Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id EAA01694 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Wed, 30 Jan 2002 04:28:01 GMT Message-ID: <005501c1a945$d6b7eca0$3c24f4d8@teddace> From: "Dace" <edace@earthlink.net> To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> References: <200201290803.g0T83jD15168@mail12.bigmailbox.com> Subject: Re: ality Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2002 20:23:12 -0800 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4133.2400 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4133.2400 Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Joe Dees:
> >> >> >As long as you've conceded the reduction of real time to
> >> >> >space-time, there's nothing you can say against determinism.
> >> >> >
> >> >> Wrong; spatiotemporality is quite real
> >> >
> >> >Of course. Everything that exists in space also exists in time.
> >> >From the point of view of physical objects, the two are totally
> >> >intertwined. But time itself doesn't exist in space. It exists
> >> >intrinsically, irreducibly.
> >> >
> >> Nope; spatiotemporality is a single irreduceable manifold.
> >
> >Spacetime is real insofar as everything spatial is also temporal. What's
unreal is the notion that time has no existence apart from space, that time
is static and given, like space, which renders past and future akin to left
and right, except that, in our limited abilities (soon to be swept away by
Science) we can only see what's to the left, while the right remains in a
haze. But with sufficient technological know-how we will find ourselves
behind the projector and then in front of the screen, with a button for
fast-forward and another one for rewind. We'll see how it's all really
concurrent and therefore determined. There's no possibility, once you
reduce time to spacetime, that any event could be uncaused. Look around,
from big bang to big crunch, it's all done, all simultaneous. How could it
be otherwise if duration is illusory and time a fourth spatial dimension?
> >
> [...] we have artificially bifurcated a single perceptual
spatiotemporality into 'space' and 'time', [...]
You keep coming back with the same point-- that spacetime is real-- despite
the fact that I'm clearly not denying its existence. Space is bound up with
time. Space, after all, is present. What is spatialized is right now. The
past doesn't have any space. Potentiality takes up no space. Only the
present has space. Space (and matter and energy) is what marks the present
off from what is past and what is potential. Since all events in space are
also in time, we may speak of spacetime. All of our experience occurs in
spacetime. But time is continual motion. The present is continually
bleeding into the past, as what was merely potential becomes actual in a new
present. And on and on and on. So time is more than just spacetime. This
doesn't mean there's a time without space. Present time is spatialized.
But its inherent motion, which space entirely lacks, makes time into
something fundamentally different, and without this difference there would
be no possibility of novelty and therefore of freedom. This is simply to
take time at face value, rather than assuming it to be a fourth spatial
dimension. Einstein was correct about spacetime. His error was to imagine
that spacetime is synonymous with time. It is not. It is synonymous with
space.
Once again, asserting the reality of time in no way denies the reality of
spacetime (any more than asserting the reality of the mind denies the
reality of the brain).
> >> >Only when viewed from the outside-- that is, from the point of view
> >> >of space-- does it appear to be purely relative to space.
> >> >
> >> Neither is dependent upon the other; they are interrelationally
correlative with neither being prior or posterior.
> >
> >Time is both prior and posterior to space. What exists, objectively,
right now, is space, which we now know as spacetime. Time is past and
potential, memory and novelty. To the extent that time is present, it's
identical to space (hence spacetime). To the extent that time is motion
it's identical to itself. This is why space (spacetime) is relative while
time is absolute. Time is reality while spacetime is derivative, ephemeral,
fleeting. If reality were spacetime, then there would be no freedom, no
self, no mind. If life has the same relation to time that branches have to
their treetrunk, then we too are self-existent and free, and it's this
self-existence that constitutes the mind. This is why memory and will are
mental. This is why we know time from within. Time is the one thing we
observe in everything around us that's also inside of us, at our core. We
seem to be made of it, and we are. Time is universal self-existence, and
life is local self-existence. We can talk about all this because we inhabit
a mental environment, because humanity is mental self-existence. We are
mental creatures, making use of primitive primate bodies to propagate
ourselves. And we, in turn, our used by our own mental offspring, culture
and cult, both of which are made up of myriad cells, i.e. memes.
> >
> Your cryptoreligios pseudoassertion that unless people accept your flawed
schema they must forsake self, mind and freedom is ludicrous, especially
when compounded by such unsupported (because unsupportable, because wrong)
statements such as "Time is both prior and posterior to space".
>>>
"Prior" and "posterior" are functions of time. Space has no priority, and
it has no posteriority. That's why it's space, not time.
Ted
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