Re: block view of time

[Andrew Bacon <andrew.bacon@lmh.ox.ac.uk>]

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In message <005d01c65918$a7a9ad40$8b02a8c0@stanley> "Stanley Chan" 
<stanleykmchan@ROGERS.COM> writes:
> Hi All,
> Please help me to understand the following:
> 1) What is Block View of Time?
> 2) Why must it be understood from a four-dimensional viewpoint?
> 3) Why is it deterministic ?
> 4) Can one understand Block View of Time without much knowledge of GTR, STR 
and QM?
> 5) What are the implications of such a view of time?
> Any help will be gratefully acknowledged.
> Stanley


Hi there Stanley,
I will try and answer your questions but I'll have to be brief because I'm not 
at my computer.

1) The block view of time is the view that past present and future times all 
exist, in particular the present does not enjoy a distinguished existence over 
past or future. In this view talk of the present is very similar to the 
demonstrative 'here'. 'Now' just refers to the temporal position of the 
speaker much like 'here' refers to the spatial position. In short there is 
nothing metaphysically special about the present. 

2) Since past, present and future times exist and have an order (beforeness) 
time is very similar in this respect to 1-dimensional space. With the other 3 
spatial dimensions we can treat it is a 4D manifold. (If your planning to meet 
someone (who doesnt have a mobile) you must give them the location *and* the 
time, i.e. you must give them a four dimenional coordinate, just the 3D 
location won't do).

3) It is deterministic in the sense that the future is fixed much like the 
past, its just that we (humans) aren't at the future bit. It is not 
deterministic in the causal sense (that is, given a 'snapshop' of the universe 
you can work out exactly what will happen in the future (and in the past)). 
The future is not 'open'.

4) No. There are newtonian block time universes, mobius strip block time 
universes, all kinds of crazy topologies which can be thought of as block 
time. It is a philosophical distinction not a scientific one.

5) Lots. In the philosophy of language it has implications for tense (or 
perhaps tense has implication for the philosophy of time?). It has 
philosophical implications for time travel. Implications for the debate over 
concrete particulars (perdurantism vs endurantism). Many many implications.

Hope that helped

Andrew




-- 
Andrew Bacon
Lady Margaret Hall
07830048336
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~lady1900



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