On Saturday, February 1, 2014 12:15:26 AM UTC-5, Liz R wrote: > > On 1 February 2014 13:22, Craig Weinberg <[email protected] <javascript:> > > wrote: >> >> On Friday, January 31, 2014 5:32:49 PM UTC-5, Liz R wrote: >> >>> It emerges along the time axis. Evolution, for example, can operate in a >>> block universe. All the phenomena we experience can occur in a block >>> universe, otherwise no one would entertain the possibility that we live in >>> one. >>> >> >> I don't think that very many people do seriously entertain the >> possibility that we live in a block universe. >> > > Except physicists, who have accepted it since Minkowski, if not Newton. > (And science fiction writers, like Robert Heinlein.) > > It's not that the effect of evolution couldn't exist in a block universe, >> its that it wouldn't make sense to say that it 'operates', since the >> beginning and ending of the operation would be, from an absolute >> perspective, simultaneous. >> > > No they wouldn't, they'd be separated by hundreds of millions of years > along the time axis. >
The time axis is only a label for one measure of the block. The separation that you are assuming is not explained by the block modeling itself. The model doesn't support any inherent "separation", because it is a homogeneous block. If there is separation, then it would have to be explained by further facts about the block. The time axis is not 'operating', it is nothing at all but an inert scalar. > > >> What is not explained is why, if there was a block universe, would being >> inside of it be filled with both simultaneous and chronological sensations. >> What would restrict some part of the block to the point of blindness to >> most of the time axis, and then insert some kind of illusion of timing >> associated with that axis? >> > > Physics. > Yes, but that just makes physics a Machine of the Gaps. Without a theory of why and how physics plays in "illusion", we have no justification to claim that the contemporary version of physics can hold consciousness of time. > >> >>> The fact that it is "all there" from the god's (physicist's) perspective >>> doesn't stop things changing and emerging within the block. >>> >> >> It doesn't stop it, but it makes it implausible. What does a block want >> with "_ing" anything? >> > > It doesn't want anything. It's just the outcome of the laws of physics. > What I'm saying though is that the block universe interpretation of the laws of physics directly contradicts any possibility of any interpretation of the laws of physics in which change is ever experienced chronologically. > > >> But there *is* time in a block universe. It's a 4D manifold, and time is >>> a particular axis within it. You seem to want an extra time above and >>> beyond the existing one. >>> >> >> Just the opposite. I am fully embracing time a just one of the four D >> axes. What the block universe does not explain is why that axis is >> presented as a verb while the other three are not, and why that axis is >> irreversible seeming while the others are not. >> >> > We're embedded in time, and the thermodynamic arrow of time is a subject > that has already been discussed at length. > We can be embedded in time whether it is experienced chronologically or not. The whole point is that the Block Universe spatializes time so that the arrow of time becomes some kind of local 'illusion'. The question of whether or not we are even 'embedded in time' is a whole other debate. I would say that the experience of being embedded in time is not primordial, but is rather derived from public relations. Time is not implicit within private consciousness, although it contains the seeds of chronological time. The native ontology of time is experiential and multiplexed, rooted in significance rather than explicit duration. Time is an accounting and comparison of groups of experiences, not a tangible location or firmament. -- 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.
