tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21863552.post1972359689052437325..comments2023-11-25T01:52:56.999-08:00Comments on Philosophical Pontifications: Reflections on Eternalism: Part 1Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06892913480992228908noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21863552.post-69802579524830874752007-11-05T18:26:00.000-08:002007-11-05T18:26:00.000-08:00Most eternalists subscribe to the tenseless theory...Most eternalists subscribe to the tenseless theory--so the conflation is natural.<BR/><BR/>As for roving spotlight and the special theory: it's no more inconsistent with the Special Theory, I'd think, then other tensed theories of time. Growing block, presentism, and roving spotlight are all equal grounds here. And they're all widely thought to be inconsistent with SR. But I think this is mistaken--and there's a growing cottage industry among presentists saying why... (see, e.g. Craig Bourne's 2006 book)Andrew M. Baileyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12606675886229313577noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21863552.post-32096438499856593742007-11-05T18:15:00.000-08:002007-11-05T18:15:00.000-08:00Hi Andrew,Point well taken--I guess I usually conf...Hi Andrew,<BR/><BR/>Point well taken--I guess I usually conflate eternalism and tenseless views of time in my own thinking. <BR/><BR/>I suppose roving spotlight views may be logically consistent, but wouldn't they conflict with the relativity of simultanaeity as evidenced by the theories of Relativity (on a realistic interpretation)?Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06892913480992228908noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21863552.post-846024924838905472007-11-05T16:28:00.000-08:002007-11-05T16:28:00.000-08:00You say: "So does it make sense to look forward to...You say: "So does it make sense to look forward to future events? If eternalism is true, I’m afraid it does not."<BR/><BR/>This follows only given the conjunction of eternalism and the tenseless theory of time according to which there is no objective present moment. If there is such a moment (`the objective now') then there are features future events don't have (e.g. not happening yet)--and it could be in virtue of these features that we anticipate them. In short, given a tensed theory of time, future events may exist and still have interesting features which distinguish them from past and present events.<BR/><BR/>Your argument thus only has force against a block universe eternalism; a roving spotlight theorist needn't be moved.Andrew M. Baileyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12606675886229313577noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21863552.post-86870429820724473232007-11-05T16:21:00.000-08:002007-11-05T16:21:00.000-08:00This comment has been removed by the author.Andrew M. Baileyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12606675886229313577noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21863552.post-56840842215330228542007-08-10T13:40:00.000-07:002007-08-10T13:40:00.000-07:00Jason: your argument here revolves around two phra...Jason: your argument here revolves around two phrases: "is identical to" and "is not identical to". Thus this entire blog hinges on the concept of Identity, and in the course of human thought we have managed to thickly interweave our concepts of Identity and Time, they are seemingly inextricable to us. That's the problem. If you presume a strictly linear Time, a concept of time modeled on our deeply, deeply engrained love of *narrative*, then you end up with a strictly linear notion of Identity, and that's what I take issue with. You are presuming throughout that Identity is something that is defined by or bound by CLOSURE, and I think that in general this shows that the human race is still in its cognitive infancy -- we can't imagine a stable Identity as anything but *closed*, and indeed our Gods are "Closed Beings", if we are to take the Bible and the Koran, say, seriously. People say that God is infinite or is Infinity itself, but that's just hand-waving, it's not very articulated, and Georg Cantor showed us that there are an infinity of infinities, but even still, Cantor's arguments and all subsequent developments in set theory and mathematics still center around our ideas of *enumeration*, but if we are going to talk about God, he or she better be far beyond ideas about enumerability. We need to re-examine from the ground up what we mean by that word, IDENTITY. I don't believe for one minute that a real God can be subject in any way to our puny, closed ideas about Identity. Addressing your argument about Eternalism, I want to say that at age 20, I could not even remotely have imagined the person I would end up being now at age 57! I say my life has been one long "pageant of Contingency", one surprising turn after another. Did my Identity at age 57 in 2007 <BR/>"already exist" at age 20 in 1970? That's a gigantic question, isn't it? I say it didn't, except as certain personality tendencies I already had, what Karl Popper called "propensities" in the context of quantum mechanics. Yes, given my genetic inheritance and the circumstances of my childhood, I ended up with particular *idiomatic* propensities that would incline me towards quasi-<BR/>predictable choices in any given situation, yet even in some of those situations I might have been sick or pissed off and done the opposite of what I normally would have done. I don't think human Identity can ever be a Closed System, *whether in the immediate moment or across the entire span of a person's life* -- and that would apply a fortiori to a Deity.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com