RJG wrote: ↑April 22nd, 2021, 6:36 am
RJG wrote:Not everything can be an illusion (i.e. not really happening).
Scott wrote:Sure it can. There is nothing contradictory about the following sentence: "Nothing is happening."
Not true.
"Nothing is happening" is a self-defeating statement. [...]
The claim "nothing is happening" is logically impossible. (...i.e. can't make the claim if claims can't happen!).
That statement didn't happen. The statement "nothing happens" does not entail the happening of that statement itself.
The statement "nothing happens", this whole conversation, the Big Bang, real dinosaurs, and the death of the Sun all exist in the unchanging 4D block universe.
Thus, the existence of that statement and that entire conversation in the unchanging 4D block universe is not logically impossible.
What you might falsely call
'the future' doesn't happen nor does anything it it happen, meaning it doesn't start out not existing and then magically pop into existence from non-existence, and then pop out of existence again. Indeed, that kind of seemingly magical process would
seem to require some kind of background or screen-like canvas-like time (and space) to occur, with time and space acting us the background or stage on which that popping into existence and popping out of existence occurs, hence the analogous references to a DVD player. Einstein's physics and the relativity of emergent time prove such a seemingly magical process does not exist or make sense and objective reality does not exist (or "occur") on a background canvas of space and time. Rather, what you would call the future and any statements that would be made in that so-called
future all already exist, and always have, in the timeless eternal unchanging reality that is the all-encompassing 4D spacetime.
If I was to venture to guess what you are trying to say or get at (noting that you would know much better than I so it's a sloppy endeavor on my part), my best bet is that you are trying to say something like the following:
Your own personal conscious experience of this conversation is incompatible with the idea that the conversation is not happening (for you in your own personal relative here-and-now in your own personal relativistic Newtonian-like space and time that emerge in relation to that personal subjective here-and-now). If so, I interpret that as you claiming you are having a transcendental conscious experience, and/or that the conscious experience you are having is somehow indicative of a missing piece in the currently known fundamental physics (i.e. that consciousness itself is either fundamental or is symptomatic of some even more fundamental unknown/undiscovered fundamental aspect of reality more fundamental than both consciousness and the non-fundamental Newtonian-like apparent time that emerges from the existence of consciousness). Is that what you are trying to say?
If so, that's very different than claiming the single sentence "nothing happens" contradicts itself or is intrinsically illogical. In other words, you are saying that the statement is incompatible with your alleged conscious experience, not that it is incompatible with itself all on its own.
It seems to me the sentence doesn't contradict itself, it contradicts you, which isn't really a contradiction but just a disagreement.
RJG wrote: ↑April 22nd, 2021, 6:36 am
I see no need to deny consciousness whatsoever and still be compatible with our 4D universe. We are conscious specifically because "stuff happens"!
If that alleged "happening" is "happening" (whatever that means) over some kind of fundemental real time, then it seems you are proposing a 5th fundamental dimension, a dimension of time, in addition to the 4 dimensions of timeless spacetime; is that correct?
RJG wrote: ↑April 22nd, 2021, 6:36 am
This universe may be truly 4D as you say, but it certainly is not "static" (like an unplayed DVD), it is undeniably "dynamic". Change (and therefore Time) absolutely and undeniably exist. Stuff happens!
If the full 4Ds of timeless spacetime containing the Big Bang, this whole conversation, and the death of the Sun is itself changing, meaning it can be conceived as multiple 4D frames happening in consecutive order over some kind of Newtonian-like time, then that time is a 5th dimension; correct? In other words, you are proposing a 5th dimension of time exists in addition to the four dimensions of timeless spacetime?
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Steve3007 wrote: ↑April 22nd, 2021, 7:06 am
There sometimes seems to be not much that me and RJG agree on, but I agree with the thrust of his argument against Scott here. I appreciate Scott's points about General Relativity/The Block Universe and the point that, within that model, the notion of a universal time and the fundamental separation of the dimensions representing time and space don't apply. But to conclude that things like time, change and stuff-happening are illusions is clearly silly.
If I am understanding correctly, you are saying that via reducio ad absurdum we can conclude that one of premises must be false. If so, I am inclined to agree. I don't believe in all the premises we are using. For instance, one could open the door to the idea that consciousness is more fundamental than relative time, and that relative time is (like the so-called force of gravity) an emergent phenomenon that exists in scientific approximation at certain scales in certain contexts and certain false and oversimplified pretenses, making relative time both as real and unreal as the so-called force of gravity.
Regardless, I think objective time is not real either way.
And needless to say relative time(s) cannot be fundamental because those have to be relative to something, and if that something is consciousness then that puts time as an emergent phenomenon whose indirect emergent reality rests upon the resolution of the
hard problem of consciousness.
However, if just for the sake of argument and simplicity we
pretend the universe is only filled with philosophical zombies and no true instances of true consciousness exist (which is not something I really believe), then even relative time is revealed as a total and utter illusion, lacking even in some kind of emergent relative reality relative to the conscious subjects. In other words, if the consciousness doesn't exist, then what's relative to it doesn't exist; but thus even if the consciousness does exist, then what's relative to the conscious subject is just emergent from that relationship between that conscious subject and that with which the conscious subject has a changing relationship. In other words, one's conscious experience of relative emergent time emerges from one's conscious experience and thus the conscious experience must be more fundamental than relative emergent time, the latter of which can be an illusion and cannot be objective nor fundamental.
Like Flat Earth Theory and the seemingly so-called solid objects and the classical mechanics that describe the behavior of so-called solid objects, relative time(s) may be emergent phenomenon that can be said to exist in oversimplified models representing scientific approximation. If my wife texts me to ask when I will be home, I'll (usually) not reply that time is an illusion, and if she tells me to drive straight in the car, I usually won't tell her that that's impossible on a curved earth flying around in curved space, that insofar as the car touches the ground and our feet touch the car the three things are already experiencing a high-speed collision like two cars side-swiping each other in a three-to-one merging lane, and that gravity isn't pulling us down (since that would violate the
Equivalence Principle) but rather what we experience as the force-like illusion of gravity is just the result of the Earth flying towards us in curved space, which itself doesn't really exist either but is an illusion created by the fact that our own watches always seem to us to tick at one second per second, and we just cannot physically escape frame in which we are moving through space at speed 0 and moving through time at speed C, even if such movement itself is a Newtonian approximation (i.e. known-to-be-incorrect illusion) due the false distinction between time and space that it entails.
If my wife and I were skydiving, and she got scared of falling to the Earth with a non-working parachute, I would probably not tell her that the
Equivalence Principle proves her fear is a false fear because instead it's more correct to think of herself as stationary and that she would be getting hit by the Earth rushing towards her in curved space at about a few hundred or thousand miles per hour maybe.
Instead, I'd speak in fictions where C is not a constant, and in which gravity is a Newtonian force in unbent Newtonian space, because those approximate fictions are much easier despite being fundamentally wrong by way of inexact estimation.
Steve3007 wrote: ↑April 22nd, 2021, 7:06 am
I come back to the analogy with the conclusion people make from time to time that solid objects, on closer inspection, are not really solid, because atomic nuclei are so dense. In my view, that's the wrong conclusion to come to. The right one is that they're as solid as they ever were, but we've understood a bit more about what it
means for something to be solid.
I generally disagree with that description of scientific approximation. For example, the claim by many ancient Greek philosophers that reality is made of lego-like atoms that are uncuttable is fundamentally wrong and debunked, The claim that reality is made of solid atoms obeying classical physics is wrong and debunked. Flat Earth Theory is wrong and debunked. Newtonian Mechanics is wrong and debunked. The idea that 3 dimensions of objective space and one dimension of objective time exist is wrong and debunked.
We can
re-interpret and still use those debunked known-to-be-wrong models like Newtonian Mechanics or Flat Earth Theory by considering them to be useful approximations that tend to give negligibly incorrect predictions in certain narrow contexts and narrow scales. When engineering a bridge, it's probably much simpler to assume wrong Flat Earth Theory than try to calculate in the microscopic affects of gravity not pulling parallel directions such that even a piece of bridge a centimeter apart would have a different vector to the force of gravity, nor would it be helpful for bridge engineer to remember that the force of gravity actually requires Einstein's mechanics and further complicate the calculations to get more precise (i.e. accurate) results. If the approximate estimated (but wrong) calculation is to buy 3 tons of building materials (which takes ten seconds to calculate), and the correct (or closer to correct/exact) calculation is 3.0000002 tons of building materials which would take 50 years and a billion dollars to calculate to that level of precision, then in practice it's probably wiser to go with the known-to-be-wrong estimate.
Steve, you mention the process of discovering "a bit more about what it
means for something to be solid". However, I believe new meanings aren't revealed but rather created. I am all for
re-defining old debunked models as oversimplified approximations that give imprecise inaccurate predictions in certain practical narrow contexts that match our day-to-day experiences in this waking dream we call life as each observed in the VR-realities hallucinated by our brains, whatever those brains are exactly, if those brains even exist, if the dreamy avatars that contain them even exist.
Steve3007 wrote: ↑April 22nd, 2021, 7:23 am
Scott wrote:A married bachelor is a logical contradiction.
An unchanging 4D block universe that contains this entire conversion is not a logical contradiction.
Obviously I don't know for sure, but I suspect the reason you think things like this is that you imagine standing outside of that block universe and looking at it, all at once. You then contrast the movement and change of yourself standing outside with the worldlines of the people and events frozen within that block. But if the block is supposed to be a model of the entire universe then that makes no sense. There is, by definition, nothing outside it. Everything in the universe, including all of the changes, are (if it's accurate) represented in that model. Any model that seeks to represent the entire universe models the changes that happen in that universe. The way we visualize it doesn't alter that.
If my entire life, from birth to death, can be represented by a worldline in that model, and if you can imagine looking at that worldline and seeing it all at once, unmoving and unchanging, from the outside, that doesn't mean I'm unmoving and unchanging. Visualizations and graphs and suchlike aren't reality. To say otherwise would, I think, be as silly as to say that if you draw a velocity versus time graph of a car making a journey, and the graph doesn't move, then the car doesn't move.
I agree that would be inaccurate and illogical reasoning.
That kind of thinking is not why Einstein's model requires a block universe according to Einstein, and it is not the reasoning, logic, and scientific experimentation used to develop and validate Einstein's theories.
Please note, that like Einstein himself, I also do not believe his model is the complete most accurate most reduced picture, which is why he continued his search for a so-called Theory of Everything for many years after developing General Relativity. Einstein debunked Newtonian physics the same way atoms were revealed as cuttable and made of smaller particles, which were then revealed as themselves as not the building blocks. Singular objective time, like uncutable atoms, has been destroyed by reductionism. Where reductionism will end, nobody knows.
Regardless, relative times (i.e. consciously experienced relative timelines and space-ness) are an approximation for emergent phenomenon emerging from an allegedly changing relationship between consciousness and seemingly unchanging (i.e. deterministic) 4D spacetime. Such relative time is less fundamental, more emergent, and more approximate/unreal than the alleged consciousness to which it is relative and from which it is emergent. That emergent phenomenon of apparent relative times is also as physically mysterious, possibly illusionary, and open to interpretation and conjecture as wave function collapse in quantum mechanics--namely because of the Observer Problem.
If we assume consciousness is neither fundamental, nor transcendental, nor physically forceful, then as a matter of parsimony I would conclude that nothing is happening and change does not exist. In other words, I don't believe consciousness is an illusion, but if it is then even relative emergent time is an illusion.
If we exclude any appeals to consciousness as transcendental and/or fundamental (i.e. that something fundamental beyond the known physics is happening in regard to consciousness), or more simply just ignore consciousness altogether,
then the lack of objective time means change is incompatible with determinism. Fundamentally speaking, RJG has insisted that would have to therefore mean that nothing is really happening at all in any true sense (even some tough to imagine sense in which real singular time does not exist but happenings and change still somehow do), and I generally agree, if not for mere parsimony.
If I instead assume consciousness is more fundamental than time, that results in relative emergent time(s) that match my day-to-day conscious experience of Newtonian space and Newtonian time, but (as I understand the discussion) that assumption has been assumed to be false as a premise in my earlier discussions with RJG. In other word, for the sake of simplicity, I am more than happy to pretend I am a philosophical zombie in order to discuss what that would mean in regard to time, and it's from that perspective (not the one you described above) that I deny that anything in any sense at all can
really happen (i.e. physically change in terms of fundamental physics).
A similar thing happens when I interpret Quantum Mechanics. I get a very different result if I assume I am a philosophical zombie versus if I let myself make appeals to the thing that transcends the science a philosophical zombie would accept, which is itself generally the only science we can share. If scientists one day can cut open my brain or cut open a tartigrade and find consciousness, or find the consciousness particle or such, then the Observer Problem may be resolved.
If Daniel Dennett is a real life philosophical zombie, then it would be unreasonable and unscientific for him to not also believe that you, me, and RJG are also all zombies. It would likewise be unreasonable and unscientific for him to believe in real time. That is my position.
I am willing to appeal to something allegedly real that a reasonable intelligent science-oriented philosophical zombie would refuse to believe exists in order to fully form and finalize my own beliefs, but that
something therefore
transcends those sharable physics and
transcends those sharable sciences, by positing something new to the physics (i.e. conscious presences), but I believe that expanded physics and expanded empiricism doesn't necessarily contradict monism, even though it may exclude people like Daniel Dennett from the discussion. It is inconsistent with the narrower timeless change-less materialism that a philosophical zombie would be stuck with, which itself could be revealed (to us conscious people via consciousness) as a wrong approximation that works well enough in certain contexts. Like Newtonian Mechanics, classic non-expanded materialism presumably is just an approximated model to approximately describe emergent phenomenon in an oversimplified manner that disregards fundamental aspects of reality, hence the Observer Problem.