Philosophy Discussion Forums

Scott wrote:The 4D block universe that contains everything in 4D spacetime is timeless, unchanging, and eternal.

This statement is a logical contradiction and is therefore FALSE.

If this statement were true, then you (as an occupant of this universe) would have been unable to type and post this statement here at Philosophy Discussion Forums. -- it is logically impossible for you to make the above claim if you yourself did not exist in a "changing" universe.

...unless of course, you are somehow implying that you exist outside this universe??? ...but if so, then again this contradicts your statement that this "universe contains everything" (including you).

Trying to get some answers in philosophy probably requires 6 dimensional thinking, but most people can't do 4.

Atla wrote:Trying to get some answers in philosophy probably requires 6 dimensional thinking, but most people can't do 4.

...but any philosophy that disregards logic is called "Bad Philosophy".

RJG wrote: ↑April 26th, 2021, 4:45 pm

Scott wrote:[47] The 4D block universe that contains everything in 4D spacetime is timeless, unchanging, and eternal.

This statement is a logical contradiction and is therefore FALSE.

That statement is not a logical contradiction.

However, that statement is #47 of the 48 numbered statements. Do you agree with 1-46? If not, which is the first of the numbered statements with which you disagree?

RJG wrote: ↑April 26th, 2021, 4:45 pm If this statement were true, then you (as an occupant of this universe) would have been unable to type and post this statement here at Philosophy Discussion Forums. -- it is logically impossible for you to make the above claim if you yourself did not exist in a "changing" universe.

That seems like a non-sequitur to me. It sounds like you are are saying that if an unchanging 4D block universe exists, then nothing within the block universe can exist. However, a whole conversation (or pseudo-conversation) can exist as a pseudo-scene in a pseudo-movie on an unplayed unchanging DVD containing the whole would-be conversation and would would-be movie including the would-be beginning, would-be middle, and would-be end. There's nothing contradictory about that.

Does your allegation that the statement is contradictory rest on the assumption that I, Scott, am not a philosophical zombie?

Is it possible instead of meaning to claim the statement contradicts itself (which it doesn't), you are trying to say that it is incompatible with your own alleged conscious experience, which is allegedly undeniable to you but not to me? If so, then I point you to the last section of the OP, labeled "Important Clarification about Consciousness".

Scott wrote:[47]The 4D block universe that contains everything in 4D spacetime is timeless, unchanging, and eternal.

RJG wrote:This statement is a logical contradiction and is therefore FALSE.

If this statement were true, then you (as an occupant of this universe) would have been unable to type and post this statement here at Philosophy Discussion Forums. -- it is logically impossible for you to make the above claim if you yourself did not exist in a "changing" universe.

Scott wrote:That statement is not a logical contradiction.

So where is the logical error?

Scott wrote:However, that statement is #47 of the 48 numbered statements. Do you agree with 1-46? If not, which is the first of the numbered statements with which you disagree?

I haven't really looked at the others. This one that Steve posted (a few posts above) caught my eye as a blatant contradiction.

RJG wrote:If this statement were true, then you (as an occupant of this universe) would have been unable to type and post this statement here at Philosophy Discussion Forums. -- it is logically impossible for you to make the above claim if you yourself did not exist in a "changing" universe.

Scott wrote:That seems like a non-sequitur to me. It sounds like you are are saying that if an unchanging 4D block universe exists, then nothing within the block universe can exist.

No, I'm saying if nothing can change in a 4D block universe, then "you" (as a member of this universe) likewise can't change (...i.e. you can't do anything, including posting statement # 47).

Scott wrote:However, the whole conversation (or pseudo-conversation) can exist like a pseudo-scene in a pseudo-movie on an unplayed unchanging DVD containing the whole would-be movie including the would-be beginning, would-be middle, and would-be end. There's nothing contradictory about that.

Not so. If as you say, there is only "static data" on this "unchanging" DVD, then nothing is changing. And if nothing is changing, then there can't logically be conversations/scenes/movies or pseudo-conversations/scenes/movies (or "you" posting statement #47) on this DVD. There is only static data on this DVD. That's it. Nothing more.

Scott wrote:Does your allegation that the statement is contradictory rest on the assumption that I, Scott, am not a philosophical zombie?

No, not at all. Your zombieness (or non-zombieness) is irrelevant to the logical impossibility of you doing something in the absence of change. If you exist in a universe of "no change" then you can't logically do (or change) anything.

Scott wrote:Is it possible instead of meaning to claim the statement contradicts itself (which it doesn't), you are trying to say that it is incompatible with your own conscious experience, which is allegedly undeniable to you but not to me?

It is not that it is "incompatible with my consciousness", it is "incompatible with simple logic". X=~X is a logical impossibility! (...you can't change anything if change does not exist!).

RJG wrote: ↑April 26th, 2021, 6:38 pm

Scott wrote:However, that statement is #47 of the 48 numbered statements. Do you agree with 1-46? If not, which is the first of the numbered statements with which you disagree?

I haven't really looked at the others. This one that Steve posted (a few posts above) caught my eye as a blatant contradiction.

If you can tell me which is the first of the 48 numbered statements with which you disagree, I think it will help me understand the exact nature and context of your objection to the argument in the OP.

Scott wrote:However, the whole conversation (or pseudo-conversation) can exist like a pseudo-scene in a pseudo-movie on an unplayed unchanging DVD containing the whole would-be movie including the would-be beginning, would-be middle, and would-be end. There's nothing contradictory about that.

RJG wrote: ↑April 26th, 2021, 6:38 pm Not so. If as you say, there is only "static data" on this "unchanging" DVD, then nothing is changing. And if nothing is changing, then there can't logically be conversations/scenes/movies or pseudo-conversations/scenes/movies (or "you" posting statement #47) on this DVD. There is only static data on this DVD. That's it. Nothing more.

I am using the words pseudo-scenes and pseudo-movie to refer to the fact that they are just static data on the unplayed DVD, hence the pseudo. So the unplayed DVD absolutely can contain an unplayed pseudo-movie with unplayed pseudo-scenes. I label it pseudo-movie because for some reason you don't want to call the data on the DVD a movie until the DVD is played at least once, which is fine.

RJG wrote:I'm saying if nothing can change in a 4D block universe, then "you" (as a member of this universe) likewise can't change (...i.e. you can't do anything, including posting statement # 47).

I am not sure what is meant by the word "you" in this context. If it refers to consciousness, or so-called 'conscious presence', or so-called 'conscious experience', then that would mean something drastically different than otherwise.

If you aren't asserting some kind of conscious presence or such, then the arguments against any kind of unconscious presence or objective now in the OP hold.

Assuming Scott is a philosophical zombie, then it may be fair to say in certain particular highly philosophical contexts that in the block universe model zombie-Scott does not really do anything since zombie-Scott's whole pseudo-life exists as static data on the figurative unchanging DVD, like a set of unplayed pseudo-scenes in an unplayed pseudo-movie stored as static data on an unchanging DVD. A would-be character in an unplayed would-be movie stored as static data on the DVD does not change the DVD, not even if the DVD is played, so in that way I agree with you. In that way, even if DVD players did exist and one (or more) players played the DVD, the ending of the then-played movie would not actually be changed by a character in the then-played movie. Zombie-Scott is like a would-be character in an unplayed pseudo-movie stored as static data on an unchanging DVD, and thus he cannot change the DVD or the would-be ending of the would-be movie, regardless of whether or not it gets played by any DVD players.

Determinism means that what you would call the future cannot be changed. Hypothetically playing one scene from the movie wouldn't change a later scene because the whole pseudo-movie including the ending exists as static unchanging data on the DVD. All pseudo-scenes exist as static data on the DVD and cannot be changed. In theory, they could be played by some kind of transcendental DVD players if such players exist, but determinism means even the transcendental players couldn't change the DVD or movie-ending.

Scott wrote:Does your allegation that the statement is contradictory rest on the assumption that I, Scott, am not a philosophical zombie?

RJG wrote: No, not at all. Your zombieness (or non-zombieness) is irrelevant to the logical impossibility of you doing something in the absence of change. If you exist in a universe of "no change" then you can't logically do (or change) anything.

That seems to be a version of the First Cause Argument. If I understand correctly, you are saying that the fact that something exists (even something unchanging) requires some creator/doer to have created/done it.

I disagree with the First Cause Argument. There is nothing logically contradictory about eternalism or the block universe model in itself. (It may be insufficient to explain/predict consciousness but that is not remotely the same as contradicting itself. Daniel Dennett's arguments about consciousness do not contradict themselves; they are just incompatible with actual consciousness.)

According to the block universe model, what you would label as the future already exists. It does not need anyone or anything to "do"/create it for it to come into existence. And it cannot be changed; you are right about that.

Scott wrote:Is it possible instead of meaning to claim the statement contradicts itself (which it doesn't), you are trying to say that it is incompatible with your own conscious experience, which is allegedly undeniable to you but not to me?

RJG wrote:It is not that it is "incompatible with my consciousness", it is "incompatible with simple logic".

It is not incompatible with simple logic.

Scott wrote: ↑April 26th, 2021, 8:10 pm
If you can tell me which is the first of the 48 numbered statements with which you disagree, I think it will help me understand the exact nature and context of your objection to the argument in the OP.

To start with I disagree with #2 and the subsequent similar statements --it's not that those mathematical constructs don't exist, it's that they don't exist, at least not with any semantic content attached, as some objective/something external to minds.

After that, the first one I disagree with is #7. Left and right exist objectively as relations. It's just that they obtain relative to a spatial reference "point" --but that's the case for everything. Everything is relative to some (set of) spatiotemporal reference point(s).

"as some objective/something external to minds"

should have read

"as something objective/something external to minds."

Scott

Alan Watts said that the godhead can't know itself just like light does not illuminate itself and a knife doesn't cut itself. The way I like to say it is this: even when we look in a mirror, the unfathomably beautiful essence is still always clothed in form. But yet maybe we can have some small rough indirect sense of the infinitely beautiful nakedness underneath.

Would you say then that noesis (immediate intuition, apprehension, or mental 'seeing' of principles) and dianoia (discursive thought) are really complimentary?

Consider beauty as a veil. As an atheist, Richard Feynman seeks to explore fragments while Simone Weil ponders the wholeness beauty conceals

Wholeness and fragments. Is there any reason why one side should attack the other as so often happens? Yet it happens. Is there any reason why a person cannot strive to experience Platonic forms yet at the same time put partial truths or fragments into a higher perspective. It seems to me that if our species could learn to do this, machines would serve Man rather than Man serving machines as happening now.

"Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars — mere globs of gas atoms. Nothing is "mere". I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination — stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light. A vast pattern — of which I am a part... What is the pattern or the meaning or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little more about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it. Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?" ~ Richard P. Feynman

"Beauty is the only finality here below. As Kant said very aptly, it is a finality which involves no objective. A beautiful thing involves no good except itself, in its totality, as it appears to us. We are drawn toward it without knowing what to ask of it. It offers its own existence. We do not desire something else, we possess it, and yet we still desire something. We do not know in the least what it is. We want to get behind beauty, but it is only a surface. It is like a mirror that sends us back our own desire for goodness. It is a sphinx, an enigma, a mystery which is painfully tantalizing. We should like to feed upon it, but it is only something to look at; it appears only from a certain distance. The great trouble in human life is that looking and eating are two different operations. Only beyond the sky, in the country inhabited by God, are they one and the same operation. ... It may be that vice, depravity and crime are nearly always ... in their essence, attempts to eat beauty, to eat what we should only look at." ~ Simone Weil

RJG wrote: ↑April 26th, 2021, 5:53 pm

Atla wrote:Trying to get some answers in philosophy probably requires 6 dimensional thinking, but most people can't do 4.

...but any philosophy that disregards logic is called "Bad Philosophy".

There is no contradiction in 4 dimensions. What we experience as change, are all existing "snapshots" of an unchanging block universe.

Scott wrote:

Steve3007 wrote:I'll pick one for now:
[47] The 4D block universe that contains everything in 4D spacetime is timeless, unchanging, and eternal.
To me, the word "eternal" means "for all time".

That's not how I use the word, but I don't doubt some people do use it in the way you describe.

Understood. As you've suggested, I'll take it that in your usage "eternal" is synonymous with "timeless". In which case [47] is not self-contradictory but it is, in my view, wrong for reasons given in a previous post.

Is that (#18) the first of the 48 numbered statements with which you disagree?

No. The first one I disagree with is [7]. Given the explanation you gave as to how you're using the term "really exist" (the one with the Santa Claus example) I agree that, when used in that sense, mathematical tools/constructs like points, lines and axes do not exist. i.e. they're not extra-mental things or properties of those things. But leftness and rightness are. As I've said, I think you're erroneously conflating relativity (properties that make sense as relationships between extra-mental things) with not existing. Relative properties, such as relative spatial position (such as leftness and rightness), exist in a sense that Santa Claus does not.

RJG wrote:...but any philosophy that disregards logic is called "Bad Philosophy".

Atla wrote:There is no contradiction in 4 dimensions. What we experience as change, are all existing "snapshots" of an unchanging block universe.

This is self-contradicting (logically impossible) and therefore FALSE. Snapshots by themselves cannot give us the experience (or illusion) of "change", ...i.e. without the "flipping" of this flipbook of snapshots, there can be no illusion to experience.

Without "change" in this universe, there can be no illusion/experience of change; nor any experiences whatsoever.
Without "change" in this universe, Atla (a member of this universe) could not do anything, including posting to this forum.


*****************
As I see it, and from a geometric perspective, "change" is inherently pervasive in our dynamic (non-static) 4D universe.

• 1D lines "change" into 2D planes
  2D planes "change" into 3D objects
  3D objects "change" into 4D motion

RJG wrote: ↑April 27th, 2021, 5:04 am

RJG wrote:...but any philosophy that disregards logic is called "Bad Philosophy".

Atla wrote:There is no contradiction in 4 dimensions. What we experience as change, are all existing "snapshots" of an unchanging block universe.

This is self-contradicting (logically impossible) and therefore FALSE. Snapshots by themselves cannot give us the experience (or illusion) of "change", ...i.e. without the "flipping" of this flipbook of snapshots, there can be no illusion to experience.

Without "change" in this universe, there can be no illusion/experience of change.
Without "change" in this universe, Atla (a member of this universe) could not do anything, including posting to this forum.


*****************
As I see it, and from a geometric perspective, "change" is inherently pervasive in our dynamic (non-static) 4D universe.

• 1D lines "change" into 2D planes
  2D planes "change" into 3D objects
  3D objects "change" into 4D motion

The mistake is on your part. You will have to give up the idea that there is a constant "you" that travels across spacetime. The "you" that started reading this sentence isn't the current "you".

Atla wrote:The mistake is on your part. You will have to give up the idea that there is a constant "you" that travels across spacetime. The "you" that started reading this sentence isn't the current "you".

Who said anything about "you" (or "me") traveling across spacetime??? My point was about the logical impossibility of an "unchanging" universe (...which "you" and "me" are members of, ...where we exist in spacetime is irrelevant).

I'm talking about "bad philosophy" (i.e. philosophy that disregards simple logic).

RJG wrote: ↑April 27th, 2021, 5:18 am

Atla wrote:The mistake is on your part. You will have to give up the idea that there is a constant "you" that travels across spacetime. The "you" that started reading this sentence isn't the current "you".

Who said anything about "you" (or "me") traveling across spacetime??? My point was about the logical impossibility of an "unchanging" universe (which you and me are members of).

I'm talking about "bad philosophy" (i.e. philosophy that disregards simple logic).

Then you took "snapshot" too literally. The block universe contains every moment, past present future all at once in one structure. Think of these moments as infinitessimal snapshots in space and time, that are all connected with each other.

We can only talk about space, time and change as relative features within the block universe. That's what humans experience, from our perspective they can be said to exist, spacetime has its own structure.

But the block universe as a whole does not change, is spaceless and timeless. What is illogical is the idea of genuine change, you are taking an illogical stance. Change is an accapted form of magic. Stuff disappears into nothingness, stuff appears out of nothingness, the whole thing is somehow driven in one direction.