Your original comment describes a process of thought and self-introspection. But you can’t have thought without the passage of time. In fact a lot of things require the concept of time: for instance the concept of utility (or desires, goals, etc.) as observed in someone’s actions.
At a durationless moment in time, there is a certain configuration of matter that makes up your body, but there isn’t any thought or behavior going on. You can’t talk about utility as you do without assuming the connection between self-instances over time, but that connection is what you’re trying to get rid of.
But you can’t have thought without the passage of time.
Help me understand your argument better:
I hold out a ball and drop it, and it accelerates towards the ground at 10 m/s^2
At t=5, time stops.
If we compared reality(t=5) to reality(t=0), we would know that the ball has traveled 125 feet from where it was.
If we unfroze time, the ball would be moving at 50 m/s.
If we unfroze time, teh ball would be accelerating at 10 m/s^2.
If we unfroze time, my utility function would be u(t=5).
If I understand your argument correctly, you are essentially arguing that just because we can’t talk about velocity, acceleration, and utility functions while time isn’t flowing, it’s not meaningful to say what velocity, acceleration, and utility functions are at a given moment.
I think that Dan’s point was simply that the process of, for example, comparing two world-states (such as t=5 and t=0) in order to calculate the distance traveled by the ball between those states requires non-zero time to complete.
TheOtherDave is right. To expand on that, I also tried to make the following point. You were trying to do without the concept of “a self that persists over time”. You said:
You might note that while I have not tabood subjective experience entirely, I have noted that an “individual” can only subjectively experience the present moment, and that “your” utility function compels “you” to act in such a way as to bring about your preferred future scenarios, in accordance with your (objective) model of the universe.
My point was that you cannot literally experience the present moment. You can experience only lengths of time. Where there is no passage of time, there is no subjective experience.
So while you were trying to start with a “self” that exists in the moment and extract the logical linkage to that self’s successors over time, I pointed out that this bridges short durations of time to long ones, but it doesn’t bridge single moments of time to even short durations. And so, restricting yourself to short periods of time doesn’t resolve the issue you were discussing, because you still have to assume the existence of a self with subjective experience that persists over that short period of time.
Your original comment describes a process of thought and self-introspection. But you can’t have thought without the passage of time. In fact a lot of things require the concept of time: for instance the concept of utility (or desires, goals, etc.) as observed in someone’s actions.
At a durationless moment in time, there is a certain configuration of matter that makes up your body, but there isn’t any thought or behavior going on. You can’t talk about utility as you do without assuming the connection between self-instances over time, but that connection is what you’re trying to get rid of.
Help me understand your argument better:
I hold out a ball and drop it, and it accelerates towards the ground at 10 m/s^2
At t=5, time stops.
If we compared reality(t=5) to reality(t=0), we would know that the ball has traveled 125 feet from where it was.
If we unfroze time, the ball would be moving at 50 m/s.
If we unfroze time, teh ball would be accelerating at 10 m/s^2.
If we unfroze time, my utility function would be u(t=5).
If I understand your argument correctly, you are essentially arguing that just because we can’t talk about velocity, acceleration, and utility functions while time isn’t flowing, it’s not meaningful to say what velocity, acceleration, and utility functions are at a given moment.
I think that Dan’s point was simply that the process of, for example, comparing two world-states (such as t=5 and t=0) in order to calculate the distance traveled by the ball between those states requires non-zero time to complete.
TheOtherDave is right. To expand on that, I also tried to make the following point. You were trying to do without the concept of “a self that persists over time”. You said:
My point was that you cannot literally experience the present moment. You can experience only lengths of time. Where there is no passage of time, there is no subjective experience.
So while you were trying to start with a “self” that exists in the moment and extract the logical linkage to that self’s successors over time, I pointed out that this bridges short durations of time to long ones, but it doesn’t bridge single moments of time to even short durations. And so, restricting yourself to short periods of time doesn’t resolve the issue you were discussing, because you still have to assume the existence of a self with subjective experience that persists over that short period of time.
I’m afraid I still don’t see… isn’t that still analogous to saying you can’t have something like “velocity” in a single moment?
Where exactly does the analogy between subjective experience at a given time and velocity at a given time break down here?