Presentism is stupid
Presentism is the view that only present time exists. This view, presentism, is stupid. If presentism were right, then mental events in the past time did not exist. Suppose that Jones made a decision that he would wake up early in the morning. However, some seconds later, his decision does not exist. This scenario is based on presentism. This shows that presentism is stupid. Presentism will delete your every experience occurred in the past. Presentism is so stupid! Eternalism is better.
Comments (33)
I don't really see how eternalism is better here. What, his current state would be related to the past state in a kind of cosmic memorybank which he could draw from as he acts? What work is eternalism doing here? At the very least, you need some supplementary explanation of how separate (eternally preserved) states relate to each other. Which is a total fucking headache. Just ditch the whole dichotomy!
Eternalism is the view that every time exists including past, present, future.
Both options are bad.
So, what is your opinion?
You reject both presentism and eternalism. What is the third option that you accept?
Both presentism and eternalism are fixated on the present. Presentism denies the past and the future for the sake of the present. Eternalism preserves the past and the future by reference to a higher present (it often denies this, but thats exactly what it does.)
You can't get time in the abstract, you have to look to your experience. And if you actually do that (instead of mining your experience to support a thesis, examining it through a premeditated lens) its all there, very simple. The past is past, the present is present, the future is future. It's not mystical - its common sense.
Your option is not a theory. It's just common sense.
True, but he would say that it did exist.
Quoting quine
It will also delete dinosaurs and historical figures as well. Is that a problem? I don't think it would make sense to say that they are still around, that they still have a real existence like you and me.
And presentism also doesn't subscribe to the reality of future events either unlike eternalism. The death of our sun isn't just waiting there in the horizon, it doesn't exist at all. That doesn't sound problematic either.
I think it is useful for explanatory purposes; the past is no longer in effect and the future is unknown. What matters is now. It is common sense to not deny the past and future particularly from an epistemological point of view, but our experience as we understand the past and future is always in the present (the death of our sun doesn't actually exist unless we in the present experience it).
Do any of the options (including the 'growing block') make any difference to how we act? They seem to me like unsolvable word games.
No, your tense is wrong. Do, not did. What I did yesterday existed, it impacted the present, but it no longer exists. The effects are still felt.Quoting quine
If I walk across the room and sit in a chair, I'm in the chair because (i.e. due to the cause of) of walking across the room, but I'm not still walking across the room and in the chair at the same time. That's presentism and it's super smart, not stupid.
Indeed, indeed!
I think this objection only properly applies to some strong forms of presentism -- e.g. Augustinian "knife edge" presentism, maybe. Weaker forms of presentism (such as the presentism entailed by McTaggart's view that A-Series are more fundamental than B-Series) seem to me more plausible precisely because they don't assume any God's eye view of the 'flow of time', or of the thickness of the present. An A-Series can be comprised of yesterday, today and tomorrow. Today obviously is a thick present. If what is present is whatever can be synthesized in experience for purpose of empirical investigation or practical reasoning (e.g. assessment of present opportunities for action) then there is no a priori limit to how thick the present can be as it might be conceived to appear in the middle of some essentially subjective A-Series.
It's a question about the nature of time, and one that interests scientists as well as philosophers. I don't see it as just a word game. It's not like the liar paradox. Instead, time is fundamental to the world we experience, whatever time is exactly.
The problem here is that GR would seem to support some form of eternalism. Our common sense has often been wrong about the world, particularly when it comes to physics. But maybe there is a way of interpreting relativistic time frames that doesn't support block theory of time?
Isn't block theory of time (eternalism) just a fancy way of saying "determinism"?
Time is a measure of change (from our perspective), and it is the necessity of that change (the causal flow) that connects one moment in time to the moments which immediately precede and follow it.
If we measured a-causal or random change, we would have no reason to suspect that there is a necessary future (a real future) and a necessary past.
If we presumed a-causal change could occur, then block theory of time gives way to a multi-verse of conflicting possibilities, all equally real or unreal. We could still record "blocks of time" by recording the random change we experience, but we would in this situation only be gaining insight into the nature of existence (or what exists) in the same way that a photon detector collapses the wave like properties of light in "the double slit test" and comes out wth a seemingly arbitrary specific result. The only real blocks of time would be the ones we pin down and record via "direct" observation.
I don't think GR supports eternalism anymore than the special theory of relativity (STR) does. One reason why STR can be taken to support eternalism over presentism is because there doesn't exist an objective criterion for singling out a unique concept of simultaneity, and hence a unique definition of a spatially extended present.
But a weak presentist, as opposed to a strong presentist (as I defined them very roughly in my earlier post with reference to Augustine and McTaggart) need not commit to the existence of a very thin present ('space-like surface') uniquely defined over vast spatial expanses (e.g. many light-years away). The weak presentist only must be able to single out the presently existing time with reference to her lived present (and local) pragmatic perspective. This perspective can also be joined to a shared intersubjective perspective through interactive conversation with others and the shared participation in collective projects.
All that is required from physics from a weak presentist perspective isn't a definition of the spatially extended present (stretching to infinity in all directions) but a distinction between those events that are entirely settled independently of the agents present powers (i.e. everything that isn't within one's 'future light cone'), those that aren't yet entirely settled regardless of what one has done in the past or is currently doing (i.e. everything that is within one's 'future light cone') and what is currently enmeshed into one's temporally thick present activity (one's pragmatically circumscribed space-time neighborhood).
So are you suggesting the B series is theoretically collapsible into the A series, probably no, but then where is the measure, how thick can a moment be before it is history? What separates the flow of time from its chronology. I don't think the experience of a moment can be separated into present, past and future, they stab too much into each other.
Do you think that time's flow requires an individual self that can experience that flow. Seems as though there would have to be some point of reference to experience time as a flow if time's flowing is not an illusion or a physical limitation.
It's not so much that B Series reduce to A Series but rather that the conception of time involved in B Series descriptions of events abstract away (for mere purpose of universal generalization) from features of A Series that are essential to the understanding of time. Being abstracted away, they still remain in the background and must be appealed to when physical theories are brought to bear to particular experiences (i.e. the interpretation of singular experiments or the deployment of theories in pragmatic contexts). In other words, the mathematical apparatus of a physical theory can be couched entirely in the vocabulary of B Series alone (for instance as they formalize the universally quantified statements of the 'universal' laws of physics). But when this mathematical apparatus is brought to bear to singular experiments, then one single element in the B Series must be identified with "now" (i.e. coordinated with the present time of the experimenter) in order to acquire definite meaning and practical significance from the point of view of an embodied physicist. This is why A Series are more fundamental. They lay behind the interpretation of the abstract theories couched in terms of B Series.
Yes, I think time flows only with reference to the perspective of an embodied living subject. This makes it subjective in a sense that isn't contrary to objectivity, but rather in a way that makes objective judgment possible. This is related to the Kantian idea that the categories of the understanding (subjective) must be brought to bear to intuitions in order that experience can be objectively valid. In the case of the experience of time, one's subjective location within the A Series (as occupying the present time) is a necessary condition for one being able to judge, objectively, that some future states of affair are within one's power to bring about while other states of affair already are settled and hence not within one's power to affect anymore. Subjectivity grounds objectivity.
So then the concept of time is not needed for what mathematicians do, it becomes a question of frequency and repetition for them, not time. For the mathematician it is the manipulation of mathematical expressions in space? They don't try to capture the richness of the experience of a moment, only its basic abstraction.
The other conception of the B series is historical, what happened in a chronological or some other type of order, say cyclic, it seems to be more about time as we more commonly understand it.
This is not quite what I was arguing. I wasn't contrasting the language of pure mathematics with the language of ordinary experience. I was rather contrasting the language of mathematical physics, and of other so-called exact sciences, with the language that one must make use of in order to bring to bear physical laws (couched in terms of B Series -- universal law statements) to the results gathered from actual experimental setups (couched in terms of A Series -- actualizations of real powers). There has to occur a translation from claims reliant on a metaphysics of isolated 'event' (magnitudes of physical values at space-time locations) and Humean causation to claims reliant on a metaphysics of 'substances' (or 'continuants') and their powers in order that the former claims may become empirically meaningful (and hence objective).
It is a point of view that abstracts away from the identity relatons that hold between the temporal 'stages' of the powerful actors, and which seek to externalize or reduce their specific powers to universal laws of causation that hold between structureless events. It's a vain attempt to achieve a God's eye view on the empirical world.
So because an abstraction is not reality, the results the mathematician arrives at must be matched up to reality (the translation) to determine if the result can be instantiated. There are no guarantees. What they come up with may or may not be realized in reality.
No, I don't see it that way. I think human history tries to tell us how we got to where we're at, it is of course a subjective determination, but it is not meant to be 'scientific', or 'god' like in that sense. The purpose of a genealogy is to chronologically inform us of those non-scientific, human truths that have occurred, suggest reasons why they occurred and show how they have affected our cultures through the ages.
I don't believe that this is a proper representation. Jones' decision exists within Jones's mind at each moment of the passing time, so it is incorrect to say that Jones' decision no longer exists. That's what memory does, it retains something from the past at the present. And even if Jones forgets when he goes to sleep, he may have set an alarm to remember for him. So his decision continues to exist at the present, represented by the settings in the clock.
What I claim is that presentism is wrong because it makes you delete memories or mental processes occurred in the past. Presentism is about ontology of time. If presentism were right, then memories about the past would be deleted with the events and the times of the past. So, presentism is in trouble.
It isn't a bad name, it seems to me, if the idea that only the present exists from the perspective of an agent can be given a reasonable sense.
The sense in which the future doesn't yet exist is the sense in which future possibilities still are open from the present perspective of a powerful agent. It amounts to a negation of nomological determinism -- i.e. the idea that the historical past in conjunction with the laws of nature determines the future -- which is a premise that doesn't make sense from the standpoint of practical reasoning.
There also is a related sense in which the past doesn't exist. From the perspective of an agent, many opportunities pass by and the possibility of them being exploited become foreclosed. The past doesn't exist anymore in the sense that it has become settled history, forever beyond the reach of the powers of an agent to shape some of its aspects according to her will (though the past still 'exists' from her perspective in a different sense: as furnishing constraints on her present and future actions).
The present, then, exists in the sense that it consists in all the opportunities for one to engage one's agential powers in various ways: power/opportunity pairs which constitute possibilities that threaten to become foreclosed, but that are immediately relevant to practical deliberation. Since actualizing one's powers to exploit present opportunities (either through individual or collective action) is a process that typically takes time, and is thus described with the use of the progressive aspect of action verbs, this also accounts for the thickness of the present.
Idk, a lot of philosophy is just really shitty linguistics.
Why would memories be necessarily deleted? They are part of your present, just like anticipations of the future are part of your present.