Life, the Universe, and Everything

[Spotted Horses]

Quoted both for truth and relevance, and I'd like to pick up your ball and run with it, Scarps, if I may.

I've often been thankful that Relativity at least gives our imagination some rational (and verifiable) way of thinking about the otherwise unfathomable nature of time: 'Yesterday' becomes a section of the time axis in four dimensional space-time.

It also does raise doubt, at least, about the idea that past and future don't exist in the same sense as the present does. Think about a point X on a straight line in space. There are clearly points on the line to the left and right of it, and those points are no more nor less real than X. Well, similarly, once you think about the moment 'now' in time, as a point N on a line which stretches off in opposite directions along a time axis in a 4th dimension, with other points on the line representing 'past' and 'future' moments, there's no reason to regard those 'past' and 'future' moments as any less real than the moment 'now'.

Of course the imagination struggles to visualise the meaning of this model, but mathematics describes it perfectly, and in a way that can be (and has been) repeatedly tested. There's nothing mystical about it, apart from the idea that mere existence itself might be so regarded.

Thinking about time as a forth dimension is indeed illuminating. The weird thing is that in a spatial coordinate, x, y, z, or maybe north, east, vertical, you can decided to move at a speed of your choosing. You can stop and reverse. In time we are constrained to move at a constant rate "forward," one second per second. We can't stop and reverse.

Time as a forth dimension didn't start with Einstein. I was surprised to read H.G. Wells famous story "Time Time Machine" and find a description of time as a forth dimension, although the treatment is quite fanciful. He imagined we could change that speed at which we move along time (which can't be).

The thing Einstein added to the Newtonian system was that time and space can mix. If we consider spatial directions we can stand facing North and right side is East, front side is North, and topside is up. But if we rotate 45 degrees clockwise right side is South-East, front side is North-East, topside is still up. We have mixed rightside and frontside. A rotation can mix up spatial coordinates but time is always time. But in Special Relativity if we start moving at a high velocity an event at a distant location that would have been in the past might be in the future instead. Space and time can mix, although time is still treated differently. Another difference is that in Special Relativity, although we always perceive time as advancing at a constant rate, it will seem to another observer moving at high speed that time is advancing at a different rate for us.

[Elgarian Redux]

Just to share a different take, not to disagree for the sake of it.

The way I see it, points in time are really just ideas that show up in the mind. They don't actually exist on their own. And anything we can describe or explain is already an object, something we're looking at, not the one who's doing the looking.

Even Einstein's brilliant equations still belong to the world of things we know about. But truth, if we're talking in a deeper sense, is the knower, the subject itself. It can't really be put into words or grasped by thought.

So the moment we try to pin time down and make it all make sense, we've already stepped away from the centre, the source, and started heading outward.

And I reply in exactly the same spirit.

It may seem that we are talking about the same thing, but I don't think we are.

My problem with the scenario you describe is that I can't find a way of living with it. It doesn't offer answers to my deepest questions. The idea of truth being the knower, for example, while making me think about, and acknowledge, how all our ideas about reality are mere models held in our mental processes, leaves me with nowhere to go. Ultimately it seems solipsistic, and although I know it's hard to refute the idea that 'all that out there' is really just 'all this in here', it doesn't solve my fundamental problem: how to live the life I have?

On the other hand, I do find that the relativistic view of time really does help me to visualise the relation between past, present, and future (to take merely the aspect we've just been talking about). I understand that to your way of thinking this takes me away from the truth, rather than towards it, but it doesn't seem so to me.

Somewhere in this I've been wanting to introduce the process philosophy of A. N. Whitehead, in which the basic units of existence are considered not as 'things' but as processes. But this is already entangled enough!

[Elgarian Redux]

But in Special Relativity if we start moving at a high velocity an event at a distant location that would have been in the past might be in the future instead. Space and time can mix, although time is still treated differently.

Smashing post - but may I highlight the above section, please, because I wish I'd thought carefully and clearly enough to say it.

[AnotherSpin]

And I reply in exactly the same spirit.

It may seem that we are talking about the same thing, but I don't think we are.

My problem with the scenario you describe is that I can't find a way of living with it. It doesn't offer answers to my deepest questions. The idea of truth being the knower, for example, while making me think about, and acknowledge, how all our ideas about reality are mere models held in our mental processes, leaves me with nowhere to go. Ultimately it seems solipsistic, and although I know it's hard to refute the idea that 'all that out there' is really just 'all this in here', it doesn't solve my fundamental problem: how to live the life I have?

On the other hand, I do find that the relativistic view of time really does help me to visualise the relation between past, present, and future (to take merely the aspect we've just been talking about). I understand that to your way of thinking this takes me away from the truth, rather than towards it, but it doesn't seem so to me.

Somewhere in this I've been wanting to introduce the process philosophy of A. N. Whitehead, in which the basic units of existence are considered not as 'things' but as processes. But this is already entangled enough!

Absolutely. At the end, that's what it boils down to: whether your way of seeing things actually helps you get through life. And what I see, without a doubt, does help me.

[Mandryka]

@Spotted Horses The idea I was interested in was that objects are processes with temporal parts. I can never point to an object, only a part of it (but I can refer to it, paradoxically.) Todd has temporal parts as well as spacial parts - that's why he's a worm, geometrically speaking.

[steve ridgway]

I do find that the relativistic view of time really does help me to visualise the relation between past, present, and future (to take merely the aspect we've just been talking about). I understand that to your way of thinking this takes me away from the truth, rather than towards it, but it doesn't seem so to me.

I have been thinking about "my allocated portion of spacetime" as if my life was a plot of land, like a garden or estate, given me to inhabit and look after. This is making me more aware of the patterns over time and trying to see, or develop my individual existence, as a whole.

[steve ridgway]

Somewhere in this I've been wanting to introduce the process philosophy of A. N. Whitehead, in which the basic units of existence are considered not as 'things' but as processes. But this is already entangled enough!

I'm wondering if the miracle of creation may be the differentiation of the universe into apparent entities able to regard themselves as individuals. Regardless of whether they're "really" processes, transient associations of matter, reflections of circumstances or however you like to break them down.

[AnotherSpin]

I'm wondering if the miracle of creation may be the differentiation of the universe into apparent entities able to regard themselves as individuals. Regardless of whether they're "really" processes, transient associations of matter, reflections of circumstances or however you like to break them down.

The waves of the ocean may seem separate and different, but in essence they are one and the same, the ocean itself. The real wonder is not the appearance of individuality. It is that, despite maya and avidya, one fine day it is possible to wake up and realise: I am not this body, not this mind. I am pure consciousness, Sat Chit Ananda. Sorry for the Vedanta terms, but it's more fun that way, isn't it?

[drogulus]

If you feel like you have free will, isn't that enough?

    It's enough not to have it. I only make choices according to my dispositions and abilities, which are just as determined as everything else. I suppose the compatibilism of A.J. Ayer doesn't outrage my sensibility much. I don't like the term because it elevates a gauzy impression to the level of the structure of the world. I say nope.
   

[Mandryka]

It's enough not to have it. I only make choices according to my dispositions and abilities, which are just as determined as everything else. I suppose the compatibilism of A.J. Ayer doesn't outrage my sensibility much. I don't like the term because it elevates a gauzy impression to the level of the structure of the world. I say nope.
   

There's a very valuable essay on this in Derek Parfit's On What Matters (pp258-263)

https://archive.org/details/onwhatmattersvol0001parf/page/n9/mode/2up

[ritter]

It's enough not to have it. I only make choices according to my dispositions and abilities, which are just as determined as everything else. I suppose the compatibilism of A.J. Ayer doesn't outrage my sensibility much. I don't like the term because it elevates a gauzy impression to the level of the structure of the world. I say nope.
 

Ortega dealt with that in his 1914 book Meditaciones del Quijote: "Yo soy yo y mi circunstancia" ("I am me and my circumstance")

[Jo498]

Nobody acts as if he had no free will, therefore it's pragmatically false or just irrelevant, one of the many claims people hold and defend during the philosophical seminar but immediately ignore on their way to lunch. (It's stunning how inconsistent people are. E.g. arguing for mild punishments because there is no free will thus the perpetrator couldn't help doing evil... But the judge has free will to punish lightly or harshly?  How can professors be so sophomoric?)

I also think it's self defeating (or pretty close to self defeating). Because I have to be rationally free in deciding what I take to be correct.
 
If I am determined to think that "A", regardless of the truth of A, I cannot really reason for and justify anything (including the claim that there is no free will). It only seems as if I am reasoning, but in fact I am determined to go through certain steps/states of mind and the result might be false or true, I cannot help it either way.

So the question for the denier of free will is: Do you believe the thesis because it's true or are you determined to believe it regardless of its truth? How do you distinguish reaching truth by reasoning (open to error) and reaching a predetermined conclusion regardless of its truth?

One can try to "save" this with a kind of prestabilized harmony, i.e. that in certain circumstances we are determined to arrive at the correct conclusions. But why should this be so? And why are we so often wrong despite the harmony of the general determination.

Or one can distinguish theoretical reasoning from acting and restrict the will debate to the latter but I find this unpersuasive. Thinking and reasoning are acts, if I have the rational freedom to follow arguments through and accept the result, I am close to the freedom to act on impulse or not, i.e. the power of theoretical reflection is unlikely to be totally different from practical reflection. Even if there is another step from the latter to the act where e.g "weakness of the will" can happen and I do the evil I don't want to do rather than the good I want to do etc. (St. Paul).

[AnotherSpin]

Nobody acts as if he had no free will, therefore it's pragmatically false or just irrelevant, one of the many claims people hold and defend during the philosophical seminar but immediately ignore on their way to lunch. (It's stunning how inconsistent people are. E.g. arguing for mild punishments because there is no free will thus the perpetrator couldn't help doing evil... But the judge has free will to punish lightly or harshly?  How can professors be so sophomoric?)

I also think it's self defeating (or pretty close to self defeating). Because I have to be rationally free in deciding what I take to be correct.
 
If I am determined to think that "A", regardless of the truth of A, I cannot really reason for and justify anything (including the claim that there is no free will). It only seems as if I am reasoning, but in fact I am determined to go through certain steps/states of mind and the result might be false or true, I cannot help it either way.

So the question for the denier of free will is: Do you believe the thesis because it's true or are you determined to believe it regardless of its truth? How do you distinguish reaching truth by reasoning (open to error) and reaching a predetermined conclusion regardless of its truth?

One can try to "save" this with a kind of prestabilized harmony, i.e. that in certain circumstances we are determined to arrive at the correct conclusions. But why should this be so? And why are we so often wrong despite the harmony of the general determination.

Or one can distinguish theoretical reasoning from acting and restrict the will debate to the latter but I find this unpersuasive. Thinking and reasoning are acts, if I have the rational freedom to follow arguments through and accept the result, I am close to the freedom to act on impulse or not, i.e. the power of theoretical reflection is unlikely to be totally different from practical reflection. Even if there is another step from the latter to the act where e.g "weakness of the will" can happen and I do the evil I don't want to do rather than the good I want to do etc. (St. Paul).

The question "do I have free will?" is rather like asking whether a dream character is moving of their own accord. As long as one believes oneself to be the body-mind, questions of freedom and determinism seem to matter. But with direct knowing of one's true Self, it becomes clear: "I do nothing at all" (Bhagavad Gita). Perhaps not quite the answer the intellect was hoping for...

[Karl Henning]

At times I make desultory attempts to observe how my conditioning prepares me to regard my so-called individuality.

[Elgarian Redux]

At times I make desultory attempts to observe how my conditioning prepares me to regard my so-called individuality.

So do I, Karl. So do I. And then I take a leaf from David Hume's book, and go and eat my dinner.

[AnotherSpin]

So do I, Karl. So do I. And then I take a leaf from David Hume's book, and go and eat my dinner.

I've stopped reading overly complicated books, especially anything by philosophers. At some point, I realised philosophy is just a way of avoiding freedom, hidden behind clever words and too much talk.

[DavidW]

Perhaps not quite the answer the intellect was hoping conditioned for...

There, fixed that for you!

[DavidW]

So do I, Karl. So do I. And then I take a leaf from David Hume's book, and go and eat my dinner.

A page from a book is a pretty meager meal. I hope you at least have a glass of milk with that.

[drogulus]

     I'm not as free as McEar, a nice doggie that only wants to scratch its ear. It can always do what it wants, while I can't play guitar like Peter Green. I also can want free will, or at least try to want it even though I have no idea how that differs from not wanting it. Perhaps splunge is the answer, as it so often is with these riddles.

[AnotherSpin]

There, fixed that for you!

Thank you, this is indeed more accurate. The intellect is not a source of truth, but rather a tool shaped by conditioning. While hoping suggests agency and desire, a subtle sense of doership, conditioned points directly to the mechanical and impersonal nature of thought, formed by past impressions and identifications with form and experience.