tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post6665791747310571249..comments2024-03-22T17:35:52.045-04:00Comments on Extra Thoughts: How do I rebut Presentism? Let me count the ways.Lydia McGrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00423567323116960820noreply@blogger.comBlogger13125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-15493548773110010692017-01-24T18:52:57.785-05:002017-01-24T18:52:57.785-05:00I don't know anything about the proposed quant...I don't know anything about the proposed quantization of time, but I did run into this set of opinions:<br /><br />https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-time-quantized-in-othe/<br /><br />The impression one takes away is that there is no experimental evidence for quantized time and that the theories in question would quantize it only "in a certain sense." So perhaps not literally.<br /><br />The most profound comment that comes to my mind (which isn't terribly profound) would be that, if the proposed time quanta were sufficiently similar to the concept of a chronon, then they'd have the same philosophical problems. <br /><br />Since I have no clear idea of what each discrete time unit would be like if there could be such, I'm not sure if it would be like a little block universe in itself.Lydia McGrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00423567323116960820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-17156228043822110762017-01-24T18:30:13.681-05:002017-01-24T18:30:13.681-05:00Lydia,
This is an old post, so you probably won&#...Lydia,<br /><br />This is an old post, so you probably won't even see this, but I'd love to know how you feel about the effort of some physicists how think that, in light of quantum mechanics, we need to quantize time into discrete units. Do you think these theories are misguided for the same philosophical reasons you criticizes the idea of a chronon?<br /><br />And if there are chronons, wouldn't this undermine the A-theory anyway? Before the chronon is completed, we need to reach the halfway point, which would mean that the first half and the second half exist "at once." The present isn't will respond by saying that time within the chronon does not "pass," since it is all present, so it makes no sense to speak of completing the first half of a chronon before reaching the second half. But if the whole chronon exists at once, then doesn't this undermine the A-theory? Each chronon would be like it's own little block universe with multiple times existing at once.Aronhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03068045949033111747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-2874014338020472642014-05-02T09:20:59.916-04:002014-05-02T09:20:59.916-04:00Thanks for the quotation. I think that clarifies t...Thanks for the quotation. I think that clarifies that Craig's confusion here is that he may think that the B theorist takes the universe to be eternal. He has given indications of that confusion elsewhere. He may also think that the B theorist cannot talk of moments being "traversed before" the present moment. However, that isn't quite the same thing as saying that there must be a moment before the universe began in order for it to have a beginning. In consistency, he _can't_ hold that, or it would catch his own view as well, since on his own view the universe had a beginning but there was no moment before it began.<br /><br />Since the arrow of time issue has come up (I thought it might) let me add that I think there is a real arrow of time and that this is the arrow of *finite* causation. God has built a directionality into finite causation to make it coherent without any problem of causal loops (causing your own grandfather to die before conceiving your father, for example). Such an issue doesn't arise for God's causality but does for that of finite creatures, so the order of finite causality or possible causality gives us a real directional arrow of time. I think this position is consistent with the B theory, though of course many don't, probably include Craig.Lydia McGrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00423567323116960820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-85727045658037054892014-05-01T21:20:25.965-04:002014-05-01T21:20:25.965-04:00This comment has been removed by the author.Aronhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03068045949033111747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-77475519936057124182014-05-01T21:17:54.029-04:002014-05-01T21:17:54.029-04:00This comment has been removed by the author.Aronhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03068045949033111747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-85753555327348199872014-04-30T08:45:22.958-04:002014-04-30T08:45:22.958-04:00I would be reluctant to attribute one of the posit...I would be reluctant to attribute one of the positions you mention to Craig, because it would represent a confusion given his own position that there was no time prior to the Big Bang. You say, "Craig would say that this critique presupposes a B-theory. If the A-theory is true the universe truly did 'come' into existence" and gloss this by saying "To say that something 'came' into existence presupposes that there is a previous time from which it came." Craig _cannot_ concede that this is what is meant by "came into existence," because on his own view that there was no time prior to the Big Bang and that God is "timeless without creation" involves _definitely rejecting_ that definition of "came into existence." He himself, therefore, must allow that the universe came into existence without there having been a time before its existence "from which it came." Indeed, he expressly denies that there was such a "before."<br /><br />I pointed this out above, in response to your earlier comment, so I'm a little surprised that you didn't notice it then. <br /><br />To take your other points: Craig does not in Time and Eternity argue against the B theory on the grounds of the future infinity argument. I don't know if that is therefore not important to him or what, but I'm a little surprised that everyone keeps attributing it to him as an objection to the B theory without citation.<br /><br />As for the matter of traversing past infinities, you are just mistaken. The B theorist _could of course_ say that if time was infinitely past before the making of the universe then an infinite number of events had to occur before the occurrence of the creation of the universe or the present moment. To say that the B theorist could not say this is, again, to treat the B theory as holding that time is strictly an illusion. As I have said again and again, *that is a confusion.*<br /><br />I have _never_ said that "time does not have to be traversed for things to happen." Within time, of course time has to be traversed for things to happen!Lydia McGrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00423567323116960820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-22918236258871117922014-04-30T02:00:04.749-04:002014-04-30T02:00:04.749-04:00This comment has been removed by the author.Aronhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03068045949033111747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-81871523300569270292014-04-26T13:48:01.442-04:002014-04-26T13:48:01.442-04:00I disagree that the Kalam relies on the A theory a...I disagree that the Kalam relies on the A theory as a premise. The Kalam requires as a premise that the spatio-temporal universe had a beginning. The B theorist also holds that the universe had a beginning. (Or at least is just as open to saying so as the A theorist.) It is a misunderstanding of the B theory to say that the universe is eternal. For that matter, since Craig holds that time itself begins with the beginning of the universe, he also has to have the universe beginning but not having a "before." This is what the B theorist says as well. The temporal-spatial universe has a beginning. That beginning is not "in" some larger time that existed prior to it. Therefore it doesn't have a beginning in the sense that there was a time before it began, since the beginning of the universe is the beginning of time. This may sound weird, but it is no more a problem for the B theorist than for Craig.<br /><br />As a matter of fact, the only alternative, which is that time itself has always existed, is one Craig rejects because of one of the arguments he makes in connection with the Kalam--namely, the impossibility of traversing an actual infinity. I think he's right on that. Time had a beginning. There is nothing intrinsically A-theoretical about that.Lydia McGrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00423567323116960820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-82556786016882846972014-04-26T12:56:41.428-04:002014-04-26T12:56:41.428-04:00This comment has been removed by the author.Aronhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03068045949033111747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-78898004966365378042014-04-13T06:25:38.001-04:002014-04-13T06:25:38.001-04:00"hopefully to appear in The Christendom Revie..."hopefully to appear in The Christendom Review." <br /><br />???<br /><br />This is fascinating stuff, Lydia, but I'll have to set aside some "time" to read it.William Lusehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15928946919078483848noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-35785259561663345142014-04-12T18:24:59.560-04:002014-04-12T18:24:59.560-04:00I think there's a much bigger problem with phy...I think there's a much bigger problem with physical infinities (infinitely high mountains or what-not) and with _traversing_ actual infinities. An infinite B series that continues into the future never has to be traversed before something else can happen or as a condition of something else's happening.Lydia McGrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00423567323116960820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-43477034002876770042014-04-12T18:20:12.626-04:002014-04-12T18:20:12.626-04:00Craig never brings up the actual infinity argument...Craig never brings up the actual infinity argument against the B theory, and he's got such a "down" on the B theory that I would expect him to bring it up if it were a significant motivation for him. He brings up a lot of other things, though, all of which I think are answerable.<br /><br />Craig (p. 158) brings up Zeno's Stadium Paradox explicitly as a problem with quantized time. I don't claim to be an expert in Zeno, so I can't swear Craig isn't misrepresenting him, but the Stadium Paradox definitely is a paradox of motion. <br /><br />I brought up the other paradox of motion because, as far as I know, the _answer_ to it is to make time infinitely divisible, but not in lockstep with space, so that one can traverse space in a smaller and smaller time period and "overtake" the divisions of space. Or so, at least, I have always understood the solution.Lydia McGrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00423567323116960820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-35817960142384684032014-04-12T17:54:05.156-04:002014-04-12T17:54:05.156-04:00I think your best bet is to simply say that we don...I think your best bet is to simply say that we don't need to postulate an objective, ever moving Real Now in order to sensibly make tensed statements about the world. Therefore, any theory of time that postulates such a thing is needlessly complicated. In particular, once we observe that tensed facts are only true <i>at</i> particular times then reducing them to facts that are not tensed becomes, I think, a straightforward matter.<br /><br />On a related note, I suspect that what's also driving Craig's commitment to presentism are his arguments against there being an actual infinite of any kind, which play a crucial role in his defense of the kalam cosmological argument. In particular, if there is no objective, ever moving Real Now then, surely, there can be actually infinite collections of things (even if most of them are still future).<br /><br />Finally, I am quite convinced that you are wrong about time atoms vis-a-vis Zeno's paradoxes of motion. In particular, Zeno's paradoxes presuppose that space and time are infinitely divisible, but if space and time atoms exist then this presupposition is false. Hence, Zeno's paradoxes can't get off the ground on a quantized view of time and there is no problem to solve.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com