Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id BAA03717 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Thu, 31 Jan 2002 01:35:34 GMT Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2002 17:29:46 -0800 Message-Id: <200201310129.g0V1Tk506664@mail12.bigmailbox.com> Content-Type: text/plain Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary X-Mailer: MIME-tools 4.104 (Entity 4.116) X-Originating-Ip: [66.156.195.74] From: "Joe Dees" <joedees@addall.com> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: Re: ality Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk('binary' encoding is not supported, stored as-is)
> "Dace" <edace@earthlink.net> <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Re: alityDate: Tue, 29 Jan 2002 20:23:12 -0800
>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.
>
Your example, if taken at face value, would not only excise the 'space' from past experience, but the 'time' as well. Where is the time in a memory? The same place that it's space is. If we play a memory back, we re-member, that is, virtually re-live, ourselves as occupying specific dynamically changing positions relative to our environment that we once in reality occupied; both their re-membered movement and our re-membered dynamically changing perpectives in relation to them are co-present in memory. We re-member spatiotemporally, because we experience that way. When our memories become knowledge, as when we lose the context and linguisticize the rest, all of spatiotemporality - it's temporal as well as its spatial aspect - have been excised from them.
>
>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).
>
It is only the naive and untutored introspection that fails to notice their co-presence in every worldly perception, every bodily proprioception, and every stream of consciousness (which we experience as happening in a location behind our eyes, not in our big toes or in the next room or nowhere).
>
>> >> >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.
>
And, I suppose, that time has no before or behind, no left or right, no above or below. In fact, time cannot even be within, for that.too is a location. Congratulations; you've just destroyed the subjective experience of time within your own vedantist pseudophilosophy.
Each aspect has its attributes, but all of them are inextricably bound up in our every experience. My previous proof about the inconceiveability of either spaceless time or timeless space has already obliterated this pseudo-objection. To perceive or conceive at all involves both aspects, due to their co-necessity for establishing perspectives, either physical or mental ones. And the fact is that these experiences do indeed reflect the structure of the world we perceive. It does no good to appeal to a wished-for future and to say that when we have new technological tools that your view will be validated, for all these possible tools will be ultimately interpreted by our perceptual apparati, and spatiotemporality is irretrieveable implicated in all of them. This reduces your contention to a religious faith, rather than a possible future science, since In PRINCIPLE it can never be tested.
>
>Ted
>
>
>
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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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