Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id FAA00745 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-bounces@mmu.ac.uk); Fri, 24 Aug 2001 05:21:36 +0100 From: <joedees@bellsouth.net> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Date: Thu, 23 Aug 2001 23:25:43 -0500 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: Logic Message-ID: <3B8590F7.24052.143DA0F@localhost> In-reply-to: <002b01c12b53$5f061a80$f986b2d1@teddace> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12c) Sender: fmb-bounces@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
On 22 Aug 2001, at 14:42, Dace wrote:
> From: Chris Taylor
>
> > > Bergson asks us to think of time in terms of a pond. There's no
> absolute
> > > separation between the surface of a pond and its depths. Yet we
> > > go
> around
> > > speaking of the "surface" and the "depths" as if they were two
> > > different things.
> >
> > Surface - air-water interface.
> > Depths - below surface.
> >
> > Current - happening now, instantly part of the past.
> > Past - things that have happened.
> >
> > There is a difference between the past and the present
>
> And there's a difference between heads and tails. But the difference
> is only within the context of sameness. There's no gap separating the
> two sides of a coin,
>
Funny; I just checked, and I could SWEAR that there's some
metal in there!
>
> and it's the same with present and past. Like
> the coin, time is singular. It's not composed of discrete elements.
> Our distinction between present and past, between days and hours, is
> purely utilitarian. If we didn't distinguish between heads and tails,
> flipping a coin would be meaningless. But that doesn't mean the
> disinction between them is absolute.
>
Fumnny; I just checked, and I could SWEAR that the pictures on
the sides are different - one has a head, and the other doesn't (I
guess that's the 'tails' side).
>
> - you can argue
> > that we're passing along the fourth dimension of space-time thingy,
> > but MR would be the index case of something from the past having
> > *any* existence in the present.
>
> If time is merely another dimension tacked onto the first three, then
> past and future are akin to left and right, and "time travel" is
> perfectly plausible. If time is a kind of space in which we're
> constantly moving at the same rate in the same direction, then going
> back to the past would simply entail stopping and reversing direction.
>
This error is caused by the erroneous belief that we can ever
REALLY return ANYWHERE; as Heraclitus stated, we can never
step in the same river twice (to which a Sophist replied that we can
never step in the SAME river even once!). When you walk from
your computer to the bathroom and return, both you and the
terminal are different. It (and you) have moved many thousands of
miles in planetary and galactic position, each of you has gained
and lost some molecules, and you have gained some memory; you
have also both aged, and slightly differentially, as the two of you
were moving with reference to each other. The single perceptual
spatiotemporal manifold does not allow such returns, for reasons
tied to statistical probability, massive aggregates and entropy.
>
> In principle there's nothing to prevent this. This flawed view also
> implies absolute determinism, since everything has already happened.
> We can hop around to see our future as well as our past. Yet, the
> very idea of a time tourist implies a second kind of time, a
> continuous motion from the tourist's past to the tourist's future.
> This is real time, the time that cannot be reduced to a kind of
> extra-space. As Bergson pointed out, real time cannot be eliminated.
> "Sooner or later" we are forced to confront its inherent nature.
>
The actually existing manifold is spatiotemporal; as I explained in
another post, Bergson illegitimately bifurcated this manifold,
mistakenly following Immanuel Kant.
>
> > This is a bigger question than development,
> > because you're positing the passage of information from the past,
> > direct. So are we talking about some undiscovered continually
> > existent store of info (so where do we start looking), or are we
> > talking about access to information direct from the past?
>
> Where do we start looking for memory? This could take awhile, since
> time is a matter of when, not where.
>
Spatiotemporality is a matter of when/where. Memories are
encoded in the electrochemical patterns in my skull here/now; I do
not expect them to be found there a thousand years hence.
>
> Sheldrake refuses to say definitively whether organic form somehow
> stays with the current of time, or if the past is in some way
> literally present. I think it's because he's not willing to be
> completely true to Bergson. >From the point of view of matter, the
> past is null and void. The past has neither space nor matter. But if
> time is a thing in itself, irreducible to material events in space,
> then the past doesn't need space and matter to exist. Of course, to
> posit that anything has inherent nature or self-existence is move from
> physics into metaphysics. Perhaps Sheldrake is wise to stay out of
> this dispute.
>
He would be even wiser to cease maintaining the reality of his
fantasy.
>
> > Books etc. don't count, because they are in the present as well as
> > the past (sort of a concrete version of option one in the last
> > paragraph).
>
> As material objects, books exist only in the present. If a book could
> exist in the past as well as the present, then it would still be at
> the printing factory and the bookstore as well as your hands while you
> read it.
>
The book existed there/then, and continued to existentially perdure
through the passage of spatiotemporality all the way to here/now.
>
> > Btw, to what extent do allegedly MR-influenced items refer
> > to the past, and to what extent to other contemporary instances of
> > the item?
>
> Morphic resonance works across time, not space. Non-contact effects
> across space involve fields, whether morphic, electromagnetic, or
> gravitational.
>
Since spatiotemporality is a single manifold, such a contention is
absurd on its face. And if it were true, then an organism, to receive
morphic blessings, would have to be born in the exact identical
location as its precursor (which is impossible, considering the
movelent of the solar system, galaxy and supergalaxy).
>
> Ted
>
>
>
> ===============================================================
> This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
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>
===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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