Announcement

Collapse

Philosophy 201 Guidelines

Cogito ergo sum

Here in the Philosophy forum we will talk about all the "why" questions. We'll have conversations about the way in which philosophy and theology and religion interact with each other. Metaphysics, ontology, origins, truth? They're all fair game so jump right in and have some fun! But remember...play nice!

Forum Rules: Here
See more
See less

Is time physical?

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Originally posted by seer View Post

    Are you kidding? How do you know God can't see our future free will acts?
    How could he if you haven't done them yet and the future doesn't even exist? There is no way to even know what the situation would be that you would be making those decisions in. How would God know that you would or would not get the COVID shot (or catch COVID) before there even was COVID?




    And how do you have free will if what I do tomorrow is already set in stone? Frozen in time? And B theory does not need a god, or any prior cause.
    As both Stoic and I have said, it could be that the decisions made in the block universe were made freely. Just because you can't change them doesn't make them unfree. Just looking at your past will tell you that. Yesterday you made many decisions. Today you know what they were and you can't change them. They are "fixed" - yet every decision was freely done. Now just imagine you are God looking back from the far future. Everyone's decisions are "fixed" and in the "past" and can't be changed but are all free. That is the block universe. God just has a point of view that encompasses it all. Past and Future.



    Comment


    • Originally posted by Sparko View Post

      How could he if you haven't done them yet and the future doesn't even exist? There is no way to even know what the situation would be that you would be making those decisions in. How would God know that you would or would not get the COVID shot (or catch COVID) before there even was COVID?
      Because God can see the future? It is called 'fore' knowledge: awareness of something before it happens or exists.

      As both Stoic and I have said, it could be that the decisions made in the block universe were made freely. Just because you can't change them doesn't make them unfree. Just looking at your past will tell you that. Yesterday you made many decisions. Today you know what they were and you can't change them. They are "fixed" - yet every decision was freely done. Now just imagine you are God looking back from the far future. Everyone's decisions are "fixed" and in the "past" and can't be changed but are all free. That is the block universe. God just has a point of view that encompasses it all. Past and Future.

      That makes no sense, every act and sin is locked into place. If I were to murder a man tomorrow I can never choose not to do that, I will murder. It is written in stone. And if I never could have done otherwise, how is that act free? In any real sense?
      Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

      Comment


      • Originally posted by seer View Post
        A growing block theory is different, it requires time flow.
        The theories are different, but the laws of physics are the same in each one.

        That really doesn't deal with my points. If Block theory is correct, the universe never actually expanded, therefore Big Bang cosmology is incorrect.
        The spacial cross section of the universe gets bigger with increasing time, just as the cross sectional area of the pyramid gets bigger with decreasing height. This is exactly the same as Big Bang cosmology.

        No species gradually over time morphed into another species, I never grew from a child to an adult. No evolution. There is NO motion/change Stoic, anywhere. Your external observer could never understand the laws of physics as we know them since many of those laws are based on movement. And he would not see movement, just a frozen, tenseless cosmos.
        He would not see movement, but he would be able to identify an object, and see that it was in different (spacial) locations at different times. By dividing the change in distance by the change in time, he could calculate its velocity.

        (His motivation would be different from ours. Whereas we want to predict what's going to happen in the future, or determine what happened in the past, he could just look. But he might wonder why the universe has the particular 4 dimensional shape that it has, and would be able to discover the reason by noting how the shape of a slice at one time is related to the shape at other times.)

        Comment


        • Originally posted by Stoic View Post
          The spacial cross section of the universe gets bigger with increasing time, just as the cross sectional area of the pyramid gets bigger with decreasing height. This is exactly the same as Big Bang cosmology.
          Did the universe start small and expand to the size we see today? Is it still expanding? That is Big Bang cosmology.


          He would not see movement, but he would be able to identify an object, and see that it was in different (spacial) locations at different times. By dividing the change in distance by the change in time, he could calculate its velocity.
          But there is no velocity in B theory because velocity requires motion.

          His motivation would be different from ours. Whereas we want to predict what's going to happen in the future, or determine what happened in the past, he could just look. But he might wonder why the universe has the particular 4 dimensional shape that it has, and would be able to discover the reason by noting how the shape of a slice at one time is related to the shape at other times.)
          But back to the point. Nothing actually evolved, nothing actually changed. Evolution as a theory is false. There is no gradual change over, every epoch is frozen in time.
          Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

          Comment


          • Originally posted by seer View Post

            Because God can see the future? It is called 'fore' knowledge: awareness of something before it happens or exists.
            That only works if the future exists to know. Otherwise it is just a guess if we have free will. If we don't have free will and everything works like Tassman claims, just physical reactions and reactions then God could reliably calculate the future since he knows every particle in the universe and what it is doing and going to do.



            That makes no sense, every act and sin is locked into place. If I were to murder a man tomorrow I can never choose not to do that, I will murder. It is written in stone. And if I never could have done otherwise, how is that act free? In any real sense?
            The only thing locked in is your free will decision. Just like your free will decisions yesterday are locked in. If you ate a burrito for lunch yesterday it was your free will decision. Today you know what it was, meaning you couldn't have chose to eat a hamburger. Your choice to eat a burrito is "locked in" from your current view. That doesn't change the fact that eating the burrito was your free will choice.

            Comment


            • Originally posted by Sparko View Post

              That only works if the future exists to know. Otherwise it is just a guess if we have free will. If we don't have free will and everything works like Tassman claims, just physical reactions and reactions then God could reliably calculate the future since he knows every particle in the universe and what it is doing and going to do.
              Who knows, I'm willing to wait to find out.



              The only thing locked in is your free will decision. Just like your free will decisions yesterday are locked in. If you ate a burrito for lunch yesterday it was your free will decision. Today you know what it was, meaning you couldn't have chose to eat a hamburger. Your choice to eat a burrito is "locked in" from your current view. That doesn't change the fact that eating the burrito was your free will choice.
              How do you know I had any freedom at all? And the fact is, if I murder a man next week I could not have done otherwise. Never mind in block theory nothing ever actually happens. I really did not eat a burrito yesterday because there is NO MOTION in B theory. I have about as much volition as a rock...

              Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

              https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

              Comment


              • Originally posted by seer View Post

                Who knows, I'm willing to wait to find out.





                How do you know I had any freedom at all? And the fact is, if I murder a man next week I could not have done otherwise. Never mind in block theory nothing ever actually happens. I really did not eat a burrito yesterday because there is NO MOTION in B theory. I have about as much volition as a rock...
                What if you want to murder the man next week? Just like you ate what you wanted to yesterday for lunch. And yes you can have motion in B-theory from the inside. Motion is just what we call movement in the space dimensions over a period of time. To an outside observer it would appear as a curved line in the chart I drew earlier instead of a straight line.

                Comment


                • Originally posted by Sparko View Post

                  What if you want to murder the man next week? Just like you ate what you wanted to yesterday for lunch. And yes you can have motion in B-theory from the inside. Motion is just what we call movement in the space dimensions over a period of time. To an outside observer it would appear as a curved line in the chart I drew earlier instead of a straight line.
                  Sorry Sparko, you don't get to play that card. There is NO MOTION in B theory. Our 'inside' view is a lie, a falsehood. I never actually moved that burrito to my mouth, my digestive system never really processed the food, my brain waves never really decided to eat it. All these required motion and motion requires a flow of time which doesn't actually exist. Like I said, if you are correct we have the volition of a stone.
                  Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

                  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

                  Comment


                  • Originally posted by seer View Post

                    Sorry Sparko, you don't get to play that card. There is NO MOTION in B theory. Our 'inside' view is a lie, a falsehood. I never actually moved that burrito to my mouth, my digestive system never really processed the food, my brain waves never really decided to eat it. All these required motion and motion requires a flow of time which doesn't actually exist. Like I said, if you are correct we have the volition of a stone.
                    You are just showing you don't understand the B-theory again.


                    Comment


                    • Originally posted by Sparko View Post

                      You are just showing you don't understand the B-theory again.
                      Sparko, I'm not letting you get away with that. What did I say that was incorrect - be specific please. Or don't falsely accuse me...
                      Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

                      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

                      Comment


                      • Originally posted by seer View Post

                        Sparko, I'm not letting you get away with that. What did I say that was incorrect - be specific please. Or don't falsely accuse me...
                        That there is no motion. Just like you keep saying there is no time. It's wrong. I have tried to explain it to you over and over. I am not going down that rabbit hole again.

                        Comment


                        • Originally posted by seer View Post
                          Did the universe start small and expand to the size we see today? Is it still expanding? That is Big Bang cosmology.

                          But there is no velocity in B theory because velocity requires motion.

                          But back to the point. Nothing actually evolved, nothing actually changed. Evolution as a theory is false. There is no gradual change over, every epoch is frozen in time.
                          See if you can reconcile this quote with your idea that there is no change in B-theory:

                          B-theorists think all change can be described in before-after terms. They typically portray spacetime as a spread-out manifold with events occurring at different locations in the manifold (often assuming a substantivalist picture). Living in a world of change means living in a world with variation in this manifold. To say that a certain autumn leaf changed color is just to say that the leaf is green in an earlier location of the manifold and red in a later location. The locations, in these cases, are specific times in the manifold. And all of the metaphysically important facts about change can be captured by tenseless propositions like “The leaf is red at October 7, 2019”. “The leaf is not red at September 7, 2019”.

                          source

                          Comment


                          • Originally posted by Stoic View Post



                            B-theorists think all change can be described in before-after terms. They typically portray spacetime as a spread-out manifold with events occurring at different locations in the manifold (often assuming a substantivalist picture). Living in a world of change means living in a world with variation in this manifold. To say that a certain autumn leaf changed color is just to say that the leaf is green in an earlier location of the manifold and red in a later location. The locations, in these cases, are specific times in the manifold. And all of the metaphysically important facts about change can be captured by tenseless propositions like “The leaf is red at October 7, 2019”. “The leaf is not red at September 7, 2019”.

                            source
                            Perhaps the simplest way to understand the difference between A and B theory is that A says time is not a spatial dimension, and B says time is a spatial dimension. Is this an accurate way to simplify the difference?


                            Comment


                            • Originally posted by Sparko View Post

                              Under A-theory there is no future for God to know..
                              God can know it if it's in His Mind. The future doesn't have to exist. There doesn't have to be a corresponding ontology that God peers into to gather His knowledge.

                              Comment


                              • Originally posted by Machinist View Post

                                God can know it if it's in His Mind. The future doesn't have to exist. There doesn't have to be a corresponding ontology that God peers into to gather His knowledge.
                                If the future doesn't exist and we have free will, then at best this would be a guess, because we have the free will to choose to do something different. This would be akin to Open Theism.

                                Comment

                                Related Threads

                                Collapse

                                Topics Statistics Last Post
                                Started by shunyadragon, 03-01-2024, 09:40 AM
                                160 responses
                                508 views
                                0 likes
                                Last Post JimL
                                by JimL
                                 
                                Started by seer, 02-15-2024, 11:24 AM
                                88 responses
                                354 views
                                0 likes
                                Last Post shunyadragon  
                                Started by Diogenes, 01-22-2024, 07:37 PM
                                21 responses
                                133 views
                                0 likes
                                Last Post shunyadragon  
                                Working...
                                X