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Joe Dees:
> >> >"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.
> >>>>
> >
> >Time has two qualities, before and after. What it lacks is left, right,
> >above, and below.
> >
> You forgot before and behind, even though I mentioned them above.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but "before" does appear in my brief list of
temporal qualities, the other being "after." I reject "behind," because
it's primarily a spatial designation.
I mention this because you seem to have trouble comprehending what I write.
Over and over again, you make the same point that I've already refuted,
completely ignoring the refutation, *as if it had never been written,* and
then repeating the initial, now-refuted point.
Here's a prime example:
> Memories stored in the brain has been verified for many years; brain
surgeons frequently keep their patients conscious so they can monitor the
immediate effects of the surgery and modify it as they go. patients
routinely report that when certain areas are stimulated, that specific
memories occur to them just as when certain others are stimulated, certain
body parts move. You really need to keep up with fifty years ago.
>>>
Now, we've been over this before. That the stimulation of certain brain
regions results in recall does not in any way prove that memories are stored
in the brain. All we know for sure is that memory, like any mental property, is
facilitated by the brain.
The attempt to scientifically demonstrate the existence of memory traces or
"engrams" in the brain goes all the way back to the 20s, when Karl Lashley
experimented on conditioned learning in rats, monkeys, and chimpanzees. He
would train them to remember the correct reaction to a given stimulus and
then remove the portion of the brain utilized in the conditioned response.
The animals would quickly regain their former memories, despite the
permanent loss of brain tissue. This has led to the view that memories are
stored holistically in the brain. But if the activity of neurons is holistic, we must
hypothesize a mysterious, holistic property of the brain, which we might call
"the mind." And thus memory is back in the mind, where it belongs.
At any rate, there's no one-to-one correspondence between memory and neural
configuration. This is not a serious, scientific contention.
> >Distance is not a property of time. Time is nowhere in particular.
>
> And space is nowhen in particular?
The spatio-material universe is right now. Not only does it remain with the
present, it defines the present. What is present is what is spatially
presented.
> >One more time, Joe. Spacetime is quite real as long as we
> >recognize that time is not reducible to it. The only element of time
> >that's coterminous with space is the present. To regard time as
> >equivalent to space is to compress all of reality to the present, to
> >erase history and future, leaving us in this eternal, static, four
> >dimensional universe.
>
>No it is not; for spatiotemporality possesses BOTH extension AND duration,
>>>
"Duration" is precisely the concept that was thrown out in Einsteinian
physics. 4-D spacetime does away with duration and replaces it with
extension. Instead of involving only three dimensions, extension now
applies in four. When you assert duration, you're asserting the reality of
time. In other words, you're conceding the argument. This is why you
imagine you can maintain concepts such as freedom and self. Because you
really do believe in the intrinsic, irreducible existence of time.
> The spatiotemporal universe has been around for at least 12 billion years,
Again, you reveal your unconscious acceptance of the reality of time.
According to Einsteinian theory, it's not that the universe has been around
for a given duration but that it extends in four dimensions, not just three,
and the units of measurement of the fourth dimension are borrowed from
our prescientific notion of "time."
Ted
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