Russell Standish wrote:
> If you can demonstrate this as a theorem, or even as a moderately
> convincing argument why this should be so, I'd be most grateful for a
> presentation. I'm all for eliminating unnecessary hypotheses.
'Fraid I don't have a theorem! However, as to 'moderately convincing
arguments', I think the problem with thinking coherently about temporal
experience seems to be with mentally flip-flopping between structural
and implicitly dynamic mental models of 'time'. I had an exchange with
Barbour about this because I was convinced that he just introduced
'time' back into his static Platonia by what I called 'sleight of
intuition' - i.e. the implicit temporality of our language. He didn't
disagree, but just felt he wanted to de-emphasise this aspect within
his project of taking the static function maximally seriously.
However, I'm not so certain about the intuition now. It seems plausible
that the content of 1st-person experience is represented structurally
within time capsules - including those aspects that would appear as 'in
relation to' the content of other capsules. This by itself would yield
a 'picture' of time from the pov of any capsule (i.e. 'time' as
information, and particularly as defined by information 'horizons') if
only we could account for the experience of dynamism. Here I'm much
less clear, but I have a sort of 'intuition pump'. It seems to me that
we must consider who or what is the 'experiencer'. For dynamism one
needs contrast, and such contrast is to be found between the 0-person
'pov' of the multiverse and individual 1st-person capsules. So if the
multiverse is the experiencer, the dynamism of time may emerge simply
from the global/ local contrast of its 0-person/ 1st-person povs.
Clear as mud.
David
> On Wed, Sep 13, 2006 at 07:40:06AM -0000, David Nyman wrote:
> >
> > Why do we need to assume TIME as an ordering process for 'successive'
> > moments under the RSSA assumption? Isn't it the case that, under the
> > ASSA assumption, 1st-person experience would continue to appear
> > 'time-like' (because of its 'relative' internal structure within each
> > 'time capsule') without the need for a TIME postulate (i.e. Barbour's
> > position)?
> >
> > David
> >
>
> If you can demonstrate this as a theorem, or even as a moderately
> convincing argument why this should be so, I'd be most grateful for a
> presentation. I'm all for eliminating unnecessary hypotheses.
>
> I haven't read Barbour's work, but from everything I've read about it,
> his approach simply skirts the issue without facing it head on.
>
> Cheers
>
> --
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> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
> Mathematics
> UNSW SYDNEY 2052 R.Standish.domain.name.hidden
> Australia http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks
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Received on Wed Sep 13 2006 - 10:57:27 PDT