Does everything exist at once?
In the following conversation Socrates infers that the knowledge we possess is already within us. (I know there are challenges to this idea of his and the technique he used to demonstrate it.)
Socrates: So the man who does not know has within himself true opinions about the things that he does not know?
Memo: so it appears.
Socrates: These opinions have now just been stirred up like a dream, but if he were repeatedly asked these same questions in various ways, you know that his knowledge about these things would be accurate as anyone’s.
Meno: It is likely.
Socrates: And he will know it without being taught, but only questioned, and find the knowledge within himself?
But the idea is that mathematical knowledge was already there. Does this then mean that everything is already there, it only awaits our ability to see it; America was there before it was discovered, Einstein’s theory of relativity was there before he formulated it, viruses existed before we identified them. Over time we learn to see more as our knowledge expands. But even then, despite our advancement in science, are we still only comprehending one small aspect of a virus. Might we one day discover that a virus has a mind?
I recall a statement along the lines of, “God allows us to know as much as he chooses.”
Is belief the suspicion of something existing that can’t yet be proven? Is belief equal to science in human enquiry?
Would it be fair to say that even our own fate is already out there, waiting for us, that our fate already exists, like America?
If our fate already exists out there, waiting for us, then does everything exist at once? And if so does that mean no time?
Can the past affect the present, can individuals be affected by those from what we regard as the past, can the present have an affect on the past? Or is there nothing?
Comments (124)
Agreed.
Mathematics, science, and engineering are discovered, while economics, for example, is invented. One can invent an unlimited number of different economics. The Soviet Union successfully invented one too.
Quite a few academic disciplines are rightfully considered to be inventions. Economics is one discipline which still often gets incorrectly classified as being a discovery, while it is obviously also merely an invention.
Quoting Brett
We cannot prove anything about the physical universe. The definition of proof requires a set of "ab initio" basic beliefs, i.e. first principles or axioms, from which we derive theorems. We do not know the first principles of the physical universe, i.e. the Theory of Everything (ToE). Hence, proof about the physical universe is simply impossible.
The best we can have about the physical universe are falsifiable suspicions, i.e. science.
Quoting alcontali
This raises an interesting point for me. Is a Capitalist economy invented, or is it a natural evolution of existing ideas?
But if it’s an invention, and claimed by many to be unworkable and unfair, then are our inventions inferior to discoveries? This sort of winds back to Darwinism, I guess, in that the natural evolution of things, survival of the fittest (idea), is the most successful.
It depends on what "capitalist" is supposed to means. It is certainly not a synonym for free trade or free markets.
At the core of a contemporary western economy you will find the usury-infested fiat bankstering system, which is not merely a "natural evolution of existing ideas". It is the 1913 Federal Reserve Act that started imposing this form of organized theft in the USA through the use of force.
When people began to realize that the banksters were lying to them, and tried to call their bluff, another spectacular, forceful intervention followed:
So, Roosevelt threatened 10 years of imprisonment for anybody exposing the banksters' lies and manipulations.
The usury-infested depravity at the core of the contemporary economy is kept afloat with highly manipulative propaganda, gigantic bankster bailouts, skyrocketing taxes, along with an extensive police force which will incarcerate anybody who refuses to submit to the lying and scheming banksters.
Ultimately, the bankstering system is kept afloat by the false belief in the fake legitimacy of the voting circus. Therefore, it is merely a byproduct of rampant paganism. Religious law strictly forbids usury, but the unbelievers do not care about that, because they were born and came into this world in order to wallow in depravity and rampant promiscuity. They are a lost cause anyway. So, just let them crash and burn.
Quoting alcontali
I can’t be sure how you’re using the word “paganism”. Do you mean it in its original sense, or in a perjirative form condemning modern times?
Edit: by the way, this is how I regard the meaning of capitalism: an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.
Well, the usury-infested fiat bankstering system is based on very serious violations against religious law. At the same time, these people still "believe in something", if only, in the usurious depravity in which they wallow. These people are burdened in debt because of their false beliefs.
The further unspecified "something" in which they happen to believe, is a set of false, pagan ideologies, which include the belief in the permissibility of usury, which is in turn just one small element in the collection of falsehoods that they subscribe to.
This problem is not even specific to modern times. Paganism was, for example. also rampant during antiquity.
Paganism is the strong belief in counter-natural behaviour.
It is the strong belief that we can relax the laws that govern human nature. Self-discipline goes out of the window. That what used to be considered wrong, becomes good, and that what used to be considered good, becomes wrong. It is the slippery slope to the world upside down.
In some ways, the self-inflicted misery of the pagans is also funny. That is why it is ok for me, because I can endlessly laugh at them. That is probably also the reason why I do not feel the need to save the pagans. In that case, I would need to find something else to laugh at. So, no, just leave it "as is".
Quoting alcontali
Of which period in history are you referring to?
Edit: this sounds more like a Christian point of view.
Nowadays, it is very strong. I guess that it is as strong as in the late Roman empire, if not stronger.
Rampant depravity is often considered an end-of-civilization phenomenon. The western world is widely considered "about to implode" because that kind of events is typically preceded by widespread degeneration.
I don't pretend to know what Socrates meant by that assertion, but I don't take it literally. Perhaps he was referring to the metaphor that man is a micro-cosmos, containing the essence of the whole world, including mathematics, within himself.
Why not?
Okay, I get it. Paganism equals depravity. So back to the beginning; is Capitalism an invention?
Because I assume it's a metaphor. It's as-if.
If capitalism means:
an economy with at the core a usury-infested fiat bankstering system
then yes, it is an invention, just like putting the GOSPLAN at the core of the Soviet economy:
Quoting Wikipedia on the GOSPLAN
Quoting Gnomon
I don’t think he does mean it as a metaphor. The exercise he carried out wasn’t a metaphor.
Quoting alcontali
I think that’s more of a description than a meaning. But my interest is whether our inventions, compared to our discoveries, are problematic. Has Capitalism, for example, as an invention, been successful or problematic?
The exercise only proved that the human brain works with an inherent logic : a mathematical logic, including basic arithmetic. If Socrates had asked for the answer to a calculus problem, do you think Meno would have had a "true opinion" about that kind of knowledge? Sages like Socrates often made bold general statements without qualification or limitation. They may be true metaphorically without necessarily being true in detail. Like Jesus' parables they are intended to convey a general impression, not to be taken literally or historically. Socrates was teaching by leading instead of by lecturing.
Sounds like Socrates is baggering Meno with his annoying rhetorical method. If only Meno could give him a dose of his own medicine. How does Socrates defend his theory of recollection?
Quoting Gnomon
Yes, that’s the argument against the exercise, which is hard to refute. So does that deny the possibility of everything already existing?
True knowledge, then, would be discovered.
Yes, I personally also think that inventions are problematic while discoveries are commendable.
Quoting Brett
Free trade, and marketplaces in permissible products and services, are permissible behaviour, while usury is a problem and deemed, impermissible behaviour.
So, yes, I consider an economy with at its core a usury-infested fiat bankstering system to be an evil invention. Furthermore, as far as I am concerned, it is the entire ideology that justifies usury as morally permissible that is reprehensible.
I am not going to argue against commerce because God has permitted trade.
Quoting alcontali
I have a sneaking suspicion that you say discoveries are commendable because they are the work of God. And then it becomes a conversation circling the idea of God, which just kills everything.
I don't think that parable had any bearing on such an ontological question. It was just a demonstration of the Socratic method of indirect teaching, not of human omniscience, or a static universe.
Yes, I appreciate that. I had used it, probably unwisely, to introduce the idea of everything already existing.
But does everything already exist or not? Or can, in a dynamic universe, things come into being that had not previously existed? Or are the elements that created this new thing already, and always are, on the way to creation, like our moving towards our fate.
I am not a religious scholar or a specialized mufti.
Therefore, I do not know how to derive something like that, or its opposite view, from religious law, while asserting that type of proposition would definitely require a legitimate ruling ("hukm") in fiqh ("jurisprudence").
Knowledge isnt something that can be discovered, it is something you have as the result discovering something. Knowledge results from discovery, but the thing you are discovering isnt knowledge itself. You find a coin on the ground, and that results in knowledge of the coin. The coin existed before your discovery, but the knowledge only exists once you, the discoverer of the coin, becomes aware (gain knowledge) of the coin.
Quoting DingoJones
Okay. Then let's just talk about the thing discovered. Forget the word knowledge.
Ok. What about it exactly?
The idea that everything already exists, that everything that could ever exist is already out there awaiting our ability to see it. (See my OP).
I will approach the issue from left field. I once had a visionary dream in which I was taken up by Christ and experienced my past and future, the past and future, laid out on the ground (in the dream I visualised this as the houses in my street with the roofs taken off and as one moved across a room one would have been traversing time.), as I was lifted I saw more of the landscape, hence a broader space of time. The Christ communicated to me in such a way without speaking, but rather like the almost telepathic understanding between a mother and baby.
My point being that reality is probably not what it seems, spatial, temporal conditions may only be a function of something else more real like a soul, or ethereal world. This suggests, or implies an atemporal, unextended (spatially) reality. But also transcendent and possibly omniscient from our position within it. Allowing everything to exist at once.
It depends on what you mean by “everything”. Some things by their nature cannot exist prior to our Ability to “see” it.
Are you taking a roundabout route to talking about determinism?
Quoting DingoJones
Really, I’m just going on a journey.
Quoting DingoJones
What sort of things?
I’ve just scanned some material on eternalism which I’ll read a bit more closely. That may clarify my thoughts a bit more.
For anyone not familiar with it, there is Einstein's train:
1. A passenger sits in the middle of a train with two light guns
2. He fires each gun at either end of the train
3. The two light pulses hit simultaneously; these two events define his present
4. There is a guy at trackside, also positioned in the middle of the train
5. To him the train is moving to the right so the right beam has slightly longer to travel than the left beam
6. But the speed of light is constant for both beams
7. So he sees the left beam impact before the right beam. That defines his present.
So in summary, two people in the same spacetime location have different interpretations of what 'now' is. This is clearly contrary to presentism and is therefore supportive of an eternalist / 4d spacetime interpretation of time.
Circular Time => involves repetition of activity over and over again, even though the succeeding cycles are variants of the first and there is some awareness of similarities and analogies despite the inability to get out of the rat race because it is believed to be necessary and integral to those life activities. (Hint: 4D perspective)
Spiral Time => involves repetition of activity as in circular time but with the capacity to learn the greater lesson (the fundamental principle) and therefore develop the capacity to move on to greater dimensional awareness, perception and activity. (Hint: 5D perspective)
Spherical/All-encompassing Time (All/Absolute Time) => Life is being. Time is only generated when one chooses to perform an activity whose perspective is limited in comparison to the whole of being. Therefore, time relations are generated through the perspective of multiplicities within the whole. The whole itself is not limited by time and only uses it as a tool for counting and keeping of records (relating, translating and expressing) within a certain dynamic. (Hint: Much higher than 5D perspective)
Life is perspective. What you see is what you get.
Well, there is a sense in which fate is real; after all the universe seems to obey rules, aptly named "the laws of nature". Whether everything in the universe is subject to laws is an open question but it is quite odd to think that a subset would be exempt from the laws the rest of the universe operates under. Ergo, it wouldn't be totally inaccurate to say, given the universe has laws, that fate is real.
If fate is real then every possible point in the future is nascent in the present just as the past held the seeds of the present. What relation, if any, does time have to fate? For ease of discussion let's take a seed of an oak in the present. The fate of the seed is to grow into an oak in the future. The process of growing from a seed into a mature oak requires the passage of time, doesn't it? Fate to be realized requires the existence of time, which could be taken, for this example, as a gap in the temporal dimension which the seed must traverse for it to become an adult oak tree. Ergo, time must exist for fate to be real.
Also, notice that fate is a combination of determinism and time: determinism is true AND determinism explains why something happened at a particular time (past/present) or why and when something will happen (future). Time is an essential aspect of fate.
As for Socrates, he seems to be talking about truths and the general impression is that truths are timeless, eternal as it were and all it takes for a person to discover it within himself is a question. Does fate claim eternal truths? Indeed if what fate decrees must occur then it does for it is about a fact and even if it has yet to become actualized, it'll inevitably happen.
Notice however, that truths are time-independent i.e. it doesn't change with it. For instance 2 + 2 = 4 was/is/will always be true irrespective of time.
Fate, however, differs in that though the pronouncements of fate may have an eternal tinge to it that which is fated requires the passage of time. So, if a person were to look back into his past, assess his actions, and realize that his present circumstance is inevitable then he has knowledge of his fate but then time passed between whatever pivotal moments occured in his past and his present condition.
For those with limited perspectives, it will always take time for cause and effect to manifest and express. The law of cause and effect is instantaneous but the limitations of the situations in which they are manifest and expressed simulate the multiple variants of time and perspectives. For example, for a lazy, obese, totally physically unfit human, the difference in moments from when the will (intent or impulse to action) is actualized to the moment the hand is raised in an attempt to sucker punch a bully whose dissing them, is far greater than if the intent were generated by the current heavy weight boxing champion of the world.
For an absolute being, lacking any limitations means that everything is at this moment because everything is actualized right now. Yes, your arms are too short to box with GOD. :wink:
Ok. It sounds to me like its taken you towards deterministic ideas, that ideas and actions are already laid out somehow and they are just waiting for you “discover” them (become aware of the casual chains to some degree).
Quoting Brett
Things that are created, like ideas or an iphone. It depends on what catagory of things you are getting at.
Sounds like you are talking about the notion of Eternalism, which is a modern version of Fatalism. Its scientific justification is based on the concept of Block Time, which is an inference from Einstein's Theory of Relativity. All I can say about that hypothetical possibility is, if you experience change (flowing time) in your world, and don't experience Stasis, then Eternalism is not real for you.
Regarding Fatalism, if you are anxious about the future, by all means consult a psychic or fortune-teller, and you will feel better. But it won't change your fate.
Eternalism : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternalism_(philosophy_of_time)
Yes.
Quite.
Is this a philosophical discipline, or is there literature relating to it?
Yes, it seems that everything exists at once, as all possible paths/events, in no time, as eternal, which we can logically find out since what has no beginning cannot have any input; thus, everything, Maning all possible particulars/events.
Why, then, do we experience 'becoming'? Somehow, we are traveling through the Everything Block along some particular path.
I mean, we do know some things independent of experience, otherwise we'd be unable to take experiences to imply anything.
But that doesn't imply we know everything independent of experience.
It doesn't imply there's no past or future or present.
It doesn't imply that I am the same as the objects I seem to be experiencing.
If everything is one, then you deserve punishment for my wrongs - yes? I mean, you committed them as much as I did, for we're one and the same person.
Yet that's manifestly absurd as the reason of all but the insane will confirm. So we're not all one. And if we're not all one, everything is not one.
I don’t necessarily see fate as deterministic. By that I mean I don’t think our life is already set up for us with an intention or objective. When I say fate I mean that our end will take place at a specific place and time. We can zig zag as many times as we chose, it’s not our fate that determines those actions, though when we look back from that moment at the end we will see how we got there. Different actions will lead to a different fate, but it will be our own whatever it is. This is free will in action, isn’t it?
So I don’t know if determinism is true.
However, if I accept determinism then our fate is definitely set in stone and most certainly must exist.
However your point about time I have to think about, because it makes sense. So there is a question over ‘no time’, or of what time is. But doesn’t ‘Einstein’s train’ allow for time be perceived differently than your seed analogy?
The ‘laws of nature’, does that mean acts that are inevitable?
Quoting DingoJones
I had contemplated the idea of things that exist and always have, and things we invent. It seems to me that when we invent we apply the knowledge we have if things that always existed, like maths. So those things you mention we invented. My other thought was that the things we invented, man-made, turn out to be problematic.
Quoting Bartricks
That was a mistake of mine to begin with Socrates and has created a false idea of where I was going. I had meant that everything already exists, like maths, not that we have information about reality imprinted on our souls.
It doesn't imply that I am the same as the objects I seem to be experiencing.
Also, I had not claimed that, someone had mentioned it. So I’m not claiming that we are all one.
If passenger ‘B’ (trackside) sees the light pulse on the left hit before the light pulse on the right does that mean the pulse on the left is the present and the pulse on the right is the future if there is a difference in time between them for ‘B’ ?
:up:
Some people believe in Archetypes, while others believe in Platonic Forms. The problem is how can we access those abstractions in the real world.
Quoting PoeticUniverse
By this do you mean ‘becoming’ as a linear event and so of time?
Quoting Gnomon
I’m not sure what you mean in relation to that post.
Reality is a space-time world. But Archetypes and Forms are "things" (ideas) that are assumed to have always existed. Yet we only have access to them in imagination. Real things are temporal. So they couldn't have always existed. Only unreal things can exist eternally.
Quoting Gnomon
This is a problem, isn’t it? Things of the imagination are not real. Real things are temporal. Only unreal things can exist externally and because they don’t exist they don’t count.
Savonarola.
So, all you're saying is that things that exist, exist.
Well math isnt something that has always existed. “”Always existed” is problematic, but even without that math is a man made description and/or a modelling structure. I think you might be confusing our description (math for example), with the reality we use something like math to describe or interact with. So that might be a useful distinction to make in your journey.
Im missing the connection between man-made things being problematic and the above, but none the less Im curious. What is it about man made things that is problematic? By what standard could you possibly measure it differently that the horror show that is the natural world doesnt also qualify?
I hadn't realised that controversy was the point of being here.
Nor did I make a claim, I asked a question.
I was alluding to the idea of past, present and future existing right now.
Well, the present isn't the past, is it? The past is the past. The present is the present. And the future is the future. They're mutually incompatible properties.
Something that exists now, is in the present. It may have existed in the past - but that's not the same as saying that it exists now.
Can't argue with that. Of course your right.
It is just a concept, a predominantly metaphysical one. But then knowledge of reality would have to be constructed predominantly on metaphysical (beyond our physique/physics) blocks. There are books with such ideas, try books on spirituality, yoga, esoteric, etc. However, beyond books, it is possible for someone, if diligent enough, to work out reality for themselves since it is something they are. The idea is to know thyself and it's the best way to learn (see Sadhguru).
I find myself coming to the forum already with a breadth of understanding of issues like what your OP is about, but from a different philosophical tradition, reluctant to broach many of the subjects because I just get shouted down by academic philosophers, especially the post modernists, as talking new age nonsense. Well if I'm spouting nonsense, what are the post modernists up to, I ask?
Perhaps, instead of modern contemporary philosophy, try explaining it to the present modern you. If you can explain it to yourself, then it is philosophy.
Quoting Bartricks
Past, present and future, or linear time as I have learnt to call it, is fundamentally dependent upon our 'refresh'-rate. That is, how many times we need to do (perform) or relay influence over our faculties for perspective to be generated, developed/cultivated and permanently set (crystallized) within us. The intelligence which operates within reality is continuous throughout infinity/eternity. That is, for reality (the absolute or God), everything is one continuous active moment of intelligent application. For us, humans, the 'refresh' rate is quite short. For example, we cannot endure more than a few minutes without oxygen or a few days without sleep, we cannot carry memory from the first moment of our breaths to our last, to cultivate any kind of discipline within us takes many cycles of repetitions, we have a life cycle of about 100 years, and so on. So, it may be said that, in terms of application of intelligence, the greater the 'refresh' rate the lesser the intelligence a particular point of reality applies.
Think about it this way, why do we say that our reptilian brain governs our survival mechanism. Perhaps, it's because, in one perspective, the reptilian mechanism of physical life is superior to any others. Even today, reptiles are some of those with the longest life-spans. So, it could not be coincident that, through all our life evolution, that part has been maintained.
Anyway, my point is this, we have a past, present and future, or whatever other designation of time, because the processes of intelligence which we apply need to be reset every so often. This way, when we sleep, nature's intelligence (mechanism) takes over, and when we wake, our activities are a combination of nature's intelligence and ours. For us, time is a better marker of relativity and activity than our memories.
Another consequence of the refresh rate in our application of intelligence is the size of our consciousness (awareness-response mechanism). For example, I'm currently alone in my study. Suppose, one of the people I know dies right now. By the time I'm informed about it, the event would be in the past. And, before being informed, the concept of that life would still be in my present, eventually to be revised much later after the fact. However, if a significant part of your body dies, you will be in the know throughout the whole process of its demise. But, the intelligent mechanism making that possible is one designed by nature (reality) for us.
Therefore, it is our limitations that organize sequences of events linearly through pasts, presents and futures. And, it is possible, with unlimited application of intelligence and, consequently, an unlimited consciousness (awareness-response mechanism), to conceive of reality (in its absolute sense) as only having a now. Because all activities are contained within that single enduring moment.
Quoting DingoJones
Quoting DingoJones
I understand that maths is a description of reality. But the reality interpreted by maths existed before us and apart from us. It’s something we have discovered and are still discovering.
The connection between invention (man made) things and the discovery (existing reality) was brought about by asking if Capitalism was a discovery (an evolutionary process) or an invention. An invention would be a Command Economy, a feature of Communist regimes, which so far has not worked out and not only failed but created hardships and poverty while producing nothing, therefore problematic.
Obviously malaria is problematic, which is a discovery. I don’t know how to address this aspect of my post.
Fate; our fate exists, in the future but already actual. It appears at the end of our life. If we died right now our fate would be there. Our fate is always close at hand, right beside us every day, shadowing us. It must exist to happen suddenly. It’s always the future but it has to be right here to happen.
Quoting Punshhh
I tend to agree with you. Everything’s pretty much set in stone. I don’t come here expecting much except to play with a few thoughts that occur to me. None of us are going to crack the code.
The two people are in the same spacetime location yet the trackside person's past would contain events from the person on the train's present.
But I have cracked the code, for myself. But in a way that is almost unintelligible to others, except others who have followed a similar path to myself.
Also crack the code can be debated extensively and may be meaningless.
I will say though that I would answer you question in the OP with a yes. But if I were to explain this, it might come across as unintelligible to people coming from the perspective of western philosophy.
Well, somethings are not meant to be explained but lived. Philosophy is action.
Quite, a lot of my explanation would be in relation to the self, being and life, following on a journey.
Yes, this is no problem for me and I do after being on these sites for a few years now use a lot of the accepted terminology and process. But the difficulty arises when I attempt to convey mystical thinking, I use words and concepts which most philosophers find unintelligible.
Let me give you an example, key to my philosophy is the principle of self orientation. Now on first reading that doesn't sound to complex, or difficult a conception to grasp, but it is not that simple. For starters, I haven't come across anyone anywhere who uses or refers to the concept except in a body of work by an author, which I took inspiration from about 20 years ago.
Let's look at self orientation, what is being oriented and in which direction. Let's take what we agreed on, that all absolute beings are fully present with all limited beings at all times. If that limited being learns skills of orientation via communion with and guidance from those absolute beings, alignments of sorts can be established. This provides the opportunity for the limited being to develop alignments and communication with those absolute beings enabling aspects of growth in the development of the being, via control and mutual alignment with the absolute being through a process of growth/ development and greater alignment, thus a daily practice is developed leading to what could be described as spiritual growth, or walking the path. The limited being if so desired, or if they posses the appropriate faculties to align aspects of mind and intellect, so developing transcendent insight, for example. Can then develop intellectual understanding of what he/she is aligning with.
This is a simple introduction to the conception, which is I think easier to understand when applied to absolute beings, because they are greater, or further advanced than us, while easily understood through common understanding of deities.
I expect you will understand what I am saying, but I doubt many on this forum would give it much credence.
1. There is a start of time (because could a greater than any finite number of days have elapsed?)
2. Assume only now exists
3. Then [1] and [2] requires creation ex nilhilo - impossible - so ‘more' than only now must exist
4. The ‘more’ must be temporal or atemporal
5. Assume temporal:
6. Let the ‘more’ exist in time2
7. Then time2 must also have a start
8. So now we are in an infinite regress of times
9. But infinite regresses are impossible (they have no first member, if they have no nth member, they have no nth+1 member, so they cannot exist)
10. So the ‘more’ must be atemporal
11. When the ‘more’ looks at our universe, which ‘now’ does it see?
12. It has to be all ‘nows’; IE eternalism
I get your perspective.
Yes, and in opposition to 'being'/'is'.
It appears that what 'is' has no alternative, else there wouldn't be anything; so, it's not just that 'is' is possible but that it's mandatory, given no opposite, and so it needs be all at once, and needs be everything but not anything in particular, since it can't have a design point. Nor can it go away; it is permanent.
Its transmutations according to the laws of nature are temporary and so fleeting that not anything particular remains even for an instant; however, certain semblences seem to continue on as if from a moment ago—these are long events, such as trees, rocks, protons, and us.
First there it's easy to demonstrate there is a universal current present moment in which everything exists.
1. It's well known that everything in the universe continually travels through spacetime (combined space and time) at the speed of light.
2. As a consequence everything in the universe is continually traveling the same distance through spacetime as light does.
3. Thus the current distance everything has traveled through spacetime is the universal current present moment. This is the only moment that actually exists, and it's common to the entire universe.
4. Now the current proper time on any object's clock depends entirely on its own path through spacetime, not on how it is being observed from any other frame. Specifically all the distance it travels through spacetime is through time if it's path is inertial. However the amount of deviation from an inertial path reduces the distance it travels through time. Whatever the result an object's current proper time at the current common distance it has traveled through spacetime is the proper time it has in the universal current present moment.
5. There is a unique 1:1 invariant correlation between the current proper times of all clocks in the universe in this universal current present moment, which we all inhabit simultaneously.
6. It must be noted that this is independent of how observers in relative motion view each other's clocks. That is a matter of perspective, and in general relatively moving observers each view the time on each other's clocks ticking slower than their own. They DO NOT see the actual 1:1 current present moment proper time correlations except in specific cases such as being at rest in the same frame.
Edgar L. Owen.
It's the essential problem of Ontology (understanding of Being). Ideal non-things are un-real, because they are immaterial, and don't matter. But, if they "exist" eternally, then their Being is essential, even if they don't count.
"To Count" means to enumerate individual things. In a reductionist materialistic worldview --- abstractly imagined in the concept of money --- whatever is uncountable (i.e. immaterial) does not matter. So such abstract human concepts as "freedom, good and evil, love, idealism, success, morality, money" don't matter, because they don't exist in a physical form.
In a Holistic worldview, though, countable parts are important only in their contribution to the whole system. In a human system, imagination is un-real, but it can refer to concrete countable things in terms of abstract symbols, concepts, and ideas. In Plato's theory of ideal Forms, those eternal unreal concepts were of more value than the specific instances in the real world, because they are more than the sum of all things.
I don’t know why that was addressed to me. What do you think any of that has to do with anything I’ve said?
This may be off-topic, but Gevin Georbran, wrote a book presenting a novel approach to understanding the space-time universe in a larger context. At first it may seem mind-boggling, and it won't tell you anything about your personal Fate, but it does address the literal meaning of your thread title. Unfortunately, like too many geniuses, he committed suicide shortly after uploading the web site. Maybe he saw his own fate, and decided to deny Fate with an act of Will.
"This website literally journeys through the timeless realm, presenting a panoramic God’s eye view of the big picture. What is timelessness? To the surprise of many, all the world's greatest physicists such as Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, Stephen Hawking, and also David Bohm, concluded during their lives that past, present, and future all exist simultaneously. What then is the timeless universe like?"
Everything Forever : Learning to see the timelessness of the universe.
http://everythingforever.com/
PS___I don't agree with all of his ideas, but this worldview was an influence on my own.
Well it's the scientific answer to whether or not everything exists at the same time or not.
Yes everything does exist at the same time. Now is the only time that actually exists, and in which the entire universe exists....
Edgar L. Owen
You must have meant to respond to someone else.
So in this scenario we have one being (the human species), in one point of time and one place (the human world), which is somehow extended into 7.5 billion individual points in space. One could also say that this being is extended in time into all the different points of time (moments) experienced by humanity from their evolution a few million years ago, to the distant future (or not so distant).
But rather than place the moments along the linear time line, it makes sense to me to refer to 7billion individual moments, experienced by the 7.5 billion unique points in space, in this one moment of now that we all exist in.
All things that are extended are essentially the same, but apparent difference emerges when extension happens on a large scale. Until there is enough difference to be equivalent to the diversity we find in the world we find ourselves in.
Why it permits the countless to briefly persist
On Mother Earth, nourished under Father Sky—
All of those finite sparks that light and die.
Behind the Veil, being that which e’er thrives,
The Eternal ‘IS’ has ever been alive,
For that which hath no onset cannot die,
Nor a point from which to impart its Why.
Some time it needed to variate Everything for,
And now knows how these bubbles to pour,
Of existence, in some ‘meant’ universe,
Those that wrote your poem and mine, every verse.
So, as thus thou lives on yester’s credit line,
In nowhere’s midst, now in this life of thine,
For of its bowl our cup of brew was mixed
Into the state of being that’s called ‘mine’.
Yet worry you that this Cosmos is the last,
That the likes of us will become the past,
Space wondering whither whence we went
After the last of us her life has spent?
The Eternal Saki has formed trillions of baubles
Like ours, for e’er—the comings and passings
Of which it ever emits to immerse
In those universal bubbles blown and burst.
So fear not that a debit close your
Account and mine, knowing the like no more;
The Eternal Source from its pot has pour’d
Zillions of bubbles like ours, and will pour.
When You and I behind the cloak are past,
But the long while the next universe shall last,
Which of one’s approach and departure it grasps
As might the sea’s self heed a pebble cast.
I don't know what you mean.
I have said that past, present and future are mutually incompatible properties. That is, if an event is present, it is not also past and future. And if it is future, it is not present or past. And if it is past, it is not also present and future.
Do you dispute that?
Like I've said, it's about perspective. If you choose to experience multiplicity and differences with respect to time relations, then that is what you will experience. All I'm saying is that, there is a perspective where time relations are not part of the experience because they are too limited.
For example, here inside this planet earth, we have day and night. Immediately outside of it, they cease to be experienced because that phenomena is limited to the relation between the rotation of the planet with respect to the sun. (And perhaps it affects other planets and satellites within solar systems.)
Also, I said what we refer to as past, present and future is dependent upon our 'refresh' rate which, as I explained, is determined by the variations operating in our consciousness (awareness-response mechanism) and through our application of intelligence.
For example, how long is a present moment according to you? A second? A millisecond? A microsecond? More? or less?
Personally, from what I've observed, a moment for most people is when the attention of their consciousness is directed towards their memory. That is, when they are aware of the record of mental images (the percepts and concepts). Therefore, a moment would still be abstract in its definition even if it got imprinted with other tags and labels, and which would not really delineate any discernible character/aspect from its mysterious/unknown identity.
So you think that if an event if present, it is also future and past?
I’ve put up thus quote and source because I know you prefer to see arguments put into a form you value. Hopefully this does. I myself find it hard to paraphrase this sort of entry, which is why I’ve put up the quote. And I appreciate the resistance to throwing up quotes instead of explanation.
However the point is that Eternalism can be looked at without resorting to mystical forms of explanation, which are rarely convincing or satisfactory.
“Presentism is opposed by Non-presentism, which is the view that there are some non-present objects. More precisely, Non-presentism is the view that, possibly, it is sometimes true that there are some non-present objects.
‘Non-presentism’ is an umbrella term that covers several different, more specific versions of the view. One version of Non-presentism is Eternalism, which says that objects from both the past and the future exist just as much as present objects. According to Eternalism, non-present objects like Socrates and future Martian outposts exist right now, even though they are not currently present. We may not be able to see them at the moment, on this view, and they may not be in the same space-time vicinity that we find ourselves in right now, but they should nevertheless be on the list of all existing things.” (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/time/)
Note: I believe you don't know what you're talking about.
My evidence for that: you don't know what your answer is to this simple question:
If an event is present, is it also future and past?
I can’t answer the question because I’m only just getting my head around the theory of Eternalism which I find supportive of my OP.
Look, it is obvious what the answer to my question is: it is 'no'.
If an event is present, it is not also future and past.
Quoting Bartricks
Then what’s the point of your posts?
Present, past and future are incompatible properties. Yes?
No. I'm saying that an event just is.
Allow me to answer your query with another sort of query:
Is the current year (2020) past, present or future?
My point is, there are certain events which defy the limitations of time we attempt to stamp onto them.
Time is a marker, a point of record, of an event with respect to other events. For us, humans, it exists within our memory relations, primarily as a sequence marker.
So, is a present event also in the future and also in the past? Please answer with an answer, not a question.
The record of events in your experience can only be as you allow for them.
For me, while there are events which are characterized into pasts, presents and futures, there are also those events beyond such designations due to their capacity to exceed such limitations depending on perspective, case in point, this year (this moment of our earth's revolution cycle).
For me, this year is already in the past, present and future in as much as its moment of occurrence, from my perspective, encompasses all those designations.
I have. I've given you an event which encompasses our past, present and future.
Unless you show me the deficiency in the answer, I don't know what else to say.
Is that what you've got from all the explanations I've given?
So I'll ask it again: If I am dead in the future, am I now dead?
Note: I think everything you have said so far makes not a blind bit of sense. Not even a tiny bit. And I think you haven't a clue what you're talking about. As, like I say, your inability to answer my question demonstrates.
Then, I am unable to respond to your satisfaction.
Quoting Bartricks
You might have to define what you mean by “dead”.
Will you be dead in the future?
Are you dead now?
Is your answer to one of those different from the answer to the other?
Actually, don't bother - you're beyond help. I recommend Buddhism (if you're not a Buddhist already). They like to sit around and think nothing.
How can we discuss death if we don’t agree on the term?
And while you're at it, what do you mean by 'can'?
Oh, and 'we' - what do you mean by 'we'?
'Discuss' - I think we need to clarify that too, actually.
And 'death'. I am not sure what you mean by it when you use it.
'If' too, please.
'Don't' - please define that while we're at it.
And I supposed 'agree' would be helpful too.
And 'on'.
Oh, go on then - 'the' too please.
And 'term'.
And that squiggle at the end - ? - what does that mean?
Thanks.
Quoting Bartricks
Exactly. That’s my position, too.
Thanks Bre. Can I call you Bre?
I’m confused by the position you hold here about death, or appear to hold to me, and the position you hold with @TheMadFool on “The Simplest Thing” about the immaterial mind. Your argument there would seem to agree with my feelings about death, that it’s only the material body that dies, that there is no “death”.
Bartricks, seems to want people to agree on one simple point before moving on and has become frustrated that their not doing that. His argument seems to be that past, present and future are logically incompatible properties. I understand what he's saying, but there are subtleties which are missed. He is insisting that all events happen in the present, they logically can't happen in the past and nothing can happen in the future. So the property of something happening (being) in the past is nonsensical, there is no past for it to be in. Humanity has created a false narrative of things being in the past. Likewise there is no future, there is only the present.
Our language has developed with many words implying things happening, or being, in the future, or the past, I have written these words in italics. You are claiming that this narrative is false, because there isn't a past and there isn't a future? Well I agree.
Also you are saying there are other reset periods, like day length determined by physical circumstances?
And on ‘eternalism’:
Interestingly, the concept of ‘eternalism’ or the ‘block universe’ interests me mainly because I believe it relates to how we structure events in our minds: not according to time, but according to value. This, I imagine, is what Einstein meant by the comment many tout as ‘proof’ of his support of eternalism (which was written in a personal letter regarding the death of a dear friend):
“Now he [Michele] has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”
In that sense, the idea that everything that could ever exist is already out there awaiting our ability to see it, pertains, in my view, to our perception of potentiality in the world. Our ability to create something new depends on our ability to see or ‘perceive’ potential in our unique interactions with the world that no one has seen before - potential that was already there, awaiting our ability to ‘see’ it.
Yes. What we, humans, like to refer to as a moment is not and cannot describe a moment in its absolute sense. Ours is a kind of aberration built upon a specific kind of relation. It is also why, in all my explanations, I have insisted on perspective. It is also why, given a period of activity taking place beyond a humans comprehension of duration of a moment, e.g. a year, it becomes impossible to classify it according to linear time unless it hasn't happened yet, or it is has already happened. In both cases, time would actually be irrelevant unless in connection with memory relations (records) of events. Basically, it is always now.
Yes, the way I look at it is that the natural state in a world/realm of manifestation is for there to be one point in one moment, rather like a singularity. This is such that it is also extended in space and time, that it contains all the complexity found in our limited world and the nature of that particular manifestation. But those limited occurrences are natural expressions of the one point and may be, for example a 3, or 4, or 5th dimensional expression of a single point existing in a higher dimension, in which all extension is as one.
This sort of concept can be a tongue twister and philosophically mere speculation.
If one approaches the question from a spiritual perspective you can go a lot further and consider the absolute.
True. However, I think that philosophically, it will change because there is a growing realization that subjectivity does not negate objectivity. There is also a growing number of people who realise that subjective actions add up to some part of our objective processes, e.g. how meditation increases the proficiency of mental processes which earlier scientific thought had dismissed as hogwash but now has incontrovertible proof of increased brain gamma waves through prolonged practice of meditation as well as its connection to well-being through improved mental health and such.
I think eventually, philosophy will advance further when it realises that logic does not mean scientific. At that point, a great part of the spiritual perspective will have regained some of its lost trust.
Right now, no matter how chaotic it gets, everything is just roses, ...roses. (Emoji/Gif: Indian guy doing the head-bobble)
Some people interpret Block Time and Eternalism as-if our experience of sequential space & time is an illusion due to our warped view from Relativity. So, the speculative inferences they draw are pretty far-out. But we need to remember that Block Time is a mathematical theory with no empirical evidence. Therefore, unless you are a theoretical physicist, I wouldn't worry too much about the weird implications of Block Time.
In my own worldview, I assume that Eternity-Infinity (timelessness and spacelessness) is the default state of BEING. But nobody is "there" to experience the infinite possibilities except G*D. This notion contrasts with Multiverse Theory (again, no empirical evidence), in which Space-Time is the default, and physical mini-universes are popping-up all over the place. Since G*D is defined as "everything possible forever" (an assumption taken as an axiom) our space-time world is analogous to a tiny bubble in the ocean. This perspective is called PanEnDeism : all-in-G*D.
This means that we humans are creatures of space-time, and would be out of our element in eternity-infinity. Yet, our rational minds can transcend space-time, to imagine intangible and irrational concepts (ideas). So we too-often confuse those Ideal notions with Real things. If we were to leave the Real world, and go to the Ideal world, we would have to abandon our 3D bodies, and become fleshless ghosts. Unfortunately, we also have no empirical evidence of humans "crossing-over", just imaginary stories of "the other side". Hence, if you want to believe that you will someday experience Eternalism, no one can prove you wrong --- or right.
G*D : [i]An ambiguous spelling of the common name for a supernatural deity. The Enformationism thesis is based upon an unprovable axiom that our world is an idea in the mind of G*D. This eternal deity is not imagined in a physical human body, but in a meta-physical mathematical form, equivalent to Logos. Other names : ALL, BEING, Creator, Enformer, MIND, Nature, Reason, Source, Programmer. So, the eternal Whole, of which all temporal things are a part, is not to be feared or worshiped, but appreciated like Nature.
I refer to the logically necessary and philosophically essential First & Final Cause as G*D, rather than merely "X" the Unknown, partly out of respect. That’s because the ancients were not stupid, to infer purposeful agencies, but merely shooting in the dark. We now understand the "How" of Nature much better, but not the "Why". That inscrutable agent of Entention is what I mean by G*D.[/i]
PanEnDeism : [i]Panendeism is an ontological position that explores the interrelationship between G*D (The Cosmic Mind) and the known attributes of the universe. Combining aspects of Panentheism and Deism, Panendeism proposes an idea of G*D that both embodies the universe and is transcendent of its observable physical properties.
1. Note : PED is distinguished from general Deism, by its more specific notion of the G*D/Creation relationship; and from PanDeism by its understanding of G*D as supernatural creator rather than the emergent soul of Nature. Enformationism is a Panendeistic worldview.[/i]
Quoting Gnomon
Unfortunately this subject gets caught in a very tight gap between those who take a firm view on presentism and those who don’t. Of course like so many things they represent the two extremes and consequently both fail to contribute much in the end except their fixed views. However that’s my problem, not theirs. It’s not my intention to prove anyone right or wrong but to pick up any new aspects I hadn’t come across before, which I did.
Edit: by non presentism I actually meant mysticism.
I'm not sure it is wise to use the word infinity there, I note that you qualify it with spacelessness, but squaring infinity with reality doesn't end well.
Timelessness and spacelessness, is a good default, or baseline. But it is a dead end when it comes to intellectual inquiry.
I think of it like the cosmic computer brain, in that, many things relating to knowledge (not all) are already out there. There's a predetermined scope of axioms that exist, it's our volition that brings them into existence and/or awareness.
A good analogy would be the classic game of Twenty Questions, and the most notable from' Wheeler's Cloud' where there is no predetermined subject matter; it evolves based on the questions that we ask...hence:
"In developing the participatory anthropic principle (PAP), which is an interpretation of quantum mechanics, theoretical physicist John Archibald Wheeler used a variant on Twenty Questions, called Negative Twenty Questions, to show how the questions we choose to ask about the universe may dictate the answers we get. In this variant, the respondent does not choose or decide upon any particular or definite object beforehand, but only on a pattern of 'Yes' or 'No' answers.
This variant requires the respondent to provide a consistent set of answers to successive questions, so that each answer can be viewed as logically compatible with all the previous answers. In this way, successive questions narrow the options until the questioner settles upon a definite object. Wheeler's theory was that, in an analogous manner, consciousness may play some role in bringing the universe into existence."
Yes. That's why I don't claim to have any direct knowledge about Enfernity. For my worldview, It's merely a baseline for everything else. It's the empty-set outside our Reality-set circle (the universe). For the purposes of "intellectual inquiry", it serves as Plato's realm of Ideal Forms.
Enfernity is a limiting assumption, as in a mathematical asymptote or the speed of light, we can approach the boundary of Reality in imagination, but never cross-over. However, by defining the limits of Reality, the not-concept allows us to understand everything we want to know by comparison to the absolute, which is both Zero and Infinity (nothing & ALL) : the brackets within which "we live and move and have our being".
[i]Enfernity : My coinage for eternity-infinity. It's not two things, but a single un-defined state. For philosophical purposes, it's "defined" by putting a negative on everything we know in the real world : not-time, not-space, not-matter. And, since reality is bounded by, and originated in, space & time, we must assume that pre-existence was in non-space/non-time.
Like Plato's Ideality, Enfernity is the limitless Potential from which all Actual things are created. Potential is not-actual, un-realized, un-defined. But, since we experience the existence of "actual, real, and finite" in space-time, we can assume their origin was in a timeless, spaceless state with the power to transform and enform into the things we know.[/i]
Presentism is the view that only actual & physical & temporal things exist. A more general term would be Realism. But human discourse has always included abstract concepts that are not actual, or physical, or real in any space-time sense. Is Beauty present? Is Love a thing?
My response to the Either/Or attitude that conflates not-present or un-real with Mysticism is the BothAnd principle, and the notion of Meta-Physics. Mystical and Magical concepts take advantage of the ambiguity of Abstraction to deceive those who are confused about what is Present and what they imagine to be present. In such cases it's good to be a little skeptical, but don't throw-out the Beauty with the Bullsh*t.
BothAnd Principle : http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page10.html
Meta-Physics : http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page14.html
I also contemplate this threashold present in myself, humanity, all the kingdoms in nature and individual cells for example. So amenable to communion.
Likewise it dovetails nicely into ideas reducing perception of our world to one point in time and space. And is useful in freeing oneself of human conditioning and nature for purposes of contemplation.
Otherwise we'd be able to freely access other simulations.
To exit this universe and enter a different simulation, requires a time-change.