the stage theoretic framework, then indexicals such as "now" can still refer to the time of utterance regardless of which use of the word "now" you adopt. That's because, similar to dynamic views like presentism, the time in which the speaker exists and the time of utterance are identical. So reference to individual stages can just as well be taken to be references to the time of the utterance.
Quoting noAxioms
No I do not. I am the spacetime worm that is composed of all times, not just the 2017 component of me. So much as the whole spacetime worm has the 2010 person as a temporal part, then we should expect this spatio-temporally extended being to have the 2010 joys. Also, I have no idea where this has led to dualism.
Quoting noAxioms
And you should perhaps get a better understanding of what I am saying first before making such claims. As far as I can tell, none of what you have said characterizes what I am saying even remotely, with most of your claims consisting mainly of strawmen.
Quoting noAxioms
Not really. Presentism also denies that any time other than the present exists. There are views that have a priveliged present but do not deny the entire structure of the block universe (growing-block views for example).
Quoting Mr BeeFine. The model as you explain it is clearly conflicting, as you demonstrate in your OP. The only mistake is labeling the model 'eternalism'. What you have described and driven to inconsistency is something else.
Quoting Mr BeeOK, I grant that. Growing block seems to adopt the worst features of both views. Not sure what problem is solved by the block history, but the lack of block-future seems to be an attempt to get around one's discomfort with the free will implications.
Quoting noAxioms
Again, I never made the statement that the 2010 joys are had by the 2017 temporal part. In fact, I have tried to make that point clear in my OP.
I think your objection falls into the same mistake of mixing up my claim that I am only experiencing a certain set of experiences (my P3.) as a claim that I am having a certain set of experiences at a particular time. I am simply not making the latter sort of claim.
Quoting noAxioms
Correction, what you have described and driven to inconsistency is something else unrelated to my argument. That is what I mean when I say you are making strawmen.
It doesn't matter what you 'mean.' What I am saying is that the sentence you uttered, a sentence of English, cannot mean what you are saying it does. That is just not what the words mean.
Quoting Mr Bee
If your claim is 'I only experience being at my computer during the time that I exist,' then this is clearly false – surely, you experience all sorts of other things during your life.
Quoting Mr Bee
It doesn't matter what your view is. The word 'now' is a word of English whose meaning doesn't depend on your technical view, and you are making a claim using that word based on intuitive experience. If instead you make it using technical vocabulary, as above, then it doesn't sound true anymore, so your argument isn't convincing. You're trading on the sentence sounding true intuitively in English, which trades on it not meaning what you want it to.
Quoting Mr Bee
My argument is that that is not what the word means, and you are wrong to insist that it can mean that. If you want instead to say you only experience sitting at your computer during the temporal duration of your entire existence, you should instead say that, since it means something different from your only experiencing it now. But then, that sentence isn't even plausibly true. So the argument doesn't work.
Quoting Mr Bee
So, in general you only experience sitting at your computer? No, clearly not, unless that's all you ever do.
Quoting Mr BeePoint out my inconsistency please.
--NoAxioms
In some of my philosophical moods, I kind of like the growing block idea. The 'block history' captures the idea that the past seems to be fixed. Whatever happened, happened. The idea that the block grows into the future captures the idea that the future is contingent, it doesn't exist in a fixed block-like form yet.
(I guess that the plausibility of that idea will depend on one's views on physical determinism.)
Sometimes I'm inclined to speculate about the future in vaguely quantum-mechanical terms as an almost infinite collection of superimposed possibilities. That captures the idea that the future can evolve in different ways. In this kind of scheme, the present moment would represent the 'collapse of the wave function'. And the past would be the resulting fixed actuality.
Existence is always tensed, so when, for instance, @noAxioms says "As a worm being, I exist in 2010 as much as I exist in 2017,' it's clear that something is amiss. noAxioms does not exist in 2010 though it's true (I imagine) that he existed in 2010.
But as a worm being, does he exist in 2010? No more than he existed in 2010, or will exist in 2010. But if, qua worm being, he simultaneously existed, exists, and will exist at all times (during the life of the worm being), then we're using 'exist' in an entirely novel and extremely fuzzy way.
If we can say that in an eternalist universe everything exists, we can, with as much right, say everything existed (but no longer does) or will exist (but does not yet). *
What's tacitly being done, when people get metaphysical with these models, is the smuggling in of a higher now in which this worm, as a totality, can exist. But the model was not meant to bear this kind of metaphysical load, and so becomes impossibly strained.
*Try arguing against this without unraveling the idea altogether.
The B-view is almost necessary when discussing from a block viewpoint. To say 'existed' is to reference a moment in time that the view denies. The A-view is not wrong, but leads to misleading usage of language such as:
Quoting csalisburyBut from the reference point of 2005, the 2010 version will exist, without conflict. Confusing since the language used carries an implication of a point of reference without the need to have it explicitly stated. So the verb tenses used by the A-view are inappropriate, but not incorrect.
Mr Bee is using A-references (such as ambiguous "I") in discussion of absolute things, and getting the expected conflicts. Eternalism is an objective view of time, and objective terms should be used at every step.
Quoting The Great Whatever
When I was using the term "now", I was mainly referring to the temporal manner in which we frame our experience. Earlier, you mentioned that our experience must always be anchored by a present tense. I took this as meaning that our experiences must always be framed in temporal terms, such that we must always refer to them as being had "now", and I later conceded that this was the case. In fact, I went one step further than that and argued that not only are our experiences always framed in temporal terms, but they are also always framed in spatial terms as well (which is referred to similarly by the term "here").
My disagreement with you had to do with what this temporal framing amounts to, and what we mean here when we say that our experiences must always be framed as being had "now". So much as I disputed your use of the word "now", I was disputing it on those grounds. You claimed that this "now" or "present tense" must mean that we always describe our experiences as being had "at a time" to which I disputed that claim and provided my own interpretation on what it meant.
As for how the word "now" is commonly defined in English that is for the most part irrelevant. If you want me to refer to the "now" in the sense above by a different term, then I will be happy to call it "NOW" just to distinguish it from the use of the term in English. So, when I say that my experiences must be framed in temporal and spatial terms, I will say that they must always be described as being had HERE and NOW. That better?
Quoting The Great Whatever
Why? I don't find my experience contains anything more than what I have identified. Assuming that you aren't reading this as a habitual claim, then I do not see how you can say it is clearly false without begging the question. If what you are saying that my claim about me only having an experience of being in my room is clearly false on the basis that we should have other experiences according to the worm theory, then it seems like you are already assuming that the worm view is true to begin with and using that as a basis for claiming that I am wrong.
Quoting The Great Whatever
Okay, let's just go with that then. You've been insisting that I use the present tense and I tried to comply with your demands up until this point. But if the above description is satisfactory to you then I think it would be easier to just move on instead of focusing on disputes about meaning. In fact, I am more interested in addressing your rejection of it, so let's just focus on that.
Quoting The Great Whatever
Quoting The Great Whatever
As far as I can tell the only reason why you seem to believe my claim to be false is because it is inconsistent with what the worm theory says we should experience. Surely I must experience things at different times, you have argued as according to the worm view, I have those times as parts of myself. And of course, this is clearly inconsistent with the claim that we have a limited experience.
To this, I would agree wholeheartedly with that assessment because that was the entire point of my argument from the beginning! I should have these other experiences, according to the worm view, but I simply find that I don't. Thus there is a clear tension between experience and theory here and something's gotta give. However, whereas I take this as "so much worse for the worm theory", it seems that you take the opposite conclusion from me prioritizing theory over experience, which I consider to be a wrong-headed approach.
Quoting noAxioms
Under the worm theory, I am the entity that identifies with the entire worm. There is no other entity I can be.
Quoting noAxioms
I said that they were inconsistencies on strawmen that you pointed out, not your inconsistencies.
Quoting noAxioms
Is "I" an A-theoretic term? It doesn't seem to me like it is.
What is the reference point here: "As a worm being, I exist in 2010 as much as I exist in 2017'? The answer is no reference point at all. You're using 'exist' to mean something radically different than it means in ordinary usage, while nevertheless retaining aspects of its ordinary usage.
Again, I suspect that what's happening is that a model is buckling under a metaphysical weight it was not meant to hold.
Another way to look at this:
I can say something like 'dodos once existed, but they don't any longer'
'But,' you would say, 'from a block-perspective, its not true that dodos existed, but don't any longer."
'Ok, I would say, 'then show me one.'
'Well, no,' you would say, 'they don't exist now in 2017'
'Right,' I'd say, 'they don't exist. They existed.'
'Yes,' you'd say. From the reference point 2017, they existed.'
'But since it's 2017,' I'd say, 'We can just say, simply, that they don't exist. We don't need to include the reference point'
'Yes,' you would say 'but, since it is 2017 when we say that, then that is included implicitly. @ 2017, dodos existed, but no longer exist.'
'But wait, I'd say, 'When you said 'from a block perspective it's not true that dodos no longer exist', didn't you also say that in 2017? So isn't it implicitly time-stamped in the same way, rendering it false? Since Dodos don't exist, now, in 2017?'
'Ok,' you might say, 'but I said from a block perspective.'
'So,' I'd say, 'it is both true that dodos exist and that they don't exist (any longer)'?
'It depends' you'd say 'whether you're speaking as someone in 2017 or as someone speaking from a block-perspective.'
'But both apply to you!' I'd say. 'Are you saying that you can hold two contradictory statements to be true, simply by claiming to be making use of two different perspectives? Two perspectives you're incapable of occupying separately (since, try as you will, you'll still be talking in 2017.)? I can understand two different perspectives illuminating two different aspects of something. But I don't understand how the same person can hold as true two statements so utterly contradictory as 'dodos don't exist' and 'dodos exist.' It seems like you'll have to give up one or the other!'
(Note that the conversation would have gone smooth as butter if we weren't talking about whether dodos exist, but whether 2+2=4 or the truth of the pythagorean theorem. 2=2=4 is a timeless truth, yet there's nothing contradictory about someone uttering a timeless truth in 2017)
Not at all. I believe it's false because they don't seem to be true, independent of theoretical position. If someone asked me what sorts of things I experience, I would probably say I experience all sorts of things, not just sitting at my computer.
Your entire argument therefore seems to rest on insisting that something that we would ordinarily say is false is true – that you only experience one thing, sitting at your computer. But of course you don't, you experience many other things as well.
Of course you might only experience that right now. But then... &c &c.
I think we may be at a roadblock here, but I genuinely think your argument is based on a linguistic confusion and so can't both be interesting & valid. And the block can't be overcome until you recognize at the very least that there is an obviously false construal of P3, on its habitual reading, which makes it uncompelling as a premise. Do you agree with that?
I did not insist on anything. You used the present tense yourself in making the claims. I was pointing that out to you. I have adopted no theoretical position and have not held you to comply with anything.
Quoting Mr Bee
This is emphatically not my position and I am not defending worm theory. Rather, there is no conflict between theory and experience, and a linguistic confusion is causing you to believe that there is, viz. you are not distinguishing between the habitual and simple present readings of the claim. You require the latter reading in order for it to sound plausible, but the former in order for it to be useful in your argument. There can't be any progress on this point until you recognize this fact about English.
Huh? Of course I am not saying that the sorts of things I experience is limited to sitting in a computer, if by that you mean the types of experience I tend to experience. That is not what I am saying at all.
I thought we were going with the notion of that "I only experience sitting at my computer during the temporal duration of my entire existence". Unless of course you thought that both the above notion and this one is the same, in which case I'm confused. If not, then I am still interested in why you reject that particular claim.
..Quoting The Great Whatever
I will say that I only have a certain set of experiences "right now" if by "right now" you are referring to the temporal region that I exist in (of course we can go with call it "right NOW" if you want, it doesn't matter to me). This is the closest I can get to making a statement about my experiences in general while still framing my experience within time. However, and again I must emphasize, I am not saying that I only have a certain set of experiences "right now" as in "at the time of my utterance".
In other words, so much as I am subject to a certain set of experiences only I am making the claim with regards to the whole temporal duration in which I exist (whether it be an instant or a lifetime). Is this description okay with you? Or is that something that we still have to work out?
Quoting The Great Whatever
I am still not entirely clear on what your habitual reading is referring to, but if it refers to the reading that you rejected above then of course I am willing to grant that it is obviously false if it means that much to you. Of course, that is not the P3. I am using and it never was.
So what are you saying? You're not saying that the only sort of thing you experience is being on a computer. You're not saying that all you're experiencing now is this. What other construal of your claim can there be?
Quoting Mr Bee
But this is false, given that as you just admitted, you experience other sorts of things – presumably, you experience them in the temporal duration of your existence (when else would you experience them)?
---
Quoting Mr Bee
Please explain to me how the only experience you have, during the temporal duration in which you exist, is sitting at your computer, while also you tend to have other sorts of experiences besides sitting at a computer. I literally cannot make sense of this conjunction of claims, except as a contradiction.
I meant what I described above, but yes, I used the word differently in a later post. I was using B-series terminology in saying I exist in 2010. There is no 'existed' tense at all in B-series.
What do you mean by 'presence'?
Identity. The experience of bring on the computer is not any other thing. What matters here is not the limit of you, the world or something else or even a moment in time, it's the identity of a particular thing. For any experience (or state), the extent of it is itself. For anyone, for any moment or lifetime, to have an experience of the computer is only that, no matter what else might happen or what changes might occur.
The eternalist shouldn't be afraid of the present tense. It's actually what defines their position in the end. Since any present state is only itself, time functions as a deterministic block, where any moment may be understood from any point in time.
In terms of identity, any state or experience is always the same, whether it has happened, is present or is past. Regardless of time, by its own presence, the experience of sitting at a computer is just that, no matter how many lifetimes have yet to pass (including the one of sitting at a computer!!), are present at a moment or have wilted away.
I exist. My third grandmother does not. The iceberg that takes out the Titanic exists.
All good and fine, but given that definition, how does one say that something is in the block, but has a finite temporal duration, and the reference-time is not part of that duration? If the iceberg exists period, how does it not exist in 2017? So it seems that the word 'exists' is context dependent. If no temporal reference is given, it just exists or not. But if a reference is given, the word is taken to mean the duration of the thing does not include the referenced time.
That's two different valid usages of the word depending on context. Seems reasonable, no? Else we need a separate word for the two usages. Notice that at not point do I need to fall back to a past/future-tensed usage. The iceberg exists in 1912, not existed, which would be an A-series statement.
I think the question is ill formed. By definition, there cannot be the iceberg which takes out the Titanic in 2017-- neither the Titanic nor the object it hits are present in that moment.
In the reasoning you are giving here, you are only accounting for identity in terms of the past. We realise the particular iceberg exists in 1912. But it doesn't consider the change of the future. Instead of realising any iceberg after the Titanic is a different state, a new moment, which the Titanic does not hit, you are still thinking of it as the same state and moment of the crashing Titanic.
It's not. The iceberg in question ceased to be at the end of the Titanic's crash. (and not because it broke apart or anything like that, but rather because it is a different state of time).
It illustrates that it needs to be stated up front before declaring something to exist or not.
Quoting csalisburyIt went sort of bad in those two lines. The question above mixed A and B references in the same sentence, rendering its meaning ambiguous. The reply is related to what I posted in my prior post, but not worded carefully.
A-series: Dodos went extinct. (implication that they don't exist now)
B-series without reference: Dodos exist. Jabberwockeys do not.
B with reference: Dodos are extinct after 17th century. Dodos don't exist in 200m BC.
The middle one lacks any reference to a specific time, and thus can only mean exists at some point in time.
B-series statements are never given from any perspective that one can occupy. The location of the utterance or the receiving of the statement is irrelevant to the content of the statement.
We seem to be discussing only language usage, which seems to be completely irrelevant to the validity of eternalism.
Maybe not. Does 2+2 objectively equal 4 or is that just property of this universe? OK, now we're waaay off topic.
Is that the "I" that has no experience of 2010? How does your 2017 component come by memory of that year if it is not part of your experience?
Not following this. I'm thinking of subsequent states (different icebergs??) as being the same event or state as the Titanic sinking one? I'm probably parsing you wrong here.
OK, that makes somewhat more sense, but seems to be more the identity thing that distinguishes the stage theorist from the worm theorist. We were discussing "as a worm being" which retains identity of a thing over a finite duration. Under the worm definition of identity, the iceberg continues existence after the Titanic hits it but eventually breaks up/melts.
For other reasons than any stated in this thread, I don't consider my present version to share numeric identity with my 2010 version, and thus, from a numeric identity perspective, am something like that stage theorist, but I also don't apply the label of "I" or "me" to any given state, and I think the stage theorist might do that. I was not particularly aware of the term before this thread.
- Quoting The Great Whatever
Let's say that the entire duration in which I exist is limited to an instant. During that time, I am only sitting in my room and looking at my computer. My experiences supervene upon my brain states at that time which would include all of the phenomenal states of that time. That is how (of course, we could also be the size of our entire lives as well, not just an instant). These will be what I describe to be all of the phenomenal experiences I find myself having.
NONE of this has any implications upon the question of what sort of experiences my body tends to experience, if we are asking this question in a common everyday sense like you seem to be. Now, if this were a presentist world, the entire duration I exist would change from instant to instant. Over time, I would tend to have other experiences (unless my life were merely me confined to a chair in front of a screen). Under the stage theory "I" is a label to describe the person the counterparts represent, it represents personal identity. In this sense we can also say that "I" also tends to have other experiences. The worm theory, there shouldn't be any other experiences apart from the ones they have in the above, but the above should be meaty enough to include more than just the computer experiences.
Clearer now? We are not going to make any progress unless you see the difference between these two and drop the habitual talk.
Quoting noAxioms
For the last time no. If I just said that I am the temporal worm, the temporal worm that I said should have an experience of 2010 as a result of it being a part.
So you tend to experience other experiences? How, then, is the only experience you have of sitting at your computer?
Quoting The Great Whatever
Have you even read my post? I literally just explained how in the paragraph above it.
1) I only experience sitting in front of my computer
2) I tend to have other sorts of experiences
?
I ask because your position is not clear to me.
What could possibly not be clear about it? If my doctor asks me if I am in pain, I find myself not to be in pain at all, and I tell him I am not. Would he suddenly be confused thinking that I am saying that I tend not to have experiences of pain?
If it means anything, please tell me, specifically, how the two statements contradict.
I accept 1) and 2).
If you are unsure why I think this, change 1) to 'I only ever...' Do you still assent to it?
Let's just assume a presentist world again. There is nothing contradictory in saying the following:
- My experience during the entire time I exist (which in this case is an instant) only includes me sitting in my room.
- I also tend to experience other experiences apart from me sitting in my room (since as time passes, my experiences will change).
Again, if you can tell me how they contradict each other, I would greatly appreciate it.
This is not possible since you only exist for an instant.
You cannot both have only one sort of experience, and tend to have different sorts of experiences.
In this paragraph you enjoin us to assume that the existence of the experiencing subject is restricted to a moment in time. This is an assumption that distinguishes stage theory from worm theory. If this assumption is thus built into your premise P3, that would make your argument in favor of stage theory circular.
That is literally the presentist viewpoint. Are you telling me the presentist view is inherently contradictory?
Do you not see why it is a contradiction to claim that you have only one sort of experience, and that you tend to have many kinds of experience? This, so far as I can tell, is what you are claiming.
Where did I assume that? Can you quote the phrase?
"Let's say that the entire duration in which I exist is limited to an instant."
Well, what you were asking about happens to be the presentist position (and no, I am not saying here it is my position, in case you were wondering). That is just what the view states.
Perhaps we are not properly understanding each other. I said earlier that I did not understand you habitual claim fully. Can you please, in specific detail, explain what that means. At the same time, explain what you think having a certain set of experiences only at the time you exist means?
Quoting Mr Bee
That was an example to make things easier to understand. That was not my view or built into my P3. I am willing to initially assume in my OP that our existence can be any duration of time (stage theory or worm theory), whatever it happens to be.
The simple present in English typically has a habitual reading. This is a fact about English, and has nothing to do with any metaphysical position.
For instance, if I say, 'I smoke,' it means that I smoke habitually, not that I am smoking at the time of utterance.
Likewise, if I say 'I experience x,' this might mean I do so habitually. For example, I might say, 'I experience fright whenever I walk alone at night.' And if someone asks me, 'what do you experience?' I might answer, 'I experience all sorts of things: joy, pain, frustration, anger...' and this is not to be read that I am experiencing all of those things now, but rather that habitually I experience all of them.
Read this way, the sentence, 'I only experience sitting at my computer' is patently false, since there are many other things I experience. Note that this has nothing to do with any metaphysical assumptions: this is simply a way the English sentence can be read, and on that reading I take it to be uncontroversial that such a claim (that I only experience being at my computer, etc.) is obviously false.
--
Quoting Mr Bee
I don't know – this sounds like a technical notion. I know what it means to have an experience, and to have an experience at a certain time.
Yes, that might have been your intent in the original post of this thread. (Your argument, back then, seemed to hinge on something like the synthetic unity of experience). But, just now, you had offered this as an explanation (for The Great Whatever) as to why you only are experiencing sitting at your computer, while excluding other experiences had at earlier or later times in your life. You also meant to insist that your intention wasn't simply to restrict reference to what you are experiencing now, but rather to what you are experiencing while you exist. This argument, which doesn't appeal to the idea of synthetic unity of experience anymore, now seems to hinge on a restriction of the temporal scope of your existence. And this is what distinguishes stage theory from worm theory.
The way you are restricting identity seems awfully arbitrary. It would seem less arbitrary to expand it to the universal or atomize it all the way to something like a single bit of information or a smallest possible particle of matter for Planck time. Any notion of identity having some finite span, be it temporal, spatial, or something else, is problematically arbitrary. Why so much? Why so little? Is there some kind of magical boundary around what you consider yourself to be? Can it grow or shrink?
And then you have the mystery of why you happen to find yourself being this part of things and not another. And if it is possible for you to not be most of the stuff in the world, why is that non-identity so incomplete? Why not slip off the world altogether, being completely non-identical with all of it, such that the world is entirely other and you don't exist at all? If it is possible for you to fail to be most of the world, how did you manage not to fail to be part of it at all?
I think it far simpler to think that there is exactly one single experiencer for which everything is immediately present. Identities only seem restricted because the information isn't fully integrated between all the parts of the world. For example, even though that which experiences everything going on in your brain is also that which experiences everything going on in my brain, no memories from your brain are found in mine, and so over here, I don't "remember" having been over there.
Imagine that there is an amnesiac named Joe who has only a small bit of functional short term memory and no long term memory. We put him in a room with a chalk board and have him record what he observes in that room on that board. If we ask him what he has experienced, he reads back what he has written on the board. If we move him to a second room with another board, he will record different experiences there and have no access to the memories on the board in the previous room. So despite the fact that it is the same guy in each room, he has no idea about his other life in the other room. He can't integrate information between the rooms. But this doesn't mean that we are dealing with two separate selves.
While I don't think that we are some detachable perspective thing that moves between brains, our situation is somewhat analogous. The true experiencer is everywhere at once and possibly at all times. But information integration comes in clusters inside this experiential field that are fragmented to varying degrees.
Memory constitutes a sort of information integration across time, between brain states. The present contains information about the past. Perhaps just as experiencing visual redness is what it is like to integrate information in a certain way, experiencing the flow of time is what it is like to integrate temporal information in a certain way.
One interesting thing to note is that there is an asymmetry in apparent identity across time that results from limitations in the availability of information. I feel myself to be the same person as my past self, but I don't feel myself to be identical with my unknown future self in the same way. It is a little like my failure to realize that I am also you. I have almost zero information about myself as an old man. The uncertainty is huge. But I have lots of information about my past self earlier today. And the story I tell myself about myself, from which I construct my falsely limited identity, comes from precisely this limited information that I have access to. Culture also plays a part in telling us how we ought to think of ourselves as distinct individuals. The idea of a soul has particularly strong influence on this self-conception even if we've abandoned traditional religious views.
And perhaps the reason we feel time to be flowing "forwards" is just a result of this information asymmetry. I remember the past, but not the future. The present brain state contains something of an echo of a previous one, but not of the next one.
If we could somehow integrate all the information, we would realize that we are everything. I strongly suspect that if we were to link up our brains in a highly integrated way, similar to the level of integration in a single brain, we wouldn't feel ourselves to be two separate selves in close contact, each with access to the other's brain. Rather, we would feel ourselves to be a single bound mind in the same way as we feel as a network of 100 billion highly integrated neurons spanning a single brain. There are no homunculi sitting in each of our brains that would find themselves as co-pilots in the newly joined larger brain..
The thing is, we know that we have experience that is bound and has at least some span across part of the universe, including many parts. Otherwise our experience would be atomized into tiny experiential fragments, something like the mind dust that William James described. These fragments couldn't have any particular experiential character due to their lack of integration. Seeing red, for example, requires not just detecting red light, but also at the same time registering that neither green nor blue are detected and integrating all this. A red sensing cone alone cannot distinguish between pure red light and white light. And when we see white light, we don't see red. The very visualness requires further integration as well. So you coudn't have an atom of red visual experience. You need span and integration in order to have red visual experience.
And I think we can be sure that we span multiple moments in time. Otherwise, I don't see how we would have any sense of change. So I think we can rule out the atomized end of the identity spectrum. And anything else besides universal identity is hopelessly arbitrary and fraught with problems.
All puzzles of identity are solved in one fell swoop when you realize that you are everything. You just have to accept that you have many windows through which to look out on yourself, each with a limited view. And you may never tie it all together such that you realize you are looking through them all at once.
And you are nothing like a worm. As far as life on this planet goes, you are the whole tree of life, branching, branching, branching. Remember that in block time, this body of yours is literally physically sprouting from that of your mother, and hers from her mother, and hers from hers, all the way back. Why draw some imaginary line between yourself and your mother? And of course, you aren't just the biology and you aren't limited to this planet. Further, you might even inhabit all of the branches of Everett's Many Worlds in all of the many universes produced by eternal inflation!
Sorry, but I am afraid I still have no idea where you derive your contradiction from, and am probably as confused as you are. Maybe I haven't taken enough time to absorb your definition, but as far as I can tell, I don't see how it could be relevant to what I am saying.
Quoting The Great Whatever
Can you explain what "I only experience sitting at my computer" would mean under the habitual view? I just want to get a clearer idea on what you take this to be.
Quoting The Great Whatever
Do you need me to explain it to you again? If you don't understand what it means, then why have you been insisting that it was contradictory with your habitual claim?
Quoting Pierre-Normand
Not sure if you understood the context in which I was giving that explanation, but I was trying to explain what having only having a set of experiences at the duration in which we exist would mean, and how it is different from his habitual claim, cause TGW considers them both to be contradictory for some reason. I was not advancing an actual argument at that point.
Something like, 'in general, the only thing I experience is sitting at my computer' or 'the only thing I ever experience is sitting at my computer.'
It's not a 'view,' it's an ordinary way of interpreting that sentence. Again, think about the sentence, 'I smoke.' What does that mean?
Quoting Mr Bee
I have merely been pointing out that it is a contradiction to believe you only experience one thing, and tend to experience other things as well. I'm not sure why you don't see this as a contradiction – yet this is what you seem to believe.
Quoting The Great Whatever
Can you clarify further what "the only thing I ever experience is sitting at my computer"? Sorry, I am still trying to make sure you mean what I think you mean.
(Also, I take it that my use of the word "general" earlier when saying that I only experience sitting in my room "in general" may have led you to believe that I was making some kind of habitual claim, given that you mention it in your description. Is that correct?)
Quoting The Great Whatever
But you don't know what the former really means apparently, at least to the point where you can't explain what it means to you when I asked. That is why I am confused when you so confidently claim that they are contradictory.
Again, there is no "habitual view." It is a fact of English grammar that simple present sentences can be read habitually (as well as sometimes being anchored to the time of utterance). I do not know of any other way to read the sentences you've said – and since neither reading seems to be what you want, I have no idea what you're claiming.
I just see no sense at all in claiming 1) I only experience one sort of thing, and 2) I experience many sorts of things. Yet this seems to be what you're committed to.
I think the distinction between the worm theorist and stage theorist is suspect. The crashing of the Titanic happened over a finite duration. If we stick to the distinction strictly, the so called stage theroist who isolates a crashing Titanic is effectively posing a worm when we examine just how many finite instances are involved with the accident-- the hitting the iceberg, beginning to sink, and so on, to give a simple example.
If we are to have an account which fits, the worm and stage must be complementary rather than opposed. The Titanic has to be both a stage (not crashed, crashing, after the crash) and a worm (a particular object with a past and future). Otherwise, we cannot say it is the Titanic which was steaming along unhindered, only to change to make contact with an iceberg, and then alter again into a sinking wreck.
In other words: a worm must be a function of many stages, an expression which not any particular stage or moment, given across many stages which are never each other. (e.g. Titanic steaming along, crashing Titanic, wrecked Titanic).
Quoting The Great Whatever
Most likely that we're talking past each other, but I have tried to clarify what I meant by both sentences so what the terms I use mean normally in English shouldn't be relevant, at least not anymore. I am still not sure how much more clearer I can be on that front.
Okay, let me give you an idea of what I think you mean when you make that statement. The way I see it, according to you, the phrase "the only thing I ever experience is sitting at my computer" means "I don't occasionally experience anything else other than this experience of sitting in my computer". The opposite of this claim seems to be that "I occasionally experience other things other than my computer experience". For instance, on one occasion, I may experience being outside, and another in the shower. Of course, my body is free to walk around and go outside, there is nothing stopping me from getting in the shower, and most of us are subject to these situations all the time so this seems obviously true.
Thus, when you see me making the above claim the image that probably came to your mind is something like a vegetable strapped to a chair in front of a computer screen forced to live out their entire life in that room. In that case, we would say that such a person does not occasionally experience anything other than being in that room. Of course that is an extreme view to take and it is obviously false (though it could be true though since someone could be like that (which you seem to admit one time earlier) but highly unlikely).
Is this a good description on what you mean?
Quoting The Great Whatever
I have tried proposing that it could be "anchored" to the temporal region of the one making the utterance (which may or may not be bigger than the time in which you make that utterance), but I am not sure if you accepted that reading or if you just treated it as one of the two readings above. Or you could also just not understand what it means, which seems to be the case so far.
It is relevant because you are appealing to intuition for the truth of an English sentence and presenting your argument in English. P3 and whatever variations of it you might want to use seem to be either not plausibly true, or not relevant for the conclusion you want to draw.
Quoting The Great Whatever
So even if I clarify what I mean on the specific terms I use, you will still insist on reading them at face value?
Quoting The Great Whatever
Maybe it is, but even so, I am still not sure why you think that is. Let me repeat once more the version of P3. that I have been proposing:
P3. I find that I am only experiencing sitting in my room during the temporal duration in which I exist. (This is what I find through introspection upon my direct experience)
So far, I still am not clear on what you think about this. I understand why the habitual claim is false (or at least, what I take to be the habitual claim. I can't be sure because you don't seem to be interested in telling me if my description in the last post matches yours), and I can also understand how saying that I only experience sitting in my room "at the time of this utterance" won't work for the purposes of my argument. However, I have still not heard a strong enough rebuttal to the above, even though it is clear that you think that it is wrong.
Do you think it is ill defined? Are the meanings of the individual words used incorrectly? Is it implausible? Is it irrelevant? Do you think this collapses to either the habitual claim or a claim that is actually about the a single time of utterance? Or do you just not understand it?
Even if this sort of claim is completely wrong, I have no idea why you think it is wrong, and because of that I can't respond to your criticisms. Who knows, maybe I'll change my mind if you point out my mistakes, or maybe I'll still think your interpretation is mistaken, but so far, you haven't addressed what I am saying here in any direct manner. The best that I've heard is at best indirect and ambiguous. In some cases, it seems you object to it on grounds of meaning. On others, you seem to object to it as being implausible, and other times you seem to take it as a version of the habitual view.
So please, if you could give me your thoughts on this particular claim, and specifically why it fails, then I will be probably be convinced by your argument. Otherwise I'll just feel like what you've been saying is irrelevant.
But this seems prima facie false, assuming only that your existence extends both to the past and to the future (or even, only to the past). It only appears true under the assumption that your own existence is restricted to the duration of your present experience. But this assumption seems to build stage theory onto your premise P3. (Or, more precisely, it builds into P3 a feature of stage theory that distinguishes it from worm theory).
Quoting Pierre-Normand
Just because my existence would extend throughout my entire life, that doesn't suddenly invalidate it. The only way in which I would believe it to be wrong is if we assume that any such claims regarding the contents of my experience must strictly refer to a single time. However, in that case, you would be the one making the assumption about the sorts of claims that I make.
Here I am only making a claim about the contents of my experience in general, without making explicit reference to any particular part of my experience. If this sort of claim would have to be framed temporally, then the only manner which makes sense to me is to say that it would refer to the entire temporal duration in which I (the person having those experiences) exist, not a specific temporal part. How long such a duration could be could very well vary depending on one's theory of time, but regardless of whether that duration is an instant or a lifetime, it shouldn't matter.
So one uses whichever language for is appropriate for the concept being conveyed at the time. I can speak of the reasonably momentary event when the Titanic disappeared entirely below the waterline, or the draw out worm event of the tragedy, or the duration of the Titanic as a whole which had no obvious beginning or end. "See this grease-spot region of somewhat higher mineral density on this (year 3000) map of the ocean floor? That's the Titanic." A true statement I guess, but then when does it stop being the Titanic? I actually chose the iceberg itself as my example because it was one we all know, and it is something that clearly has no stage component in 2017.
You use whichever form is convenient. I deny numeric identity of something like the Titanic between the various stages of the Titanic. For one thing, what happened to that identity when the two halves separated? Yet I use the worm form as a language concept that conveys real meaning.
Is the crashing Titanic the same one as the steaming Titanic? Certainly two stages chosen from those to states are not the same stage, but are they stages of the same thing? Is a worm an identity? I have a very strange answer to those questions, which is no, the various stages are not of the same numeric identity of Titanic, but they are stages of the same identity of worm. In my view, there is a 1-1 correspondence between a worm and a stage, it being the stage at which the worm ends, and the stage only being defined from a reference point in that stage's future. All the stages making up the worm are part of it, but do not share numeric identity with the worm, since they don't share that identity with each other.
I probably didn't state that very clearly. I have spotty time to respond right now.
If you clarify what you mean, then the sentence may lose its intuitive plausibility: that is the gamble one takes when moving from an intuitively plausible premise to one spelled out in technical jargon. Though I'm not sure you have clarified what you mean, yet. I still don't understand the claim.
Quoting Mr Bee
But this just doesn't even sound true. For my own case, I don't find that at all – I find that I experience many things while I exist: yesterday, for example, I existed, and I experienced being on the L-train, and not at my computer, as I experience myself being now.
I don't know what to make of the present progressive 'am experiencing.' The present progressive is clearly anchored to the speech time, so again, the only way I can read it is as something like 'am experiencing now,' which again, is confusingly what you've insisted you don't mean. As for 'am experiencing during the entire time I exist,' this just seems like word salad to me – the only way I can make sense of it is to draw the bizarre implication that I only exist right now, and that's the only thing I experience right now. But then, you've said you don't want to assume any bizarre / presentistic premises for your argument.
Do you see why the weird use of English makes this impossible to understand? Once you clarify, it will probably not be plausible. I am not sure how to parse your claim, and so I can't tell you what I think about it. If it's supposed to be an intuitive truth based on introspective evidence, surely I should be able to recapitulate your conclusion? But my guess is if you asked most people this question, they would either not know what you're talking about (because 'am experiencing during the entire time that I exist' sounds like word salad without the aforementioned bizarre implication, and in any case the notion that one intuits directly how long one exists for, and what one experiences for their entire existence, is wildly implausible), or they would construe it as anchored to the present (and so not serviceable to your argument) or possibly habitually if you drop the progressive (and so false).
First off, thank you for responding to my request. Because of that, I now have a better understanding of your objections so hopefully the conversation can continue from there.
Quoting The Great Whatever
You seem to be equating "the temporal duration in which I exist", with "my entire life". This is a fact that is only true under certain theories of time. For instance, under the worm theory, we are temporal worms, and are extended through our entire lives, but under presentism and also the stage theory, we are only limited to a single time, which of course is not what we would consider our entire life (note that I am not endorsing presentism here). The use of the former was meant to be neutral with respect to those theories of time.This was the reason why I have assumed presentism in my earlier example, to make clear the distinction between the meanings of both.
Quoting The Great Whatever
Earlier, I said that your saying that your use of A-theoretic terms in the sense above is wrong-headed because we are talking about situations where one is assuming Eternalism. You apparently weren't sure about what to make of that then, but let me try to expand upon what I mean when I said that.
Technically, under eternalism, all times are equal. Time in this case is very much like space here, to the point where it has often been said by eternalists that time is literally the fourth dimension of space. This is why terms such as "will" experienced" that you mentioned earlier make no sense because under a theory in which there is no flow of time, there is no sense in which an even "will" happen. It at best is described as being "later" than other events just as much as a location in space can be described to the "right" of another. It has sometimes been said that eternalism is sort of like presentism in the sense that technically, under A-theoretic terms, everything is "now". The block universe would not be fundamentally different from a glorified present moment, sans the flow of time, which contains all facts about the universe from beginning to end. All times, existing on a par, can also be said to be "present" in an A-theoretic sense as well.
So much as you are saying we use the present tense in an argument, assuming by that you mean the common A-theoretic version of the term, it doesn't mean what you normally think it means unlike common everyday situations, because the situation under the worm theory is quite alien to our usual understanding of things passing from moment to moment through the flow of time.
It is for this reason why I find unjustified the assumption that my claims about my experience must be anchored to a specific time of speech, when the one making the claim is a temporally extended worm. It makes as much sense as saying that "here" means "the specific place of the utterance itself" for us beings who are spatially extended (which is a fact that holds for all theories of time). Even if claims about our experiences must always be confined to a specific time of our entire lives, assuming that we should experience all of them together, then that fact should at least figure explicitly in the sort of judgement I make (that is, I should understand when I am talking about a part of my experience and not the whole. Saying that I have an experience at a temporal part would be no different from saying that I have a pain in a specific part of my body). So the problem, as I see it so far, is that you were neglecting the fact that our discussion is done within the context of eternalism and are interpreting facts in a manner that conforms to our everyday sense of time.
If I can intuit from my introspective experience "The only thing I experience during the time in which I exist is sitting at my computer, etc.," and the truth of this requires that stage theory be true, it follows that I can intuit from my own introspective experience that stage theory is true. But I can intuit no such thing – so you must have made a mistake. Or, if you like, I can't intuit from my introspective experience how long I exist for. Yet if I can't intuit this, then I can't know what "the time in which I exist" is, and so I cannot intuit the truth of any such proposition as "The only thing I experience during the time in which I exist is..."
If the very question under discussion is whether or not I exist for more than the present, then you cannot appeal to a premise in your argument that requires for its truth that this holds. This is begging the question.
As for the claim read as an ordinary claim of English, which is what I take it must be to prove useful in this argument, I cannot understand it as meaning anything but my entire life. It is only if I take 'exist' in some special, technical sense, that I can read 'I will not exist a minute from now' as true. As the word 'exist' is used in English, I will exist a few minutes from now so long as I don't die.
Quoting Mr Bee
But the word "will" does make sense. So either eternalism is false, or your characterization of it is. I'm guessing the latter – I'm sure eternalists have reasonable semantic proposals for "will."
Quoting Mr Bee
This is, so far as I can tell, nonsense – it's not possible for all times to be at the same time, since to be different times is precisely for them not to be (at) the same time. So either eternalism is nonsense, or your construal of it is false. My guess is the latter. My guess is the eternalist would say that all times are on a par in some sense, but not in a temporal sense, i.e. that they're all 'at the same time,' any more than all spaces are 'at the same space.' This simply makes no sense.
Quoting Mr Bee
I mean the present tense as it is used in the English language, which is the language in which you are making your claims.
Quoting Mr Bee
If you do not want to so anchor them, you must not make them in English using the present progressive. For that is what that grammatical construction will do, regardless of your intentions or theoretical assumptions. You must cast them in some non-English or quasi-English technical vocabulary, or find some way to avoid using that tense.
Quoting The Great Whatever
Nope. It could also mean that presentism is true as well, but that is if you are not an eternalist. Technically, the worm theory can still be true, if we consider spacetime worms to be instant sized. Of course that option sounds ridiculous.
Quoting The Great Whatever
So far as I can tell, I am not introspecting upon a part of my experience, the way, say, I consider a colour patch on the left side of my vision to be a part of my phenomenal experience. In fact, it doesn't seem like the specific experiences of sitting in my room are a part of any larger experience at all. So it seems like I am referring to my total experiences, which would, by definition, include all of my experiences that occur at every time I exist, however long that may be.
Note that none of the above assumes the truth or falsity of the worm theory. Under the worm theory, that total experience should include my other life experiences, but does what I consider to be my total experience match up with that?
Quoting The Great Whatever
I don't think anything I can say would help convince you, since not knowing anything about eternalism yourself we are at the point where you will just assume that I am mistaken. So here is a quote from Stanford:
And here is some random guy I found online saying what I would say:
[quote= "Aron Wall"]
Saying "all times exist now" is really shorthand for "The [Eternalist] ascribes to the Past and Future the same type of reality which the A-theorist only ascribes to the Present."
[/quote]
Not authoritative, I know, but still I am not the only person making claims like this.
Quoting The Great Whatever
It's not that I do not want to anchor them. I will have to make statements in the sense you ascribe as far as I can tell. It is just the idea that it has to be "anchored to the speech time" that I find objectionable. There are other senses of what "now" could mean, as the Stanford article mentions, so I don't see why it should necessarily refer to the time of utterance.
No, since you'll exist tomorrow and existed yesterday and had experiences then as well.
Quoting Mr Bee
I'm being polite. What you quoted is more lucid than what you said.
Quoting Mr Bee
I didn't invent the English language. That's how it works.
Quoting Mr Bee
Those senses are not how the word is used in the English language. So if you want to use them in a non-standard way, you must flag to begin with what you are using a different, technical language, and define its terms, and state your premises in that language. In a word, you must say 'by "now," I don't actually mean "now," but xyz...'
Quoting The Great Whatever
Personally, it seems like the ontological now is more basic than the sense of "now" in terms of temporal location (but I am not saying it is how the english term is used mind you), but whatever.
Now do you accept it as a way of making my claims, as something that is framed in this "quasi-English" technical sense? If so, then let's just go with the ontological sense of "now" and call it "NOW" just to be absolutely clear.
Quoting The Great Whatever
Are those other times which have those experiences a part of me right NOW? If not, then they don't count.
A presentist would consider their total experience to be limited to the one existing present, so it would only be limited to their time of utterance. A stage theorist would have those times exist, but they wouldn't be considered parts of themselves either, any more than a random stranger would be considered a part of who they are.
Under the worm theory, those other times should be a part of me NOW (since they exist, in an ontological sense), so so much as I am talking about my total experiences, they should, assuming the worm theory, include experiences of all these times.
According to worm theory, those future and past experiences would be experiences had by stages of yourself that are part or you now in the ontological sense of "now". They are not experiences had by you now in the ordinary sense of "now" (i.e. the temporal location sense of "now"). Let us use "now-o" (ontological) and now-tl (temporal location) to disambiguate those two senses as distinguished by the eternalist theorist. Provided that you don't equivocate between those two senses, then it seems that P3 asserts that you are not experiencing anything other than sitting at your computer now-tl. But it doesn't follow from this introspectible fact that you aren't experiencing other things now-o. In fact, you are experiencing now-o everything that you experienced in the past or will experience in the future, according to the worm theorist. Of course, you can not know this on the basis of your introspective experience now-tl alone. But you can know it on the basis of your reflection on the meaning of "now-o", your memory of your own past experiences, and your expectations regarding your own future experiences.
Quoting Pierre-Normand
Under the worm-theory, those experiences of being at my computer are had as part of a larger experience which includes other times. But simply put, it doesn't seem like I do have those experiences as a part, they just feel like they are had in general, as the totality of what I experience in an unrestricted sense (or you could say, in ontological terms).
Now you could continue to insist that I am just wrong my statement, and that what I "really" am claiming is actually restricted to a time, that fact happening to be simply beyond my ability to even notice (which is why I don't mention it), but I see absolutely no reason why I should accept your words over my own, especially since I am the one having those experiences. In other words, it seems like you are just rejecting my claims and trying to fabricate some other claim about what I am "really saying" in its place, begging the question.
For instance, you claim that I am experiencing a pain in my right foot. I say that I am not experiencing any such pain at all. In fact, I would say that I find that I am not having any sort of pain experience in general (in any part of my body) because that is just what I find through introspection. If you were to claim that "no, when you said that you weren't experiencing any pain at all, you were "really" saying that you weren't experiencing any pain in your left arm (or any body part that doesn't include your right foot). This is still compatible with you having a pain in your right foot", then I see no reason why I should take your word over mine and I don't think you would be convinced either of that response either if you were me. If you disagree with my reply then I am interested to hear what you think of it.
There is no 'ontological' sense of 'now,' if by 'now' you mean the English word. If you do not mean this word, then why not make up a new one so as to be less confusing, and spell out what this new word means?
Quoting Mr Bee
You can make whatever claim you like – but it won't make more true the claim that you or I can intuit such a thing from our introspective experience. I intuit that right now I only experience such-and-such, but not that I exist only right now, or all that I experience is that. So I see no plausibility in the premise.
Quoting Mr Bee
I really don't know how to answer this question, because I'm not sure what it means. How can a time be a part of a person? It seems like a category error.
What I do know is that, unless I die, I'll exist tomorrow, and experience something else. So I'm not in the least inclined to believe that whatever I'm experiencing right now is all that I experience (or will/have experience(d)) while I exist.
Quoting Mr Bee
They do include experiences of all such times; it's just that the future ones will happen latter. Obviously.
Quoting The Great Whatever
I just did. It's called NOW, in accord with the Stanford definition of "existing in the domain of our most unrestricted quantifiers", that they themselves call the ontological sense of now.
Quoting The Great Whatever
Really? Sure seems like I do. Not sure about you though.
Of course, I mean that in the sense of NOW. If what you are saying is that the you that exists in every possible sense of the word (NOW) does not exhaust who you are, then I am interested in what else you consider yourself to be since frankly I find that claim implausible. Of course, it could also be that you are still insisting upon "now" as in "the specific time of this utterance". I highly suspect this is the case.
Quoting The Great Whatever
Please. The "you" tomorrow and the "you" yesterday. Do they exist in any ontological sense, and are they are part of you NOW? The answer to that would again depend upon the theory of time you adopt.
Tell me, what is your stance on the philosophy of time?
Quoting The Great Whatever
Great then. My argument is that I simply find nothing of the sort in my experience.
I don't know what this means. How many senses of existing are there? I know I exist. I know that sitting here etc. is all I experience right now. But I'm also reasonably sure that I will exist tomorrow, and that tomorrow I will experience other things. Therefore I in no way intuit that what I experience right now exhausts all my experience during the time I exist.
What is wrong with this, or do you intuit something different?
Quoting Mr Bee
That doesn't tell me anything. Is it an adverbial? A predicate? Use it in a sentence, or give me an idea of what it means to 'exist in the most unrestricted sense.' Do other things exist 'in a restricted sense?'
Quoting Mr Bee
The 'me' tomorrow and the 'me' yesterday are just me. And I would say that I existed, do exist, and will exist. I don't know what it would mean for 'them' to be a part of 'me.' Can I be part of myself? I suppose, trivially. Those times, at which I did exist and will exist, are parts of my life.
Presumably, the answer I adopt will depend on what's true!
Quoting Mr Bee
But you had found them before, and will find them later. See how that works?
Quoting The Great Whatever
You know how eternalism says that the past and future exist while the presentist doesn't? Of course, you don't need to take my word that that is what those views entail.
Quoting The Great Whatever
Eternalism says that the past and future exist just as much as the present does. Or to quote someone else:
And for the record, "real" = "exists".
Quoting The Great Whatever
And see, that sounds very much like you are an A-theorist. I did mention earlier that those terms don't make sense without a flow of time (as the eternalist worm theorist asserts there isn't). That is simply because "will' and "existed" as A-theoretic terms are simply incompatible with a theory that rejects the A-theory of time!
Quoting The Great Whatever
Fine then. Which theory of time do you think is true?
Quoting The Great Whatever
Again, those terms make no sense under eternalism if we are talking about them in A-theoretic terms. You keep saying that they do but apparently you don't know yourself. So either read up on what Eternalism says, or stop making claims about what you think it should say.
This is not what I was asking. I was asking what this word, NOW, you've made up, means. This does not help. You need to use it in sentences.
Quoting Mr Bee
The terms "will" and "existed" make perfect sense, regardless of what theory you subscribe to.
Quoting Mr Bee
I have no particular opinion on the matter, and it should make no difference since presumably your argument should have some sort of force without prior commitment to a metaphysical thesis.
Quoting Mr Bee
But the terms do make sense, full stop, as anyone who knows English can see. Besides, why should I have to subscribe to some bizarre metaphysical theory for your argument about what you claim you can intuit introspectively to make sense? If asked what I experience, prior to any such commitment, that is how I respond. I certainly don't intuit that what I experience now is all I experience "for the duration of my existence," or any such thing.
Quoting The Great Whatever
Okay, Eternalism says that the past, the future and the present are all NOW. According to the block universe, every event from the Big Bang to whatever the end of the Universe is like exists NOW. This is in contrast to presentism, which says that only the present moment exists NOW. The Growing Block theory says that the past from the Big Bang to the present exist NOW.
Quoting The Great Whatever
If you really aren't interested in learning what the theories are, then I am not sure if I can even have a proper conversation. Even the everyday presentist viewpoint wouldn't make sense to you (which may be the case since earlier it seemed liked you did) if you just insist on taking the claims at face value regardless of clarification. I can't do anything about that. Sorry.
Quoting The Great Whatever
So you say. But that is simply just wrong.
I am not sure why the worm theorist ought to be committed to that. She is committed to the temporal stages of a person being parts of that person. Those stages add up mereologically to a worm and the person is numerically identical with this worm. But it doesn't follow that experiences had by that person at different stages make up a unified experience. Likewise, my organs and limbs are part of me. But it doesn't follow that my organs are part of a unique super-organ or that my limbs are part of a super-limb. It is the stages of the subject of the experiences that are parts of the whole person (i.e. worm) according to worm theory, not necessarily the experiences themselves.
Here is another way to put the point. Having an experience is tantamount to one being in cognitive contact with some determinate aspect of one's perceptible environment (in such a way that the elements of this experiences display a synthetic unity). This is similar to one being in physical contact with a material object. One can be in contact with different objects at different times. The worm theorist is committed to the idea that she is ('now'-ontologically) in contact with all the objects her different stages have been (are, and will be) in contact with. But she is not at all committed to the idea of there being a unique object that is the mereological sum of all the objects she, as a worm, is in contact with. All of those commitments (and lack thereof) are justified by her conception of continuants and her theory of time, and are quite independent of whatever is available to her through introspection at various times.
Alright – I still don't really get it. I don't know what the difference between a past time 'existing' versus not. It seems to me to be a confusion about the way we talk about time using tense. For example, past events happened, individuals that once were alive but are now dead did exist but don't anymore, and so on. Certainly we make reference to past times – does that mean they 'exist?' I don't know, since I don't know what it means for a time to 'exist.' What's more, the word 'exist' has to be used tensed, in reference to some time, so the very notion that a time exists may even be confused – or at least that is not how we usually use these words.
As for this NOW thing, I'm trying to grasp from your usage what it means and I can't. I can say things like, 'there was a time when...' or 'there will be a time when...' Perhaps even 'there existed a time when...' etc. So perhaps the obvious thing to say is that past times existed, and future times will exist? Is this a case of existing in 'the general' sense of NOW? But then, NOW seems to have nothing to do with 'now,' since it covers all times not just now.
Quoting Mr Bee
Isn't this thread about your argument? Do I have to accept some sort of metaphysical theory in order for your argument to make sense / be valid / be persuasive? I'm a little lost as to your rhetorical strategy.
Is your claim about what you can intuit, and the resulting P3, something that only people who accept a certain metaphysical theory can intuit?
Quoting Mr Bee
Whether the word "will" makes sense isn't contingent on any metaphysical theory, since we already observe that it makes sense independent of any such theorizing. It is an empirical fact that such words have a meaning, we know how to use them, etc.
Quoting Pierre-Normand
At this point, you are objecting to my P2. To me, P2. seems like the straightforward consequence of being an entity that consists of parts which each individually has experiences of their own. I can imagine what it is like to have two limbs without having a super-limb and similarly have multiple organs without a super organ, perhaps because the way they are defined restricts what an organ or a limb can be. But the problem is that the same can't be said for our experience. I can't possibly imagine currently being subject to multiple experiences without being subject to all of them together. What would it even be like for you to now have two experiences, and not have a larger experience that contains them both? That just seems like a basic feature of having multiple experiences in a unified consciousness.
SImilarly, if I have the property of being a man and I also have a property of being over 20, then I have the property of being both a man and over 20. Maybe you don't accept this, but if you think that any two properties cannot be said to be had together, then it would seem to give way to seemingly contradictory situations. I can be a bachelor and I can also have a property of being married, but there won't be a contradiction because I don't have the impossible property of being a married bachelor. In a sense, married bachelors can exist, but of course, this all sounds incredibly strange. As well, I would argue against the idea that I am having an experience of being in excruciating pain, and an experience of complete pleasure without saying that I have them both as not making sense.
Furthermore, while I cannot imagine a super-limb or a super-organ in any case, I can imagine a complex experience being made up of smaller experiences. Any complex experience that we would describe, such a visual image of the Mona Lisa to tasting fine wine while hearing classical music can be made sense of. In fact, it seems that experiences do seem to necessarily combine together when we consider things spatially (and this is something that all theorists on time should agree upon). We are spatially extended bodies, consisting of a complex set of sensory organs each giving rise to particular experiences that we all now have. But it doesn't seem like I have multiple separate experiences of, say, a pain in my right leg or a buzzing in my ears separately. It seems like I have a single unified experience that consists of these smaller experiences as experiential parts (I have an experience of a pain in my right leg and a buzzing in my ears). In fact I can't imagine not having them in such a manner either. So if experiences necessarily combine together over space, then the question is why should we make an exception with time? Now you may argue that time isn't like space, but they are very similar to one another, and to me they are similar enough to make analogies like this have some force (and it would be even more convincing if you are an eternalist who considers time to be just another dimension of space).
(Sorry if the above came out messy. My computer somehow decided to post it while I typing)
That is actually a problem for presentism. If certain events from the past don't exist NOW, how can we say they are true? Eternalists and Growing Block theorists have a way of accounting for claims about the past, because there is a truth-maker represented by his existence at that time that they can refer to NOW. Presentists, however, don't have that luxury. So if you find yourself confused here, then you aren't alone. The fact that we can still apparently refer to events that don't exist NOW as being true under presentism is often called the truthmaker problem.
Quoting The Great Whatever
Again, it seems like you are operating under an A-theorist framework (which is of course the common everyday sense of time). If an event will happen in the sense of the passage of time, then no, it doe not exist NOW.
Quoting The Great Whatever
Exactly. NOW of course doesn't mean now as in temporal location. That was the whole point of the Stanford quote.
Quoting The Great Whatever
Not at all. All I am saying is that you need to understand what I am talking about before saying that I am wrong. If you don't understand what the metaphysical theories say, then read about them first before correcting me on what they should say.
Quoting The Great Whatever
It makes sense to the common everyday layperson but that doesn't mean it can't be false. The idea that the sun rises and sets would be acceptable to children who don't know any better, but that doesn't mean that the sun revolves around the earth no matter what.
Eternalism isn't common sense. It is not intuitive at all, and it certainly doesn't conform to our everyday beliefs about time. It says things that goes against our everyday notions of time, and that includes the idea that events had or will happen through the passage of time. That is just what it basically says.
For example, having different experiences at different times, like smelling burnt toast today and skydiving five years ago. I don't have some "larger experience" of these two events, unless that "experience" is my entire life.
Can you elaborate on what you mean here?
What needs elaboration? You asked what it is to have two experiences without having some "larger experience," as though this were impossible. I gave the example of two experiences separated in time; that were not had simultaneously.
This is under the assumption that both experiences are by together by the same subject, under the worm theory right? If not then you aren't understanding my question.
Wait, I am not sure if you are trying to disagree with me or are agreeing with me. Under what theory of time are you saying that you have both experiences? Are you saying that you have them one by one with the passing of time (as in tensed theories of time) or are you saying that you have them both in the way, say I have an experience of seeing a computer screen and an experience of a buzzing noise in my room (in the manner according to the worm theory)?
Quoting Luke
Yes I did, but I did say that you are subject to multiple experiences regardless. The point is, can one be subject to having multiple experiences without experiencing them together? Personally, this sounds impossible to me to imagine or conceive of and it sounds inherently impossible. Perhaps it is because I recently read Chalmers and Bayne echoing the same sentiments but I just find the notion incoherent.
I have "both" experiences under either theory of time. But when I speak of having them "together", I mean having them simultaneously, at the same time. It probably depends how you wish to define "experience", but I don't see any problem in talk of having more than one experience at the same time, such as having a conversation and hearing background noise at the same time. But I deny that two disparate experiences separated by a long period of time can be said to be had together or simultaneously or at the same time. That quite obvious, so I still don't understand your claim that it requires some "larger experience".
Also, I don't see why you seem to think that worm theory entails that experiences can only be had simultaneously. Is this the distinction you are making between worm theory and stage theory: whether experiences are had one-by-one or whether they can be had simultaneously? That's not how I understand it, but I also don't know that much about it.
Quoting Luke
There are different senses to having "both" experiences as I have pointed out in my last post. If you are saying you have them in both senses, then that doesn't make sense.
Quoting Luke
I am not referring to multiple experiences over time "at the same time". Like I said, this is not what I mean at all and the "larger experience" does not require making such a claim.
Wasn't your distinction between having the experiences one-by-one or (being able to) having them simultaneously? Either way I have both experiences, don't I?
The latter wasn't meant to be "had simultaneously" as "at a time". I was asking you if you are saying a temporal worm can be subject to an experience of skydiving at one time of their lives and another experience of smelling burnt toast at another and not have a larger experience that encompasses them. Of course, you could also mean it in a presentist sort of way, where I experience skydiving then smelt burnt toast according to the passage of time.
In the case just described, it is an experience of "Skydiving and Smelling burnt toast". It is not just having an experience of "Skydiving" and an experience of "Smelling burnt toast" separately.
Or if you are okay with a completely visual example, in the case where I am seeing a red patch in my vision and a blue patch, there will be a larger visual experience of seeing both of them together (for instance, it could be an image that has red on the left side and blue on the right).
Does one need to commit to some metaphysical theory in order for P3 to sound plausible? Will P3 sound plausible to a layman? Who is P3 attempting to convince, and why should anyone find it convincing?
Don't you think that any theory that forces us to say that sensical things don't make sense should prima facie be disregarded, unless there is good reason to believe them? Is there any reason one would want to be an eternalist or a presentist? Probably not; they probably arise from verbal disputes and misunderstandings.
NB: 'The sun rises' is still true, of course.
Quoting The Great Whatever
Nobody needs to commit to any metaphysical theory of time in order to accept P3. Technically, nobody even needs to have an explicit understanding of them, though understanding them will certainly help them in distinguishing between the senses of temporal now and the general NOW, which P3. relies upon. The examples I have given to explain what the term means requires an understanding of those theories of time, an understanding you don't seem to have at the moment, which is why I am having trouble conveying what the term means. I am not asking you to accept any metaphysical theory, just know what they entail. That is all.
Quoting The Great Whatever
Again, read up on the theories to know what they mean. It doesn't take that much to understand the difference. Presentism is actually commonly considered a common-sense view, while Eternalism is not. And yes, there are arguments for both positions, some even based upon scientific theory. It would probably make the conversation a lot easier if you know what I am talking about, instead of simply rejecting the theories I mention without even knowing what they mean.
Great! So let's talk about P3 independent of metaphysical theories of time. Let's suppose (as is true) that I have no stake in the game of which theory of time is right, and so am neutral on the subject.
P3 doesn't sound convincing at all to me. Why? Because I don't think my experience is limited to a single time – I think that I experienced some things yesterday, will experience others tomorrow, and so on. So it seems that I have different experiences at different times – and if that's true, my experience can't be limited to a single time.
Your response?
Quoting The Great Whatever
Again, if you could please read up on they mean then that would make both of our lives easier. You can still remain neutral even after reading about them and refrain from adopting any of them if you so wish. Why are you making this so hard?
I cannot respond to your comments because they seem like they rest upon a lack of understanding, one that you seem adamant about maintaining. If you don't want to do so, then I don't see the point of continuing to argue with you, given that we will most likely talk past each other like we have been over the past couple of days.
OK, I've been pulling your leg a little bit. I actually am familiar with all of these theories, and have been playing dumb because I don't want to get into them and distract from the actual issues.
So with that said, what's wrong with my objection to P3? Reading it over again, it sounds way more plausible than P3 itself. Why should I think my experience is limited to a single time (again, prior to accepting any metaphysical theory – do not ask me to accept a certain theory of time in your justification without first arguing for it)?
Quoting The Great Whatever
Okay? I thought they were important, but you didn't. That sounds like an issue in itself.
Do you understand what the term NOW means then, or is that still over your head?
Quoting The Great Whatever
If you are really serious about this claim, then it sounds like you are still operating upon some misunderstanding. Saying that you "experienced" and "will experience" something if you mean that in an A-theoretic sense with the passage of time means you are not experiencing them NOW.
Quoting The Great Whatever
Because the total experiences I find myself in NOW have the contents of only a single time (or something very close to it). My experience doesn't include the contents of multiple moments or times. I don't find myself having an experience of being in my room, and an experience of being on the train to work, for instance.
But I do find that – at different times of course.
Quoting Mr Bee
I mean that in the perfectly ordinary sense. Forget about the A and B theories – we're not assuming we accept any particular theory of time, remember?
You mean that you find that you have them one-by-one with the passage of time?
And do you have those sorts of experiences NOW?
So do you mean to ask me, 'do you ever have those sorts of experiences?' or 'Do you have those sorts of experiences while you exist?'
In answer to the former, yes, and in answer to the latter, yes (surely I must exist to have the experiences).
If that is not what you mean, can you clarify what you are asking me?
When you say you experience both sitting in a room and being on a train, are you saying that you find yourself having an experience where sitting in your room and being on the train are parts of that experience?
By 'parts of that experience,' do you mean, do I experience them at the very same instant? Then no.
Not at the same instant no. By parts of an experience I mean just that. For instance, I have a visual experience of a forest, but it can contain a bunch of smaller visual experiences of trees located in differents parts of my vision as parts.
But the skydiving that I did five years ago and the burnt toast that I am smelling today are separate experiences and do not form a combined singular experience. I don't have some meta-experience of both experiences, except maybe in memory, but recalling them is not the same experience as undergoing them. You seem to want to attribute experience to the worm itself. For you, it's not just that a person has experiences one-by-one with the passing of time, in a presentist sort of way. You also want to say that there is some sort of eternalist way to have experiences. I reject this claim, and your example of simultaneously seeing a red and a blue patch (at the same time!) does not help to address how one can possibly have some "larger experience" of two different experiences that are temporally distant from each other.
Quoting The Great Whatever
Do both of these experiences exist together NOW? (Not saying if they exist at the same time, mind you). Or does this experience of getting up and going to work require events passing in time?
Quoting Luke
I was giving you an example of what I mean when I talk about what a larger experience is. Nowhere does this definition refer to anything like having to experience red and blue "simultaneously". You were the one who imposed that restriction earlier and here you continue to insist upon it now. But I see no reason for this restriction.
You might as well say that by having red and blue experiences together, we must always refer to having them all in the same place (the same spatial point!). But of course that is just false. Some parts of my eye can register red experiences while other parts can register blue experiences, both being spatially separated. So being an extended body that has those eyes as parts of me, I am exposed to a set of experiences that consists of me having red experiences at some spatial locations of my body and blue experiences at others. But that doesn't stop me from having a combined experience which includes both. I can have a combined experience which is described as "red at the left side of my vision and blue on the right". In fact, I always find I do have to have such an experience if I were to have them both.
Similarly, I see no reason why a temporal worm extended in time, who would be exposed to, say, experiencing skydiving at t1 and smelling burnt toast at t2 would not have a combined experience of "skydiving at t1 and smelling burnt toast at t2" in a manner similar to how we can experience "red on the left side of my vision and blue on the right". Despite the differences between the two, time is a dimension just like space (which is even more true when we consider the block universe!), and here, being extended over time and having multiple experiences over time is no different than being extended over space and having multiple experiences over space. In the latter case you seem to want to allow such beings to have a combined experience, but in the former you don't.
I really don't know how to answer this question. Is it translatable into English?
One of them happens at some time t1, the other at some other time t2, where t1 precedes t2. I have both of them, one at each respective time.
Do you know what NOW means? Does your conception of having multiple experiences require the passage of time (yes/no)?
I keep asking you questions like these, but you either choose not to answer them or not answer them directly. I cannot understand what you mean when you say something like "clearly I experience more than just this one time" unless you help clear up my specific concerns. Maybe it sounds obvious to you, but so far, it seems like you are operating on a misunderstanding, though it is one I still have yet to determine exactly.
No.
Quoting Mr Bee
What do you mean by the passage of time? It requires that there be different times, with each of the experiences had at different ones.
Quoting The Great Whatever
Okay, we could've just continued from there then. What is NOW includes what generally exists. According to the Block Universe all times are NOW, while presentism states that only a single present moment is NOW. Assuming that you understand these theories (and aren't pulling my leg), what do you find difficult to understand here?
Quoting The Great Whatever
If you don't really understand what the passage of time is, then I don't know if I can really tell you, since to me it's a basic concept. It's that thing that everyone in the philosophy of time talks about.
Also, I don't know what to make of that other statement of yours. At least not in terms of a specific interpretation.
What does it mean to generally exist? Is that different from existing?
Is your question, 'Do both of these experiences exist together what generally exists?'
Quoting Mr Bee
I think that there's a time t1 at which I have an experience and then later another time t2 at which I have another. Is that the passage of time?
Quoting The Great Whatever
It just means what it says. If something exists, then it is a part of what is NOW.
Quoting The Great Whatever
So far as I can tell, nope. But then again, you also mention that you "will" have experiences at those times and have "had" other experiences, which seem indicative of you talking about the passage of time. Though really, how can I tell?
So why use the word NOW? Can you just reword your claim using the word 'exists' instead?
Are you asking if I have both experiences while I exist. Of course – I have to exist to have an experience.
Quoting The Great Whatever
Because you asked me to create a new word to describe what it means to you. If just using the word exists suffices for you then whatever. So according to eternalism, past present and future events all exist. According to presentism only the present moment exists. Does that make sense to you?
Quoting The Great Whatever
Do you object to this statement: "Both the experience of sitting in my room and the experience of being on a train exist"?
More specifically, do both the experience of sitting in my room and the experience of being on the train exist like we would say that both the events of the big bang and the event of the creation of Earth are said to exist under the Block universe (again, I'm not requiring to you to accept the latter)?
When did they happen? If they both happen in the past, I would say they both existed.
Quoting Mr Bee
I think a more sensible thing to say about past events is that they happened. Asking whether they exist seems infelicitous to begin with, but to the extent I can make sense of it, it seems to be a matter of asking whether they're happening, which of course they aren't, but they did happen.
I asked you to use a new word because you were abusing the English word 'now' by using it incorrectly.
So? Doesn't change the fact that you asked me to do something but then asked me why I was doing it later.
Quoting The Great Whatever
See, it's statements like these that make me think you are bringing in a flow of time.
(BTW, what is your stance on time? I've asked you this question before with no response but I am genuinely curious, even if it is not going to be relevant.)
Quoting The Great Whatever
In the block universe, those events both exist though. If you are saying that the experience of sitting in your room and the experience of the train do not exist (you reject the above statement), then I cannot see how you can say we experience both, other than by saying that they are experienced with the passage of time.
Of course, my P3. has nothing to do with this notion. It says for the experiences that exist that I have, they are only limited to a single time, because the contents that I find in my total experience are only of a single time.
They did exist.
Quoting Mr Bee
I experienced both. I have no idea what you mean by 'the passage of time,' if you're using that phrase somehow technically. If you mean in the ordinary sense, of course I believe in the passage of time, because time passes. But if you require this to be an argument contingent on eternalism, as it seems to be in your OP, it seems you can just as easily convert any such notion into there just being distinct times at which things happen. I mean, I think eternalism is stupid, but that isn't my point, I'm just focusing on your argument, which has an unconvincing premise.
Quoting Mr Bee
I can't parse this clause.
But again, this is just false. If I think about my total experiences, I find that I have had some, have some now and will have others later. So clearly they aren't limited to a single time. Why would I believe P3, then?
Quoting The Great Whatever
They don't exist anymore.
Quoting The Great Whatever
Then why didn't you say that earlier? There is only one sense of the passage of time I know of.
Quoting The Great Whatever
It's not contingent upon eternalism. The argument is meant to refute a view of eternalism, but the premise in question does not require one to adopt eternalism like I keep saying.
Every theory of time says that something exists. The presentist says the present moment exists, the eternalist says that all times exist, and the growing block theorist says that the past and present exist. As well, the worm theorist says that the me that exists is a temporally extended worm, while the stage theorist and presentist say that me only refers to a single time. So much as my P3. talks about me only experiencing a single time, I am talking about the me that exists, not what will exist and has existed (which strictly speaking, no longer exist).
Quoting The Great Whatever
Just corrected that phrase (Just take out the "am"). Sorry about that.
Quoting The Great Whatever
If your "total experiences" include experiences that don't exist (such as experiences that existed or will exist), then that is not the total experience I am talking about. I only mean the experiences that exist.
Because throughout this conversation you have not used English words with their ordinary meanings, so it's difficult to know what you mean.
Quoting Mr Bee
Good. Then let's drop references to eternalism altogether and just talk about P3. So no more saying "but on an eternalist view..." etc. That is simply irrelevant.
Quoting Mr Bee
"The me that exists?" Isn't that just you? It's not "another you." You exist and you will exist. It's not like you won't exist anymore and "another you" will spring into existence instead.
Quoting Mr Bee
I assume that my "total experiences" are all those that happen over the course of my life. Apparently you don't mean this. Apparently you mean only the experiences that exist. Okay, but the word 'exist' is inflected for the present tense, such that for an experience to exist is for it to be happening (or being undergone) now. But you've said this is not what you intend.
Reading P3 naively, it doesn't sound plausible. If you change it to something like "the only experience I am currently having," or "the only experience that exists, by which I mean the only experience occurring now," it does. But you've said this is not what you want to say.
References to eternalism would help me understand what you are saying better. I will drop it once I feel like we are on the same page and understand what we both mean by the things we say. That said...
Quoting The Great Whatever
When an eternalist says that the Big Bang exists, do they mean that in the present tense? That it is happening now?
If so, then it certainly doesn't mean it is happening "now" as in "at the moment of this utterance" because the Big Bang doesn't exist "now". Unless, by now, you do not mean "at the time of this utterance" but something more general than that? If so, then I will agree with saying that I am experiencing only sitting in my room now.
If they are using the English language, that's all that sentence can mean. It's not up to them to decide what it means. "Exists" must mean "exists now," since it's inflected for the present tense as a grammatical fact (that's what that little -s morpheme means). Notice how it's semantically anomalous to say "x exists yesterday." That doesn't make grammatical sense, regardless of your metaphysical position. You might be able to say it "x existed yesterday" or "x will exist tomorrow."
Quoting Mr Bee
That is what "now" means. It is not a question of what I mean by it. If I mean something other than that by it, then I am not using the word – I am either misusing the English language or trying to speak in some sort of technical jargon, in which case using a word homophonous with the English word "now" should be foregone to avoid confusion.
So the eternalist view in your opinion, is completely incoherent? You did say that you considered the view to be stupid, so is that the reason why?
My argument, despite its goals, was meant to be expressed in a manner that is neutral to the different views of time. My main target here would be the eternalists (who would believe eternalism to not only be coherent, but true) who are also worm theorists. I suspect your disagreement lies in the fact that you don't think that it is possible to do so, because you find one of those views to be internally inconsistent.
It is a fact about English that things stated in the present tense are anchored to the speech time (for the most part – it's more complicated than that). A theory that denies this cannot be correct. I don't have any views on whether eternalism is committed to such a thing. My guess is they would plead that they are using 'exists,' if they're inclined to do so, in some technical sense that differs form how it's used in ordinary English. I would also be skeptical, however, that they have a coherent notion of the sense in which they are using it. My position on these subjects tends to be that these metaphysical disputes are not actually disputes about anything, but are a performance of verbal confusions (that is, they are not about verbal issues like what words mean, but exist only in the real-time enactment of confusion over words).
Quoting Mr Bee
It may be a potentially convincing premise infelicitously worded. But I think any felicitous wording of it would make it mean something like 'Right now, I only find that I have the experiences I have right now.'
Quoting The Great Whatever
I am not an eternalist but I am not sure if the eternalist view in itself is nonsensical. As far as I can tell, the sense in which they use the word "exists" is pretty much how a presentist would say the present "exists". I don't see much of a problem with that, but apparently you do.
Like I said earlier, eternalism can be interpreted as a version of presentism, albeit a strange version of it. It's just that, apart from rejecting the flow of time, the present moment that they consider "now" includes events from the Big Bang to the end of the universe. What they would call the "speech time" when they say that the "Big Bang exists" would be much bigger than the instantaneous moment that presentists would normally call "now" and include all the moments in the universe's history. Of course, this may sound incoherent at first, because how can the speech time refer to multiple times in the universe's history? How can the present moment consist of multiple moments in time? It doesn't make sense. However I suspect that the eternalist here would distinguish between two different senses of time in order to get around that. The speech time is the time that we are usually familiar with and operates like it usually does, but the "time" in which we take events like the BIg Bang to exist in, the time of the block universe, is introduced as an extra dimension (let's call it "sime" to differentiate it from time) within which all the different moments in the universe's history, all the years of our history, can be laid out. Events are laid out in order like they are in time, where the Big Bang exists at an earlier sime than that of the creation of the Earth, and 2018 is at a later sime than 2017. Put this way, there doesn't seem to be a problem anymore. The eternalist can talk about the past, the present, and the future existing at different simes while still being able to say that they all exist at the time of this utterance (and please note that here this time of utterance that our present tense claims are anchored to does not refer to a particular sime, which was a fact that I have been trying to emphasize throughout our discussion). Technically, they are still making use of the present tense, and framing their claims in a temporal manner, but now they are able to make sense of events such as the Big Bang and 2018 existing. I am not sure if this way of describing eternalism is satisfactory to you, but that is just how I see it.
Quoting The Great Whatever
Like, I said before, depending on your views on time, the premise could be read differently, some of which may probably be acceptable to you. For instance, the non-eternalist presentist could read P3. as "At the time of this utterance, I only experience the contents of a single time", and that is because nothing exists but the present moment, which would necessarily have to be the moment in which you make the utterance. Of course such a premise would sound trivial when expressed this way, and I agree that it doesn't sound remotely interesting, but this speaks more to the fact that you aren't an eternalist than any triviality of P3. itself. I imagine that this reading of the premise shouldn't be difficult to accept for you, at least I think.
Personally, I have never had a "combined experience" of two distinct, temporally distant experiences, and I'm pretty sure that nobody else ever has, either. Humans just don't experience things in this way. Why you are so intent on attributing experience to a hypothetical aggregate of your temporal existence (i.e. your temporal worm) is beyond me.
Quoting Mr Bee
Because "we" have experiences. Why make the bizarre assumption that temporal worms do, too?
Quoting Luke
Does that matter? The point in contention is merely whether the fact that a person has an experience of x and an experience of y together means that they have an experience of x and y. I argue that that is just a general fact about having multiple experiences together, just as much as having the property of being bald and the property of being a man means having the property of being a bald man.
Quoting Luke
Um, because according to the worm theory I am actually supposed to be a temporally extended being that should, presumably, have multiple experiences together?
If you want to say that such a temporally extended entity cannot possibly have any sort of experiences then it would seems the worm conception of time is obviously false because evidently, you and I do have experiences. Of course that would also work to rejecting the view (which is my goal anyways) as will TGW's overall rejection of eternalism in general, but I find it either to be question begging or uncharitable to the view. I think it reasonable to believe that temporally extended beings can have experiences just as much as spatially extended beings do, and my argument is simply to show how the implications of those facts lead to conclusions that we just don't find in our own experiences.
You misrepresent the point in contention. The point in contention is whether the fact that a person has an experience of x and an experience of y means that they have a combined experience of x and y. My going to Disneyland when I was five years old and my going to Disneyland last week do not constitute some "combined experience" - they are separate and distinct experiences. I suppose I could talk about the singular "experience" of my entire life, but this strikes me as a virtual misuse of the word, and it is not the same meaning of "experience" as you have used when describing our 'point in contention' above. Also, you are not referring to the experience of a person, but of a person's worm.
Quoting Mr Bee
Eternalism (and the worm conception of time) is an ontological theory of existence, not experience. You are importing your own bizarre assumptions about experience.
Quoting Mr Bee
Presentism is a theory of time which is consistent with the way we have experiences and apparently move forward in time. It is up to eternalism to try and account for why it seems this way to us. You can presume that a temporal worm has experiences, and has all of the experiences that an individual will have across their lifetime, but this still won't account for (temporally-speaking) the main issue: why does time appear to flow and why do we appear to have these experiences in a presentist way, moving forward in time from one moment to the next? It's not being uncharitable to eternalism that it cannot account for this; that's just the problem with eternalism.
Quoting Mr Bee
I agree that it is reasonable to believe that temporally extended beings, like us, can have experiences. However, I disagree that some aggregate of our entire existence, unlike us, can have its own consciousness or experience, including any meta-experience (or "larger experience") of two distinct, temporally-distant experiences at once.
Quoting Luke
An experience of x and y is a combined experience. I am not sure what the distinction is to you. Similarly an experience of a red patch on my left side of my vision and a blue patch on my right is a combined experience of red and blue. It is an experience of red and blue.
Quoting Luke
The worm conception of time is an ontological theory of time that has implications on what we should experience. I am making no such assumptions about the experience of temporally extended beings apart from those we usually make to spatially extended beings.
Quoting Luke
There is a difference between saying that eternalism says that we shouldn't be consciousness whatsoever (that the phenomenon of conscious experience necessarily requires a flow of time) and that eternalism cannot account for our experiences of feeling like time flows. The former is not charitable because it assumes that beings in an eternalist world are zombies which we evidently are not. However this seems like too strong a stance to take.
Quoting Luke
I am sorry, but what is the difference between being temporally extended and being an aggregate of more than one time?
I thought that was the point in contention? An experience of x and an experience of y need not be a combined experience, as they can be two distinct, separate, temporally-distant experiences. Although you could refer to them as a singular experience, I take you to mean that the experience of red on my left and blue on my right are not temporally-distant experiences. If they were temporally-distant, then it would be peculiar to refer to them as a single experience, instead of two individual experiences.
Besides, if any two (x and y) experiences must be combined into a single experience, then all experiences must be combined into a single experience. How, then, can you distinguish, or even speak about, one experience as distinct from the rest? It then all becomes just one big experience. This seems to create some problems for your OP, where you speak of having more than one experience.
Quoting Mr Bee
How does it have implications on what we should experience? I don't know what beings you are talking about, but I'm talking about normal human beings and the way that we actually have experiences. You are talking about some abstract nonsense which has little to do with human beings.
Quoting Mr Bee
Charitable or not, I find it impossible for us to have consciousness or experiences, or for there to even be the illusion of a flow of time, in a static, motionless universe. I don't think that beings in an eternalist world would be zombies, because even that suggests some sort of motion. If the eternalist theory proposes that the universe is truly motionless, then why be charitable about it? Advocates of the theory are welcome to explain it.
Quoting Mr Bee
I was attempting to distinguish between the sequence of experiences that we actually have, and the type of abstract aggregate experience that you are proposing our worms might have (over and above our actual ones).
Quoting Luke
I'm not sure I understand you. Earlier I said that the disagreement laid with me saying that having an experience x and an experience y means having an experience of "x and y". You said I misrepresented you and said that the real disagreement laid with the fact having both experiences entails having a combined experience. This suggests that you see a difference between the two. Explain what that difference is.
Quoting Luke
Let's say that both experiences are had at the same time. Is it possible to have an experience of x and an experience of y without having a combined experience? If so, can you imagine what that would even be like? For instance, is it possible to have an experience of seeing red and seeing blue without seeing an image of red and blue?
Quoting Luke
Indeed. I believe that is a general feature of a single conscious subject having two experiences.
Quoting Luke
We can distinguish individual parts of our experiences easy. If I am looking at a picture of the Mona Lisa, then I can identify the visual experience of her hair, and the visual experience of her eyes. In fact I can even identify and compare the different parts that visual experience I have. Nothing wrong or problematic with that. But that doesn't mean that I have those experiences separately or that I do not have the visual experience of the Mona Lisa in full.
Quoting Luke
If I am a being who is extended through space and time, and the parts that I have at every spatio-temporal contain experiences, then shouldn't be relevant to what I, as a being who is composed of those parts, experience?
Quoting Luke
So you think the notion of temporal worms itself is nonsensical? I am not sure what else you think I am talking about here.
Quoting Luke
The problem is that most such arguments as far as I have heard them, seem to be unjustified. I have heard people say that if time doesn't flow then experience cannot happen, but they usually misinterpret eternalism or assume requirements about conscious experience that aren't plausible. The eternalist, for instance, wouldn't say the world is motionless because motion does not require the flow of time, it only requires that objects change position over time. In addition, I do not see how consciousness would require the flow of time either.
If someone were to say physicalism on the grounds that it says we are all zombies, then I believe they would also be acting unfair because I see no reason to believe physicalism in general to reject conscious experience (unless of course you are an eliminativist about it). Maybe you think it is satisfactory to reject eternalism in that manner, but for me, I find it insufficient.
I've explained it several times and you continually fail to address it: I find it peculiar to consider two distinct, temporally-distant experiences (e.g. decades apart) to be referred to as a singular experience. How do you justify this unusual use of the term?
Quoting Mr Bee
I've already granted that a person can have more than one experience at a time, and I provided the example of having a conversation and hearing background noise simultaneously. Now let's say that the two experiences are not had at the same time, and that they are temporally-distant, since this has been my unaddressed counter-argument for several posts now.
Quoting Mr Bee
I believe that it is a general feature of a single conscious subject to be continually ageing and moving forward in time.
Quoting Mr Bee
The relevant difference being that we don't experience our lives all at once, or have every experience of our lives available to us "in full" at a single glance. For example, two distinct experiences might be had decades apart, where they do not form a combined, singular experience.
Quoting Mr Bee
I don't know, should it? Why should it? You are attributing the experiences that you actually have (in the real world) to the eternalist model, and then subsequently make the assumption that the eternalist model has implications on what we should experience. Sounds backwards to me.
Quoting Mr Bee
No, I think that your talk of worms having experiences is nonsensical. Also, how you seem to think that it is unproblematic for a worm to have a combined experience of two distinct experiences which may be years or decades apart. Worms don't have experiences of a person's entire lifetime; people have experiences throughout their lifetime, and in a particular sequence.
Quoting Mr Bee
How do objects "change" their position over time without a flow of time? You need to implicitly assume a flow of time for the concept of change to make any sense. Changing where I focus my attention on the static timeline does not constitute any real change, it's just an attempt to smuggle in change via my attention (which really does change!). And I'm pretty sure that if (e.g.) blood doesn't flow through our veins, if our brain impulses don't fire, and if we don't continue to breathe in and out, then we will soon lose consciousness.
Tell me, when you talk about having two experiences together, are you bringing in some notion of the flow of time into the mix? That is, when a person has two experiences, one of skydiving and one of smelling burnt toast, then do you see the person as having them in sequence with the passage of time, according to an A-theory of time?
Quoting Luke
I have given reasons, if you have been reading. We have no problems considering having multiple experiences in space for a single subject that would necessarily combine together. Experiences may be "separated by space" but that doesn't mean anything to saying they are had together. Space is not time, but they are very similar to one another (even more so under eternalism, where it is often claimed that time is another dimension of space), so it seems there is no reason for us not to say the same applies for a being who is temporally extended through time.
The only reason why I think you would disagree is if you just simply assume that having a larger experience means that all the experiences are had "at the same time". But I see no reason for this understanding. Furthermore, your sense of "together" as "together at a time" is too restrictive. The worm theory says that a temporally extended being has their temporal parts "together". Do they mean "together at a time" where "time" means one of the moments of the worm's life? Certainly not, any more than we would say that have all of our body parts at a single point in space. But does this mean that the worm theory is obviously false? Maybe it is to you, but it seems like a lot of people are fine with saying that a person has their temporal parts together without trouble, so either they're wrong or you are.
Whether you have read these reasons or not, you certainly haven't addressed them, instead repeating the same unjustified assumption that just because two experiences that a subject experiences are temporally separated, there is no larger experience which contains both.
Quoting Luke
I was asking if it is possible for you to not have a larger experience featuring them both. And again I should note that we are talking about both experiences being had at the same time.
Quoting Luke
And I imagine that this "single glance" implicitly means "at a time", "simultaneously", and "at the same moment" right?
Quoting Luke
Okay, let's just consider the spatial case. I am a body extended through space. My eyes register visual experiences, my ear audio, etc. Does this have any implication for what I experience, as the body who has all of these different body parts as a part of myself? If not, then what does?
Quoting Luke
I am not sure if you are just instinctively saying "no" whenever I ask you for clarification, because I've found more than once that your responses to my questions have no connection to what I have asked about, I mean at all.
Do you think the temporally extended worms of human lives are not "human beings"?
Do you think that temporally extended worms cannot possibly have experiences?
Quoting Luke
Quoting Luke
The situation with you is starting to sound like the one I have with TGW. Even though you reject my argument, you don't reject my conclusion. In fact, you would go one step further and deny eternalism altogether. To you the very concept of the block universe doesn't make sense, and so much as we have been disagreeing, as far as I can tell, we have been disagreeing about whether or not the notion of temporally extended worms and their experiences even make sense.
Yes, of course. Do you know of any other way to experience something?
Quoting Mr Bee
You address my concerns by complaining that I have not addressed your concerns?
Time is considered to be a space-like dimension under eternalism, not "another dimension of space". Time is not considered to be a dimension of space.
Clearly the term "experience" is problematic here, due to its many shades of meaning. However, I disagree because I don't necessarily consider any two of my experiences to be part of the same "larger experience". Your use of the term to cover one's entire lifetime seems a stretch of the meaning of the term, especially when used to combine two clearly separate and otherwise unrelated experiences in one's life.
Quoting Mr Bee
I have experiences (or an experience) at a particular time. I don't agree that this must necessarily be a part of some larger experience, which I can only take you to mean something like the rest of my life. Please correct me if you are referring to some other "larger experience" than this. To be clear, I consider an experience to be a part of my entire life, I just take issue with calling my entire life "an experience".
Quoting Mr Bee
Perhaps. I was trying to imagine how a worm might experience two temporally distant experiences as a combined experience. I imagine that they would have to be experienced together, at the same time.
Quoting Mr Bee
I think that a worm is a representation of a person/object's lifetime/existence. I don't think that a representation or a lifetime can have its own experiences. I believe that a person can have experiences over their lifetime, however.
Quoting Luke
Well, given that we are talking about having multiple experiences in the sense of the eternalist worm theory, then of course that is irrelevant. According to the eternalist, time does not pass. You apparently think that this means that they cannot have conscious experiences, but I am willing to grant that they do, and then work towards what that would mean.
The idea of having multiple experiences together as a combined experience that I am referring to is pretty much like the idea of having multiple experiences at the same time combined into a larger experience. The way I see things, the eternalist is just like the presentist in that it regards everything as, in the A-theoretic sense, "present". It is just what they consider "now" includes alot more than a single moment. It includes all times, the Big Bang, the death of the Universe, and whatnot. This is why the eternalist would say they all exist on a par. The time in which these events exist in, can be treated pretty much like an extra dimension of space, in which the different events are located. It is for this reason why I think the analogies I made with space are convincing.
The block universe would functionally be no different, say, from a world with no flow of time and 4 dimensions of space, 3 of which are the usual xyz coordinates the the 4th including the contents of all the different time slices. If there were a being who is spatially extended across the 4 dimensions, then she would be exposed to whatever experiences that her parts have. It seems reasonable to believe that, given that she has each of these experiences, that she would necessarily have an experience of them all together, does it not?
Quoting Luke
That is how I think you've been addressing my concerns. But if you look more carefully at the text you quoted, you would see there are two large paragraphs above the third one where I specifically try to show the error in your reasoning. I have given you my reasons, but you haven't really addressed them.
Quoting Luke
Indeed, but I did say that it was claimed by some to be just like space. The fact that they are very similar under eternalism than presentism should make the analogy more convincing, no?
Quoting Luke
Yes, I am not referring to the sense of having multiple experiences that you describe, one that involves the passage of time. Remember the context in which I am referring to having a larger experience over time is within the context of the eternalist worm theory, in which the passage of time isn't real. Given that you seem to have a strong stance against the eternalist view, then I am not sure if you would even think the latter makes sense, but understand that I am certainly not saying that we have multiple experiences as through the passage of time.
Quoting Luke
According to the worm theory, the temporally extended worm isn't just a representation. The block universe isn't neither. There literally is a real sense in which the Big Bang exists and 2018 exists, because the block universe isn't just a map, but the real territory. The worm is actually a real entity that is composed of multiple times.
Again, I think the situation with you is similar to TGW. You think that the very ideas of the worm theory itself are nonsensical, which is why when I try to frame my argument in a way that tries to accommodate the theory and remain neutral among all the theories of time, you either find it unnecessary or equally nonsensical. Of course, I don't really share that same feeling and am willing to grant that the view makes sense. At this point my job isn't just to clarify what my argument says, but to actually convince you that a metaphysical position that you reject is worth considering, which is a bigger order.
It seems that we are each referring to something different by the word "experience". I am using the common definition, while, to be charitable, you are using your own 'technical' definition. As a result, it seems that we have been talking past each other.
We are indeed talking past each other, because you were, like I said, inappropriately applying A-theorist ideas in a context that was explicitly eternalist. More specifically, your sense of "having multiple experiences" required these different experiences to pass according to the flow of time was different from what I meant. I am not sure what you mean when we say that our use of "experience" differ, unless you mean the idea of "having multiple experiences" above.
So, do you understand now why you should drop this idea of having multiple experiences in the dynamic sense here? When I say that we have multiple experiences over time, it is in the context of the static worm theory.