From the B-Theory to Eternalism

Temporal dynamism denied!

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Tangentially related to the question whether Joe Dementia lied when he promised not to pardon his worthless son.

Comments

[Michael Brazier]

"Another consideration in support of the B-theory is that the physics of Einstein & Co. has no need of temporal becoming."

Yes; but quantum field theory, which enjoys just as much support from experimental evidence, very much does need temporal becoming. In fact the different opinions of the two theories on how time works are a major obstacle to reconciling them in a single system. So if you can bring A and B together into a common mathematical equation, you could win a Nobel prize!

[Joe Odegaard]

A positron is an electron moving backwards in time, or so it can be considered, according to Richard Feynman. That tells in favor of Eternalism, if you ask me.

[Elliott]

Very interesting post, Bill. I'm fascinated by eternalism.

>> And when it [the tomato] ceases to exist, it doesn't pass away: it simply is at certain times and is not at certain later times.<<

It seems to me that eternalism entails the falsity of the termination thesis (TT), which holds that death brings one’s existence to an end. If eternalism is true, then if one exists at time t1, dies at t2, and is dead at t3 – tn, it is still the case that one exists tenselessly at t1.

On eternalism, in a sense, once one exists, one can't shake free of existence.

Feldman examines the TT in Midwest Studies in Philosophy, XXIV (2000), available here: https://people.umass.edu/ffeldman/TT.pdf

[john doran]

1) On the B-theory, we are 4-dimensional spacetime worms. "I" do not exist at any particular point of my self-awareness: "I" am the sum-total of all of those points in spacetime that "I" exist, from conception to (physical) dissolution.

2) My experience of thinking is based solely on the "now". But every "now" is simply a part of a page in the Book that is really "me".

3) So, B-theorists - along with telling a good story about time - also have to tell a good story about self-awareness: if "I" tenselessly exist in all of "my" temporal moments, then what accounts for my strange apperception that "I" am wholly present at each moment of my life?

If I was a B-theoretical vermiform, why would "I" not be constantly, simultaneously aware of every moment of the thing that we call a "life"? Earlier, simultaneous with, and before, every other point in that life?

Really, it just sounds like a poor-man's version of Boethius' definition of eternal life.

4) "Einstein's" theories of relativity (Special and General) are of only peripheral interest (it was Hermann Minkowski that first suggested the 4d spacetime manifold, simply as a way of understanding relativistic math, NOT as the only way.)

Mathematical systems are simply functional processes that follow deductively from stipulated axioms.

The question as to whether some mathematical system is the one that accurately describes the fabric of the world, is a totally different question.

Look, Ptolemy and Brahe both made accurately predictive astronomical models; simpler, in some respects, than their heliocentric Copernican counterparts.

Newton's calculus works for our purposes just as well as relativistic math.

Riemann/Lobachevsky/Bolyai's non-Euclidian geometrical systems also work (as far as we can tell), but there's nothing necessarily connecting them to the world.

So.

In the end, I tend to believe the testimony of my senses, over recondite philosophical and mathematical arguments.

my feeling that I - "I", all of me - exists NOW...

...and NOW...

...and NOW...

is as powerful and ineluctable as the feeling of the pain in my hand when i cut myself, preparing dinner.

it cannot be argued away.

[BV]

Elliot,

Good point. The Termination Thesis looks to be inconsistent with the B-theory.

When Albert Einstein's friend Michele Angelo Besso died, the great physicist wrote, in a letter of condolence to Besso's family,

"Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. For us believing physicists the distinction between past, present, and future only has the meaning of an illusion, though a persistent one. (Wikipedia, “Michele Besso”)"

Besso's death means nothing because he remains something, and always will. He is 'eternal.' What's to grieve over? Grief would seem to be an inappropriate emotion for what is merely at a different location.

Tenseless existence is a paltry substitute for gen-u-ine immortality, but it is better than nothing. Hartshorne and John Leslie have argued for the former.

TT appears to presuppose presentism. Presentism, however, is fraught with difficulties -- which is not to say that the B-theory is in the clear. Time is a knot that no philosopher or scientist has ever untied. But of course, one can always wax dogmatic -- and people do.

[Elliott]

John,

You raise some good points about the difficulties of the spacetime worm theory of personhood. On this view, as you noted, a person is the sum total of his locations in spacetime. Hence, at any given location, the person is merely a spacetime slice or spatiotemporal part of the whole self that is the spacetime worm. Persons perdure rather than endure.

On this theory, it is hard to make sense of what it means for a person to think, reason, experience, etc. And what about free will? Do my temporal parts make free choices? And are some of my other temporal parts morally responsible for those choices?

[Elliott]

Bill, the quotation from Einstein is very interesting. He understood the implications of eternalism.

You asked: >>What's to grieve over? Grief would seem to be an inappropriate emotion for what is merely at a different location.<<

I suppose one can reasonably grieve over the fact that one’s loved one is at a different temporal location and that this location is inaccessible to the grieving person. So, such bereavement would not be grief over existential loss, but grief over temporal separation -- somewhat like one might lament if his dear family member travels to a distant (spatial) location, never to return, never to call or write, etc. The grieving person can take solace that the family member still exists, but suffer from being deprived all contact with that family member.

Here's a question:

We have mental access to the past via memory. If eternalism is true, why don't we have a similar mental access to the future? Why don’t we have something like precognition?

[Elliott]

>>Tenseless existence is a paltry substitute for gen-u-ine immortality, but it is better than nothing.<< I agree.

>>TT appears to presuppose presentism.<< Yes, that seems right.

>>Presentism, however, is fraught with difficulties ...<< Yes indeed.

[BV]

Elliot and John,

My present sense of responsibility for what I did or left undone years ago is hard to square with the the view that a person is but a diachronic whole of temporal parts.

[David Brightly]

Hello Bill,

Do SR and GR support the B-theory? It's true that SR and GR have no need for temporal becoming. But then neither does classical mechanics. Time appears in the equations of motion only as a second derivative. Moreover, in the relativistic theories each inertial observer finds his own B-series of temporally-ordered events. Observers in relative motion may disagree about the time order of distant events. Hence event ordering is just as observer dependent as the A-series appears to be. What observers do agree on is the 'spacetime interval' between pairs of events, Δs² = c²Δt² - Δx² - Δy² -Δz². So if observer-independence is a mark of the real, we have to take seriously Minkowski's 'kind of union of space and time'. But this would seem to rule out a universal B-theory of time alone.

[BV]

David,

Those are excellent points. My article ended: >>Another consideration in support of the B-theory is that the physics of Einstein & Co. has no need of temporal becoming. So if physics gets at the world as it is in itself apart from our subjective additions, then real time is exhausted by the B-series.<<

My formulation is misleading given that classical mechanics has no need of temporal becoming. I should have just said that physics has no need of temporal becoming.

Your point about event ordering being just as observer-dependent as the A-series is also well-taken.

One possible misunderstanding on your part, however, is that the B-Theory of time is not a theory of time separate from space, but a theory of spacetime. The idea is that there is one 4-D manifold of spacetime points each of which has unique x,y,z,and t coordinates.

The B-theory is anti-presentist is that it holds that all times and the events at those times are equally real and that there is no temporal flow/passage/becoming.

We should also distinguish two senses of 'observer-dependence.' There is the sense you invoke above which pertains to relativistic mechanics. The observer-dependence of temporal becoming, however, pertains to both classical and relativistic systems on the B-theory.

[David Brightly]

Bill,

I wonder if we can reconcile on the one hand, the A-theory and Presentism, and on the other hand, the B-theory, Eternalism, and Relativity? The latter are all 'views from nowhere and nowhen', the former are 'views from somewhere and somewhen'. These need not be in disagreement. There is a sense in which the views from nowhere 'contain' the possible views from somewhere. For example, the four-dimensional spacetime manifold contains the world lines of all possible inertial observers. Choosing one of these we can map the manifold according to this observer and recover the coordinates he finds for events.

Part of our difficulty is that we tend to discuss a view from nowhere in the language evolved in a somewhere. Moving from a somewhere view to a nowhere view involves subtle reinterpretation of the somewhere language. Some examples:

1. When an Eternalist claims that an event of a certain description 'exists' we have to understand that he is quantifying over all events related by the B-series. The Presentist insists on quantifying over merely the events simultaneous with his present moment.

2. The maths of relativity derive from the 'differential geometry' invented in the 19th century to investigate what properties of curved surfaces embedded in Euclidean 3-space can be discovered by measurements purely in the surface, and hence answer the question of whether physical space is perhaps non-Euclidean. This works because different coordinate grids on a surface can agree about the distance between pairs of points in the surface. These methods are applicable to Einsteinian relativity because it's taken as axiomatic that different coordinate grids in spacetime agree on the spacetime interval between event pairs. The experimental constancy of the speed of light for all observers justifies this. But the interval between some event pairs can be negative. So the spacetime interval cannot be thought of as an ordinary geometric distance between points in space.

3. Elliot asks, We have mental access to the past via memory. If eternalism is true, why don't we have a similar mental access to the future? Why don’t we have something like precognition? We are inclined to think of the temporal aspect of spacetime by analogy with a fourth spatial dimension. So time should have a future/past symmetry analogous with up/down, left/right, etc, symmetries in space. But spacetime is far from Euclidean, as evidenced by the minuses in the expression for the spacetime interval. Hereby the strained language of four-dimensionalism, I suspect.