Time and Boundaries
Time Viewed Through The Lens of Cause and Effect
The parachutist jumps from the airplane at ten thousand feet and plummets to earth at the speed of acceleration due to gravity.
Whats causing precise acceleration? Is it the jump? Is it the air? Is it the man?
We know air in a weightless chamber doesnt cause acceleration.
We know man in a weightless chamber involves no accelerating earth plummet.
Introduce gravity into a formerly weightless chamber and acceleration occurs.
Gravity is causing precise acceleration.
Gravity and acceleration-due-to-gravity are, in a certain sense, as one. They are conjoined as a unified concept: gravity-and-acceleration. Thus cause and effect are, in the same sense, as one, save one stipulation: temporal sequencing.
Cause and effect are separated temporally. However, in our scheme of conceptual unification of cause and effect, elapsing time counting down to zero links them. After all, when we look at a cause we dont see an effect, and vice-versa until after we do some thinking. Just add thinking to temporally separated cause and effect and voila! Abstraction counts time down to zero as unified concept: cause-and-effect.
This is the sleight-of-hand of abstract thinking; its an example of change over time reduced to a set of examples at time-zero. Of a world of changes I sing.*
By utilizing John von Neumans empty set expansion to derive all numbers, we can derive, in a parallel process, all cause-and-effect relationships. We start with the empty set. Since the empty set contains nothing, not even the number zero, it is zero.**
The set of historical time tracks the-motion-of-material objects. Its the set of all cause-and-effect relationships. Its our material world of phenomena coupled with experience.
If we identify the empty set with the set of time abstracted from matter, as with all numbers derived from nothing, we can derive all cause-and-effect relationships derived from nothing. Its a kind of cognitive singularity, the infinitesimal nothing from which all phenomena derive.
So we start with { }. We go from here to { { } }. This is the set that contains one element: the empty set. It contains one element, so we identify it with the number one. Next step in our progression is { { }, { { } } }: this is the set containing our zero and one. It contains two elements, so we identify it with number two. The progression continues forward with each new set containing all of the previous sets. Each new set is thus an identification with the next natural number.
Proceeding from the naturals, we go on to establish the negatives, the fractions, the reals and the imaginaries. In our one-to-one correspondence, all numbers equal all cause and effect relationships.
We see now that cause and effect the logical conjunction: [math]{a ? b}[/math] morphs into
[math]{a ? b} - t ? {a ? b}^n .[/math]
Time in our narrative is both separator and unifier of cause-and-effect: just add (or subtract) thinking.
Theres no question cause and effect, before unification, are temporally separate.
Also, theres no question cause and effect, once unified, post-date cause.
The big variable herein is the diversification/unification of the material creation, via cause and effect, along the invisible connective tissue: time.
Whats the critical operation between cause and effect when considered as conjunction: time-positive? Yes.
Whats the obverse critical operation between cause and effect when considered as a unified whole: time-zero? Yes.
The critical operation is time elapsing down to zero, thus merging two different things into one.
This is the magic of natures stunning variety: e pluribus unum.
Questions
Is time active?
Time as an active verb is the unidirectionally forward flowing of history
Time as forward flowing history takes presence as its object; flowing time makes all presence unstable; time regulates metabolism/catabolism_order/disorder; forward flowing time actuates the increase of entropy; time is the arbiter of death ? time mediates the ultimately transcendent boundary: life
Time controls the morphology of forward-flowing history
Are there any observable boundaries time cannot merge?
Consider the ranking ordinal. Its timeless regarding the ranking differential. Time is, however, essential to sequencing. With regard to sequencing, there are no atemporal physical continuums.
Regarding coincidence, time mediates herein the boundaries of individuality as superimposed coordinates. There is no individuality in absolute isolation. Humanoid sentience is thus implicit in God
Does time mediate all boundaries? Yes.
Does time, via the forward flowing of history, actualize and regulate both equivalence and identity? Yes. If so, does that mean time is arbiter of truth? Yes.
Is time a force? Yes. Time mediates presence* as forward-flowing history, a transitive verb that blossoms the scope and diversity of nature.
*Time is a metric of total history as it is abstracted in the mind as a unified concept. Invididual moments of time are subsets of total history. Time expanding as motion into history unfolding forwardly gives us our phenomenal universe of objects, subjects and experience.
* Ovid, Metamorphosis
** Robert Kaplan, The Nothing That Is
The parachutist jumps from the airplane at ten thousand feet and plummets to earth at the speed of acceleration due to gravity.
Whats causing precise acceleration? Is it the jump? Is it the air? Is it the man?
We know air in a weightless chamber doesnt cause acceleration.
We know man in a weightless chamber involves no accelerating earth plummet.
Introduce gravity into a formerly weightless chamber and acceleration occurs.
Gravity is causing precise acceleration.
Gravity and acceleration-due-to-gravity are, in a certain sense, as one. They are conjoined as a unified concept: gravity-and-acceleration. Thus cause and effect are, in the same sense, as one, save one stipulation: temporal sequencing.
Cause and effect are separated temporally. However, in our scheme of conceptual unification of cause and effect, elapsing time counting down to zero links them. After all, when we look at a cause we dont see an effect, and vice-versa until after we do some thinking. Just add thinking to temporally separated cause and effect and voila! Abstraction counts time down to zero as unified concept: cause-and-effect.
This is the sleight-of-hand of abstract thinking; its an example of change over time reduced to a set of examples at time-zero. Of a world of changes I sing.*
By utilizing John von Neumans empty set expansion to derive all numbers, we can derive, in a parallel process, all cause-and-effect relationships. We start with the empty set. Since the empty set contains nothing, not even the number zero, it is zero.**
The set of historical time tracks the-motion-of-material objects. Its the set of all cause-and-effect relationships. Its our material world of phenomena coupled with experience.
If we identify the empty set with the set of time abstracted from matter, as with all numbers derived from nothing, we can derive all cause-and-effect relationships derived from nothing. Its a kind of cognitive singularity, the infinitesimal nothing from which all phenomena derive.
So we start with { }. We go from here to { { } }. This is the set that contains one element: the empty set. It contains one element, so we identify it with the number one. Next step in our progression is { { }, { { } } }: this is the set containing our zero and one. It contains two elements, so we identify it with number two. The progression continues forward with each new set containing all of the previous sets. Each new set is thus an identification with the next natural number.
Proceeding from the naturals, we go on to establish the negatives, the fractions, the reals and the imaginaries. In our one-to-one correspondence, all numbers equal all cause and effect relationships.
We see now that cause and effect the logical conjunction: [math]{a ? b}[/math] morphs into
[math]{a ? b} - t ? {a ? b}^n .[/math]
Time in our narrative is both separator and unifier of cause-and-effect: just add (or subtract) thinking.
Theres no question cause and effect, before unification, are temporally separate.
Also, theres no question cause and effect, once unified, post-date cause.
The big variable herein is the diversification/unification of the material creation, via cause and effect, along the invisible connective tissue: time.
Whats the critical operation between cause and effect when considered as conjunction: time-positive? Yes.
Whats the obverse critical operation between cause and effect when considered as a unified whole: time-zero? Yes.
The critical operation is time elapsing down to zero, thus merging two different things into one.
This is the magic of natures stunning variety: e pluribus unum.
Questions
Is time active?
Time as an active verb is the unidirectionally forward flowing of history
Time as forward flowing history takes presence as its object; flowing time makes all presence unstable; time regulates metabolism/catabolism_order/disorder; forward flowing time actuates the increase of entropy; time is the arbiter of death ? time mediates the ultimately transcendent boundary: life
Time controls the morphology of forward-flowing history
Are there any observable boundaries time cannot merge?
Consider the ranking ordinal. Its timeless regarding the ranking differential. Time is, however, essential to sequencing. With regard to sequencing, there are no atemporal physical continuums.
Regarding coincidence, time mediates herein the boundaries of individuality as superimposed coordinates. There is no individuality in absolute isolation. Humanoid sentience is thus implicit in God
Does time mediate all boundaries? Yes.
Does time, via the forward flowing of history, actualize and regulate both equivalence and identity? Yes. If so, does that mean time is arbiter of truth? Yes.
Is time a force? Yes. Time mediates presence* as forward-flowing history, a transitive verb that blossoms the scope and diversity of nature.
*Time is a metric of total history as it is abstracted in the mind as a unified concept. Invididual moments of time are subsets of total history. Time expanding as motion into history unfolding forwardly gives us our phenomenal universe of objects, subjects and experience.
* Ovid, Metamorphosis
** Robert Kaplan, The Nothing That Is
Comments (91)
It's nit-picking, but starting your lengthy presentation with an inaccurate statement can distract from your argument. The falling parachutist does not fall at a rate determined purely by gravity - air resistance must be taken into account and this slows the fall. Such an effect is frequently calculated as proportional to the square of the velocity when close to the ground, if I remember correctly.
Quoting ucarr
???
Well, at least you get a minimum of one reply this time around. :cool:
You're right, of course. I stand corrected for neglecting to mention air resistance.
Quoting ucarr
My symbolic logic statement is supposed to say: a leads to b (causal relationship) evolves into a leads to b minus time (abstraction) evolves into a and b are interwoven as a unified concept. The bi-directional a and b at the end needs to have a bracket so that the bi-directional is raised to the power of n. This final piece is supposed to represent all cause-and-effect relationships. I'm just learning mathjax and don't yet know how to get a polynomial raised to a power.
Quoting jgill
Yes! And I'm much obliged to you for supplying it. Thanks
Here's another thing to add to what jgill said. I think that jumping, or more correctly pushing off, in a gravity-free space, actually would cause acceleration.
Quoting ucarr
I don't think that this is correct either. Acceleration only occurs from the effects of gravitation when whatever is preventing acceleration is removed, or if an object is suddenly exposed to gravitation. So the man is exposed to gravitation, in the plane, before jumping, but is only caused to accelerate after removing himself from the plane. The plane being the thing which is preventing gravitational acceleration of the man. All things on earth are exposed to gravitation, and this has a great effect on the way that they rest, but they are not necessarily accelerating from gravitation.
So I don't really like the way you characterize causation, making cause and effect one. In principle (theory), cause and effect might be united as one, so that X necessitates Y, and Y could not have occurred without X, but this is simplistic and not properly representative of real events. In reality there is always a number of complicating factors such as prior conditions and other influencing activities. So the thing we isolate as the cause is really only a contributing factor. And in your example gravity is a contributing factor.
Is it your understanding cause and effect is not a temporal phenomenon?
You're right about this.
Quoting ucarr
Do you buy the notion gravity-and-acceleration are a unified concept within a restricted domain:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The parachutist has jumped out of a plane airborne at ten thousand feet. What happens next and why?
Quoting ItIsWhatItIs
A film script is also known as a continuity. Characters behave and their behavior causes reactions in other characters. Action with emotional impact drives the story forward. As the story moves forward, characters change. This is the arc of the story. As we watch a film continuity, we feel and know the middle of the story is not the same as the beginning of the story because things have happened that have brought us to a new place in the story of people's lives. What Joey did to Cathy last night has made her become a more confident woman next morning.
What's going on inside of Cathy?
A good point. However, much of Q-theory presupposes spacetime in one or another metric framework. When you see d^4 in a formula that probably indicates space and time. But all of that is way beyond me.
A simple example: You have a cylindrical container having base area, A. The volume of liquid in the container is given by V=hA, where h is the depth of the liquid. A causal change in V is the result of draining the liquid to a lower value of h. dV/dh =A, which gives a change of V corresponding to a change of h. No time is involved in the equation, only change. But if h=h(t), then dV/dt=(dh/dt)A, and we have change associated with a passage of time.
I usually think of change as taking place over an interval of time.
Quoting jgill
Are you guys telling me time and cause and effect are either: a) separable; b) separate?
Quoting jgill
Quoting jgill
Is this an example of the difference between an abstract idea (equation) and its everyday expression as a physical event?
With respect to contemporary fundamental physics, I don't see what one has to do with the other. Even in Kant, these concepts are not directly related.
dV/dh=A is not abstract. If you measure a change in depth, then dV=Adh gives the corresponding change in volume.
Suppose it were possible for that change in h to happen instantly. Then so would the change in V. That would be unrealistic, however.
So d = depth? A variable is not abstract?
Quoting 180 Proof
As I understand you, you're telling me cause and effect is not a temporal phenomenon. Am I reading you correctly?
Language of calculus. dV means "change in V", etc.
Yeah; also that "time" is neither "temporal" nor a "phenomenon". (I think you're confusing (your) maps with the territory.)
Not really, because acceleration can be caused by things other than gravity. So for example, a rocket blasts off and it accelerates in breaking away from gravity, as a sort of reverse relation to gravity. There is still a relation with gravity involved here, but since it is a reversal, we see that it is not a direct relation because there must be something else involved. Since there is something else involve we can't restrict the domain.
Likewise, with your example of the parachutist. You refer to the effects after jumping, as "acceleration".
But what is required prior to this, and is a necessary condition, is that the person takes off in a plane (gravity reversal), and then jumps from the plane. That particular prior condition is the one required for your specific description, but it could be replaced with all sorts of others. So even the prior condition is not in the strict sense "necessary", but there is a whole class of possible prior conditions. But since one of these many possible conditions is necessary, for the acceleration described, we cannot restrict the domain in the way you propose.
One can say that footprints are caused by feet, or that they are caused by gravity, or both. Or one could talk about the relative hardness and resilience of feet and wet sand... But physicists talk more about interaction and the limits of interaction being the light cone. An interaction changes two things at once - an atom absorbs a photon and its energy is increased. one does not wish to say that the photon caused the increase in energy more so than the atom caused the absorption of the photon - it is a single event - a single interaction, and the observation thereof is another interaction.
Philosophers are prone to try and understand modern physics in the terms of mediaeval or even classical cosmology, and it doesn't really work. We might mention the architect's drawings as an indirect cause of the building, whereas Aristotle would suggest that the building was the final cause of the architect's plans. Physics dismisses final causes that work backwards in time, but then has to admit something like an imaginary building as the (prior) cause of the plans and thus the real building.
And then there is the matter of origins: we extrapolate the expanding observable universe backwards in time and come to a singularity, that we call the Big Bang - the beginning of space, time, and energy. And because of the physicists demand that cause must precede effect in time, there can be no cause of the beginning. The story has to stop at the limits of the equations. To speak of a cause of time and space in this sense is to reject the physicists meaning such as it is, and resort to Prime Mover type talk.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The restriction stipulates causes of acceleration of a material object. This set contains gravity-caused acceleration scenarios, but the domain of this set need not exclude other scenarios, such as rocket-propulsion caused acceleration as a unified concept. However, a legitimate sub-set includes the set of gravity-caused acceleration: a one member set.
In this conversation two schools of thought are present: a) temporal cause and effect; b) atemporal cause and effect
Quoting unenlightened
I'm getting the impression post-Newtonian physics is moving away from temporal cause and effect towards atemporal cause and effect.
Do you find the general structure of the OP too muddled to allow discernment of a central theme?
Do you find my prose sometimes waxing poetic at the expense of scientific and logical merit?
Do you think my notion of time's relationship to unfolding history fatally flawed?
I don't know what atemporal cause and effect would be. I'm suggesting that temporal cause and effect are the 19th century paradigm of billiard ball physics which is in turn and adaptation and restriction of the notion of cause (or four kinds of cause) in Aristotle. both are not much talked about in modern physics; it's a conceptual relic of a deteriminist science.
So the quote below is not your intended example of an atemporal cause and effect?
Quoting unenlightened
I'll be honest, I couldn't totally follow this. I would caution against any model where time "flows." Time is the dimension in which change occurs. Without time change is meaningless.
I think Aristotle's response to Zeno's Arrow is instructive here. Zeno asks us to imagine an arrow shot from a bow in flight. Imagine it frozen for an instant. Is it moving? No. At any one frozen instant the arrow is never moving. So where are change and motion in the world?
Aristotle's response is that this is simply a fallacy of composition. Time is the dimension in which the arrow changes its position relative to other objects. Looking for motion in frozen instants is obviously doomed, but it's because the example defines its topic wrong.
I point out this old example because it is astounding how many arguments against the reality of time's passage are essentially Zeno's Arrow dressed up with references to the natural sciences and mathematics that don't play any direct role in the issue at hand, the biggest red herring being appealing to Cantor re: the denseness problem, which isn't actually a problem and is simply Achilles and the Hare dressed up in imposing mathematics.
Time cannot flow because for time to move in any direction results in a paradox. If time is flowing, you need a second time dimension through which the flow of time can occur, and then a third dimension for that second time's passage, and so on (See the "A and B series" arguments for more on this).
Some philosophers have bitten the bullet and accepted either the non-existence of time, change, and motion based on this problem, or infinitely regressing time dimensions, but there is actually no need to do this. I would recommend R.T.W. Arthur's "The Reality of Time Flow - Local Becoming in Modern Physics," on this point.
Do they? It seems like I come across references to "causes" regularly in physics. Seeming violations of SR/GR are often presumed to have some sort of explanation precisely because they "violate causality."
You see such references all the time, e.g., "what is causing galaxies to deviate from the predictions of our models?" Such causes get posited as new elements of a model a in many subfields uncovering the nature of these causes becomes a major, or the major topic of research, e.g. dark matter and dark energy.
The arguments against causation in physics I can recall have all tended to be in the context of arguments for the block universe view.
I don't know if this is necessarily the case. Black Hole Cosmology, while speculative, posits a cause of the Big Bangs, and of many Big Bangs for that matter. Discussion of the Past Hypothesis in particular seems to center around cause.
I'm somewhat skeptical of block universe models, not the least because very sloppy thought experiments that misunderstand proper time in SR seem to be extremely influential based on how a number of physicists have decided to argue for the idea in popular science texts.
Becoming being a local phenomena is not a refutation of becoming though. Areas of physics are time reversible, physics as a whole is not. You will never see ripples converge on a puddle and a rock shoot out of it, nor will you see radiation converge on source of radiation to be absorbed, billiard balls leap from their pockets and rearrange themselves into a triangle, etc.
Okay. I understand you to be making a comparison. You're telling me the concept of interaction hews to more naturally occurring situations; the concept of before and after hews to more contrived situations.
You imply time is a metric: a standard of measurement?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Change specified as boundary crossings, boundary mergers, Venn Diagram overlapping and transcendence of boundaries is what interests me and what motivated my OP.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Are you making reference to spacetime?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Thanks for the book reference.
Becoming suggests crossing a threshold. Is this a topic of the book?
This is all arse-about. In newtonian physics, Gravity is just a name for the acceleration of any two masses towards each other. Nothing more. Saying gravity causes acceleration is just saying the acceleration between two masses causes the acceleration between two masses.
In respect to "why does this sky diver fall down?" I feel like "there is a universal law such that... and as you can see, this is just one such example of said law," explains more than "the acceleration causes acceleration." That maybe gets lost in some formulations though.
When I was a kid I thought Newton just got hit with an apple one day and realized that things fall down and thought, "did these jokers really not pick that up earlier?'
:smirk:
Newton's first law explicitly says that the motion of a body will remain constant unless acted on by a force. I think "acted on by a force" implies causation doesn't it? In Newtonian physics gravity is a force, and acceleration is caused.
Are you talking about gravitational attraction?
[math] g = 9.8 m/s ^2[/math] You hold this equation in contempt?
Quoting ucarr
Quoting 180 Proof
Is this the language you respect?
Why would you suppose that? An odd response.
What the Universal Law of Gravitation says is that the force between two masses is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. That number you posited is the proportion.
The force is the product of the mass and the acceleration. F=ma.
"Cause" does not appear anywhere in those equations.
Is it a stretch, a distortion, a mis-read to say your above quote is affirmation of my main point?
Gravity causes acceleration (in free fall) ? acceleration of mass ? gravity as [math]g = 9.8/s^2[/math], or [math]f = ma[/math].
My Main Point
Quoting ucarr
Quoting ucarr
Quoting 180 Proof
Quoting ucarr
Quoting 180 Proof
Do you think the forward-flowing of history comprises the physical phenomena populating our empirical
experiences?
In the below quote, are you referring to the commingling of the forward-flowing of history with the metric that tracks it mathematically?
Quoting 180 Proof
In Newtonian physics gravity just is an acceleration of a mass due to the another mass. Saying gravity causes that acceleration is circular. If that is all you have to say, then fine. But you then add something odd about temporal sequences.
Newtonian physics is pretty clean, making use of mathematical equations rather than causal statements. While we can to some extent treat the equations as causal links, that's perhaps a bit muddled. So we can say that gravity causes stuff to fall, but that's a shorthand for a failure to explain the acceleration between masses rather than an explanation.
pretty much ended the mistaken notion that cause requires time. It's a topic that has been discussed here before, leading quickly to partisan stances.
(I model mathematical causal chains - in time - as compositions of functions. A result (effect) at a time t is, say, z. The next temporal step, and the scale of time can vary, is to compute s, where s=f(z), then after that, r, where r= g(s), and so on. There's a whole theory herein. But I think it more realistic to assume several functions act on z, not just one. Like differing forces. So each step - and these are associated with intervals of time - has as outcome the influence of a number of "forces", rather than a single function.)
Sorry, got carried away with a current research topic of mine. Maybe it's relevant here.
Quoting jgill
In the above quote, jgill elaborates with detail and clarity what I've been trying to claim more vaguely and superficially. The above quote gives us a description of phenomenal reality, known empirically to all of us. It is a complex mix of the physical and the conceptual. Cause and effect and time are deeply partial to each other as an interweave, and this interweave has for its signature the forward-flowing of history.
Quoting jgill
The gist of my claim herein is that the above quote describes our fluidly transforming world as an ongoing continuity of boundary crossings, boundary mergers, Venn Diagram overlapping and transcendence of boundaries.
Time and its signature, the forward-flowing of history, will bleed through anything, whether physical or conceptual: the drop of water, in time, bores through the great stone; the black hole, in time, evaporates, releasing phenomena only seemingly lost forever.
"Forward-flowing" is a cognitive illusion and intuitive way of talking about asymmetric change. "History" represents time-as-past-tense-narrative (i.e. a ghost story). Particle physicists refer to worldlines (or many-worlds branchings) and statistical mechanics refer to entropy gradients. I still don't see what your musings, ucarr, have to do with philosophy. What's the philosophical itch you're trying to get us to scratch? State it plainly.
Have your seen my quote directly above yours?
Quoting ucarr
Quoting 180 Proof
I take your above quote for an answer to my question above it.
No doubt my appointment with the dentist tomorrow, when seen as asymmetric change representing time-as-past-tense-narrative (i.e. a ghost story) with reference to world lines (or many-worlds branchings) and statistical mechanics referring to entropy gradients, holds formally very little in common with my vision of getting a filling in my back molar. No. I haven't entered such descriptions into my daily planner.
Having said that, I think I understand your cutting-edge scientific vision of forward movement is pertinent to the concepts and details of my narrative. If I'm right, then you exaggerate when claiming "It's clear as mud to me."
Quoting 180 Proof
Where a lot of that begins is the Schrödinger equation, which is fundamentally a partial differential equation with the independent variable t = time. When solutions are computed, all of a sudden mystical superpositions and wave collapses occur with experimentations. Why is time so vital here?
They do, because they speak the same language we do. I'm not saying causation is denied, but what is the focus? You said it yourself - things that "deviate from the predictions of our model". Anomalies.
But in the mathematical models, there is no variable or constant 'cause' or 'effect'. Nor do the models cause the universe to obey them. The world is orderly and disorderly and mathematics describes the order and the disorder. When there is an anomaly there is work to be done revising the model, or refining the instruments. Causation drops out of the conversation because it has no function. It is not a particle, or a field, or a force, or a dimension or a measurement... It's not anything, but an old fashioned way of thinking that we still use. To look for the cause of an anomaly not understood is to look for some new thing; it is not to look for causation. Causation is a fancy word for 'the way things go' and that is why there is the temporal aspect.
"Cause isn't in mathematical equations," certainly isn't taken as gospel in the philosophy of causation (I'm currently in the middle of "Causation: A Users Guide). Why can mathematics not represent causes, but it can represent state changes and processes with a defined start and end point?
Where I've seen arguments against cause related to physics, it's been in popular science books in the context of arguments for a block universe. The block universe is hardly something all physicists accept, and if authors are putting their best arguments for such a view into their books, they seem to have more motivations in philosophy than in physics. To be sure, this is partly because debates on the nature of causation generally aren't considered a topic for physics articles, and one's popular science books are a good place to get into more speculative discussions.
But I certainly don't see the "cause is antiquated," view writ large on the natural sciences as a whole, or even just physics. Instruction on elements of physics being time symmetric is not an argument that physics itself is time symmetric, it demonstrably is not.
I would be less skeptical of the block universe if the motivation behind some key arguments for it didn't seem to come from philosophers' anxiety over how their propositions could have truth values given some form of presentism. Davies, who I generally like, goes for one of these. It's frustrating because these are presented with an air of certitude (he says something like "one must be a solipsist to disagree") when in fact there is by no means only one way to view SR vis-á-vis the reality of local becoming. These examples amount to attacks on the Newtonian time the audience is expected to be familiar with, and then propose the block universe as the only solution (Putnam does something similar). The issue can also be resolved by seeing time as degenerate in SR, with time bifurcating into co-ordinate time and proper time . This distinction gets muddled in many retellings of twin paradoxes though.
Of the views on time I like best in modern physics is the view that events in the past exist, and exist(ed) just at the local time they occured, while "now" is defined locally by the simultaneity of local interacting processes. I see no reason to jettison the overwhelming empirical evidence for time's passage when there exists fully coherent models that don't require eternalism.
Cause is trickier because people mean many things by cause. Just like time now has to be split into many different types of precisely defined time (and even these might not be enough, some physicists think Minkowski Spacetime is doomed as a flawed model), we probably need some sort of precisely formulated definition of causality. In the philosophy of physics, the transfer of conserved quantities is the leading definition of causation from what I've seen, but there are information theoretic definitions too.
A world line in an objects' 3D path rendered with a time dimension, nothing more. A world line can also be used to describe the history of a path for an observer. We talk about time in statistical mechanics all the time. Even in a model of quantum foundations like consistent histories, where there is no one true state of affairs at time T, a classical history emerges from decoherence/collapse. Physicists don't talk about time in SR/GR because you need to specify which types of time you are referring to. This doesn't disprove the reality of an arrow of time or local becoming, except inasmuch as philosophers have used the model to construct paradoxes, or pseudoparadoxes depending on who you ask, that call them into question.
The funny thing is that the alleged paradoxes and the arguments that allegedly rebut them haven't really moved since the 1940s; they just get restated. Someone who wants to refute Davies can cite Gödel or Robb who were actually replying to people in their time... and so maybe time is illusory or circular...
The things you mentioned don't have anything to do with history being a "cognitive illusion." The apparent "arrow of time," is one of the big questions in physics, not something that has been solved and written off as illusory by any means. Some physicists speculate that time is somehow "illusory," although the nature of this illusion is generally fairly nuanced and not grounded in cognitive science. When they do so, they tend to be doing more philosophy than physics, although the use of specialized terms certainly confuses this fact.
That time, and thus history, can't flow and that things do not "move" "forwards" and "backwards" in time is more well established. These are bad analogies that lead to apparent paradox. So, "forward flowing of history," is probably best to avoid.
All this does is show the deficiency of systems theory as a means for modeling the world. The reality of these "boundary crossings" implies that there is many things which cannot be classified as being proper to one system or another. Initially, this may not appear as a problem, but when it comes to mapping causation, we need to distinguish between what is within the system, and what is acting on the system, as a causal force. As in my reply to Banno, above, inertial continuity is modeled as internal, therefore non-causal, and external influence is modeled as a causal force of change.
So for example, someone in another thread suggested to me that we could model an atom as a system. However, the natural state of atoms is to exist within complex molecules, where parts (electrons for example) are shared. If two atoms share an electron, and the atoms themselves are being modeled as distinct systems, then in each model, the shared atom is both an internal part of the inertial continuity of the system, and also a part of the other system, thereby acting as a causal force of change on that same system. In other words, from this 'systems' perspective, the electron must be understood as both a part of the inertial continuity of the system, and a causal force of change to the system (being a part of an external system), at the same time.
You might be interested in information theoretic, holographic principal-based workarounds for this problem if you're not already aware of them. Since information is only exchanged across any systems' (however defined) 2D surface, we can model them purely relationally. One interpretation of this is that information content is relative between systems, with these relationships formalized using the concept of symmetry and group theory. Example: for many enzyme reactions, a chemicals' being composed of isotopes or not is indiscernible for both systems and thus irrelevant to describing the interaction. This was best expressed in brilliant dissertation that made it into Springer Frontiers and got rave reviews, before the author seemingly disappeared, which is a shame.
Verdal's book sort of goes with this, in his explanation of information only existing relationally between parts of the universe, but he seems to reverse on this later in the book to use the old "amount of bits stored by each particle," calculation to make some points about quantum information.
I think the arbitrary nature of system boundaries is akin to other problems in the sciences and even humanities. For example, in semiotic analysis/communications, a physical entity, say a group of neurons, might act as object, symbol, and interpretant during the process, depending on the level of analysis that is used. But at a certain part, the ability of any one component to convey aspects of the total message breaks down. E.g., a single logic gate can't hold the number "8," itself. Certain relationships only exist at higher levels of emergence, like your example of shared electrons.
Causation, in such models, would likely be interpreted in terms of computation or information exchange, and I'd argue that current theories of computation and communications would actually make it extremely difficult to differentiate these two models at the formal level.
IMO, something like the concept of levels of abstraction in computer science is needed for this sort of problem, but I can't fathom how to formalize it in a manner that isn't arbitrary.
Subjective is fine. Entropy is subjective (see the Gibbs Paradox) but not arbitrary. Arbitrariness seems like a problem however.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Your above quotes for me are introductions to detailed examinations of topics in physics, each of which, in the elaboration of specialization, would easily engage the entire careers of physicist-specialists.
My label of convenience for the theme connecting and focusing pertinent issues within Time and Boundaries is Boundary Ontology. Under this category the focus is on such questions as: How do we measure the surface of a material object? In the scale of human experience, this question is perhaps mundane. Is that the case at the scale of the elementary particles? How about the scale of the expanding universe? What does it mean for spacetime to expand and yet have no outer boundary?
Speaking mathematically, clearly topology has a key role to play herein. For example: topology might offer a rational approach to a definition of the soul: a surface invariant to unlimited manifolding of a set.
Is system the limit of entropic expansion? Is universe the limit of system? These are, I think, important boundary ontology questions.
Is there a possible general mathematical definition of what constitutes the boundary of a system?
Can boundaries be defined for cognitive inter-relations, thereby establishing a hybrid interweaving the cognitive_physical?
Finally, there's the supreme challenge of the sine qua non of boundary ontology puzzles: Origin Boundary Ontology. First principle, first cause, etc, will need more than three spatial dimensions + time for practical elaboration.
Real-life Q-physicists have been chased away, I fear. Kenosha Kid tried to get some sympathy for the Transactional approach, but had unsatisfactory experiences and left the room to play his guitar. I know very, very little about Q-theory beyond the elementary stuff. Feynman's path integral I can follow if I take the simplified version involving time splitting. In my old age I dabble in very elementary mathematics (in the professional sense), finding the road I am on challenging enough. :cool:
Interesting. Why do you say that entropy is subjective? Is it because a system's boundary is arbitrary?
Not just that.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibbs_paradox#The_mixing_paradox
I don't agree with the use of the term "arbitrary" in the Wiki article, at least not in an important sense.
This paradox has a special place in my heart because when I began reading a lot more on statistical mechanics and doing problems on it I realized this problem myself somewhat early on. I thought to myself "holy shit, maybe I could be really good at this, look what I uncovered, this is air tight too!"
I finally got over the fear of someone stealing my great insight and posted a question in Stack Exchange. Within a few hours someone asked, "do you mean the Gibbs Paradox?"
Yeah, someone had the idea first, over a century ago, pretty much as soon as Boltzmann published. So much for my genius lol. I felt better about this after reading Max Tegmark describe "discovering" decoherence as a first year PhD student, only to learn he'd been scooped by several years. At least that was somewhat close in time though.
I suggest that this is an illusion created by the terms of the example. If each individual molecule of compartment A is marked as A, and each individual molecule of B is marked as B, then even if the two compartments each contain the same type of gas, the combining will appear the same as if they are different gases, because they are marked as different.
There is no paradox, just an illusion. In the case of two distinct gases, an act of mixing is required, and this requires time and energy. In the case of the gases being the same, it appears like the gases have already mixed as soon as the separation is removed. That's just an illusion, mixing has not occurred, as marking the molecules would reveal.
Yes, that was sort of Gibbs' original point in the case of ideal gasses. You need a non-extensive entropy to deal with that the problem.
Jayne's big point is summed up in the introduction: " We argue that, on the contrary, phenomenological thermodynamics, classical statistics, and quantum statistics are all in just the same logical position with regard to extensivity of entropy; they are silent on the issue, neither requiring it nor forbidding it."
And, counter intuitively, non-extensive entropy actually tends to model many real systems better (e.g. Tsallis entropy).
Jaynes paper does a better job explaining why this was generally been considered a genuine paradox. Distinguishability is, in an important sense for predicting/describing physical interactions, relational.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/tong/statphys/jaynes.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwih8Im-ic_9AhXhIjQIHdJVBWMQFnoECA4QAQ&usg=AOvVaw2au7z1gIQKaFakPez7h4r7
My central mission in this conversation is to define time in terms of boundaries and their inter-relationships.
My central premise is that time is a type of general boundary modulator; perhaps it is the general boundary modulator.
For an example of what I mean, consider: once you were a boy in single digits; now you are a man in double digits. How did this change happen? Typically, we say, "Time passed and you, making your various rights of passage: birth, first steps, first words, first date, graduation, first job, marriage and etc., moved on, growing older."
Well, do you think these rights of passage are moving you along through one boundary after another? Do you think passage through all of these boundaries has been actuated -- maybe I should rather say, facilitated -- by time?
Thanks for the weigh-in. Dialogue is divine, even when it's not.
You think my thinking untidy.
The hard trick in slinking behind low expectations: maintaining enough public interest to avoid wholesale dismissal. Invective trumps silence, especially when it's instructive.
Against obverse inclination, you've been doing your job of examination: unselfish.
Hostile interest is intriguing because -- I'm off topic...
Back to chasing reverberation. Goal: sustain your pithy judgments.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Can you elaborate? Can you give me a link to an article that elaborates?
If time is flowing, that is moving relative to different states of the universe, then it must be doing so over some sort of second time dimension. Some philosophers have accepted this and posited an infinite regress of time dimensions, but it seems unappealing to most.
Second, under special relativity, the order in which events occur can be different for different observers. This makes it unclear as to how any time flow could occur.
I see one inconsistency and one redundancy in this argumentation:
First, there's a circularity: You take two different things, a cause and an effect, and assume that they are one thing --in a sense, or whatever. Then you conclude that cause and effect are the same, well, also in a sense.
Then you introduce the element of timing ("temporal sequencing") that refutes the above statement and which doesn't actually change anything; it's only another reason why the first statement is invalid, since cause precedes effect. Which can be also considered as a tautology.
Is it maybe the argumentation --as a whole-- not properly worded or constructed?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Does your statement above describe a situation containing two temporal progressions: a) different states of the universe; the differentials separating the states of the universe being one set of a type of time; b) time moving relative to the first set of time being the second set of a type of time?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
At the risk of being convoluted and opaque, "order in which events occur can be different for different observers" exemplifies time eliding even itself: that the ordering of events into a timeline is relative to the inertial frame of reference of the observer and thus there is no universal time: time penetrates its ordering of events in one locality with a different ordering of the same events in another locality.
Time is essential to location in that the structure of a location is not a separate thing apart from material things populating said location; a location is itself a material thing: spacetime. Spacetime is entangled with the material objects that seem to populate it. Entanglement ? time_gravitation.
Now we come to a big question: the boundaries of consciousness: How do time and gravitation negotiate the boundaries of consciousness? Lying center to this question is how do time and gravitation negotiate recursion? Suffice it to say the result of this negotiation is the axiom.
If you propagate an infinite number of successive executions of a computational function you get as a resultant a mathematical axiom.
Time plays an essential role in negotiating recursion en route to axiomatic truth. Expressed in phenomenal terms, this is time penetrating the boundaries of consciousness.*
Aristotle's agent-intellect is propagated by recursion negotiated by time to time-approaching-time-zero. This is also dimensional expansion, viz., propagation of existence instantiated in material objects.
*What are the boundaries of consciousness? One of the boundaries of consciousness is infinite computational recursion en route to time negotiating time-approaching-time-zero. This is echo feedback looping in route to consciousness.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
Quoting Alkis Piskas
Your analysis is correct. What I'm trying to do has to be processed through the channel of truth. Think of a plumb line and how it's used to keep a building vertical all the way to its apex. If the plumb line holds to the datum at the base of the structure, we say it's true.
In our phenomenal world of everyday experience, we couldn't well navigate constant potential sensory overload if our pattern recognition of cause-and-effect didn't phrase-up to a unified concept wherein the plumb line from a to b holds true.
A and b holding true to each other is a tautology, except that we have the complication that a and b don't look like each other. That's the mysterious time element. Dispelling the seeming difference of a and b is, however, the adventure of life. We make our journeys in search of truth and, if successful, we confirm that a is really b and vice versa. The seeming endless variety of creation boils down to the ohmm of oneness the ascended spiritualists keep exposing to us.
Time, therefore, elides the multi-forms of creation into a universal oneness of blissful wholeness.
The fall from grace is the smashing up of wholeness into pieces; humans, however, cannot be happy without the adventure of reconstruction
Time, beyond water, holds top rank as the universal solvent: with enough time, drops of water pound coal into diamond.
Where do you buy your weed? A blessed product.
We need to define time in order to avoid confusion. Aristotle's defines time as "the measure of change according to before and after." If we accept this definition, then time is not a thing, but a measure number specified by both the change measured (say, the number of cycles of some process) and the details of the measuring process. We see this in special relativity, where time measure numbers depend on the frame of reference used in measuring change.
Given this definition, it is difficult to see how there could be more than one time dimension. Possibly a physical state could change along one time-like axis and while no change would be perceptible along another. So, we would have a universe in which different, independent, kinds of change occurred -- a continuous sequence of universes orthogonal to the base universe and its "normal" time.
Such a second time dimension might have its own laws of motion and a reason that we could not experience it. But, if we could not experience it, it would not be parsimonious to propose it.
Of course, you could change the definition of time, but then you would need to ensure that it agreed with our normal time when the new definition reduced to that case.
Also, time does not flow, because it does not exist independently of being measured. What flows is the sequence of events that change produces, and that we use to produce a time measure number.
Somewhat unconventional, but very interesting ideas! :up:
I enjoyed it. And it reminded me somehow of "The Tao of Physics" that I read about 50 years ago! :smile: And I loved it!
Quoting jgill
In the olden days (my childhood), when we had milkmen and they delivered milk in glass bottles to our door, sometimes a bottle would lie burst on its side. Dad, looking at the bottle, would say, "Another loss from water turning into ice."
Did you not learn to navigate sequences of events in this manner?
Somebody -- Was it Aristotle? -- talked about the essential importance of metaphor in the exercise of human intelligence.
I, being lazy, use "time" to signify: What flows is the sequence of events that change produces....
Getting fancy, let me add that,
syn·ec·do·che | s??nekd?k? |
noun
a figure of speech in which a part is made to represent the whole or vice versa, as in Cleveland won by six runs (meaning Cleveland's baseball team).
I have no problem with figures of speech that are recognized to such.
He also says, that in another sense "time" is what is measured.
Quoting Dfpolis
"Time" as that which is measured, is completely different from "time" as "the measure of...". One's the territory, the other the map, so to speak. But, they both agree with a "normal time", to some extent. Notice though, that the definition you provided is qualified with "according to before and after". This means that we must refer to an apprehended "before and after" to be able to employ time as a measure of change. And this is where the problem which points to, lies.
Since this is a very real problem, we ought to start with the other definition, that time is what is measured. Then we can say that "before" and "after" are products of the measurement of time, and the inconsistency in before and after which ucarr points to, is attributable to the way that time is measured, distinguishing between the measure, and what is measured. And, we can say deficiencies in the way that time is measured creates the appearance of inconsistency in before and after.
That time is what is measured is more consistent with our wider range of experience with the concept of "time" anyway. For example, when someone says what time it is. And when we see the problems of measurement exposed by the relativity of simultaneity, we can start to apprehend the need for more than one dimension of time, in order to give us precise measurement.
Where?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
In Aristotle's definition, the territory is the changing world. Time is a coordinate we place on its map.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes. We do this in light of the echos physical events leave in our memory. We remember what happened before now, not what will happen after now. We also see that our willed commitments can affect the future, but not the past.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
That is not a definition because it is implicitly circular. The result of measurement is time. So, by your definition, time is both the source and result of measurement, which leaves us completely in the dark about what we are measuring. A's definition makes clear what we are measuring, viz. change, which he defines with no reference to time as "the actualization of a potency insofar as it is still in potency."
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No, it does not. It allows us to eliminate misconceptions about spatially separate events. Some events are before or after a given event, no matter how we measure time. Others are not. If we fix upon a single place, the sequence of events is never in doubt.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I look at a changing clock to see what the measure number is. If the clock does not change, I don't trust it to indicate the time.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You seem not to understand relativity. It is all about how we measure things. As a result, Aristotle's concept of time is compatible with it, while Newton's concept of absolute time (which seems to be yours) is incompatible with it.
That would be "Physics" Bk 4, Ch 11-14.
Quoting Dfpolis
I don't think you've read the section of the "Physics" which I refer to, if this is what you think.
219b: "Time then is a kind of number (Number, we must note, is used in two senses --- both of what is counted or the countable and also of that with which we count. Time obviously is what is counted not that with which we count: these are different kinds of thing.)"
Quoting Dfpolis
It only becomes circular if you allow "time" to have both definitions, which would be equivocation anyway. So your argument that it is circular is an argument based in equivocation. The explicit equivocation is that "time" refers to both the thing measured, and what is produced by the measurement. If we adhere to the one definition, that time is what is counted, then the thing produced by the measurement is not time, but theory relating to time.
As an analogy, let "quantity" refer to the thing counted, and "number" refer to the counting theory. When a quantity is counted, the counting theory is employed to produce a theory which represents the thing counted. "There is x number of C in the lot", would be an example of such a theory produced from counting. Whether or not the theory is sound is not relevant here.
It may be the case that Aristotle in some ways establishes an equivalence between time and change, but he does qualify this by saying that time is the number of "continuous change". He defines "change" in terms of coming to be and passing away, and further with "cause". "Cause" is analyzed even further and divided into potential and actual. In a number of ways he describes how causes precede the end, and he also argues how time is a necessary condition for change. Therefore change is defined with reference to time. This is why he proceeds in the "Physics" from "change" to motion and time.
Quoting Dfpolis
That sure looks like inconsistency to me. If one way of measuring time results in a reversal of before and after, in comparison with another, and time is defined with reference to before and after, then there is inconsistency within the way that time is measured.
The discussion of time begins in ch. 10. There he notes that "no part of it is" (218a6). So, we need to be aware that while it is convenient to speak of beings of reason (ens rationis) as though they exist simpliciter, they do not. Time, as a measure number, exists only in the minds contemplating it. So, you need to distinguish between what is a convenient way of speaking, and Aristotle's doctrine.
Then, in ch. 11, he says, "Time then is a kind of number. [Emphasis mine] Number, we must note, is used in two waysboth of what is counted or countable and also of that with which we count. Time, then, is what is counted, not that with which we count: these are different kinds of thing." (219b6-9) As a number, it is not something existing in nature, but a mental entity resulting from a numbering operation. We can only number something which can be numbered, ie. change, which he has already argued time depends upon. This is entirely compatible with the classic definition of time as the measure of change according to before and after.
There is no point in continuing to pile quotation on quotation. You are misinterpreting the text.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
There is no equivocation. What is measured is time potentially. The result is time actually.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I suggest you read about simultaneity, and the difference between the time-like and space-like separation of events in special relativity. It would take too much of my time for me to explain to you.
I really think you need to reread that section, you might come to a better understanding. He clearly talks about time as being measured and he describes how time exists. This is what he says at 226b, 28:
"We have stated, then, that time exists and what it is, and in how many senses we speak of the 'now', and what 'at some time', 'lately', 'presently' or 'just', 'long ago', and 'suddenly' mean."
Notice that all these terms, all these ways of speaking, are grounded in time being something real. This is not a matter of "a convenient way of speaking". What is the case, is that there must be a real difference between the time referred to as "now", and the time referred to as "before now", and "after now", or else the distinction of before and after is incoherent. In other words, if time isn't something real, before and after make no sense.
Quoting Dfpolis
Aristotle was a student, of Plato, and numbers were considered to be existent things, as well as the symbols we use to count things. That's why he says number is used in two ways, what is countable, and that with which we count. Time is what is countable, therefore the terrain, not the map.
Quoting Dfpolis
Sure, but don't you see that in order for "before and after" to have any meaning, there must be time which is something real in nature, to give these words significance. So consider that we use time to measure change according to before and after, as you say. We can't just assign "before" and "after" arbitrarily, these designations are grounded in empirical observations, and this is the manifestation of time in its real, natural occurrence. Before and after are not mere fabrications of the mind, these words refer to a real, observed order in the physical world. The glass fell off the table before it broke on the floor. If there was no real order here, it would make just as much sense to say that the glass broke before it fell.
Quoting Dfpolis
I agree there is no point in looking at quotes, or even discussing what Aristotle thought, what is important is what we believe, you and I, and what is the truth to this matter.
Quoting Dfpolis
I don't get this at all , maybe you could explain. Doesn't time have to actually pass before it can be measured? How could one measure the potential passing of time? It seems to me like that would be a fictional measurement. Therefore I think you might want to reconsider this, as you seem to have it backward.
In our minds, in theory, we can work with all sorts of time intervals, and time durations, these mental constructions we might call "time potentially". Also, when we hand a name to a duration, like "day", "hour", "second", these are 'time potentially", because they do not refer to any actual, specific time period. But when we use a clock to measure time, the passing of time, this is actual time, as time is actually passing. The clock provides us with a measurement, "ten seconds" for example. But this is back to a mental construction. "Ten seconds" is potential time, unless we relate this to the actual passing of time in the world, for context, and say in qualification, "the ten seconds when...".
Yes, time exists, but as a measure number, a being of reason.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No, they are grounded in the reality of change.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, Aristotle was a student of Plato. He went on to reject his theory that ideas and numbers are substantial.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No, the potential and the actualized ground before and after.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Change is measurable according to before and after, say in the movement of clock hands. The act of measuring this produces time as a measure number.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It is not the potential passing of time, but the passing of potential time, stages in the process of change, that is measured.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No, what is imaginary is not potential. Potencies are grounded in actual states of nature, not the mind.
I do not intend to continue explaining this to you.
That's not accurate, because they are grounded in before and after, which is a specific feature of change. Your definition was "according to before and after". So if time is a measure of change, it measures only this particular parameter, that which relates to "before and after".
But the problem is that these other terms such as "lately", "long ago", "suddenly", introduce another aspect of time, other than "before and after" and that is duration, temporal extension, the meantime between before and after . So temporal measurement requires not only a judgement of before and after, but also a method for measuring the time (duration) between these, the meantime.
Quoting Dfpolis
You have this backward, before and after are used to ground potential and actual. That this is the case can be seen from what you refer to as "actualization". Actualization is the concept which establishes a relationship between potential and actual. Without that concept there is no direct relation between those two, and no way of deriving "before and after". Therefore "before and after" are not derived from potential and actual, and are not grounded in potential and actual.
Instead, "actualization" is used as a concept to relate potential to actual, by establishing the temporal relation of "before and after" between potential and actual. So, that there is a relationship between potential and actual is established with "actualization", and that this relationship is the relationship of "before and after" is established by the nature of "actualization".
"Actualization" represents the meantime, the duration between before and after. In traditional Greek terms this is "coming-to-be", the time between being not-X, and being X, in the condition of change, the act of generation. Therefore the concepts of "potential and actual" are grounded in the empirically observed reality of "coming-to-be", which occurs in the temporal duration (extension) of the meantime between before and after.
Quoting Dfpolis
Before and after set the boundaries of the parameter to be measured, which is the duration, or extension of time in between these two, the meantime. This is how we employ the "now" as Aristotle explained, we project it as a point in time, using it to establish boundaries to segregate a specific temporal duration. One instance of the projected "now" represents the before, the other represents the after, the duration between is measured.
It is necessary that "before" and "after" represent something empirically real, this grounds the projection of the now in real. And, in order that the temporal duration measured is applicable, the measured duration must also be something empirically real. Accordingly, the temporal duration measured, as the meantime between the two artificial boundaries created by the projection of the "now", is equally real and measurable and empirically verifiable, as is "before and after".
Quoting Dfpolis
Yes, potencies are grounded in actual states of nature, but potencies are produced by the mind. What is described by us, is what we claim as "actual", and from this we derive through the application of principles, specific potencies which are attributable to that described actuality. So potencies are grounded in actual states, but the "actual states" are descriptions which we produce, and these are themselves grounded in empirical observation.
The important point is that we cannot directly describe the world in terms of potencies, because what is derived from the activity of sensing is actualities. So it is only actualities, forms, which are grounded in the world; "grounded" meaning supported by empirical observation. From an analysis of these forms, actualities, along with the application of specific principles derived from an understanding of change, we can describe potencies. But the key point to apprehend is that there are "principles" which lie between, and separate the descriptions as actualities, and the derivative potencies. So both actualities and potencies are "grounded", but actualities are grounded directly by empirical observation, while potencies are grounded by actualities, through the means of principles which relate potencies to actualities. As described above, in Aristotle this relationship is established with the concept of "actualization", which is derived from the ancient understanding of "coming-to-be".
Quoting ucarr
Well, according to the O.P., he plummets.
Yet the point's that the relationship that's merely between these states of experience can be represented in terms of precession & succession, without any physical cause being required in order to do so. In other words, when the parachutist was inside of the plane that was up in the air, he wasn't plummeting, but when he was subsequently completely outside of it, at some point, he was; the former state temporally preceding, & the latter state temporally succeeding, the other; without any physical cause being required in order to represent this series of events, as I've literally just done so.
Quoting ucarr
Continuity isn't causality. A thing may be the former without being the latter. For example, one point in space can be represented as being continuous with another, & yet neither depends on or is the "effect" of the other in existence. Therefore, continuity isn't causality.
The "middle" & the "beginning" of the story are temporal determinations, not causal. The "beginning" & the "middle" of the day may be lit out, with the "end" of it being dark at night, & yet neither the light of the "beginning" & the "middle" our story, or day, nor the darkness at the "end" of it are either the causes or the effects of the other. Thus, just because something, like a story, can be represented with a "beginning," a "middle," & an "end" doesn't presuppose causal reality within it.
Quoting ucarr
An "effect" can't be separated from its "cause." One can witness Cathy's confidence without knowing of what "Joey did to Cathy last night." Thus, it can't be claimed that Cathy's confidence is an effect of the latter, unless you're saying that the knowledge of that "effect" can be separated from its "cause" (which is contradictory, & so a reason why this scenario can't be an example of causality). Not mentioning that "last night" & "next morning" are temporal determinations, which, as I've just pointed out above, aren't inherently causal.
I'm curious how you can do that. :chin:
Well, seeing as, at https://www.dictionary.com/browse/continuous, "continuous" is definable as "being in immediate connection or spatial relationship," it should seem quite distinctly. :cool:
Quoting ItIsWhatItIs
Can you take your above quote and apply it to your below quote?
Quoting ItIsWhatItIs
I can't 'cause I neither observe causes nor effects within it. Although, honestly, I'm not sure that I get what it's that you're asking. So, if you just happen to elucidate it, that won't be a bad thing.
One thing may precede another thing without the preceding thing being the cause of the succeeding thing.
Is my above interpretation of your quote correct?
Quoting ItIsWhatItIs
Continuity alone does not imply causality.
Is my interpretation of your above quote correct?
Can you cite an example of causality without continuity?
My quote that you're referencing there, when I say that "a thing may be the former without being the latter," isn't about precession & succession. So, it's a "no" as to the interpretation, but, yeah, I've said that before & hold it still.
Quoting ucarr
Yeah, your "interpretation" is correct. As to an example: firstly, my assertion was that continuity isn't causality, i.e., not conversely, & so I can't be asked to cite an example of there being causality without continuity, because I've never claimed that. Secondly, I've already provided an example of that assertion in my post before last, as well as a definition of "continuity" in the latter. Yet that's a better way to approach this one point, that is, to settle on its definition before I restate my given example. So, before I give you an example of continuity without causality, please tell me: how do you understand that term?
A line through space is continuous in the common sense of the word and exists without causality. But I can interpret the line as a contour "caused by" a function f(t).
Quoting ItIsWhatItIs
Quoting ItIsWhatItIs
I claim a correct interpretation of a claim isn't limited to covering the meaning intentionally expressed by the writer of the claim; it can also cover the syntactical meaning of the claim, even if it's not an expression of the writer's intention.
What do you say in reaction to this?
Quoting ucarr
Quoting ItIsWhatItIs
Are you claiming my question is illegal because it asks you to respond to a claim you haven't made?
Quoting ItIsWhatItIs
Quoting ItIsWhatItIs
Assuming the above is the quote, is this a correct interpretation: causal relationships imply continuity?
My conclusion: The reverse-ordered statement: "Continuity implies causality" is incorrect.
Quoting jgill
You are claiming a line through space is and isn't the effect of a cause?
"Illegal"? No. Yet I don't have the burden of proof by an example for something I that didn't assert. So, to be sure, not "illegal," but illogical.
Quoting ucarr
I'd like you to ask my previous question first: how do you define the word "continuity" or "continuous"? Besides, even if I'd affirm it, that still wouldn't undermine my point. For, given that all "xs" are "ys" doesn't necessarily mean that all "ys" are "xs."
Quoting ucarr
Still, even if I did, that wouldn't defeat my point, & would rather support it. For, that some "xs" are "ys" precisely means that all "xs" aren't, & therefore "x" can be without "y"; in other words, "continuity, i.e., 'x,'" can be without "causality, i.e., 'y'"; which was precisely the point that was to be proven.
Quoting ItIsWhatItIs
How to define "continuity" is what I'm attempting to examine. If something is continuous, such as the lifespan of an individual human, how to we correctly understand the changes that reshape the identity of this human over time? Specifically, how do we correctly assess the consequences of the individual's behavior? Typically, we say our actions have consequences. For this reason, we're concerned about doing the right thing so as to avoid negative consequences. Actions with consequences is the foundation for viewing and judging the moral success or failure of an individual's life. I think the implication of moral judgment is that choices and behavior are causal; they have effects.
Is it wrong to think of the lifespan of an individual as a continuity through time if continuity precludes causal relationships between choices, behavior and consequences?
As a Platonic object it exists. It is describable by a contour function. Word babble IMO.