Something out of nothing.
It is my belief that there is a hidden problem with secular humanism, its reliance on existentialism. Humanists declare that a life well lived has meaning in and of itself, and that there is no need for supernatural myths. The problem is that they base their conclusions on the period prior to physical death, and consciously or unconsciously dismiss all inquiry into the period after.
When someone named Bill is born he exists. If there is no non-physical life after physical death, after the physical death of Bill he does not exist. After his physical death those who are alive can search the entire physical universe, but they will never find Bill. Bill has no present and no future, simply because Bill does not exist. What is usually missed is that in addition to no future, Bill has no past because Bill does not exist.
"Past" references both that which is part of an object (a “past” which belongs to the object, like a person’s memories that “belong” to the living individual from birth to death), and the existence of the object from a third party’s view (a “past” which is a chronological description of an object, like a photo album containing a lifetime collection of pictures of an individual who has died) (from, my detailed discussion of meaning). An individual who does not exist has a history that those who are alive are aware of, but he or she does not have a past which is their past, which they are aware of.
Philosophers from Nietzsche and Camus, to the neuro-existentialists Flanagan and Caruso, acknowledge the dilemma - "How, given that consciousness is a natural phenomenon, does human life mean anything? What significance, if any, does living our kind of conscious life have?" (from). They try to create Übermensch, or hope for some breakthrough because "naturalism is the only game in town" (Flanagan and Caruso).
Naturalism is not the only game, indeed the science behind naturalism rejects as absurd any search for meaning in a purely physical life. Efforts to imbue with meaning that which does not exist are futile attempts to make something out of nothing. Science shows us the folly of attributing positive or negative traits to physical objects, including human beings, who have no physical existence. A logical argument for meaning and value in human life can only be built on a non-physical existence. It is far more rational to seek meaning in the possibility of a non-physical life after physical death, no matter how unlikely you may believe it to be, than it is to create a humanistic myth attributing positive qualities to that which is nothing.
When someone named Bill is born he exists. If there is no non-physical life after physical death, after the physical death of Bill he does not exist. After his physical death those who are alive can search the entire physical universe, but they will never find Bill. Bill has no present and no future, simply because Bill does not exist. What is usually missed is that in addition to no future, Bill has no past because Bill does not exist.
"Past" references both that which is part of an object (a “past” which belongs to the object, like a person’s memories that “belong” to the living individual from birth to death), and the existence of the object from a third party’s view (a “past” which is a chronological description of an object, like a photo album containing a lifetime collection of pictures of an individual who has died) (from
Philosophers from Nietzsche and Camus, to the neuro-existentialists Flanagan and Caruso, acknowledge the dilemma - "How, given that consciousness is a natural phenomenon, does human life mean anything? What significance, if any, does living our kind of conscious life have?" (from
Naturalism is not the only game, indeed the science behind naturalism rejects as absurd any search for meaning in a purely physical life. Efforts to imbue with meaning that which does not exist are futile attempts to make something out of nothing. Science shows us the folly of attributing positive or negative traits to physical objects, including human beings, who have no physical existence. A logical argument for meaning and value in human life can only be built on a non-physical existence. It is far more rational to seek meaning in the possibility of a non-physical life after physical death, no matter how unlikely you may believe it to be, than it is to create a humanistic myth attributing positive qualities to that which is nothing.
Comments (79)
Bill exists potentially, before his physical life, during and after it, so long as those who interacted with Bill during his physical life can still relate to his existence. Bill therefore has a potential past existence, as well as a potential present existence (insofar as those who remember him continue to interact with their relation to him), and a possible future existence - even though he no longer has an actual or physical existence.
Quoting CommonSense
You seem to be arguing towards (nonevident here•after) rather than from a given position (evident now•here).
I begin with life, living, being alive ...
The capacity to value - select, interpret, relate to - and, thereby, to be valued for (e.g.) following fighting feeding fucking etc seems intrinsic to life itself (if, by life, what is meant is, in part, 'ecology-bound agent-systems maintained and self-replicated via metabolising, while being metabolized by, other ecology-bound agent-systems'). From amoeba to gut bacteria, flatworms to silverback gorillas ... the very existence of the living seems to consist in, at least, evaluating their ecology for affordances to furthering survival.
To live is to evaluate.
In Spinoza's terms, every life seeks to persist in its existence - continue, survive, grow-develop (à la 'will to power'); thus, every life values - is valuable to - herself; and insofar as a life recognizes other lives as valuable to themselves, a life enters into reciprocal valuing with and among them, to value and be valued by other lives. Thus, value, or meaning, does not come "out of nothing"; it comes from community - natality, eusociality, fatality - and reinforced, or enriched, by communicative practices (e.g. cooperative labors, crafts-arts, rituals, trade, discursive dialectics (e.g. scientific / historical / philosophical inquiries)).
Quite naturally, physically, existentially.
Proximately not ultimately - what good is ultimate meaning to proximate living? No promissary metaphysics or spirituality relieves the living of the factity of living here and now as natural natal-eusocial-fatal creatures who survive by the courage to learn & make, judging-deciding on the basis of the facts of the matter, and not by hoping for miracles. The comparative significance of nature and 'the supernatural': yeah, we don't live by bread alone, but we certainly will starve with nothing but 'faith' in otherworldly - "non-physical" ergo fact-free - shadows & fantasies.
Does this imply other existences?
At least other an aspect.
So as well as he is past universe existence, he is other, because we can't know if Bill is now not present...
Bill is a concept he is out there somewhere. He probably is known or spotted by someone? He probably isn't heard by someone without paired eyes.
Unless very important to impede delay I think you refresh in a sea of the dead, and become new life. That either paying debt or just significant enough to select a new life.
I would argue that the only non-physical after-life worth believing in is one that exhibits the most positive aspects of our current life. But my initial concern is for humanists to recognize the irrational myth of any form of Übermensch or other attempt to posit meaning for a being for which it is true - being x does not exist.
If "after physical death" is a "reality", then there must be evidence by which we can discern it from unreality (i.e. mere fantasy, wishful/magical thinking, etc), no? Provide such evidence and I'll consider it and "the reality" entailed by that evidence. (Btw, uncorroborated scriptural or testimonial accounts won't suffice because they only beg the question - like pseudo-scientific woo woo.) Absent that, CS, on what grounds (i.e. publically accessible facts of the matter) ought we to concern ourselves - organize our lives & societies - with respect to some nonevident here•after?
We have no idea what is not now so we're typo-typo agnostic intellectually, at most.
You would have a down view on what's possible.
You need to elaborate: It could be this thing, what is this thing, to have any knowledge on the matter.
Does energy interact with us somehow? Then I theorize yes there can be massive affection. We are all linked.
It's energy, it's most common representation, light.
It's more like what light is than what the darkness is. These are strict laws. These are how stars are made.
Nothing is state, it's just as easy for something to be present. They are both states. Why don't we argue that something existed? It's the answer.
While some claim proof, I cannot honestly say that I can offer such objective evidence that there is a non-physical existence after physical death. I can even admit that the lack of scientific proof leads me to believe that it is highly unlikely that there is a non-physical existence after physical death. But that feeling I have is objectively irrational.
To be able to scientifically prove something we must be able to test our hypothesis and show that it is statistically highly likely to be true, that no observation has been made that is opposite to what our hypothesis predicts. It is human nature to assume that if we have never observed X, then X does not exist or is highly unlikely to exist. However to make any statistical judgment we must observe how often X occurs, or doesn't occur, over a given interval. If X is beyond human ability to observe, then we cannot say that X did occur or did not occur during the interval. The false conclusion is that because we did not observe X it does not exist anywhere / anytime. In fact we have no scientific way to determine if X exists or does not exist. The result is that we cannot say that it is likely that X exists or that it is likely that X does not exist, in fact we cannot say anything at all about the likelihood that X does or does not exist.
There may or may not be a non-physical existence beyond human ability to observe. I cannot offer proof that there is or that there is not, in fact I cannot say anything at all about the reality of an after-life. But I can say that there is a possibility, or at least that there may be a possibility, that anything (or nothing) exists beyond our physical universe. It is simply impossible to prove that which is beyond human ability to observe. Yet that does not mean that there is no non-physical existence and after physical death, nor does it mean that there is. It simply means that we cannot say anything objective about the possibility. If there is an after-life then the possibility was real, if there is no after-life then the possibility was an allusion and not a possibility at all.
The possibility of ‘future physical existence’ for Bill is dependent upon a sufficient consensus of perceived potential for ‘reincarnation’ (ie. future physical existence) by those who continue to interact with his potential existence. They simply relate his potential to another physical existence, in the same way that we recognise the child we knew years ago in the physical existence of the adult.
This assertion is false in General Relativity. In GR, all of space-time exists forever. The past still exists and the future already exists. In GR time is kind of like space. My father died when I was young, but in GR, he's still there, just at a different location in time than I am. It's kind of like he's in California, only in time there's less freedom of movement than there is in space. So, while my father is alive and well in California (or actually 1969), I just can't get to California from where I am currently located.
In GR, I am not located below my feet or above my head, and likewise, I am not located before I was born or after I die. But I exist always between the bottom of my feet and below the top of my head and for the time between when I was born and before I die.
|>ouglas
What is it exactly about the non-physical that is so attractive that we should think of the physical as nothing?
I still don't understand what you are trying to get at here. Granted, one can only predicate things about something or someone that exists. But what does this have to do with the search for meaning? Bill may or may not find his life meaningful while he is alive. After Bill dies, or before Bill is born, there is no sense in talking about the meaning of his life, except in the past or future tense. So what? (By the way, do you also require that Bill must have an eternal pre-life, as well as an eternal after-life in order for his life to have a meaning?)
You make a good argument for this. How do you suppose we go about researching life after death?
The scriptures are garbage. But what other source of evidence can you get of life after death? For one, there is the argument you made. But for any other? There is none. No witnesses, no first-hand experiences, no visible signs or signs detectable by any means. So how do you go about your quest, how do you suppose to make others join you in this belief, other than it being a possibility?
You may know what dreams are, but you're still not a full time dreamer, you are only a part time dreamer.
Isn't it fair that they can belong above you? To someone who is only a dreamer/force?
Isn't this intelligence present in a dream?
[I said earlier in a different thread one hallucination, interpret it this way and you'll be able to imagine universal strangeness parasites in the abyss. You are are returning with a force rhythmic in nature, possibly understanding. They could bop you out of rhythm now.
Don't mean to interrupt while waiting for Commonsense's response, but just a couple of commonly widespread tools at our disposal, are studies in: phenomenology, Near Death Experiences, inductive reasoning, cognitive science (William James), etc.
Were you unaware of those kinds of things?
I guess this because of how the universe is a non-standard simulation; it's a super-massive lock-out from what I guess to be standard simulations. If my guess is good we might be able to scan and further understand chaos or that might be impossible.
Worlds are made luckilly, but with good odds.
If we were ever to transition to a purer simulation type, we would be harmonious with these laws.
That is indeed the strategy of most religions : to look for life's meaning in some kind of afterlife, either in spirit-body or in re-incarnation. Because when you're in the middle of your life-story --- it's all Second Act, it doesn't yet make sense. That's why meaning-of-life questions usually refer to the Setup (or backstory) and the Resolution (tying-up loose ends), because we --- the not-yet existent or no-longer-existing actor or protagonist --- are not there to see where-we-came-from, or where-we-are-going.
Only the omniscient story-teller and the objective audience can know the Prelude and the Denouement. Hence, they can place a single life-story into a larger context. For the Protagonist, the only way to know the whole story is "to create a humanistic myth attributing positive qualities to that which is nothing". Pre-life and Afterlife myths fill a need for closure, that is lacking in the open-ended life-as-lived. But, those religious and cultural myths are obviously [to some] popular fictions, not objective reports from the hereafter. There are common themes --- as in the Hero's Journey thesis --- but the details are relative to specific locations and cultures.
However satisfying the Preface and the Epilogue might be to a complete personal history, the most important part is the development of the Protagonist in the process of navigating the exigencies of life. Ironically, most theories of Afterlife seem to assume a continuation of the Second Act. When psychics relay messages from the dead, their situations and activities seem to be more of the same mundane life-story that they left behind --- only this time in Utopia. So, personally, I don't worry about the nothingness before and after Life. Instead, I focus on writing my own life-story day-to-day, by developing my character as best I can. After all, some famous philosophers have opined that "to philosophize is to learn to die". Thus, we learn to live, by doing what needs to be done, which develops the kind of character that doesn't waste time on worrying about non-existence. :cool:
Hero's Journey : "Campbell describes 17 stages of the monomyth. "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey
Learning how to die : Michel de Montaigne begins his essay “That to Philosophize Is to Learn How to Die” by quoting the same idea from Cicero:
https://sententiaeantiquae.com/2015/09/19/2343/
http://essays.quotidiana.org/montaigne/that_to_study_philosophy/
:death: :flower:
Quoting Douglas Alan
Interesting ... :clap:
So, in other words, with respect to my question: there are no grounds (i.e. evidence) for "the reality that is often ignored" or you simply can't answer intelligibly because all you've got is that old-time woo you wish was true (but know it ain't).
From a scientific standpoint I am pretty much convinced that the evolving causal set theory model, which is consistent with relativity and QM, will prove to be true and will replace traditional block universe models with a timeless model where event X does not exist - X exists - X does not exist.
A brief comment on "woo woo", which is regrettably an appeal to emotion and not logic. What I "wish to be true" has no effect on what is true or false. The reason for pointing out that we cannot say anything objective about that which is beyond human observation is that the statement is logically true. It does not posit the existence of "woo woo" outside the domain of human observation, nor does it posit that there is nothing outside the domain of human observation, it simply says that human statements about the possibility that there is something or is nothing beyond human observation are products of human nature, hubris, and folly that lead to proclamations that humans are somehow better able than other creatures to understand reality. Neither you, nor I, nor the smartest person on earth know, or can even predict, if there is something beyond the physical, or nothing. (Perhaps that does not reject the value of intuition - Saul Kripke, "Naming and Necessity")
I fully agree that we should live the most positive physical life that we can, even if on our physical death - nothing. Yet that does not change the fact that if "nothing", then for each individual all will be as if it never was. This is vastly different from saying that we can live a meaningful existential life if there is no extension after death, it says that if we do not exist after physical death then all will be as if it never was (which is certainly not to be feared or even thought about). The logical conclusion is that if on physical death all will be as if it never was, then the rational choice is to live the most positive life that we can with belief in the possibility, no matter how slight, that there is a non-physical life after death which gives meaning to both the First Act and Second Act. To do otherwise is to believe in the myth of the Übermensch.
Note that this is the odds of creation of our universe at the "big bang", it is not the often quoted lesser number for the odds of creation of life out of inanimate matter - an apples and oranges comparison.
From a purely rational basis it seems to me that there are two most probable consequences of physical death (1) that there is nothing and all (including our past) will be as if it never was and (2) that there is a life after physical death. Since if 1 is true there will be no positive or negative consequences to physical death, living for the possibility that 2 is true is the logical choice. Therefore we should live the most positive physical life possible, not based on the humanistic myth that physical life has existential meaning, but rather on the possibility that there is a non-physical life after physical death that gives meaning to both our physical and non-physical lives. We will know if 2 is true after our physical death, if 1 is true we will never know because the question will die with us.
100% probability and is actually a certainty.
You are looking at this from a third party viewpoint. Every living being can look at the history of Bill and discuss his life using tensed language. The past I am talking about is something that belongs to Bill, something that he is aware of. After Bill's physical death he has no past, present, or future simply because he does not exist.
No
Sorry for my unorganized replies - just getting used to the markups. As I replied to 180_proof quoting you - One misconception from relativity is that a block universe implies a permanent me that spans my worldline from head to toe, in a sense I am my worldline as you suggest. However the requirement that no event be given precedence over any other event, means that each point on the worldline is unique.
A fine physicist, John Baez, once said that at every point on our worldline there is an approximate isomorph of me. The fact is that that we cannot identify an individual being on a worldline simply because there are an infinite number of me's on the line. Beyond that is the problem of Being and Becoming, presentism vs possibilism vs eternalism.
GR simply does not have an adequate mechanism to explain being and becoming. In the 5th appendix of the 15th edition of his book on relativity Einstein wrote “Since there exists in this four dimensional structure no longer any sections which represent now objectively, the concepts of happening and becoming are indeed not completely suspended, but yet complicated.” What did he mean, “…happening and becoming are indeed not completely suspended”?
He consoled the widow of a friend, saying that although her husband had preceded her in death it was of no consequence, “…for us physicists believe the separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, although a convincing one.” Yet he also said “A photograph never grows old. You and I change, people change all through the months and years but a photograph always remains the same. How nice to look at a photograph of mother or father taken many years ago. You see them as you remember them. But as people live on, they change completely. That is why I think a photograph can be kind.”
It is clear that Einstein believed that the past, present, and future coexist, yet he also realized that in some unexplained manner happening and becoming occur, “But as people live on, they change completely.” There is no answer to what being and becoming means in a block universe, indeed Einstein said “An individual who should survive his physical death is also beyond my comprehension.”.
From a scientific standpoint I am pretty much convinced that the evolving causal set theory model, which is consistent with relativity and QM, will prove to be true and will replace traditional block universe models with a timeless model where event X does not exist - X exists - X does not exist.
If there is no afterlife, then there is no transcendent meaning or value to human life. Nevertheless, there is meaning and value for a human life within the context of humankind. Individuals contribute to ther family and society, and these contributions can have an effect that persists long after their death (this is an "afterlife", of sorts).
A theist, I suspect, will tend to respond that this is insignificant, compared to the sort of metaphysical meaning and value they have in mind. That may be true, but it remains just a hypothetical. Perhaps it's one more motivation to WANT to believe in an afterlife, but such wishful thinking does not seem a rational basis for belief.
By that reasoning, a human is just a collection of cells, and the cells are just collections of [s]atoms[/s] quarks and leptons. That extreme reductionist view is counter to common sense. A human being is something more than a mere collection of particles; it is an organism, which functionally interacts with the world - despite the fact that the actual particles of which it is composed are not fixed.
The same is true of families and societies: they exist, and they functionally interact with other components of the world. Just as a person continues, despite there being an ongoing replacement of component particles, a society continues despite an ongoing change in its constituent members.
That is true, but a human being has an individual sentient consciousness, where a society does not have a single physical consciousness. A group of individuals is a family that is part of a society, but the group / society does not have a sentient existence apart from its members. If all sentient life on the earth was destroyed by a comet there would be no society that was aware of the destruction of humankind.
If you believe in panpsychism then, while I would not agree, I would see a logical argument for an anthropomorphic society. Otherwise society and family consist of individual sentient conscious beings who, if there is no afterlife, cease to exist on each of their physical deaths.
Well, I don't really know how to respond to all this. GR works fine for me as it is, and leaves me with no feeling of unresolved mysteries at all.
Except for how phenomenal consciousness arises. But I've already wasted years of my life on that debate.
|>ouglas
P.S. Okay, well there's also the mystery of how to unify GR with QM, but I consider that a completely scientific problem that likely doesn't really have any deep philosophical consequences. Except perhaps if we accept the Many Worlds Interpretation of QM, which I do.
An individual "sentience" consists of a set of beliefs, memories, and dispositions processed with an intellectual capability. These all change over time. That's analogous to what goes on in a society over time. All are functional entities that persist in time and interact with the part of the world outside itself.
[Quote] If all sentient life on the earth was destroyed by a comet there would be no society that was aware of the destruction of humankind.[/quote]So what?
[Quote]Otherwise society and family consist of individual sentient conscious beings who, if there is no afterlife, cease to exist on each of their physical deaths.[/quote] So what?
I'm guessing you just consider transcendent existence preferable. Sure, it would be. But that doesn't make it true.
There are dozens of deep mysteries that GR and QM don't solve. Many Worlds does not help with quantum entanglement, dark matter, etc. Quantum entanglement alone has philosophical significance that may never be unraveled.
I didn't make something out of nothing, I simply identified someTHINGS that you had overlooked: family and societies. And as I said, there is meaning and value for a human life within the context of humankind.. Again, this is not something from nothing. About all you can add to that is that this is a transient impact - families and societies disappear or evolve to unrecognizable forms, over time. And they will eventually disappear entirely. This doesn't alter the fact these are things that actually exist, they extend beyond ourselves, and provide something into which our contributions are relevant. In one sense, our contributions to these transient things is more meaningful than would be an afterlife: if there is a heaven, within which our existence continues, is there any reason to think that any one individual soul has a meaningful impact to that broad, extended existence - wherein every soul that has ever existed, and ever will exist, resides? Is that a society that evolves, for either better or worse, and within which we can make a difference?
Quoting CommonSense
Of course it does. It tells us precisely what results from quantum entanglement.
As far as I'm aware, the probability problem is the only deep philosophical problem of QM left open by the Many Worlds Interpretation. And I've got more important things to worry about, personally, than that detail.
Quoting CommonSense
There's nothing philosophically problematic about dark matter. It's just a physics problem that we don't yet know the answer to.
|>ouglas
Perhaps not "all will be as-if it never was". Most of us can find a bit of solace in the notion that we can live-on in our genes, our children will be our mark on the world. Even if our physical gene-line comes to an end, the memes (memories) that each person has generated may still inhabit the minds of those that survive. Those who have made a more permanent impact on the world, in writings or in deeds, may even "live-on" as historical personages. But that is small comfort for those who can't deal with the idea of non-being. I have no idea where I was before I was born, and no idea where I'll be after death.
The "possibility, no matter how slight" sounds like Pascal's Wager. But he was assuming that a heavenly hereafter was promised only to those with blind faith. Yet, many believers make their lives miserable with pathological anxiety about their eternal destiny. And Pascal should have known from experience that mundane Gambling is an act of blind faith that creates far more losers than winners. So why not bet on a sure thing : today? Besides, what is a "non-physical life?" The only life we know anything about is a property of physical beings.
Anyway, if non-being after death is no more scary than non-being before life, then why should we hope in vain for 'the possibility, no matter how slight"? If we can't find our meaning & purpose in this life. why should we expect to find it in another life? Nietzsche didn't proclaim that a person alive today will become a superman tomorrow. He was talking about evolutionary progress of the species. That possibility doesn't give any meaning to my life right now. So why not forget about meaning & purpose being assigned to you from above, or inherited without doing anything meaningful. Instead, write your own story with your actions, and your relations with others. :cool:
" Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. "
Matthew 6:33-34
“I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying. I don't want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen; I want to live on in my apartment.”
Woody Allen
I think this is the clearest statement of your thesis (excluding the odd bit about "as if it never was," which is what I picked up on initially, but I guess it's not that important). But this is just a variation on Pascal's Wager (as it is usually interpreted when read out of context). And as with the Wager, this argument is ineffective when deployed against a skeptic or agnostic, one who is not at least biased towards a particular kind of afterlife belief.
I can entertain a nominal possibility of an afterlife of some kind. But what will this afterlife be like? How will the choices that I make in this life affect that hypothesized afterlife? I have no idea. There is nothing that I could use to inform a guess, let alone formulate a theory. I could propose radically different afterlife scenarios, and none of them will be any more probable than the others, as far as I am concerned. Therefore, the mere possibility of afterlife cannot influence my thinking and decision-making in any way whatsoever. It is completely irrelevant to my (actual) life.
GR does not imply this. You are thinking of eternalism, which is a metaphysical view. GR does not imply it any more than Newtonian mechanics does. GR (or rather SR) constrains to some extent alternative views.
Quoting SophistiCat
Yes it does. Or at least it does as interpreted by physicists who specialize in GR. E.g. Hawking and Smolin.
Also GR allows for "closed timelike loops" which let you travel into the past. You can't travel to something that doesn't exist.
Of course, GR could be wrong in some important way. Or its conventional interpretation could be wrong. Maybe closed timelike loops turn out to be impossible for reasons that we don't yet understand.
But the OP is making strong claims based on premises, some of which are claimed to be wrong by standard interpretations of GR. So the OP's premises are on very shaky ground. And even if GR is wrong, or the conventional interpretations are wrong, we still have no good reason to accept the premises of the OP's argument.
That's not the best argument I've seen; sliding the word exists from one sense to another.
If Hawking and Smolin subscribe to eternalism, and I don't know if they do, that is on them and not on GR. GR has nothing to say on the question of existence, it is not a metaphysical theory.
Quoting Douglas Alan
This is a red herring. In any theory of spacetime you can travel to the future by the normal means, that is by waiting for it to actualize, but that doesn't imply that the future exists.
You are right that Smolin in particular championed an interpretation that includes temporality in his book Time Reborn. It is not as clear if he still supports that position six years later, his contemporary Carlo Rovelli does not .
For my argument it does not really matter if you accept GR, QM, and many worlds as an incomplete block universe model where there are an infinite number of isolated "me's" scattered in an infinite number of universes or existing as an infinite number of points on a worldline, or you accept causal set theory where there is only one transient me - in both cases after my physical death there is no singular me who is aware of my past, or for that matter aware of anything. An infinite number of me's does not equal a singular consciousness that survives physical death.
If we live in a block universe (eternalism) then there are an infinite number of approximate physical isomorphs of me living in an infinite number of isolated universes (many worlds theory) or an infinite number of me's at every point on my worldline, none of which can be said to be a singular conscious me who exists after my physical death.
If we live in a universe made up of sequential events (causal set theory) then as a conscious physical being I do not exist - I exist - I do not exist.
In both cases after my physical death - nothing. All would be as if it never was.
My argument is that it is far more rational to believe in the possibility (not certainty) of a non-physical existence after physical death than it is to make something out of nothing - to argue for existential meaning in a purely physical existence. That is what humanists who understand science and neuro-existentialists must do if they are to escape Camus' absurdity. Ubermensch, and any other assertions of meaning associated with a purely physical being, are in fact the irrational myths.
I carefully explain the reasoning behind this conclusion in the Something Out of Nothing book (Google Play Store and Kindle Books) - free on Google and Apple - minimum allowed price on Kindle.
To be rational, there must be a rational justification for the belief. I haven't seen one, and I'm not going to read a book to see if it's buried in there somewhere.
What is the "something" that you allege is from nothiing? Meaning? That woulld be reifying an abstraction.
Walk me through your justification, and we can then assess whether or not it's rational.
I think I am getting a handle on this confusing bit that recurs in your posts. The problem here is even more basic than tensed predicates. You cannot predicate anything in the absence of an entity to which the predicate would attach. You cannot describe someone who does not exist as having no past, because you cannot describe someone who does not exist at all.
Quoting CommonSense
Quoting CommonSense
When even after two pages of discussion you have failed to so much as hint at such an argument (beyond the tired old Pascal's Wager), I don't think I want to invest my time into reading your book.
That is my point. That is the essence of nothing. That is the the logical basis of the conclusion all will be as if it never was.
We, Bill's friends and enemies, know that Bill is decomposing, and from our view he's no longer conscious.
Proposition 1:
The energy that experienced Bill, has returned to the environment.
Proposition 2:
Something recorded Bill's life and Bill is awaiting judgement.
In any case, Bill no longer exists. However, if my propositions stand any ground here...
In proposition 1, Bill's energy may exist again, it's not fully gone and unrelated.
In proposition 2, if Bill can't be distinguished out of the energy, something, that recorded Bill's life, may re-create Bill.
What I'm trying to suggest is, even if afterlife is a factor of existence, Bill, upon death, is more of a non-existent, even in a passage to another life...
Well, your point, as in the point of this thread, is rather elusive. But as to a more specific point that I was addressing, it is simply wrong. It is wrong to say of someone who has died that she has no past, for example - in the same way that it is wrong to say "The present king of France is bald." If you say "Albertine has no past," this can be interpreted as a conjunction:
1. There is one and only one x such as x is Albertine.
2. For every x that is Albertine, x has no past.
But if Albertine is dead, then (1) is false, which makes "Albertine has no past" false (as well as "Albertine has a past," of course).
So when you ask if someone from the past exists, you are actually asking if someone who is dead is conscious?
Yeah, you can have that argument to yourself.
Quoting CommonSense
That's not a philosophical problem. It's a scientific one.
And if turns out to be a question that science can't answer because there's no way to falsify certain theories that could be right, it doesn't really matter anyway.
This is not like the distinction between Bohm's Interpretation of QM and MWI, which are experimentally indistinguishable, but which posit worlds that would be extremely different in extremely important ways philosophically.
Quoting CommonSense
Again, this sounds like a scientific problem, not a philosophical one.
Though I suppose it would have consequences for philosophy should it turn out that eternalism is false.
Quoting CommonSense
Sounds like a distinction without a difference to me. E.g., maybe I die every time I go to sleep and then there's a new, different me every time I wake up? If you use the word "die" in that manner, then you've basically redefined the word "die", though.
Because whatever happens when I go to sleep and wake up, has been defined as a single, continuous life by virtually everyone since people have been using language.
Didn't Parfit write about these kinds of worries in his book?
Quoting CommonSense
I don't see this as being an important philosophical worry at all. It's like worrying that maybe I don't exist because I'm just a pattern of energy waves, and waves are emergent. E.g., a wave in the ocean is constantly made of different water as it travels.
But despite any of these worries, I exist. Waves exist. The wrinkles that I can't get out of my bedspread exist. I find none of this mysterious or worth fretting about after one has finished Philosophy 101.
|>ouglas
Something doesn't have to be a metaphysical theory for it to entail obvious metaphysical consequences.
Quoting SophistiCat
That's not traveling; that's waiting.
Let me be more clear with a more specific example. Let's say that we build or find a closed timelike loop. And now let's say that we have a million people traverse this timelike loop, but traverse it differently so that they all end up in different times in the past. And at each of these times, let's say that each of these million people is causally connected to billions of other people.
So, we now have a million different people who were here earlier today but are now spread across the past. Did they cease to exist? Or do only the locations surrounding these million people exist in spacetime? What about all the billions of people that are causally connected to them?
I'm sure that someone could come up with some crazy explanation for this which doesn't entail eternalism, but it sure to be ad hoc and completely violate Ockham’s razor.
|>ouglas
Time travel is nothing more nor less than waiting. You are perhaps led astray by conventional word associations: waiting feels passive, while traveling feels active. But once you build or find your time machine/closed time-like curve, all you need and can do in order to complete your journey through time is what all of us do all of the time: wait, let the time pass. And if the spacetime topology happens to have a certain exotic configuration, then your waiting may take you to places unexpected.
But all this is an unnecessary complication, because, whatever the topology of your worldline, you still exist/existed/will exist on the points of that worldline. And the question remains: do all of those points exist? Or does only one moving point exist? Or a growing segment? Is there a fact of the matter about which of these points are in the past and which are in the future? These are metaphysical questions (or perhaps, as some argue, language questions), which physics is not equipped to address.
That is exactly right. The issue is what does "existed" and "will exist" mean - are they historical facts available to those who are conscious or are they facts that instantiate a past belonging to the person who does not exist - a past that is their past. The question about the metaphysical implications of tensed language is tied to the answer to our scientific question of whether the universe exhibits fundamental or emergent temporality - are past and future part of physical reality or not. For the spooky action at a distance of Quantum entanglement to work it appears that something like causal set theory, where there are sequential events but no fundental temporality, absolutely must be added to or discovered to be the correct interpretation of GR / QM. This has profound implications for the ontology of human physical existence.
You have a tendency of taking words out of context and using them inappropriately. Stop that. Your comment, while expressing an agreement, has nothing to do with what I actually wrote.
Quoting SophistiCat
This argument makes no more sense to me than saying that traveling to San Francisco is just waiting. I get on a plane headed towards San Francisco and then I just wait.
Quoting SophistiCat
It doesn't have to take me to some place unexpected. If I know enough about the closed timelike curve, I can use it to go to precisely the time I'd like to go to. Given that the time I want to go to is contained within the curve, and the CTC is of a sort that lets me do that. And where I want to go to is consistent with the past. I.e., I actually showed up in the past there in the past, etc., etc. But this is a thought experiment, and nothing I'm postulating in it is inconsistent with GR as we understand it, even if it only occurs in a relatively unlikely possible world.
But arguing about such things is a pointless detour wrt whether GR entails eternalism. I've presented a thought experiment where a million people use a closed timelike curve to all travel to different times. As far as I understand things, these types of thought experiments are generally taken by physicists to entail eternalism, assuming GR is true enough that closed timelike curves are actually possible.
Though even Special Relativity makes presentism difficult to defend. See the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy for more details.
I went to a Philosophy conference at MIT filled to the brim with professional philosophers. In one of the talks, the moving spotlight theory was given a quick refutation as part of the argument. Here's a longer discussion. Though this author actually defends the moving spotlight theory as not being incompatible with Special Relativity:
https://web.mit.edu/bskow/www/research/timeinrelativity.pdf
There was Q&A after the talk. Not a single philosopher spoke up to question the implicit eternalism that was presented, nor to support the moving spotlight theory. My natural conclusion is that eternalism is not hugely controversial. Or at least not amongst the philosophers who might come to MIT for a conference.
In any case, eternalism is a simple and natural explanation for what happens in the thought experiment. It is also in my experience how virtually all scientists who talk about GR, talk about GR.
I consider eternalism prima facie true, assuming the thought experiment is actually possible.
I think that anyone who wants to reject eternalism without rejecting the possibility of this thought experiment has a lot of work to do! And I find it highly improbable that whatever theory is presented as an alternative would be widely accepted as more likely.
As for who is better equipped to address such questions, I don't consider philosophers better equipped than scientists. Particle physicists used to consider virtual particles just a mathematical convenience, rather than virtual particles being real. Now virtual particles are universally accepted as real. I don't consider philosophers to be better equipped than particle physicists to determine the metaphysical status of virtual particles wrt existence, and in the unlikely case that philosophers come to a different conclusion than physicists on this issue, I would most likely side with the physicists.
|>ouglas
In MWI, there is no spooky action at a distance. It is a completely local and deterministic interpretation of QM.
|>ouglas
You're looking for meaning in all the wrong places. There is no meaning to life. Live with it.
If there's any meaning to life, it's the meaning that you yourself decide to assign to it.
|>ouglas
In the tapestry of time and space, Bill lives forever. His existence cannot be wiped off. The universe would be different without the causal effects of his having existed.
And yet you try.