My point was that thermodynamics explains (most of) the experience of passing-ness. Or, more precisely, it explains why our cognition is set up to process time dynamically, with memories accumulating as we grow older, and with the future appearing to be “open”. I don’t believe there’s any objective phenomenon of passing-ness, so that’s not something that needs to be explained.
Even if passimgness is not an objective reality, it is a subjecrive illusion, and that is no easier to explain.
An eternalist theory can’t explain why we process dynamically, since it is exclusive of dynamism.
Eternalism can account for an arrow of time , and therefore why I don’t have memories of time T4 at moment T3. What it can’t account for is why I don’t have simultaneous direct awareness of T2 and T3 and T4. Saying that that is because they are different times answer the question easily under the A series theory, because T4 does not exist at T3. But if all times co exist, why don’t I have consciousness of all of them? If I am a 4D entity, why don’t I have a 4D consciousness ?
Consciousness and other brain states are not properties of you, the 4-D entity. They are properties of particular time slices of that 4-D entity, and different time slices can instantiate different properties. So it is a category error to ask “Why don’t I have consciousness of all times?” if by “I” you’re referring to a 4-D entity and not an individual time slice. 4-D entities are not the sorts of things that are conscious. Time-slices of (certain) 4-D entities are. I don’t even know how to answer your final question, because I have no idea what you mean by “4-D consciousness”.
Now maybe we can re-word your question like so: “If all times co-exist, why don’t my time-slices have consciousness of all of them?” But the answer to this question is simple: Your time-slices do have consciousness of all of them (at least, all of the ones between your birth and death). It’s just that different time-slices are conscious of different times; each one is conscious of the time at which it is located. It is (currently) true that my time-slice from two hours ago (who is located at a time two hours in the past of the time I’m typing this) is conscious of that time.
An analogy: Suppose you invent a time machine. You use the time machine to travel three years into the past. As a consequence, there are now two spatially separated “yous” located at the same time—the “you” from three years ago and the “you” who just time-traveled. Let’s say the former is in England and the latter is in Greece. Surely you wouldn’t expect each one of the “yous” to have some sort of combination of England and Greece experiences. You’d expect the one in England to have England experiences and the one in Greece to have Greece experiences. For similar reasons, the eternalist should expect each time-slice to have experiences specific to its own (space-time) location, not some combination of the experiences of all time-slices. And, indeed, that is what we observe. So I don’t think there’s any deep mystery here.
To explain the phenomenology of passingness, then, reduces to a problem of explaining why each time slice identifies strongly with other time slices, and the particular structure of that identification. The way in which my current time-slice’s psychological states are related to those of past time-slices is very different from the way in which they are related to those of future time-slices. Also, the way they are related to proximal past time-slices is different from the way in which they are related to those of distal time-slices. I think it is analyzing the nuances of these cross-temporal relationships that will get us farthest towards understanding the phenomenology of temporal passage (at least, as far as we can get without a solution to the hard problem of consciousness). A-theory and presentism, by contrast, do not help me understand passage at all, so I really don’t see their advantage in this regard.
Consciousness and other brain states are not properties of you, the 4-D entity. They are properties of particular time slices of that 4-D entity, and different time slices can instantiate different properties. So it is a category error to ask “Why don’t I have consciousness of all times?” if by “I” you’re referring to a 4-D entity and not an individual time slice. 4-D entities are not the sorts of things that are conscious. Time-slices of (certain) 4-D entities are. I don’t even know how to answer your final question, because I have no idea what you mean by “4-D consciousness”.
A 4D consciousness is what you would naturally expect a 4D entity to passed, and a 4D entity is what you would naturally expect to find in a 4D universe.
Empirical, entities seem to be 3D, and consciousness, where present, seems to supervene on 3D states...seems empirically that is. Fully fledged empiricism would not only suggest 3D consciousness, but presentism … there us no direct evidence of past and future start. Fully fledged 4Dism would suggest 4D consciousness. What you have put forward is a compromise. 3D consciousness is a natural consequence of presentism, because there is only a 3D slice to available to supervene on. 3D consciousness is not a natural consequence of Eternalism.
It’s not the only compromise position either...the growing block universe is also a compromises.
On reflection, I disagree that consciousness seems to supervene on 3D states. Consciousness seems to me to be a necessarily temporally extended phenomenon. I don’t know what it would mean for an object that only existed for a single instant to be conscious.
Consider this thought experiment: Suppose you were able to freeze me right now, so that all processes in my body halted. In particular, my brain remained frozen in its current state, with nothing happening in it. Would this frozen version of me be experiencing things continuously? It seems to me that both science and intuition strongly suggest that the answer is “no”, that the frozen me would be unconscious. Yet if you believe that consciousness supervenes on 3-D states, then you would have to say that the answer is “yes”. Each 3-D slice of that frozen person is identical to my current 3-D slice (or the 3-D slice of me a few moments ago, to be more accurate), and there’s no denying that I am currently experiencing things. If those experiences supervene on my 3-D state, then they must be shared by the frozen version of me, but that seems pretty counter-intuitive to me.
So in a sense I agree that consciousness is a property of 4-D entities. Not the entire 4-D entity corresponding to a person’s space-time worm, but of thin (but not infinitesimally thin) slices of that worm.
Also when you say that empirical entities seem to be 3-D, you are presumably talking about prima facie appearance. Our most sophisticated empirical understanding of the world suggests that those entities are 4-D, since presentism (and even endurantism) has huge problems reconciling itself with relativity. It would be a poor empiricist who placed more credence in prima facie empirical evidence than the carefully refined empirical evidence provided by our best science.
Relativity, however, is a bad match for quantum mechanics. The growing block universe is, on the other hand, a good match for the objective reduction. I agree with Rovelli that each major physical theory has a different picture of time.
I also agree that we should expect consciousness to supervene on small but nonzero stretches of activity.
My point was that thermodynamics explains (most of) the experience of passing-ness. Or, more precisely, it explains why our cognition is set up to process time dynamically, with memories accumulating as we grow older, and with the future appearing to be “open”. I don’t believe there’s any objective phenomenon of passing-ness, so that’s not something that needs to be explained.
Even if passimgness is not an objective reality, it is a subjecrive illusion, and that is no easier to explain.
An eternalist theory can’t explain why we process dynamically, since it is exclusive of dynamism.
Eternalism can account for an arrow of time , and therefore why I don’t have memories of time T4 at moment T3. What it can’t account for is why I don’t have simultaneous direct awareness of T2 and T3 and T4. Saying that that is because they are different times answer the question easily under the A series theory, because T4 does not exist at T3. But if all times co exist, why don’t I have consciousness of all of them? If I am a 4D entity, why don’t I have a 4D consciousness ?
Consciousness and other brain states are not properties of you, the 4-D entity. They are properties of particular time slices of that 4-D entity, and different time slices can instantiate different properties. So it is a category error to ask “Why don’t I have consciousness of all times?” if by “I” you’re referring to a 4-D entity and not an individual time slice. 4-D entities are not the sorts of things that are conscious. Time-slices of (certain) 4-D entities are. I don’t even know how to answer your final question, because I have no idea what you mean by “4-D consciousness”.
Now maybe we can re-word your question like so: “If all times co-exist, why don’t my time-slices have consciousness of all of them?” But the answer to this question is simple: Your time-slices do have consciousness of all of them (at least, all of the ones between your birth and death). It’s just that different time-slices are conscious of different times; each one is conscious of the time at which it is located. It is (currently) true that my time-slice from two hours ago (who is located at a time two hours in the past of the time I’m typing this) is conscious of that time.
An analogy: Suppose you invent a time machine. You use the time machine to travel three years into the past. As a consequence, there are now two spatially separated “yous” located at the same time—the “you” from three years ago and the “you” who just time-traveled. Let’s say the former is in England and the latter is in Greece. Surely you wouldn’t expect each one of the “yous” to have some sort of combination of England and Greece experiences. You’d expect the one in England to have England experiences and the one in Greece to have Greece experiences. For similar reasons, the eternalist should expect each time-slice to have experiences specific to its own (space-time) location, not some combination of the experiences of all time-slices. And, indeed, that is what we observe. So I don’t think there’s any deep mystery here.
To explain the phenomenology of passingness, then, reduces to a problem of explaining why each time slice identifies strongly with other time slices, and the particular structure of that identification. The way in which my current time-slice’s psychological states are related to those of past time-slices is very different from the way in which they are related to those of future time-slices. Also, the way they are related to proximal past time-slices is different from the way in which they are related to those of distal time-slices. I think it is analyzing the nuances of these cross-temporal relationships that will get us farthest towards understanding the phenomenology of temporal passage (at least, as far as we can get without a solution to the hard problem of consciousness). A-theory and presentism, by contrast, do not help me understand passage at all, so I really don’t see their advantage in this regard.
A 4D consciousness is what you would naturally expect a 4D entity to passed, and a 4D entity is what you would naturally expect to find in a 4D universe.
Empirical, entities seem to be 3D, and consciousness, where present, seems to supervene on 3D states...seems empirically that is. Fully fledged empiricism would not only suggest 3D consciousness, but presentism … there us no direct evidence of past and future start. Fully fledged 4Dism would suggest 4D consciousness. What you have put forward is a compromise. 3D consciousness is a natural consequence of presentism, because there is only a 3D slice to available to supervene on. 3D consciousness is not a natural consequence of Eternalism.
It’s not the only compromise position either...the growing block universe is also a compromises.
On reflection, I disagree that consciousness seems to supervene on 3D states. Consciousness seems to me to be a necessarily temporally extended phenomenon. I don’t know what it would mean for an object that only existed for a single instant to be conscious.
Consider this thought experiment: Suppose you were able to freeze me right now, so that all processes in my body halted. In particular, my brain remained frozen in its current state, with nothing happening in it. Would this frozen version of me be experiencing things continuously? It seems to me that both science and intuition strongly suggest that the answer is “no”, that the frozen me would be unconscious. Yet if you believe that consciousness supervenes on 3-D states, then you would have to say that the answer is “yes”. Each 3-D slice of that frozen person is identical to my current 3-D slice (or the 3-D slice of me a few moments ago, to be more accurate), and there’s no denying that I am currently experiencing things. If those experiences supervene on my 3-D state, then they must be shared by the frozen version of me, but that seems pretty counter-intuitive to me.
So in a sense I agree that consciousness is a property of 4-D entities. Not the entire 4-D entity corresponding to a person’s space-time worm, but of thin (but not infinitesimally thin) slices of that worm.
Also when you say that empirical entities seem to be 3-D, you are presumably talking about prima facie appearance. Our most sophisticated empirical understanding of the world suggests that those entities are 4-D, since presentism (and even endurantism) has huge problems reconciling itself with relativity. It would be a poor empiricist who placed more credence in prima facie empirical evidence than the carefully refined empirical evidence provided by our best science.
Relativity, however, is a bad match for quantum mechanics. The growing block universe is, on the other hand, a good match for the objective reduction. I agree with Rovelli that each major physical theory has a different picture of time.
I also agree that we should expect consciousness to supervene on small but nonzero stretches of activity.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/1jm/getting_over_dust_theory/88rs
However, this still isn’t a hold match for full strength Eternalism.
The numerical value of each part of that slice is equivalent to the numerical value of the same part of your current slice, but the derivative is not.