God and Time

[CharlesV]

It is commonly believed that God stands outside of time and is able to view all temporal events, past, present, and future, from a transcendent time-less Now. This claim, though widely believed, is false, and for a very obvious reason.

Consider the following:

Yesterday I was at the grocery store looking at a magazine. I have a clear and distinct memory of this. If God truly sees all moments in time, that event, being a moment in time, does really exist as well, otherwise there would be nothing for God to see. But if that moment does really exist, I must be there experiencing it in the very same sense as I experiened it yesterday. Yet I am not. I cannot be mistaken in this because I was the one whose experience it was. If it was happening, I would surely know about it. Yet clearly it is not.

Thus God has no timeless and transcendent view of time because the past no longer is, and the future is not yet. Only the present is real and experienced. All else is memory and expectation only.

[Abraxas]

AbraxasLets accept your claim that each slice of time only has access to itself. One slice cannot experience another slice. This, in effect, destroys subjective continuity, as each moment in your conscious history is but an isolated subjective fact. Indeed, there is no such thing as your conscious history for there is no continuing conscious subject to whom the word your refers. This has been my objection all along. Unless there is something real in consciousness that abides and connects ones experiences, each moment is experienced by a wholly other subjective entity, and there is no one conscious subject for whom an accumulation of experience can even exist. The only fact of which any one subject can be certain, or even know, is its own momentary slice. This totally undermines your theory, for no one conscious subject has access to the other slices which you somehow postulate exist. Only by exempting yourself from your own theory are you able to suppose the existence of other slices, or that something moves from slice to slice. Youre basing your theory on evidence which, if your theory were true, could not possibility be known, and if it was known, could not be true.

To put it simply...No theory of reality is credible, if in being true, it makes impossible the very evidence on which the theory is founded.

In other words, the problem is you still insist on applying your standards of identity, continuity of consciousness, onto my theory despite the fact I have explicitly rejected it, and indeed raised numerous objections to it, not one of which you have actually addressed. Conscious entities really aren't all that important to me nor my theory as I fully intend it to apply to unconscious ones as well, the relevant points being changes to the pattern through sensory input. The continuing pattern is what counts, not the continuing consciousness.

Consciousness and awareness change to match the pattern they emerge from, the patten quite obviously existing over time. We don't experience past and future events because they are not in the pattern in this timeslice. You keep wanting to put consciousness first in this and then decrying it doesn't work (not that that is a good argument either), but so far you have done little to attempt to critique consciousness as an emergent property from the changing over time mental landscape.

Further, you have yet to make a case that time slices being individual inherently implies isolation. Like links in a chain, each one is an unique structure with it's own characteristics, and yet is still bound to the links before and after it, and the chain as a whole. No one point of the whole need have characteristics of the whole, no one point of the whole need experience the same phenomena as any other point, and yet in both cases can they be of the same object, the same identity. In this case, changes to the pattern from previous timeslices are carried forward into future ones as the pattern exists over time. It may not have access to the specific sensation or input pattern that caused the change, but the change itself remains, most obviously in memory but others as well.

As a final note, the only thing anyone can be absolutely certain of is that they exist in the present timeslice, if you want to get into one of those useless Cartesian modes. Can I be certain every moment before this isn't the result of modified memories, no, but so what? Why should that stop me from building a theory about the world as I perceive it, even if it is the Matrix.

[CharlesV]

AbraxasLets ask a simple question. What would experience be like if your theory were true, and would it conform to reality as its actually experienced?

By your theory, conscious history is a succession of finely divided conscious slices in which nothing from one conscious slice passes into the next. Each conscious slice is its own individual and private subjective experience, unchanging and unending. As such, whichever conscious slice you presently are, you are that experience forever. Obviously this doesnt agree with reality as its actually experienced.

To counter this, you point to the underlying pattern as that which endures and connects the successive slices. However, the pattern itself is not conscious. You have stated this yourself. Having no consciousness itself, the pattern obviously cannot be the conscious experience of succession, for that which is not conscious itself cannot be conscious of anything else. The same is also true of the material elements that give the pattern is physical reality, for they too are not conscious.

So what, then, constitutes the undeniable experience of succession? If it is not the individual conscious slices themselves, or the underlying pattern and its physical elements, what else is left to account for it? You havent told us.

Once again, you neglect to realize that metaphysics always presupposes epistemology. What we know cannot be separated from how it is we come to know it. Youve concocted a theory which, if true, would make impossible any conscious knowledge of the very facts you seek to explain, and indeed, makes impossible even a conscious understanding of the theory itself.

[Abraxas]

Firstly, you once more neglect the same answer I have given about a dozen times now. The pattern exists continuously. Consciousness is an emergent property of the pattern and so emerges in a continuous fashion.

Secondly,

"By your theory, conscious history is a succession of finely divided conscious slices in which nothing from one conscious slice passes into the next." Not wholly true. Changes to the pattern travel into successive slices and consciousness emerges from the pattern.

"Each conscious slice is its own individual and private subjective experience, unchanging and unending." Not precisely, it is unending and unchanging only in the same sense any other moment yanked out of history is unending and unchanging. It is merely a statement that at this time the universe looked like this, something I think you would have great trouble arguing against.

" As such, whichever conscious slice you presently are, you are that experience forever." Does not follow. That part of your past or future is part of you, certainly, however, forever implied through all time, something that I have not stated. Eternally, literally meaning outside of time, yes, if I were to look at the whole of your life from a position outside of time, that component would be part of you but it would not exist, not precisely, through your entire being.

"Obviously this doesnt agree with reality as its actually experienced. " Fortunately it was never part of my theory but rather a strawman. You never did give a reason one time slice would share the experience of any other.

[CharlesV]

AbraxasI fully understand your claim that the pattern exists continuously. But the pattern itself is not conscious, and therefore cannot itself be the conscious experience of succession, which undeniably exists. I also understand your claim that each successive slice of the pattern gives rise to an emergent conscious experience which accumulates information over time. But the question you keep avoiding is for whom do those successive experiences exist? They dont exist for the pattern because the pattern isnt conscious of anything. And because each conscious slice is aware ONLY of itself, and has no conscious access to any of the other slices, any succession in consciousness would consist of a sequence of mutually unknowable events. There would be a succession of experiences, but not the experience of succession. And its this latter fact which undeniably exists and must be accounted for. This is the point I think youre missing.

[Abraxas]

AbraxasI fully understand your claim that the pattern exists continuously. But the pattern itself is not conscious, and therefore cannot itself be the conscious experience of succession, which undeniably exists.

On what basis do you say the pattern is not conscious when consciousness exists? Certainly the pattern is not always conscious but I would contest a statement it never is. It is not the conscious experience, no, but it gives rise to the conscious experience and is itself conscious.

I also understand your claim that each successive slice of the pattern gives rise to an emergent conscious experience which accumulates information over time. But the question you keep avoiding is for whom do those successive experiences exist? They dont exist for the pattern because the pattern isnt conscious of anything.

Why must they exist for anyone? Why can they not exist for their own sake as a creation and projection of the pattern being conscious?

And because each conscious slice is aware ONLY of itself, and has no conscious access to any of the other slices, any succession in consciousness would consist of a sequence of mutually unknowable events. There would be a succession of experiences, but not the experience of succession. And its this latter fact which undeniably exists and must be accounted for. This is the point I think youre missing.

They are not mutually unknowable as information imparted into the conscious changes the structure of the pattern to carry forward into future timeslices. What they are is mutually inaccessible, I cannot choose at moment to experience something from a previous or future timeslice, though the memory is available at times. Furthermore, I would contend succession of experiences within one identity is the exact same thing as the experience of succession so long as the pattern contains some mechanism by which it is aware things have changed, something easily and obviously accomplished by allowing information to change the pattern and thus be carried over between slices.

All you are doing is rehashing the old Cartesian objection, that all we can know is we exist now. Any succession of experience could be an illusion, a belief engineered into you that never really happened. No theory of identity has been able to overcome this, no theory can, and frankly, it isn't really important to begin with. What we know does not change who we are.

[CharlesV]

AbraxasNow your statements are becoming ambiguous. On one hand you seem to maintain that the patterns themselves are not conscious. On the other, you say they can actually be aware of succession. How can something that is not conscious be aware of anything?

Also unclear is how your theory accounts for the experience of change. As we all know, change is a brute feature of reality. To illustrate why your theory is inadequate to account for this, consider the following thought experiment.

You are watching a basketball game and see the movement of the ball and the players. Imagine that the slices which make up your conscious experience of the game are dispersed throughout the population of China, each slice being experienced by a different person. The content of each slice remains the same, the only difference is that each slice is experienced by a consciously different individual. Further suppose that these individuals experience their particular slice in the same ordered sequence as you experience yours. Would this create an experience of the basketball game? There would, of course, be a succession of experiences. It might also be claimed that all conscious information about the game does exist, albeit in different minds. But would this create an experience of the game itself, and of the movement of the ball and the players? The answer, of course, is no. Because each slice would experience only itself, and each slice is but a motionless instant in time, there would be no one for whom the entire sequence of slices exist. No indiviual could report more than what his or her slice reveals. It would be like watching a movie in which each member of the audience is allowed to view only a single frame. Even if each frame is viewed by someone, no member of the audience could report seeing more than a motionless image on a single frame.

This, in effect, represents your theory, in which each conscious moment begins and ends with itself, having no conscious access to any of the other moments. Unless there exists a real and abiding conscious subject who is able to enter into and experience a temporal sequence of events, there can be no real experience of change, a fact so fundamental to experience that any theory unable to account for it must be faulty.

[Abraxas]

AbraxasNow your statements are becoming ambiguous. On one hand you seem to maintain that the patterns themselves are not conscious. On the other, you say they can actually be aware of succession. How can something that is not conscious be aware of anything?

It can be conscious, it simply need not be as the pattern exists in states of consciousness and unconsciousness alike. I never said it cannot be conscious, only that it need not be so.

Also unclear is how your theory accounts for the experience of change. As we all know, change is a brute feature of reality. To illustrate why your theory is inadequate to account for this, consider the following thought experiment.

It experiences change through imprinted information about how things were and sensory input of how things are and comparing the two.

You are watching a basketball game and see the movement of the ball and the players. Imagine that the slices which make up your conscious experience of the game are dispersed throughout the population of China, each slice being experienced by a different person. The content of each slice remains the same, the only difference is that each slice is experienced by a consciously different individual. Further suppose that these individuals experience their particular slice in the same ordered sequence as you experience yours. Would this create an experience of the basketball game? There would, of course, be a succession of experiences. It might also be claimed that all conscious information about the game does exist, albeit in different minds. But would this create an experience of the game itself, and of the movement of the ball and the players? The answer, of course, is no. Because each slice would experience only itself, and each slice is but a motionless instant in time, there would be no one for whom the entire sequence of slices exist. No indiviual could report more than what his or her slice reveals. It would be like watching a movie in which each member of the audience is allowed to view only a single frame. Even if each frame is viewed by someone, no member of the audience could report seeing more than a motionless image on a single frame.

Once again, a red herring because it fails to address why this would be at all relevant to a continuously emerging property based in a continuous pattern and completely ignores the undeniable reality that information from previous timeslices pass into the next through changes to the pattern of the brain, aka, memory.

This, in effect, represents your theory, in which each conscious moment begins and ends with itself, having no conscious access to any of the other moments. Unless there exists a real and abiding conscious subject who is able to enter into and experience a temporal sequence of events, there can be no real experience of change, a fact so fundamental to experience that any theory unable to account for it must be faulty.

No, this misrepresents my theory, because each conscious moment is part of a continuity of an emergent property generated from a pattern enduring over time. You keep trying to pretend my theory calls for them to be unlinked when in fact it does not.

[CharlesV]

AbraxasThe physical pattern itself can be conscious? So if I have the conscious experience of a red square, the physical pattern itself becomes red and square-like? I dont think this is what you intend. It is one thing to say the pattern CAUSES a conscious experience, quite another to claim it IS the conscious experience.

This is part of the problem. Your theory wants to make the physical pattern the abiding subject of experience. But this only works if the pattern fulfills whats required of it, which is that it be an enduring conscious subject that enters into a succession of conscious states. If this is what you intend by the word pattern, then what you label as pattern I would label as conscious subject, and the only difference is their spelling.

But I dont think this is what you intend at all. The pattern, as you describe it, is a complex form embodied by a physical medium of some kind, in this case the brain. In contrast, consciousness is not, of itself, the physical brain or its complex form. We know this because consciousness gives no direct insight into either the physical brain or its neural patterns. It would be very odd, and contrary to fact, if all of my thoughts were about complex neural configurations. While one may plausibly cause the other, it would be a manifest absurdity to claim that one is the other. This confusion of identifying consciousness with its material cause as if they were interchangeable terms is often made in language, but is never the case in fact.

I'll return in a couple of days - cv

[Abraxas]

AbraxasThe physical pattern itself can be conscious?

Yep.

So if I have the conscious experience of a red square, the physical pattern itself becomes red and square-like? I dont think this is what you intend.

Now you are equivocating "is". If I were to say Ray Charles is blind, it does not mean he is identified with all instances of blindness. Is, as it often does, in this case, means, "has the property of". Put together, under certain circumstances the pattern has the property of consciousness.

It is one thing to say the pattern CAUSES a conscious experience, quite another to claim it IS the conscious experience.

I didn't say it is the conscious experience, I said consciousness is among it's properties.

This is part of the problem. Your theory wants to make the physical pattern the abiding subject of experience. But this only works if the pattern fulfills whats required of it, which is that it be an enduring conscious subject that enters into a succession of conscious states. If this is what you intend by the word pattern, then what you label as pattern I would label as conscious subject, and the only difference is their spelling.

By pattern I mean all physical properties including shape, position, chemical composition, etc. of the brain. Further, the above is only required of it if I accept consciousness has a role to play as a part of identity, something I have rejected. My theory, unlike yours, still holds when a subject is unconscious.

Consciousness is a property that comes and goes in my theory, like a light bulb can be on or off and no less a light bulb. It is a possible property of, but not necessary component to, identity.

But I dont think this is what you intend at all. The pattern, as you describe it, is a complex form embodied by a physical medium of some kind, in this case the brain. In contrast, consciousness is not, of itself, the physical brain or its complex form.

No, it is the complex interaction between them.

We know this because consciousness gives no direct insight into either the physical brain or its neural patterns.

Untrue, measurements of conscious stimuli provide great insight into brain structure.

It would be very odd, and contrary to fact, if all of my thoughts were about complex neural configurations. While one may plausibly cause the other, it would be a manifest absurdity to claim that one is the other. This confusion of identifying consciousness with its material cause as if they were interchangeable terms is often made in language, but is never the case in fact.

Prove it. I would contend the opposite, that what we consider thoughts and knowledge and memory are in fact the interaction of complex neural networks and nothing more is required, either to explain them or to give them substance.

I'll return in a couple of days - cv

See you then.

[Cathar1950]

AbraxasThe physical pattern itself can be conscious?

Yep.

So if I have the conscious experience of a red square, the physical pattern itself becomes red and square-like? I dont think this is what you intend.

Now you are equivocating "is". If I were to say Ray Charles is blind, it does not mean he is identified with all instances of blindness. Is, as it often does, in this case, means, "has the property of". Put together, under certain circumstances the pattern has the property of consciousness.

It is one thing to say the pattern CAUSES a conscious experience, quite another to claim it IS the conscious experience.

I didn't say it is the conscious experience, I said consciousness is among it's properties.

This is part of the problem. Your theory wants to make the physical pattern the abiding subject of experience. But this only works if the pattern fulfills whats required of it, which is that it be an enduring conscious subject that enters into a succession of conscious states. If this is what you intend by the word pattern, then what you label as pattern I would label as conscious subject, and the only difference is their spelling.

By pattern I mean all physical properties including shape, position, chemical composition, etc. of the brain. Further, the above is only required of it if I accept consciousness has a role to play as a part of identity, something I have rejected. My theory, unlike yours, still holds when a subject is unconscious.

Consciousness is a property that comes and goes in my theory, like a light bulb can be on or off and no less a light bulb. It is a possible property of, but not necessary component to, identity.

But I dont think this is what you intend at all. The pattern, as you describe it, is a complex form embodied by a physical medium of some kind, in this case the brain. In contrast, consciousness is not, of itself, the physical brain or its complex form.

No, it is the complex interaction between them.

We know this because consciousness gives no direct insight into either the physical brain or its neural patterns.

Untrue, measurements of conscious stimuli provide great insight into brain structure.

It would be very odd, and contrary to fact, if all of my thoughts were about complex neural configurations. While one may plausibly cause the other, it would be a manifest absurdity to claim that one is the other. This confusion of identifying consciousness with its material cause as if they were interchangeable terms is often made in language, but is never the case in fact.

Prove it. I would contend the opposite, that what we consider thoughts and knowledge and memory are in fact the interaction of complex neural networks and nothing more is required, either to explain them or to give them substance.

I'll return in a couple of days - cv

See you then.

I suspect he has it backwards as if he was asking consciousness to explain the brain and not the other way around. Consciousness is a product or effect of the brain. Our consciousness seems more of a memory of experiences and feed-back. Maybe consciousness is the brain looking at itself or remembering itself in a three dimensional illusion. Our experiences are processed in a way where we can even have them asleep, which may be related to learning according to some studies.
We share them symbolically.
We evolved to relate to the world we live in so our experiences make sense.