> On 21 Dec 2018, at 05:44, Jason Resch <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > On Thu, Dec 20, 2018 at 8:28 PM Bruce Kellett <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > On Fri, Dec 21, 2018 at 1:07 PM Jason Resch <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > On Thu, Dec 20, 2018 at 7:11 PM Bruce Kellett <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > On Fri, Dec 21, 2018 at 11:49 AM Jason Resch <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > > Do you believe other locations in space exist? > > They exist, but there is no sense in which they are simultaneous with my > existence. > > There are certain senses in which you could, but I mostly agree (as they are > not objective). > > They exist because events at other locations in my past light cone can affect > me, and I can affect events at other locations in my future light cone. > > Okay, no problem with this. > > Do you believe other locations in time exist? > > I believe that I have a past, and will have a future, but I do not believe > that these exist in my present. Such an idea is clearly a linguistic > confusion. > > I agree. > > (I answer yes to both questions, that is all I mean by block time -- that > there is no privileged part of space time blessed with the property of > existence). > > The present is all that you can know exists. All else is idle speculation. > > But you just said there is no such thing as the present (since there is no > objective notion of simultaneity) > > I have never said that there is no such thing as the present. All I have said > is that the notion of a space-like hyper-surface of simultaneity is not an > objective notion. > > Okay I agree with this. I happen to take this as evidence that the "passage > of time" is also not an objective notion. What do you think about the > passage of time, is it purely a subjective notion in your view? > > The print moment exists now for ev very one of us individually. > > Of course, you can construct imaginary theories in which unicorns, fairies, > and Hogwarts Castle exist, but you would not have any evidence for any of > these. > > You just said you have evidence for the existence of objects in your past > light cone. Why presume that they would disappear from existence? What is > the motivation/justification for such an idea? > > I have no evidence that they exist now, since all I am currently aware of is > the record of their past existence as it is present to me now. The evidence > is that they existed in the past. Why is that not sufficient? I tend not to > believe in things, like fairies, for which I have no current evidence. > > This seems to be a trend that explains all aspects of your philosophy. For > example, rejecting many-worlds, rejecting other universes, rejecting other > points in time, rejecting mathematical objects. It's based purely on what you > can see. It is a theory of minimizing the number of objects in reality. But > to me this is not a correct application of Occam, which was about simplifying > theories by reducing their unnecessary assumptions, rather than reducing the > ontologies of those theories. > > So by lobbing off the assumption that some points in the past stop existing, > you get a larger universe, more points in spacetime exist (but this is > simpler, as you don't have to add a theory of how different events come into > or out of existence), or with many-worlds, if you drop the collapse > postulate, you get the same predictions, and a simpler theory (but a huge > number of unseen histories). With this different philosophy/value system I > don't think we will ever agree on what makes for a better theory, for in all > these cases that we disagree, it comes down to my preference for a simpler > theory, and your preference for a simpler ontology.
I would say that with Mechanism we get both a simple ontology (just 0, 1, 2, …) and a simple theory, just the two SK axioms, or the very elementary RA. Yet, we get a extremely rich phenomenology, unboundedly complex with sharable and non sharable truth, with infinitely many histories and cosmos/multivers, etc, and with many persons and their experiences (no risk to sacrifice souls and consciousness). Bruno > > Jason > > -- > 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] > <mailto:[email protected]>. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>. > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list > <https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list>. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout > <https://groups.google.com/d/optout>. -- 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 https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
