Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Bluemist]

A recent study indicated that the laws of Nature are changing.
(2021) Scientists Say the Laws of Physics Are Changing
The cosmos is stranger than we know. It’s mind-bending to imagine that the laws of physics might learn and adapt over time.
https://futurism.com/laws-physics-changing

That article is a pure clickbait sensationalist misreading of the original scientific article.
No, the scientists did not say that the laws of nature are changing.

The linked scientific study is speculating about the self-directed (without any agency direction) evolutionary (Darwinian) origin of fixed laws that we supposedly have in today's physics. https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.03902
A better article should have talked about how physics and all other sciences have developed and how they are still changing every day.

[psyreporter]

A recent study indicated that the laws of Nature are changing.
(2021) Scientists Say the Laws of Physics Are Changing
The cosmos is stranger than we know. It’s mind-bending to imagine that the laws of physics might learn and adapt over time.
https://futurism.com/laws-physics-changing

That article is a pure clickbait sensationalist misreading of the original scientific article.
No, the scientists did not say that the laws of nature are changing.

The linked scientific study is speculating about the self-directed (without any agency direction) evolutionary (Darwinian) origin of fixed laws that we supposedly have in today's physics. https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.03902
A better article should have talked about how physics and all other sciences have developed and how they are still changing every day.

Do you agree that your assertion about physics would be invalid when the laws of Physics would change in time?

Your assertion:

Similarly, physics assumes that the physical world looks the same for any observer from anywhere. But this is only true from the point of view of physical laws and their implications.

I mentioned the following:

Such an idea is based on a dogmatic belief in uniformitarianism when it concerns the laws of Nature.

While repeatability of science provides one with what can be considered certainty within the scope of a human perspective which value can be made evident by the success of science, at question would be if the idea that the facts of science are valid without philosophy is accurate on a fundamental level.

--

What would be the basis for the idea that the laws of Nature remain the same in time? And if there is no theoretical ground for such an assumption, how can it be said that the physical world looks the same for any observer (in time) from the perspective of physical laws?

[Bluemist]

Your assertion:

Similarly, physics assumes that the physical world looks the same for any observer from anywhere. But this is only true from the point of view of physical laws and their implications.

You're right, I misspoke.
The physical laws themselves are universal, meaning they are applicable anywhere anytime for the last 13 billion years or so, and will be applicable into the far future to the end of time.
But even given these fixed laws, the physical world appears different, looks different to different observers when removed in space and time from each other. This relativistic perspective is also part of standard physics.
For a far example, without air resistance a feather drops just like a rock on airless Moon.

Such an idea is based on a dogmatic belief in uniformitarianism when it concerns the laws of Nature.

I think that uniformitarianism is a geological theory that Earth has always changed gradually in uniform ways so that digging deeper is the same as looking backwards in time. This is a useful dogma but is not strictly valid. In geological history there are long-term gradual changes but there are also catastrophic events, like asteroid impacts and massive volcanism. But this is not physics.

[Atla]

Proponents of the Kalam cosmological argument seek to establish that any temporally ordered series of discrete events must have a beginning.

If time goes in a circle (which it logically should), we can have a temporally ordered series of events with no beginning or end. No point on a circle is the beginning or the end, yet the circle is finite.

[psyreporter]

Your assertion:

Similarly, physics assumes that the physical world looks the same for any observer from anywhere. But this is only true from the point of view of physical laws and their implications.

What would be the basis for the idea that the laws of Nature remain the same in time? And if there is no theoretical ground for such an assumption, how can it be said that the physical world looks the same for any observer (in time) from the perspective of physical laws?

You're right, I misspoke.
The physical laws themselves are universal, meaning they are applicable anywhere anytime for the last 13 billion years or so, and will be applicable into the far future to the end of time.

At question would be whether that argument is valid. On what basis can it be said that it is so, since science is just a few hundred years active and modern science a few decades?

I think that uniformitarianism is a geological theory that Earth has always changed gradually in uniform ways so that digging deeper is the same as looking backwards in time. This is a useful dogma but is not strictly valid. In geological history there are long-term gradual changes but there are also catastrophic events, like asteroid impacts and massive volcanism. But this is not physics.

The indicated dogmatic belief in uniformitarianism involves the belief that the laws of Nature remain the same in time.

[psyreporter]

Proponents of the Kalam cosmological argument seek to establish that any temporally ordered series of discrete events must have a beginning.

If time goes in a circle (which it logically should), we can have a temporally ordered series of events with no beginning or end. No point on a circle is the beginning or the end, yet the circle is finite.

Can you explain why time would 'go' in a circle? What would be the location or origin of the circle shape? Would it imply that there can be more circles of time? If so, would that imply that the impossibility of traversing the infinite would become applicable to circles of time?

[Atla]

Can you explain why time would 'go' in a circle?

It's just a possibility that we can't rule out, and the only one that makes sense imo. Maybe time goes in a cirlcle, maybe time is linear, maybe neither. Human thinking is linear, and our apparent movement from past towards future seems linear, so people always assume linear time, but the circle is the more natural shape.

What would be the location or origin of the circle shape?

Doesn't need an origin. And I guess the "location" would be our entire universe or at least a part of it, and the universe doesn't need to be "in" anything.

Would it imply that there can be more circles of time?

Don't know, maybe?

impossibility of traversing the infinite

How do you know that's impossible? What if your speed is a bigger infinite?

[Sculptor1]

I noticed the following article in a news feed:

Endless and Infinite

Abstract: It is often said that time must have a beginning because otherwise the series of past events would have the paradoxical features of an actual infinite. In the present paper, we show that, even given a dynamic theory of time, the cardinality of an endless series of events, each of which will occur, is the same as that of a beginningless series of events, each of which has occurred. Both are denumerably infinite. So if (as we believe) an endless series of events is possible, then the possibility of a beginningless series of past events should not be rejected merely on the ground that it would be an actual infinite.

Proponents of the Kalam cosmological argument seek to establish that any temporally ordered series of discrete events must have a beginning. One of their principal arguments for this conclusion is that a beginningless series of discrete events would have the paradoxical features of an actual infinite – features that could not be instantiated ‘in the real world’. In particular, they point out that an actually infinite series has a distinctive property, which we shall call the ‘Cantorian Property’. A series has the Cantorian Property when it can be placed in one-to-one correspondence with infinitely many of its proper parts, so that the whole has the ‘same number’ of elements as its parts. For instance, there are just as many natural numbers as there are even numbers, etc. But in the ‘real world’, they say, the whole must always be greater than any of its proper parts. So, in the real world (as opposed to the world of mathematics), an actually infinite series is impossible; nothing real can have the Cantorian Property (See Craig & Sinclair 2011: 110). And this is said to establish the first premise of the following argument:

• An actual infinite cannot exist.
• An infinite temporal regress of events is an actual infinite.
• Therefore, an infinite temporal regress of events cannot exist. (Craig & Sinclair 2011: 103)

Now one might have thought that if these considerations were sufficient to show that a beginningless (and therefore infinite) series of past events is impossible, they would apply with equal force to an endless (and therefore infinite) series of future events.1 After all, one could make a seemingly symmetrical argument as follows:

• An actual infinite cannot exist.
• An infinite temporal progress2 of events is an actual infinite.
• Therefore, an infinite temporal progress of events cannot exist.

If this second argument were equally as sound as the original one, this would be bad news for the proponents of the Kalam. For one thing, it is implausible to claim that the future could not be endless. For example, one can easily imagine a series of future events, each of which is causally sufficient for another. Again, one can imagine an endless series of events, each of which is fore-ordained by an all-powerful God. As far as we can see, these are genuine metaphysical possibilities.

The questions:

1) is it possible for true infinity to exist?
2) is it plausible to assume that time must have had a beginning?
[/quote]

Infinite means two things; 1, less commonly used means of indeterminate or unknowable quantity, and 2, more commonly means endless.
The former obviously exists, the les less so. The second definition can never be established in fact, since it would take an infinite amount fo time to travel and infinite distance, then it simply can never be established that such a thing could ever exist.
It is in all our experience that our subjective time has already had a beginning, and we fully expect that time to come to an end if we are to use the knowledge of death all around us.
All the evidence from cosmology demands that time , matter, and space had a starting point, and since infinite quantities may never be established (above) by virture of their nature we can only proceed with the assumption that all things are finite, though they may well be of indeterminate quantity in time and dimension.

[Sculptor1]

Space itself is infinite by definition because space is defined as that which is not there, so how could something which is not there have an ending?

No space is the relationship between things. It is the potential for the position of things. Space in not nothing. It is the ground of the possibility for all material and energetic things. Space is never quite empty either, not even a vacuum is perfect.

[Bluemist]

The physical laws themselves are universal, meaning they are applicable anywhere anytime for the last 13 billion years or so, and will be applicable into the far future to the end of time.

At question would be whether that argument is valid. On what basis can it be said that it is so, since science is just a few hundred years active and modern science a few decades?

Scientific laws are like mathematics or metaphysics in that they are timeless dimensionless changeless hypothetical purely mental formalities. Their timelessness in application to a changing world is asserted dogmatically. The basis for this dogmatic approach is purely pragmatic without argument -- it is that laws make successful predictions about the physical world.

Hypothetical science is not concerned with the philosophical issues of scientific induction in application, neither Hume's point that inductive steps are not infinite therefore there will be an end, nor Goodman's grue argument that the bases or the environment of the induction is open to sudden shifts. If and when that happens then new laws are invented/discovered. Old laws are still around, used or unused depending on practical convenience, even after becoming obsolete or deprecated.

[psyreporter]

Can you explain why time would 'go' in a circle?

It's just a possibility that we can't rule out, and the only one that makes sense imo. Maybe time goes in a cirlcle, maybe time is linear, maybe neither. Human thinking is linear, and our apparent movement from past towards future seems linear, so people always assume linear time, but the circle is the more natural shape.

Can you explain in detail the ground upon which you believe that time being of finite substance within a circle shape makes 'sense'?

What would be the location or origin of the circle shape?

Doesn't need an origin. And I guess the "location" would be our entire universe or at least a part of it, and the universe doesn't need to be "in" anything.

I have a difficulty to understand how you can possibly perceive time to reside within just a part of the Universe. If that were to be so, would the other part of the Universe be devoid of time?

impossibility of traversing the infinite

How do you know that's impossible? What if your speed is a bigger infinite?

The problem is cited in the paper. The paper ends with the following:

There are, of course, other arguments for the finitude of the past that we have not discussed – most notably, perhaps, the one based on the supposed impossibility of ‘traversing the infinite’. We shall have to leave them for another occasion.

Actual infinite cannot be counted since it doesn't have a begin while 'endless' does have a begin and is merely infinite by the potential provided by the observing mind.

[psyreporter]

The physical laws themselves are universal, meaning they are applicable anywhere anytime for the last 13 billion years or so, and will be applicable into the far future to the end of time.

At question would be whether that argument is valid. On what basis can it be said that it is so, since science is just a few hundred years active and modern science a few decades?

Scientific laws are like mathematics or metaphysics in that they are timeless dimensionless changeless hypothetical purely mental formalities. Their timelessness in application to a changing world is asserted dogmatically. The basis for this dogmatic approach is purely pragmatic without argument -- it is that laws make successful predictions about the physical world.

Hypothetical science is not concerned with the philosophical issues of scientific induction in application, neither Hume's point that inductive steps are not infinite therefore there will be an end, nor Goodman's grue argument that the bases or the environment of the induction is open to sudden shifts. If and when that happens then new laws are invented/discovered. Old laws are still around, used or unused depending on practical convenience, even after becoming obsolete or deprecated.

You argue that the timeless nature of the laws of Nature is asserted dogmatically. Would you agree that it is important to be aware of that fact especially when humanity is increasingly moving to a situation in which science is to be used as a guiding principle?

If it cannot be said that the laws of Nature as static in time, how can it be said that what is perceived in time has been the same in time?

When a photon is emitted from a star at billions of light years distance it will instantly hit earth from the perspective of the photon. The photon experiences zero time and distance.

Does light experience time?
But for light itself, which is already moving at light speed… You guessed it, the photons reach zero distance and zero time.
https://phys.org/news/2014-05-does-ligh ... -time.html

If the laws of Nature were to be static in time, the potential required for the existence of a timeless photon would be bound to a changeless origin which would be absurd. That which precedes something of a timeless nature cannot have existed beforehand to be indicate-able empirically to be changeless (i.e., the capacity to be perceived as empirical laws). The origin of a photon would necessarily need to be of a nature that supports timeless substance.

[Atla]

Can you explain in detail the ground upon which you believe that time being of finite substance within a circle shape makes 'sense'?

Because then there is no need for change, there is only the illusion of change as it should be. The past doesn't have to magically disappear, the future doesn't have to magically appear out of nothing. Past present and future are equally real, and can form a complete, circular chain of events.

In practive this probably means that the universe is an "unchanging perpetuum mobile", a block universe of circular dimensions. So eventually our region of the the universe will start to contract and collapse back into a singularity, which is one and the same singularity at the same point in time as the Big Bang was. It's completely counterintuitive that a distant point in our futurte is a distant point in our past, but the only picture that makes perfect logical sense.

[psyreporter]

Can you explain in detail the ground upon which you believe that time being of finite substance within a circle shape makes 'sense'?

Because then there is no need for change, there is only the illusion of change as it should be. The past doesn't have to magically disappear, the future doesn't have to magically appear out of nothing. Past present and future are equally real, and can form a complete, circular chain of events.

In practive this probably means that the universe is an "unchanging perpetuum mobile", a block universe of circular dimensions. So eventually our region of the the universe will start to contract and collapse back into a singularity, which is one and the same singularity at the same point in time as the Big Bang was. It's completely counterintuitive that a distant point in our futurte is a distant point in our past, but the only picture that makes perfect logical sense.

When time would be of finite substance within a totality (a finite 4D block of Universe substance) it would imply that it should be considered an existent that requires an explanation.

If 'no change' is applicable within a finite amount of time slices of a block universe, one would be obligated to ask the questions: why such time slices, why a certain amount of time slices, why the specific content of time slices (i.e. conscious experience such as writing about the block universe on this forum) that 'never changes'?

Block universe theory (time slices in a circle shape)
block-universe.jpg (92.51 KiB) Viewed 2004 times

(2018) Block universe theory: Past, present, future exist simultaneously
In the block universe, there is no “now” or present. All moments that exist are just relative to each other within the three spacial dimensions and one time dimension. Your sense of the present is just reflecting where in the block universe you are at that instance. The “past” is just a slice of the universe at an earlier location while the “future” is at a later location."
https://bigthink.com/hard-science/a-con ... same-time/

It is interesting that a theory such as the block universe theory is able to be considered plausible.

Only because of the idea that empirical value is all that can possibly be considered 'valid' when it concerns an explanation for physical reality, it is possible to claim that conscious experience is a mere illusion.

Essentially, the theory abuses the inability to capture meaningful experience (conscious experience) within the scope of empirical value (i.e. scientific evidence) so that any argument by which it can be said that the theory is to be considered absurd would originate from one's assignment of value to one's own meaningful experience (one's conscious experience). Such value would not be empirical value which causes incompatibility with what science deems valid so that one is obligated to either neglect it or to pose arguments for which scientific evidence is not possible.

The problem is addressed in the philosophical zombie theory.

(2022) The philosopher’s zombie: What can the zombie argument say about human consciousness?
The infamous thought experiment, flawed as it is, does demonstrate one thing: physics alone can’t explain consciousness.
https://aeon.co/essays/what-can-the-zom ... sciousness

Can logic overcome the problem indicated by the philosophical zombie theory (the inability to assign empirical value to meaningful experience)?

If not, is it just to pose a theory such as the block universe theory without a direct reference to the problem that makes the theory possible?

If yes, how?

My footnote provides an indication that it is possible.

[Atla]

When time would be of finite substance within a totality (a finite 4D block of Universe substance) it would imply that it should be considered an existent that requires an explanation.

Not sure what you mean. Maybe time could just be a direction of increasing entropy, since humans are bound to increasing entropy. That doesn't mean that entropy can't decrease elsewhere, that time can't "flowing backwards". And maybe time can stagnate when entropy stagnates.

Or maybe the entire universe has some direction that somehow loops back into itself. Like, the universe keeps expanding forever and that's the direction we call time, yet with circular dimensions, the future extremely large size of the universe is somehow the same as the extremely small size of the Big Bang singularity in the past. Trying to picture this in absolute space makes no sense, but space is relative so maybe it doesn't have to make sense in absolute space.

If 'no change' is applicable within a finite amount of time slices of a block universe, one would be obligated to ask the questions: why such time slices, why a certain amount of time slices, why the specific content of time slices (i.e. conscious experience such as writing about the block universe on this forum) that 'never changes'?

Not sure what you mean. Humans are also finite, aren't we then also obligated to ask why?

(2018) Block universe theory: Past, present, future exist simultaneously
In the block universe, there is no “now” or present. All moments that exist are just relative to each other within the three spacial dimensions and one time dimension. Your sense of the present is just reflecting where in the block universe you are at that instance. The “past” is just a slice of the universe at an earlier location while the “future” is at a later location."
https://bigthink.com/hard-science/a-con ... same-time/

It is interesting that a theory such as the block universe theory is able to be considered plausible.

Only because of the idea that empirical value is all that can possibly be considered 'valid' when it concerns an explanation for physical reality, it is possible to claim that conscious experience is a mere illusion.

Essentially, the theory abuses the inability to capture meaningful experience (conscious experience) within the scope of empirical value (i.e. scientific evidence) so that any argument by which it can be said that the theory is to be considered absurd would originate from one's assignment of value to one's own meaningful experience (one's conscious experience). Such value would not be empirical value which causes incompatibility with what science deems valid so that one is obligated to either neglect it or to pose arguments for which scientific evidence is not possible.

The problem is addressed in the philosophical zombie theory.

(2022) The philosopher’s zombie: What can the zombie argument say about human consciousness?
The infamous thought experiment, flawed as it is, does demonstrate one thing: physics alone can’t explain consciousness.
https://aeon.co/essays/what-can-the-zom ... sciousness

Can logic overcome the problem indicated by the philosophical zombie theory (the inability to assign empirical value to meaningful experience)?

If not, is it just to pose a theory such as the block universe theory without a direct reference to the problem that makes the theory possible?

If yes, how?

My footnote provides an indication that it is possible.

Not sure what you mean. Yes there is no "now" or present in the everyday sense, but everything is the "eternal now" fundamentally. That says nothing about p-zombies or meaningfulness.