ChatteringMonkey

Yeah, that's where I'm at basically. Time is a usefull convention, regardless of it's ontological nature.

It's figure of speech, sort of, if you plot something in a graph along an axis that indicates different moments of time, then they move in time, and c...

The 4th axis of 4d spacetime. The parts at different times are different right? Well, that simply is change. I don't know how to put it any other way ...

I've read the things you referred to, and my question is still the same, what do you mean with genuinely passage of time and genuine change? I can't a...

It's the B-series. But look, if you don't engage the ideas themselves, I don't think we will get anywhere. I don't think characterization as A-series ...

The temporal passage thing is not the problem, the block is only static viewed from the outside. Within the blockuniverse time is one of the dimension...

It's a pressing concern to 'appear' to conform to the facts, otherwise people won't buy into it anymore. But it doesn't actually have to conform with ...

No technically the answer is, no.... if only a yes or no answer will do :-). They need to "appear" to conform to facts... not they have to conform to ...

It was easier to say the universe was created in 7 days in a time where we had no clue how the world came to be. They need to be facts based insofar t...

Because Chistianity had Truth as one of its core values and ate its own tail... in short :-).

Yes I do, but I want to say that other worldviews don't necessarily have a whole lot to do with truth. That's not their primary function, I don't thin...

Well yeah, if it has been tested countless of times over years, than maybe they have a point in calling dissenters lunkheads. It's like running your h...

Yes it is. I don't disagree, but I think what OP is getting at is not so much the scientific method itself, but how it is received and use more widely...

Yeah, no it's the opposite, some scientific theories are only considered 'the best theory we currently have' so long as there is no data to the contra...

I think you are not wrong in your analysis, there doesn't seem to be a good solution to that dilemma. Either you opt out entirely and ostracize the so...

Yeah, let's leave that one for another thread.

Could you clarify that question, because I don't get it as it is formulated... How do perspectives and knowledge exist seems like an odd question to a...

Don't know why you ask me that question. I thought my point was clear from the first post I made addressing one of yours :

A perspectivist would probably say that 'natures' and 'essences' are also incoherent notions, like 'how thing really are' is. So then, if it's a quest...

I alluded to this in an earlier post, but I don't think this is so much about 'what exist' as it is about 'how things are'... It's a question about kn...

Yes sure, and that is usually the point of positing an underlying reality beyond the senses. Not that they really care about the truth... but that the...

I think, and this is most probably a move you won't like, ultimately that I don't really care about the underlying reality. Truth serves a function, o...

Okay fair enough, I'm a presentist (that maybe is thinking of changing his mind) defending a theory I don't adhere to (yet), so excuse my (lingering) ...

That's fine, and i'm just saying I don't think they are really problems for the eternalist.

With 'experience of passage' or with 'passage that is real'? The eternalist view doesn't start from the point of view of human experience, it's derive...

'Special metaphysical status', or preferred moment as noAxioms put it... that is what exist, what is real. The eternalist says that every point in tim...

Yeah but existence in the block-universe is defined in four dimensions, that is probably what you are not realising?

No, the moving spotlight theory gives a special metaphysical status to the present whereas eternalism does not, I guess, i'm not exactly an expect on ...

I don't get how you would interpret it that way, since time is literally one of the dimensions in the block-universe. What do you think that dimension...

But the block-universe incorporates motion, in space and time? Isn't it a given that things change in space and time in a 4-dimensional block-universe...

Yes I get that, what is the point? If B-theorist eternalist are right, and we are beings that only experience one moment in time, then we would experi...

Yes it still isn't entirely clear what your mean with it, does it mean that time is an independent metaphysical thing acting on the universe, or do th...

What do you mean with the reality of temporal passage?

It's not a question of ontology, I don't think, but of epistemology. The world exists without me, you or anybody observing it. But the notion of findi...

I don't quite understand how get to the that infinite regress. But yes, you can be correct or wrong from a giving perspective, i'd say... which is to ...

I have no idea what you are getting at. What transcends language, what do you mean? Lots of things transcend language, it's just a tool we use to comm...

Yeah that is at least the conclusion that Nietzsche for example drew from it... that if the true world, or how things really are, is an incoherent not...

To the point of the OP... The first thing one needs to understand that the universe or reality or whatever... cannot contradictory by itself, or rathe...

What do we mean with 'how things are'? :-)

The whole spacetime-block is 'static' viewed from the outside, but with-in the model, time and change are part of how things are situated in that spac...

Yes Heraclitus... I think ultimately the point is to collapse the whole real world/apparent world distinction. Since the 'real world' or the thing in-...

I'm a generally a sceptic (not of the absolute kind), not because I don't trust the senses, but because I generally don't trust what people make of th...

Yeah, but we were not wrong because we trusted our senses... but because we inferred things from them, that we had no real justification to infer. The...

Philosophy is about examining our assumptions, yes, and getting by with as few unjustified assumptions as possible... but sometimes there is no way fo...

The epistemological problem is a dead end. It's not like there is an other way than via the senses that we can access this real world to verify if our...

Nietzsche quote that seems relevant here :-) The true world — attainable for the sage, the pious, the virtuous man; he lives in it, he is it. (The old...

Distrust of the senses has been a perennial issue in Western philosophy it seems, but ironically we only started to make progress historically when we...

Sure, it probably depends on the person to what degree... still I'd guess that most people would agree that dreams, imagination or illusion are less d...

Yeah sorry, I know you were just presenting a view, not necessarily advocating it. I was tackling the idea, not the man :-).

Yeah the problem is that this sentence doesn't even make sense to begin with. What would it mean to have a taste when not tasted? The property 'sweet'...