Here's how I understand the reversibility of time. Suppose you took measurement of everything going on at one instant (wait--to say that is to talk as if there is absolute time! Wouldn't Einstein have a problem with that?) and somehow reversed the movements indicated by those measurements. The result would be that everything would continue to work in reverse indefinitely. For example, a bowling ball being dropped on the ground with a kind of wave of movement being transmitted and dispersed through the earth, would, when played in reverse, amount to the opposite: many very small movements would congeal together and become more intense in a reverse-wave, with the result that the bowling ball would be propelled upwards. And so it would be for each event that preceded the dropping of the ball...
The following claim is made about reversibility:
If, per impossible, one could pull this off, history would reverse itself.
Someone lying on the ground in a pool of blood would be fortunate enough to have the blood gather together and unpour from the wound, and the person who (in forward playing direction) had fallen, would be lifted aloft by the very forces that (when played forward) seemed to be effects of his having fallen, etc. In other words, everyday descriptions of causality would become irrelevant, because they wouldn't make things happen when played in reverse. And that would be because they hadn't made things happen when played forward either.
Doesn't this make everything but physics epiphenomenal? Or rather, doesn't the claim about reversibility assume that?
But isn't "epiphenomenal" granting too much? It would be more accurate to say that, given the claim of reversibility, nothing exists except that which can be described in in the language of physics.
How, then, could there be such a thing as a proposal? A claim (self-contradictory ones included)?
Hmmm...
The following claim is made about reversibility:
If, per impossible, one could pull this off, history would reverse itself.
Someone lying on the ground in a pool of blood would be fortunate enough to have the blood gather together and unpour from the wound, and the person who (in forward playing direction) had fallen, would be lifted aloft by the very forces that (when played forward) seemed to be effects of his having fallen, etc. In other words, everyday descriptions of causality would become irrelevant, because they wouldn't make things happen when played in reverse. And that would be because they hadn't made things happen when played forward either.
Doesn't this make everything but physics epiphenomenal? Or rather, doesn't the claim about reversibility assume that?
But isn't "epiphenomenal" granting too much? It would be more accurate to say that, given the claim of reversibility, nothing exists except that which can be described in in the language of physics.
How, then, could there be such a thing as a proposal? A claim (self-contradictory ones included)?
Hmmm...
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