Eternalism and the Now of Discourse as well as the Eternal (or "Our Time" is not just a 50+ singles website...)
Eternalism, says Sean Carroll in his lectures on time, is the notion that a scientist, or at least a physicist, has a "view from nowhen" inasmuch as past and future are viewed with a kind of indifference. This indifference consists of the ability to see that, for any particular particle moving in one direction at a certain speed, it can be conceived of as moving in the opposite direction at same speed. Since every change involves an interaction of equal and opposed forces, the same process can be reversed while operating according to the same laws of nature. Consequently, the processes that we witness in our daily life could, in principle, occur in reverse. One would need a closed system for that to happen, so it makes more sense to say that all of the processes in the universe could together go in an order that is the reverse of what we now see happening. And in doing so, they would proceed in a manner consistent with the laws of nature. Of course, this reverse would be a movement from more entropy to less. So it would be many times more improbable than it is for cream mixed with coffee to separate from the latter. But what's important to the eternalist thesis is the claim that, from the perspective of one using the laws of nature to calculate how things will move from moment to moment, it makes no difference whether one is calculating forward or backward.
Imagine someone waterskiing at high speed, letting go of the tow, falling into the water and slowing down until the skiier stops moving forward in the water. Now imagine the same forces that slowed him/her down working in reverse, so that someone who was stationary in the water is grabbed by the forces in the water and dragged backwards and upwards, etc. until the waterskier is heading backwards with the rope jumping up out of the water and into his hands, etc.
Those who regard the reverse process as a perfect mirror of the forward process thanks to the laws of nature have an eternalist perspective, for they believe that -- with sufficient information about laws of physics and the locations and movements of physical particles -- they can navigate forwards or backwards through time.
In order to embrace eternalism, one must presuppose that reductive materialism is true. But doesn't this thesis also eliminate the causal influence of knowledge? For if the "tape could be played backwards," then events such as our interactions, including our discussions about truth, math, goodness, etc. would be determined to happen in reverse, even though the meanings of the words and thoughts would no longer matter. Nor does it matter whether "the tape is played forward," for the objects of thought that we normally think motivate our actions would be irrelevant to how we act, not only when the tape is played backward, but forward as well. And if thought and its objects are causally irrelevant, or epiphenomenal, then they might as well not exist at all.
But wouldn't that get rid of science? Including the type of scientific knowledge that moves some to propose eternalism? In our everyday perspective, advocates of eternalism see it as yet another Copernican revolution, one that has its origin in the everyday concept of time. So eternalism, as an idea, is rooted, among other things, in the everyday concept of "now" as the time when we communicate, including our communication about eternalism. To engage in scientific discourse, one must believe that "we are now discussing the same ideas" or "this is our time to talk about time." Don't the ideas influence how the conversation proceeds? The "now" of conversation always "makes space" for ideas that influence the conversation itself. The concept of now, therefore, is anti-reductive. For "now" is "our time to discuss these things."
If reductive materialism is true, then we simply don't have the time to talk about it.
But we do.
Therefore it is false. Modus tollens.
The reductive materialist might object that "now" or "our time for discourse" is a coarse grained notion that is to be gotten rid of once we've obtained bona fide scientific knowledge of what time. But no scientific experiment has proven reductive materialism is true, and no experiment would be meaningful if it were. In fact, the very act of debating whether eternalism is true is itself evidence that -- inasmuch as it is taken as an all-encompassing claim that embraces reductive materialism with its rendering the objects of thought as epiphenomenal and hence effectively non-existent -- (repeating myself just in case you lost the train of thought) the very act of debating eternalism is evidence that it is false.
**
Another thought about the same topic: isn't it also ironic that those who are, thanks to their materialism, skeptical of our ability to say anything meaningful about an eternal Being with eternal knowledge, find themselves positing as a kind of ideal object a kind of knowledge whose name echoes classical theism?
***
Yet another afterthought: maybe, if physicalism is asymmetric, then the tape could be played backward in a lawful way without implying that it plays forward necessarily. For playing backward would be like making an inference to a necessary condition on the basis of a sufficient condition. And, given the asymmetry of the two, nature could be lawful, after a fashion, yet still make room for contingency (including freedom).
The counter to this proposal is that if nature is reversible in the manner described, then there is a symmetry between past and future. But that counter would be, a kind of circular argument. For it assumes that physicalism is reductive. But if non-reductive physicalism is true, then, that is because of an asymmetry that ultimately undermines eternalism, at least in its more robust form.
Imagine someone waterskiing at high speed, letting go of the tow, falling into the water and slowing down until the skiier stops moving forward in the water. Now imagine the same forces that slowed him/her down working in reverse, so that someone who was stationary in the water is grabbed by the forces in the water and dragged backwards and upwards, etc. until the waterskier is heading backwards with the rope jumping up out of the water and into his hands, etc.
Those who regard the reverse process as a perfect mirror of the forward process thanks to the laws of nature have an eternalist perspective, for they believe that -- with sufficient information about laws of physics and the locations and movements of physical particles -- they can navigate forwards or backwards through time.
In order to embrace eternalism, one must presuppose that reductive materialism is true. But doesn't this thesis also eliminate the causal influence of knowledge? For if the "tape could be played backwards," then events such as our interactions, including our discussions about truth, math, goodness, etc. would be determined to happen in reverse, even though the meanings of the words and thoughts would no longer matter. Nor does it matter whether "the tape is played forward," for the objects of thought that we normally think motivate our actions would be irrelevant to how we act, not only when the tape is played backward, but forward as well. And if thought and its objects are causally irrelevant, or epiphenomenal, then they might as well not exist at all.
But wouldn't that get rid of science? Including the type of scientific knowledge that moves some to propose eternalism? In our everyday perspective, advocates of eternalism see it as yet another Copernican revolution, one that has its origin in the everyday concept of time. So eternalism, as an idea, is rooted, among other things, in the everyday concept of "now" as the time when we communicate, including our communication about eternalism. To engage in scientific discourse, one must believe that "we are now discussing the same ideas" or "this is our time to talk about time." Don't the ideas influence how the conversation proceeds? The "now" of conversation always "makes space" for ideas that influence the conversation itself. The concept of now, therefore, is anti-reductive. For "now" is "our time to discuss these things."
If reductive materialism is true, then we simply don't have the time to talk about it.
But we do.
Therefore it is false. Modus tollens.
The reductive materialist might object that "now" or "our time for discourse" is a coarse grained notion that is to be gotten rid of once we've obtained bona fide scientific knowledge of what time. But no scientific experiment has proven reductive materialism is true, and no experiment would be meaningful if it were. In fact, the very act of debating whether eternalism is true is itself evidence that -- inasmuch as it is taken as an all-encompassing claim that embraces reductive materialism with its rendering the objects of thought as epiphenomenal and hence effectively non-existent -- (repeating myself just in case you lost the train of thought) the very act of debating eternalism is evidence that it is false.
**
Another thought about the same topic: isn't it also ironic that those who are, thanks to their materialism, skeptical of our ability to say anything meaningful about an eternal Being with eternal knowledge, find themselves positing as a kind of ideal object a kind of knowledge whose name echoes classical theism?
***
Yet another afterthought: maybe, if physicalism is asymmetric, then the tape could be played backward in a lawful way without implying that it plays forward necessarily. For playing backward would be like making an inference to a necessary condition on the basis of a sufficient condition. And, given the asymmetry of the two, nature could be lawful, after a fashion, yet still make room for contingency (including freedom).
The counter to this proposal is that if nature is reversible in the manner described, then there is a symmetry between past and future. But that counter would be, a kind of circular argument. For it assumes that physicalism is reductive. But if non-reductive physicalism is true, then, that is because of an asymmetry that ultimately undermines eternalism, at least in its more robust form.
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