On 31 January 2014 13:28, Telmo Menezes <[email protected]> wrote:
Imagine we are experiencing all the possible > moments, "eternally", right "now". Would things appear any difference > from the perspective of any of these moments? > Interesting question. Depends what you mean by "we", I guess, and also what you mean by "any of these moments". Are you satisfied with the idea that "your" experience would be restricted to just any *one* of those moments? Sure, that might be consistent with the particular "history to this point" encapsulated by the memories associated with that moment. But a you that is restricted to one particular moment might seem to lack the possibility of any "future history" beyond that point, no? Remember that I'm talking about intuition here, not about "reality", but I think it's matching intuition with some proposed model of reality that is actually under discussion here. If we don't allow our intuition to select - and then restrict - our experience to that of some particular moment, should we accept the "panoptic" alternative of all moments "simultaneously"? Well, this seems grossly inconsistent with the experience of any particular one of "us", in terms of which moments are definitively non-simultaneous. What sort of intuition might then suggest itself? The panoptic symmetry needs to be broken in some manner that doesn't leave each one of "us" stranded, monad-like, in the context of a single moment. I would argue that Hoyle's stochastic serialisation of the class of all possible moments comes naturally to hand here. This idea, let us be clear, simply provides a logical referent, in the context of a block structure, for our incorrigible belief in the successive change in our "personal" spatial-temporal location. It's by no means intended to introduce a "second time dimension", or a primitive physical "becoming". That said, It may well be that our difficulty with these intuitions (for those, at least, who entertain such difficulties) is a sign that there may be something amiss with the block-structure idea itself, at least when considered as a physical primitive. In particular, as I suggested at the outset, there may be something amiss with our notion of "ourselves" - something which is (to say the least, and no doubt intentionally) under-defined in such a model. In the computational conception, however, the notion of "person" seems more subtle. The "person" - at least the conscious person - is hypothesised to be an emergent at the level of the truth-content of certain classes of incorrigible indexical beliefs, instantiated by computational machines. Amongst these, presumably - if, per comp, "we" are some level such machines - is just such a deeply-rooted belief in successive change in spatial temporal location. This belief, in common with other definitive self-concepts, is stabilised by a matrix of highly-consistent physical appearances. In this conception one might say that a justified (i.e. "true") belief in the momentary and successive nature of spatial-temporal location is implicit in the very definition of a person. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
