andy-k wrote:
>The problem I have with eternalism is that if all
> things and all events are already accounted for in
> some "block universe" then there is no change.
In an eternalism model, change could be a type of relation, a
comparative state. *Situation A* is different from *Situation B*, ergo
the illusion of one situation having altered into the other --the belief
that a physical or even hyperphysical action must have transpired. But
there is no physical modification, change doesn't transcend its
cognitive nature.
And the inference (that a 3D-universe "changed") probably isn't some
eiphenomenal object or substance moving spatially in correlation to
brain actions (since the brain would be a static, continuous
hyperstructure embedded in the larger hyperstructure version of the
universe). But even if the "differences" between situations was reified
as a thing "moving" along outside or inside the brain worldline (or
etc), it wouldn't alter the fixed hyperstructure in its travels (since
by definition it doesn't alter).
Brian Green sums up comparative relations as "memory", but as memory
concerns the past it doesn't quite capture all the whole connective
network of the hyperbrain:
Brian Green ~~~ "I think the relationship between memory and time is a
very deep and tricky one . . . . I do consider memory that which allows
us to think that time flows. We all have a sense that our memory of the
past was the time when a particular moment was real, and that it then
receded into the past. And now we're in the present, and we can reflect
back on those distant events using our memory. I think, however, and
many physicists agree, that that sense of time flowing that we all feel
through memory is actually an illusion. Every moment is as real as every
other. Every 'now,' when you say, 'this is the real moment,' is as real
as every other 'now'---and therefore all the moments are just out there.
Just as every location in space is out there, I think every moment in
time is out there, too."
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200405u/int2004-05-20
>We have to unaccountably insert a privileged 'now'
> into the block universe and then have it
> unaccountably move along the time axis (i.e. we
> have to introduce change in order to account for
> our experience of change).
Change as the difference between situations: The whole 4-dimensional
"wiring" scheme of a brain between its genesis situation and its death
situation could be a single judgement of how the two extremes compare,
but with that relation being divided into sub-comparisons (order of
life) as a necessity of any meaningful account of how the *beginning*
and *end* differ. The actual problem here (which I've likely
demonstrated in places further above) is finding language that avoids
describing such "comparative connections" as spatial movement / actions
or spatial transfers / transitions. Better minds than mine could
probably produce a purged nomenclature or invent a new language for
eternalism models, free of such resonances.
>Since nothing in a block universe changes (short of
> this unaccountable introduction), there could be no
> "subjective illusion" that anything is changing
> (since an illusion of change would be a changing
> illusion).
The physical nature (if I must continually use that word) of the
hyperstructure would remain unchanged by any illusion. But I'd doubt
anyway that "change" can really be abstracted from its relational nature
(there's a difference between *this* and *that*), so as to be more
fundamental than comparative connections themselves.
>What Witt seems to be rejecting is the notion of
> time as a substantive -- some*thing* that 'flows',
> and against which we measure the rates of change of
> all other processes. 'Time' is a word we learn to
> use in common speech as though it were just such a
> substantive -- e.g.. we might say things like "I
> don't have enough time", and "a lot of time has
> passed since then".
"Time" is an organized framework: Past, present, future; or earlier,
simultaneous, later. Julian Barbour's "The End of Time" model gets rid
of the framework (no definite path of a past and no definite one for a
future), thus his title. It therefore doesn't even preserve the past as
Whitehead's process does. But though it features a "universal now", it's
not pure presentism because he seems to offer a kind of quasi-existence
for all the possible states of the universe competing to be the next
Now.
>But there is no such 'thing' as time -- it is only
> the way we talk about relationships between events,
> and not something that 'flows'.
Intermittent spacetime realists like Brian Green or full-time ones like
Einstein in his later years would apparently agree: no temporal flux.
posted by Ecce
