How does Eternalism account for our experience of time?
So I've been reading a bit up on the block universe model of time (otherwise known as eternalism).
According to eternalism, every moment in the universe's history is real and as such exists simultaneously. They all exist on a 4-D structure known as the block universe and are all equally real. Such a theory is considered static due to this fact. There is no such thing as the passage of time.
However, I am having trouble understanding how such a model accommodates our experience. To be clear though, I am not referring to an experience of time as passing in a world that isn't; that is another issue for another topic. Instead, I am talking about the fact that currently, I have the subjective experience of this particular moment of asking this question.
Under my first impression of the view, I assumed that given that all moments of my life exist, then I am currently equal to their sum. I mean they are different versions of me. But that would imply that I would have their experiences as well. My childhood experiences, my life as (hopefully) an old man will all be presented to me simultaneously, given that under eternalism, all moments of my life simultaneously exist and that I am simultaneously identical to all of them. But this is demonstrably false. My current experience is of only this one moment, and that cannot be reconciled with the view that I am currently experiencing my entire life. So this option seems false.
The only other option that I see is that there would have to be infinite versions of me (or an incredibly large amount) which exist corresponding to every moment of my life. That is, there is a version of me that only experiences a moment when I am a toddler, one experiencing a moment where I am an old man, and of course one where I am asking this question. That would explain why my experience is of one moment only but now we face the question of why I only experience this particular view. Out of all the different versions of me that exist, why am I the person who experiences life in October of 2017?
Hopefully this makes sense. For those who are eternalists, or understand eternalism, I welcome your feedback.
According to eternalism, every moment in the universe's history is real and as such exists simultaneously. They all exist on a 4-D structure known as the block universe and are all equally real. Such a theory is considered static due to this fact. There is no such thing as the passage of time.
However, I am having trouble understanding how such a model accommodates our experience. To be clear though, I am not referring to an experience of time as passing in a world that isn't; that is another issue for another topic. Instead, I am talking about the fact that currently, I have the subjective experience of this particular moment of asking this question.
Under my first impression of the view, I assumed that given that all moments of my life exist, then I am currently equal to their sum. I mean they are different versions of me. But that would imply that I would have their experiences as well. My childhood experiences, my life as (hopefully) an old man will all be presented to me simultaneously, given that under eternalism, all moments of my life simultaneously exist and that I am simultaneously identical to all of them. But this is demonstrably false. My current experience is of only this one moment, and that cannot be reconciled with the view that I am currently experiencing my entire life. So this option seems false.
The only other option that I see is that there would have to be infinite versions of me (or an incredibly large amount) which exist corresponding to every moment of my life. That is, there is a version of me that only experiences a moment when I am a toddler, one experiencing a moment where I am an old man, and of course one where I am asking this question. That would explain why my experience is of one moment only but now we face the question of why I only experience this particular view. Out of all the different versions of me that exist, why am I the person who experiences life in October of 2017?
Hopefully this makes sense. For those who are eternalists, or understand eternalism, I welcome your feedback.
Comments (58)
According to eternalism, every moment is real in the same sense as the present is real. I don't see how else I can make sense of all moments being real or equally real other than to treat them all as I do present objects, which is to say, that they currently exist, unless you have another idea of what it means to say that they are all "real".
Eliminativism most likely (denial of subjective experience/ appearance vs the reality), I think that's what can be interpreted the "stubbornly persistent illusion" quote.
Anyway, the B-theory of time is the modern Parimendes and so the classicial criticisms apply. Such as how it is possible to be persuaded by the result of argument if change is not possible. In order to accept B-theory, you have to accept minds can change in some way and the change must be in some way the result of the argument.
What do you mean by "relative terms"? And what inconsistency are you talking about? I don't understand.
I was asking if you have an idea of what all moments being equally "real" or all "existing" could possibly mean if not that they exist in the present tense. If you cannot do so for whatever reason, then I can only conclude that your disagreement is irrational and that you don't know what you're talking about.
Quoting AlecLet me bold some:Quoting AlecThere is no present, no present objects, since no reference has been specified. So you can say that Napoleon presently exists at Earth, 1815, which is a redundant way of saying Napoleon exists at Earth, 1815. But there is no 'the present', and 'currently' is meaningless without a temporal reference point. Whose present? Currently with what? Begging references to these things is going to make you declare the position irrational.
Napoleon exists, and he also exists in 1815, but does not exist in 1915 since the two times are not simultaneous. Paris exists, and Paris exists in France, but Paris does not exist in Japan since the two locations are not the same place. But that doesn't mean Paris doesn't exist just because the speaker is in Japan. It simply doesn't exist at that speaker's 'here' any more than Napoleon exists at your 'present'.
I think you're confusing a preferred time with things currently existing. The argument from relativity states that there is nothing to determine that one set of simultaneous events should be preferred to any other, leading to the conclusion that none are. There are no privileged frames; this is known as the relativity of simultaneity.
It is like saying that any one place in space is privileged. Our location is not any more special than any other in the universe. For instance, some may say that our planet is at the centre, but that is not true at all, or at least not justifiable. However, that does not prevent us from saying that all locations presently exist or are currently existing.
Quoting noAxioms
My emphasis on the word "exists". You seem to be using "exist" in the present tense. You don't say that Napoleon "did exist" or "will exist", you are saying that he currently exists.
I think you should understand that under eternalism, time as a dimension functions very much like space. One could even say that it is the fourth dimension of space. The notion of past and future are replaced with earlier and later, which designate coordinates in our universe just as spatial ones. Just as we say that Pluto exists over there, so too do we say that Napoleon exists in 1815.
No, events are still ordered if within each others' light cones. My parents were born before me, in any relativistic reference frame.
Eternalism is not an assertion about simultaneity or preferred frames or the lack of them.
Both are tenseless.No, I say he exists. There is no current time.
That sounds a bit too extreme to me. It seems like eternalists are willing to grant that experiences do occur, but that they are illusory in the sense that what they imply isn't real. For instance, I mentioned the problem with the experience of the passage of time in my OP, where the common position is to accept our subjective experience, but at the same time explain it away via psychological reasons.
Not familiar with Parmenides, so I'll have to look into that. My main concern however is with the problems with the view from a phenomenological standpoint, so if you have any comments on that then I'd be interested to hear them.
Sorry, but this is just false:
Maybe you should read up on more on the view before talking about it.
Quoting noAxioms
There is a reason why they call it "Relativity". It's because of the fact of the relativity of simultaneity. Look it up if you disagree.
Quoting noAxioms
Yeah, that was my point. Eternalism doesn't say anything about simultaneity. It has probably been around before relativity was a thing but the lack of any absolute notion of simultaneity has been used to argue for the view.
Quoting noAxioms
I'm sorry, but there are only three ways I could read your "exists". Either you're saying that Napoleon "did exist" or "will exist" or you're saying that he is currently existing. You somehow deny all of them, and want a fourth option, this "tenseless" form of exist, but I have no idea what that is.
It's like libertarian free will. Metaphysical libertarians want something that isn't random but also somehow not causally determined. What else is there? I dunno but apparently it isn't any of the well defined options out there.
You cut away the distinction between temporal sense and ontological sense of the concept of 'exists right now'
So in my posts, I consider references to the present ('right now', 'currently', etc.) to be temporal references, not ontological ones. There is no ontological now, nor a time that is ontologically the current one.
Are you saying that relativity does not order my parents' birth before my own? The ordering is ambiguous or nonexistent?
Yes, the lack of absolute simultaneity is seriously suggestive, but not proof of any sort.
Yes, all three reference the present. I mean exists ontologically, and eternalism does not give any ontological status to a present, so there is no present to reference.
I guess I should have referenced Socrates, not Napoleon.
Eternalists are temporal realists who believe that our physical notion of time is fundamental and represents mind-independent and psychologically timeless entities that in some metaphysically independent way gives rise to our psychological notion of time.
Presentists are temporal idealists who see our psychological notion of time as fundamental and consisting of private definitions of temporal signification which relate directly to first-person experience, and believe that physical time is conceptually reducible to talk of psychological time.
Relativity I suppose says that the temporal distance between the two events is frame dependent, but the ordering is not. Relativity is not a statement of ontology (despite being suggestive of it), so it is pretty mute about the ontological sense of the two events.
Right. It appears that one's identity is a series of experiences along the time dimension that are connected in an intimate way by laws of nature but each experience excludes the others. Earlier experiences may affect later experiences as memories built in the structure of your brain but at each moment there is an experience that excludes both earlier and later experiences. This exclusion seems to be due to the fact that consciousness exists only on certain time scales, which is about tens of milliseconds. There is no experience on shorter or longer time intervals. And so you cannot have an experience that spans an hour or your whole life. At this moment you have an experience that spans say 50 milliseconds. Over the next 50 milliseconds you have a different experience and not the one that you have over the previous 50 milliseconds. And you have no experience that spans 100 milliseconds.
Why consciousness is constituted this way is an open question. There are many questions about why consciousness is the way it is, for example why a particular pattern of firing neurons feels like experience of red color or why another pattern feels like experience of sweet taste.
But they are all currently existing. Again, I must emphasize that part of your post. You keep saying that that they aren't. Unless you want to backtrack on that.
Quoting noAxioms
Perhaps you meant to say that there is no temporal now? If you're saying that there is no sense of an ontological now, then you're contradicting what you just quoted. Everything exists right now under eternalism, in the ontological sense. This sense of now is just the sense of now that we have when we speak in the present tense.
But if you agree that every time in the universe's history currently exists in the ontological sense, then we can move on to the bigger problem in the OP, which is how, if all times of our life currently exist, and that we are currently a 4D object that extends throughout our life, can be reconciled to our current experience of only one of those times.
Quoting noAxioms
I would ask if you're disagreeing with the relativity of simultaneity. If you are then you'll have more help reading up the literature on it. If not, then I have no idea what your disagreement is on about.
Interesting. It could be that we do not either exist as complete 4D entities extended throughout our entire lives, nor instantaneous entities in the block universe, but are actually somewhere in between, mini 4D entities who exist for only a mere few milliseconds, but certainly more than an instant. However, that does raise a number of problematic questions, such as how arbitrary processes within our brain during our lives can determine how we are extended through time. In a sense, such a process seems to be meta-temporal, where events within time can affect the way time is divided, which is somewhat strange to me. In addition, even if our brains are at every moment, processing events of an extended interval of time, this process (at least to my mind) is continuous. Our brains seemingly just process information in discrete chunks of 50 milliseconds, but our experiences are constantly flowing in and out (presumably staying within our brain for that particular interval of time), so which parts of our lives these our mini 4D entities do occupy and experience is unclear which raises the question of why our lives were "cut" up in a particular manner.
Personally, I think that the fact that our brains process information at a certain time scale has no ontological implications. It just means that at every moment we are aware of events occurring within a period of time but that does not mean that our conscious mind need be extended.
Sure there is. Temporal now is today, the day this forum post is submitted.
Good example of mixing senses, leading to confusion. Everything exists (ontological, italics) right now (temporal, bold). Eternalism does not give temporal existence to Socrates, nor give any ontological status to 'right now'.
I cannot agree to a statement with mixed senses like that. Be explicit. Every event (there is no 'every time' since something like '1945' is ambiguous outside the context of Earth) currently (temporal sense) exists (ontological sense).
That's utterly confusing, but at least spelled out.
Are you saying that relativity does not order my parents' birth before my own? The ordering is ambiguous or nonexistent?
— noAxioms
No, I don't disagree with relativity of simultaneity, but my parents are still born before I was.
Going offline for quite some
And so they currently exist which I have quoted you as saying.
Quoting noAxioms
Look, the Stanford author was clearly outlining a sense of "now" that is ontological, which for some reason you want to deny. If you disagree with him in any way, then just say it. If you're more interested in muddling things, then I don't see how this discussion can go forward.
Quoting noAxioms
This is a good example of misrepresenting what I said. Did I bring in anything temporal? I was speaking strictly and purely from an ontological standpoint, and all uses of the word "now" and its synonyms are in the ontological sense.
Quoting noAxioms
Like I said, everything is strictly ontological, so you can't dodge the problem like before.
.
Stanford qualifies the difference. If it states that there is an ontological present, then it is not any form of eternalism that I'll agree with.
In a strictly ontological sense (there is also a temporal sense), there is no 'currently'. Current with what? Eternalism is not a statement of the simultaneity of all events. Time is a dimension, not a point.
Okay, then you disagree with the article. I don't really have much else to say then :-} .
I can only conclude that your version of eternalism is, like libertarian free will, irrational and ill defined.
But there must also be a kind of connectedness between these mini 4D entities that enables accumulation and integration of memories that enable our experience of personal identity that evolves in time.
Quoting Alec
These chunks of experiences may actually overlap, but since we cannot experience time intervals under the scale of tens of milliseconds the transitions between experiences may feel fuzzy and continuous.
Quoting Alec
Our experiences are obviously associated with spatiotemporally extended objects like brains but the experiences themselves seem to be indivisible and unanalyzable. They seem to have an intrinsic, unstructured, monadic identity as well as a relational identity that is constituted by the relations of the intrinsic identity to other intrinsic identities. This metaphysical view is also known as Russellian monism.
If i say "now and here" for no apparent reason while pointing at a tree, what information have i conveyed?
Haven't I at best, merely named the tree "now and here"?
Yes. They are all different versions of the same entity that exists over its entire lifetime, different clones of the same person.
Quoting litewave
That could be the case, but then that would sound a bit too extravagant and excessive. Instead of having multiple 4D entities that uniquely experiences and represents a portion of a person's life, every moment is represented by a multiple (perhaps infinite) entities that each have very slight differences in regions they occupy. Personally, I think that sounds even more strange.
Quoting litewave
Not entirely familiar with that view, so I'll have to look into that. I do think that this particular issue is related to the debate between what people call Extensionalism and Retentionalism. There are those (the extensionalists) who have argued that the specious present requires our minds to be actually extended and those (the retentionalists) who claim that it doesn't. This partially extended view seems to involve some form of the former view. I, however, happen to find the latter more preferable since it seems to reduce our specious present into something purely psychological instead of metaphysical.
I actually argued for something similar to this in a thread a few months back. I think your conclusion refers to the stage view of persistence, which states that you are one of the multiple (though not numerically identical) instantaneous counterparts of you in the block universe.
If you're willing to do some extra reading, there have been other authors who have discussed this topic. Off the top of my head, there is Experience and the Passage of Time by Bradford Skow (which I think can be found on the author's page) and A phenomenological argument for stage theory by Josh Parsons (I'm not sure if this can be found online as easily though).
Quoting Alec
This is like asking why you are you and not somebody else. It's not like there was a roulette wheel that was spun prior to your birth to determine who you are. If you were somebody else you would probably ask the same question, and similarly, the same would apply if you weren't the you who experiences life on October 20 of 2017.
I don't think that you can separate these two. The particular experience of asking the question, takes time, it has temporal extension. So it is impossible to separate the experience of this particular moment, from the experience of time passing, because the experience of this particular moment is an experience of time passing. By the time you say "now", time has passed, so even the moment of now involves an experience of time passing.
If we assume a block universe, then the subject must be somehow propelled through this block to create the feeling of time passing. The propellant must be something external to the universe, but within the subject, to create the subjective experience. So there must be something within the subject, which is external to the universe, causing the subject to experience a procession of time. This suggests dualism.
Quoting Alec
The problem with this perspective is to account for the connection between the different versions of you, and the relationship of order, between them. If there are different versions of you, then how can you have memories from different versions of you. This requires that you assume a relationship between the different versions of you. What is this relation, and why is there a particular order to the memories of the occurrence of different versions of you? So you end up having to assume something else, to account for these relationships. What is that something else? Is it time passing? If it is, then we have two "times", one in the eternalist block, the other to account for the ordered relations, the passing of time..
So we can't call this "time", because it would create contradiction, two distinct definitions of "time". What is it then, other than that special feature of the subject, which I've already spoken about, that causes an ordered relationship of memories? Either way, if we assume the eternalist block, dualism is unavoidable.
This idea just occurred to me a while ago but it seems that the second timeline, which would be a series of my passing "now" experiences of the eternalist block, would constitute another eternalist block. It would be a series of my brain states or mind states, each state being an experience. And since my subjective experiential timeline is bound up with the objective world timeline we might fuse these two timelines into one timeline of a world that includes both the objective world and our brain or mind states.
Funnily, it also occurred to me that the "passage" of time may be a phenomenon that is not only our subjective experience but in some weird sense also a property of the objective world. Let me explain. What we experience is, strictly speaking, not the external world but the representations of the external world in our minds. But since these representations are particular mappings, via causal relations involving the senses, of the external world onto our minds, there is some significant similarity between the external world and our representations of it. For example, when we see a triangular traffic sign in the street, the triangle of the traffic sign in the external world is similar to the triangle experienced in our mind. Also presumably, when we experience the red color of a tomato, there is some similarity between our experience of red color and a property of the tomato that is represented by our experience of red color. And so, when we experience the passage of time of the external world there seems to be a property of the external world that is somehow similar to its representation, that is, to our experience of the passage of time. That property would be an objective "passage" of time. It would be like an "experience" of the eternalist external world block itself, associated with structural properties of the world (the relativistic structure of spacetime, the laws of physics, the second law of thermodynamics...).
I follow, except there is a lot more than two timelines, because every subject has one's own timeline. Then the "objective timeline" is assumed to have real existence because we can find consistency between the different subjective lines. The real issue though, is the experience of time passing. I don't believe it is possible to disassociate the "now" experience from the experience of time passing, so we have to work this "time passing" into the objective timeline.
Quoting litewave
Exactly. We conclude that there is an objective timeline from the fact that there is consistency in our experience, so from the consistency in this aspect of our experience, time passing, we can conclude that there is an objective aspect of reality which corresponds to this experience the passage of time. So the question is, how do we reconcile this with the eternalist block time. I don't think it is possible, and that's why I don't think that the block time is an acceptable representation of reality.
I would reconcile an objective passage of time with the eternalist block time in the following way. While the subjective passage of time is a qualitative aspect of a pattern of neuronal firings (an experience), the objective passage of time is a qualitative aspect of the pattern of the external world (which is represented in our mind by the pattern of neuronal firings). Both the external world pattern and the pattern of neuronal firings are patterns in an eternalist block spacetime, but every pattern has a qualitative aspect (in addition to its structural aspect); in the case of the neuronal firings it is a conscious quality (quale/experience) while in the case of the external world it is, presumably, an unconscious quality. These two qualities are similar because the two patterns are similar, but one quality is conscious and the other is probably unconscious. It seems impossible to imagine the unconscious quality because only conscious qualities can constitute the content of our consciousness, but we know that there is some kind of similarity of the unconscious quality to the conscious quality, and so in the external world there is some kind of counterpart of the consciously experienced passage of time. But as I said, both kinds of the passage of time are qualitative aspects of a static, eternalist pattern.
The "qualitative aspect" of a pattern may seem like a convenient concoction but I think there is a plausible metaphysical idea behind it. The idea is that every thing has an intrinsic identity, which is something that the thing is in itself, and this intrinsic identity is unstructured/monadic and therefore "qualitative" - it is the qualitative aspect of the thing. This same thing also has a structural identity, which may be a structure constituted by the relations of the thing to its parts (or generally by the relations of the thing to any other things), but since the thing (the whole) is not identical to any of its parts, the intrinsic identity of the thing is not constituted by its parts. The intrinsic identity is something indescribable because when we describe something we always present the thing in its relations to other things (by referring to its parts, properties or other things). And so it ultimately defies description what the "passage of time" is in itself. We may label it by a name or a phrase like the "passage of time", or describe it by reference to other aspects of reality like "past", "present" and "future", which however have something qualitative and therefore indescribable about them too.
The metaphysical view known as Russellian monism proposes that intrinsic identities, or at least some subset of them, are qualities of consciousness. The panpsychist version of Russellian monism regards all intrinsic identities as qualities of consciousness while other versions only some - that's why I differentiated between the conscious qualities of neuronal firing patterns and the probably unconscious qualities of the external world patterns. (in the end we might say that all qualities are conscious but differentiate the "level" or "intensity" of consciousness)
From the Stanford entry:
Quoting Alec
What is the difference between "existing right now" and being "currently present"? That is either a contradiction or conceptual confusion in the article, or else "existing right now" does not mean "existing at the present time". Perhaps 'right now" in the context of eternailsm is thought of not as the present moment, but instead the eternal present which is the totality of all present moments, but obviously not merely any one of them.
This is similar to the idea that "right here" could be anywhere is space, or in other words is applicable in general to everywhere, not merely specifically to where you or I happen to be.
The "patterns" you refer to are a temporal succession, one neuron firing is experienced as prior to another etc. In the block universe, how does one thing get experienced as prior to another?
Quoting litewave
I don't see how a passage of time is a qualitative aspect of a static eternalist pattern. I agree that there is a temporal order to the block, but unless there is something independent from the block, which is moving through the block, I don't see how there can be a passage of time. The conscious subject can only have an experience of time passing because it consist of something which is completely independent of the objective world, and that defines it as a subject rather than an object. The objective block universe has no time passing, therefore whatever it is which is responsible for the experience of time passing, this thing must be completely independent from the objective world. So we ought to assume dualism.
The author of the article refers to two different senses of the term "now", one in which he calls "ontological" and the other "temporal locative". When he says that Socrates isn't "currently present" he is saying that he is not "present" in the sense of temporal location, despite being ontologically real.
I believe that the ontological sense of the term "now" refers to what we normally mean when we talk about what is currently happening. When we say that you are reading this post "right now" we don't mean that it "has happened" or that it "will happen"; we mean that it is happening right now. That is just a basic fact. To say that something "has happened" or "will happen" would require a flow of time. Given that Eternalism simply lacks a passage of time by definition, this is where we get statements from the article such as:
Quoting Stanford Article on Time
The temporal location sense of the term "now" in contrast seems to refer to a similarity in coordinates. Under eternalism, everything exists in four dimensions, the fourth being time, which is functionally like space (you might as well consider it a fourth dimension of space). We not only have the notion of objects existing to the left/right, above/below, or behind/ahead of each other, we also have them exist earlier and later to one another as well. To say that Socrates isn't "present" is just to say that he is located earlier to where I am. If he was to be considered "present" by me in the temporal location sense, then he wouldn't be located later or earlier relative to me. Of course, this doesn't mean that Socrates in this four dimensional universe does not exist (in the ontological sense). He is still around for the Eternalist, just not where you are.
Saying that something exists at a certain time ('now' for instance) leads one to imply that it does not exist at some other possible time. The Stanford entry says it doesn't mean that, but everybody is ignoring that disclaimer (OK, Mr Bee sees it).
Yes, it is similar to exactly that: "Every point in space exists right here." That means that despite being right here, it does not imply that other locations do not exist. They all have equal ontology, and there is no preferred 'here'. Saying they all exist right here does not imply that all points are at the same location, but the statement "Every point in space exists right here." tempts one to interpret the statement exactly that way. Hence I don't like the Stanford wording.
No it isn't. If you don't believe in an objective flow of time then there is no meaning to saying that events have occurred or will occur. That is really the main crux of the eternalist vs presentist debate, the existence of this passage. The only tense that makes sense is to say that all things "are", which is to say that they are all exist now in the way we normally understand things existing right now.
Quoting noAxioms
Under eternalism, we say that WWI is later to 1910, not that it will happen, similar to how I say that the store is to the right of my house. I believe you are referring to the temporal location sense in your use of the present here.
Because of causal relations between one thing and another. There is a causal imprint of the earlier thing in the later thing, so the experience of the later thing enables us to identify it as being after the earlier thing.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The experienced passage of time is a feeling, a quality of consciousness (quale). It is a fundamental problem in the philosophy of consciousness how a certain pattern of neuronal firings, whether viewed as static or dynamic, can give rise to a quality of consciousness, for example to the experience of red color. David Chalmers dubbed it the "hard problem of consciousness". So your inability to see how the experience of a passage of time can be a qualitative aspect of a static eternalist pattern is a special case of a wider problem - the inability to see how any experience can be a qualitative aspect of some pattern.
As I said, the qualitative aspect of the pattern can be understood as the intrinsic identity of the pattern (as opposed to its structural or compositional identity) but there seems to be an unbridgable explanatory gap between the structure of the pattern and its quality. This seems to be due to the fact that the quality cannot be logically derived from the structure (and the structure cannot be logically derived from the quality) because you can only derive a structure from a structure - logical derivation is about relations, not about qualities. So we can understand why there is some qualitative aspect of a pattern but we cannot explain why the qualitative aspect is the way it is - why the experience feels the way it feels. Moreover, we cannot even describe how the experience feels because a description of a thing always refers to other things, not to the intrinsic identity of the thing. Try to explain the experience of red color to a person who never saw it; referring to tomatoes won't help, it will only tell him about the relation of red color to tomatoes but not about the quality of red color.
Still, since the intrinsic and the structural identity of a thing are bound up like two sides of a coin (they are identities of the same thing), we can expect that structurally similar patterns will also have similar qualities. We can also expect that the quality will somehow reflect the structure, so it can make some sense that the causal structure of brain processes, which enables the identification of prior and later moments, will be reflected in the experience of a passage of time.
That's the norm, Stanford is not a good reference.
Quoting litewave
But causality is highly questionable in eternalism. You could perhaps assume potential causal relations, through spatial-temporal relations, but to say that there is a causal imprint from one thing on another thing, is just an arbitrary claim. It is like saying that X is similar in spatial structure to Y, and after Y in time, therefore Y caused X, but this is an arbitrary assumption. We cannot deduce a passage of time here without a definition of "cause" which assumes a passage of time. But this premise, the definition of "cause" which assumes a passing of time, would contradict the premise of the eternalist block.
Quoting litewave
I do not understand how you are try to relate "structure" to temporal experience. Temporal experience is better described as "order" rather than structure. We may be able to say that order is a particular type of structure, but an argument would have to be made to show this relationship. I understand order in terms of quantity rather than quality, so if the structure you are talking about is order, then this may be why you cannot reconcile structure with quality. 1,2,3,4,5, is an order. So your argument about quality and structure, appears irrelevant to me because you haven't shown how this is related to order. That is how we experience time, as order.
Quoting Alec
Our minds have their own "time", as noAxioms put it. I would say that things, including our minds, have their own frequency of change. Time is simply an arbitrary measurement of change.
Our minds process the information of the world at certain rate, or frequency, that is change at a different rate, than the change that occurs around us. This means that some things appear to change so fast as to be a blur (change faster than our minds do) or change so slow as to appear to be solid, stable objects (change slower than our minds do). So the speed at which other processes of nature change is relative to our processing of it. Because our minds are part of the universe itself and change at a particular frequency, just like everything else, that is relative to the other natural processes, we end up stretching the causal relationships into what we know as space and time.
Causal relations are part of the structure of block spacetime. I think causal relations are a special kind of mathematical/logical relations in the context of the entropic arrow of time where consequences logically follow from causes, if we use a broad definition of "causes" as initial conditions and structural features of spacetime that we call laws of physics. So, if you can logically derive a pattern at some moment of time from a pattern at a prior moment of time and laws of physics, then there is a causal relation between the two patterns.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Time is a special kind of order. At least in our world this order is defined as the time dimension of spacetime according to the theory of relativity and the direction of this order (the arrow of time) is defined by the increasing entropy (second law of thermodynamics). All of this is already included in the structure of block spacetime. The remaining problem is why this order appears to be "passing" or "flowing", and I am saying that this appearance of "passing" or "flowing" is a feeling, a quality of consciousness, a qualitative aspect of neuronal firings. This is the subjective (experiential) passage of time. I am also saying that this quality of neuronal firings is a representation of a quality of the world, and I am suggesting that this quality of the world can be regarded as an objective passage of time.
Quoting Mr BeeAssuming I am an eternalist (I'm not really), is it not legal for the October2017-noAxioms to say that Christmas will be on a Monday this year and last was on a Sunday? If the October2017-noAxioms can legally use those tenses, surely it is valid for the October2016-noAxioms to assert that this Christmas will be on a Sunday. Or do you disagree? Not sure what you're saying is invalid to do.
Nope, because under eternalism, it simply isn't the case that Christmas "will exist". Christmas doesn't just pass into existence and October out of it. Instead it already exists at a part of the block universe and it is located later to where October-2017-noaxioms is located on the block. The Christmas located on a Sunday of 2016 is located earlier to the same individual.
You try to bring in talk of "will" and "was" to the mix, but that just confuses things, as they are commonly associated with the passage of time. It is a basic fact that eternalism is commonly associated with the rejection of the flow of time, but I highly suggest you look at any corner of the literature if you're not convinced. This is why the article says that every event exists "right now", but I am not sure why you disagree with it.
Quoting Mr BeeYes, I agree that the tenses should be avoided when speaking in eternalist terms, but only because of the lack of a reference point.
Quoting Mr BeeI disagree with the reference to "right now". What does that mean in eternalist terms?? There is no "right now".
Well, Eternalism is well-known for being counter-intuitive (again, you can look that up if you're skeptical), unless you want to argue that it is a common sense view. If you want to state that "Xmas will be on a Monday" and intend it as an expression of the passage of time, then you're probably not an eternalist. Sorry, but that is just how the words are defined.
Quoting noAxioms
What does it mean when we usually speak of things existing "right now"? I am typing up this response "right now" because my fingers are currently going across the keyboard. You're reading this post "right now" as your eyes are currently looking at the screen. What does it mean when we say that?
I think the better question is, what does it mean to exist if things neither existed, will exist or currently exist.
You can try to argue that things exist "tenselessly" in the sense that they are eternal and unchanging, but that notion can be captured either by saying that they "always did exist, are existing and will always exist", or that they "currently exist" and rejecting that things ever did happen or will happen (ie. rejecting the flow of time, which is what Eternalism does). One may also try to argue that things exist "timelessly" like some may claim to be how numbers and God exist, but I am not a platonist, nor do I believe in a religious God, so the notion of existing a-temporally seems nonsensical to me.
Thanks. I couldn't find anything that significantly disagreed with anything I had said in either of your responses, so that leaves me with nothing much else to say.
From the "point of view" of eternalism everything exists eternally, in its eternal "right now" or eternal present. From a temporal perspective, of course everything that has, does or will exist does not exist in the current "right now", but does exist in some other "right now".
Sounds good, I think. To me, saying that everything exists in this "eternal present" is just a way of saying that they currently exist. Saying that there is a time where Napoleon exists under eternalism is no more different than saying that there is a parallel universe where everything is set 200 years back and Napoleon is alive IMO, and we have no trouble using the present tense for the latter.
Ok, I see where I misunderstood.
It seems to me, though, that terms like "now", "then", "before" and "after" become meaningless by eternalism. If time doesn't exist except in our minds, then how would we describe the relationship between 1917 and 2017 outside of our minds? To say that they both exist now, wouldn't make sense, but to just say that they both exist doesn't get at their relationship. After all, we could probably point to events in 1917 that led to events in 2017.
If you use "increasing entropy" to describe the arrow of time, then there is no need to describe the feeling of time passing. The feeling of time passing is just the consequence of increasing entropy. However, increasing entropy is not something included in the eternalist block universe. It is something else which is added. The block universe allows that time could "flow" in either direction. So "increasing entropy" is a concept derived from observations of the physical world, and these observations directly contradict the block universe theory because they indicate that time can only flow in one direction, while the block universe allows that time could flow in either direction.
Quoting litewave
I don't agree with this at all, you seem to be just making things up. Yes, causal relations are determined in the context of the entropic arrow of time, but the entropic arrow is not a part of the block spacetime, it is something which is added to the block, to account for our observations of a flow of time. This allows that within the block, someone can distinguish between time-like relations and space-like relations, by assuming causal relations. The observations of causal relations are inconsistent with the block universe, so the block must be adapted by means of light cones and such, to allow for the arrow of time, the observations of causation.
On a lighter note, I notice that time identity is not associative under presentism: "The future is now" is true, but "Now is the the future" is false. So A = B, but B ~= A, a contradiction, therefore presentism is false.
That's my attempt at the dumbest proof of etermalism ever posted.
No, presentations of block universe typically assume a single direction of time, which is usually identified with the direction of increasing entropy along the otherwise bi-directional time dimension. As an example, imagine a gas tank with gas concentrated in one of the corners of the tank. According to the second law of thermodynamics the entropy of the gas tank increases with time, so at the subsequent moments of time the state of the tank will have more and more dispersed gas particles. So there is a series of states of the gas tank, each state having more entropy (more dispersed gas) than the previous state, and this series constitutes an eternalist block. There is no obvious "passage" of time in this block; it's just a series of arrangements of gas particles.
Right, so the point at issue is the second law of thermodynamics. It indicates that the structure of patterns within the eternalist block are such that we must proceed in our experience of time passing, in one direction only. We cannot proceed in our experience of time passing in the other direction without violating that second law. But the eternalist block allows that we could experience time in both directions. Therefore the second law of thermodynamics is inconsistent with the eternalist block representation of the universe.
Yes, time is a special kind of order and increase of the world's entropy is one of the characteristics of this order.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Why do you think so? As far as I know, the eternalist block just says that there is no passage of time because spacetime is a static, timeless object.
That's right, Perhaps I didn't state that very clearly. The eternalist block universe does not allow for any passing of time. Any conception of time passing, would have to refer to a force outside the universe to account for time passing. There is nothing inherent within the eternalist block which would force that force to pass time in one direction, the other, or even random jumping around. The second law of thermodynamics, necessitates that time is passing in one direction, so it represents that outside force. Therefore the two, the eternalist block, and the second law, are incompatible. The second law of thermodynamics describes a force external to the universe, which is imposed on it.
The second law of thermodynamics is just a rule for ordering the time slices of the block. It doesn't make time pass any more than any other rule for ordering time slices. But it does seem important for the feeling or quality of time passing.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The second law of thermodynamics is a structural feature of the universe.
The second law is not a structural feature of the eternalist block universe, that's the inconsistency I'm talking about. Either the eternalist block provides an incomplete representation of the universe, or the second law refers to something outside the universe.
The second law is just the way the time slices are ordered. Why would it be something outside the universe?
Because there is no slices in the block, it is a block. The slicing and ordering is done by something outside the universe.
The time slices are parts of the spacetime block. When there is an order somewhere it doesn't have to mean that the order is created by some external force.