Presentism and Eternalism

Re: trireutroreiteprwoururtityyer

No not the present You can't see anything but your present. Your present is just a relationship between events in spacetime. One of those events is you birth.

 

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Infinity can never be done, only doing... So to speak.

 

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"quit it you typewriter reporter" is all on one line

Fair enough.

Why not?

 

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For it to be done there would have had to be an end, thus it would not have been infinity...

 

YEAH... what he said. (side note: did you know that while an infinity cannot end, there are different SIZES of them? I believe this is one of the lessons from advanced calculus... I believe the size of an infinity is indicated by its Cardinal Number or something like that... thought you might enjoy that tidbit if you weren't aware)

 

Wha :bugeye: If that is so, it is definately out of my grasp of understanding...

Then again, infinite elephants would be bigger than infinite mice...

 

Honestly, I don't know much about it. I've never taken the course(s) differential equations was the highest pure math course I took and I was only halfassed good with the stuff. All I remember is something about using synthetic algebra and a lot of laplace transforms. I have been exposed to the minimum and the basis for the argument. It is provable (in terms of a mathematical proof) that one infinite set can be defined such that it fits inside another infinite set (purely mathematically, like rational numbers vs. integers) I believe it's true (but I don't remember for sure) that the set of rational numbers has a larger cardinal number than the set of all integers. For more information, consult your friend who knows advanced calculus.

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Ah, I suppose that makes sense. I'm sure that's just the very skin of the issue, but I'm no longer :bugeye: , more like

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lol

 

I'm going to try and dive back into this one.

Presentism is where things just exist, that our perception of time is that existence, that "being". There is no premade future. I can see that the free will argument is still up in the air here, since there can be determined and random actions either way.

Eternalism is fixed. The universe has been made, past and future, and only "time" keeps them all from occurring. I fail to see still how there is free will in this universe, where the path of everything is already made, and it's only a matter of this "time" playing the next point of existence. I also fail to see how this point of view can be argued at all without some evidence that there's a factor which allows only the present to occur, and hides the rest of the path from us. Certainly a proof of prophesies or some method of predictions or time travel would be support to this. But without a difference of viewpoint, why take the more complex?

I don't think Occam's razor is nullified at all. The razor in no way disproves anything. It simply suggests that the simpler view is more likely to be true, given the lack of evidence of the more complex.

 

Willy Nilly

1) Who says we're at the end of infinity? Who's to say the present is not the beginning, and the past and the future are the unsurpassable ends?

2) I still stand by all the stuff I said about the concept of infinity not belonging in philosophy.

3) Yeah, I learned about the infinity cardinal numbers at one point. I'm pretty sure that calculus is not required; a bit of set theory doesn't hurt. I don't think it's really relevant, though.

 

Hmm... I think I must be a "pastist" because to me, the past is real.. it's past.. you can see "objectively" confirm that stuff happened.. for instance.. I was apparently born. *shrug*

The past indicates to me things that might happen in the future, but as it hasn't happened yet, it is difficult for me to "objectively" confirm that it exists. For instance, I haven't died yet... but I'm surely going to... there is no way to know..


when.

There is no gaurentee that what I expect in the future given my past will be true and as far as I know, things happen outside of my expectation all the time (like the Rams this season, fucking unbelievable). Since objectivity has no point without subjective interpretation, I submit that eternalism has no basis for acceptance as truth, only as an abstract tool to add contrast to a concept.

Presentism is invalid for the reason that it ignores the past. In the case of Presentism, how are we having this conversation? I was not born, my knowledge of language doesn't exist.. etc. A path that one can leave bread crumbs along already exists, thusly nullifying that the present is the only time.

Now, the semantics there are kind of tricky. It is ALWAYS right now, meaning that the present has an eternal element, however... something has simulataneously ALWAYS preceded right now.. and so on... and so on... ad infinitum.

Does the productively add to the discussion?

 

I don't think it does, but it infers that what is past is gone...history.

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I see the two more as arguments of whether or not time is a dimension that already has structure and is fixed, or if time is just our way of sensing existence itself. Which means that a second ago existed, but now it's only record is what influences occurred during that period.

So the past did exist, but the only true existence is now.

 

My answer is...
Both Presentism and Eternalism

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Let me explain myself... Both Presentism and Eternalism are talking about the same thing, but they are just using different perspectives, so they are both right.

 

Eternal sea of spacetime

With "surfing carnival" analogy and if you are a presentist you are more inclined to be of the view that your life is like riding on a board called "present" within a single wave called "reality", and when you are wiped out that is the end of your life that is it and this wave just keeps rolling on without you.

I am an eternalist and therefore I believe life is more analogous to riding a surf board after emerging from an eternal sea of spacetime and when you are wiped out you fall into that same eternal sea, because we came into existence because the laws of physics made up possible and the laws of physics before we were born and after we die are identical. Both really the same sea of eternity.

 

But they are the same. The only thing that changes is how you see it. Both presentism and eternalism makes the present the focused point. In both there is no past or future, there is only an eternal present. Eternal + Present. Eternalism + Presentism...

 

Is there any scientific difference between the present as you perceive it in 1993 and the present as you perceive in 2003.

 

Both are experienced as present. The content may change, but not the context. It is like putting water in a jar, getting it out and then putting oil in it. It is still the same jar, although the content of it changed.

 

Schopenhauer

What you are speaking of there is a time frame of reference that comes to your conscious attention not the present positing a singular seat of reality.
Or at best a point on a light cone in the case there would be an infinite number of "nows" in the universe.

I think the extract from Schopenhauer puts presentism in a nutshell:
in ON THE VANITY OF EXISTENCE

"That which has been no longer is; it as little exists as does that which has never been. But everything that is in the next moment has been. Thus the most insignificant present has over the most significant past the advantage of actuality, which means that the former bears to the latter the relation of something to nothing."

 

Infinite number of presents, eternal present(s)...

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