What is the difference between present and past?

[PyramidHead]

Our consciousness can view any moment of time, past, present, or future. However, part of what it views is the current state of whatever brain is harboring it at each moment, including memories and accumulated experience, creating the illusion of time flowing from one moment to the next.

Why can't I be conscious in the past right now (in a block or growing block universe)?

'Now' has no real meaning in a block universe. For any moment in time, you are conscious if there is a brain capable of producing consciousness, and you experience whatever is in that moment, including the appropriate set of memories that distinguish one moment from another for the brain in question.

 

[ryan]

Why can't I be conscious in the past right now (in a block or growing block universe)?

'Now' has no real meaning in a block universe. For any moment in time, you are conscious if there is a brain capable of producing consciousness, and you experience whatever is in that moment, including the appropriate set of memories that distinguish one moment from another for the brain in question.

I feel like you are glossing over the problem. Why is there only one now in a block or growing block universe? What (a ghostly consciousness) is intersecting with the block/GB universe?

This all seems to really make the consciousness very unnecessary yet definitely real.

 

[bilby]

Leaving cause behind, present is the point in process we are viewing. After and before what we are viewing are future and past, respectively.

We are viewing in the past if the past still exists. What is the difference between viewing 10 minutes ago and viewing now?

Ten light minutes.

The past is separated from us by mere distance; The further away we look, the further into the past we see.

- - - Updated - - -

Our consciousness can view any moment of time, past, present, or future. However, part of what it views is the current state of whatever brain is harboring it at each moment, including memories and accumulated experience, creating the illusion of time flowing from one moment to the next.

Why can't I be conscious in the past right now (in a block or growing block universe)?

I see no reason whatsoever why you cannot be.

 

[Juma]

Conciousness is a process in time. If you watch a ”frozen” block universe you wont see conciousness.
Conciousness ”is” the unfolding of the brain activity.
No change - no conciousness.

 

[bilby]

Conciousness is a process in time. If you watch a ”frozen” block universe you wont see conciousness.
Conciousness ”is” the unfolding of the brain activity.
No change - no conciousness.

That's true; But a block universe is only 'frozen' because it is being imagined from the perspective of a higher dimensionality. The consciousnesses that inhabit it are not frozen, and have no access to any perspective in which change is illusory.

By analogy, a cone, when viewed from the perspective of an observer whose space is two dimensional and whose time occupies the third dimension in space, might appear to be an ellipse of constantly increasing size; the change in size of the ellipse is analogous to consciousness here - it is a real phenomenon to the two dimensional observer, but there is no change in the universe as viewed as a three dimensional cone - from the higher dimensionality, nothing changes size at all.

 

[DBT]

Presumably time travel to the ''past'' from any 'present' standpoint of an observer would be possible in Block Universe, all points in 'time' being equally real withing the BU.

 

[PyramidHead]

'Now' has no real meaning in a block universe. For any moment in time, you are conscious if there is a brain capable of producing consciousness, and you experience whatever is in that moment, including the appropriate set of memories that distinguish one moment from another for the brain in question.

I feel like you are glossing over the problem. Why is there only one now in a block or growing block universe? What (a ghostly consciousness) is intersecting with the block/GB universe?

This all seems to really make the consciousness very unnecessary yet definitely real.

There is actually no singular 'now'. Every moment in time for every conscious observer, when differentiated from those that precede and follow it by memory and accumulated experience, counts as a 'now'. It appears to you that you only exist in THIS now, but if you could see your entire history from a higher vantage point, you would find that you are equally real at all points on it, and at each one you firmly believe that THIS is the "one now".

 

[PyramidHead]

My point in talking this way is to show that there is nothing in my account that is inconsistent with our experience. It's no different when talking about space; for any location in space, you are justified in calling that location 'here'. But that does not mean there is only one 'here'. We have no trouble conceiving of a block space universe, but block time remains problematic to grasp intuitively. I strongly feel this has everything to do with some quirk of brains that give rise to consciousness, and not a fundamental feature of the universe. It's like how the retrograde motion of planets in the night sky was taken as a bizarre tendency of the cosmos, when it was actually simply due to our changing position relative to those planets.

 

[ryan]

We are viewing in the past if the past still exists. What is the difference between viewing 10 minutes ago and viewing now?

Ten light minutes.

The past is separated from us by mere distance; The further away we look, the further into the past we see.

- - - Updated - - -

Our consciousness can view any moment of time, past, present, or future. However, part of what it views is the current state of whatever brain is harboring it at each moment, including memories and accumulated experience, creating the illusion of time flowing from one moment to the next.

Why can't I be conscious in the past right now (in a block or growing block universe)?

I see no reason whatsoever why you cannot be.

Then why am I not still viewing in the past? I am viewing now.

 

[ryan]

Conciousness is a process in time. If you watch a ”frozen” block universe you wont see conciousness.
Conciousness ”is” the unfolding of the brain activity.
No change - no conciousness.

Nothing moves or changes in a block universe. How can anything "unfold" or have "activity"?

 

[ryan]

Presumably time travel to the ''past'' from any 'present' standpoint of an observer would be possible in Block Universe, all points in 'time' being equally real withing the BU.

But nothing changes in a block universe. What is there has always been that way and always will.

So what is going back in time, a nonphysical consciousness?

One scary implication of this seems to be that if you were to go back in time, you would forever keep in that loop, in a block universe. Unless of course we have free will.

 

[PyramidHead]

Then why am I not still viewing in the past? I am viewing now.

The person you were when you wrote the post I am currently responding to is viewing what we would now call the past. What you are asking is: why can't I view the past while retaining all of the memories I have in the present? That should be obvious: memories are encoded in brains as accumulated information, which varies along the axis of time.

 

[ryan]

My point in talking this way is to show that there is nothing in my account that is inconsistent with our experience. It's no different when talking about space; for any location in space, you are justified in calling that location 'here'. But that does not mean there is only one 'here'. We have no trouble conceiving of a block space universe, but block time remains problematic to grasp intuitively. I strongly feel this has everything to do with some quirk of brains that give rise to consciousness, and not a fundamental feature of the universe. It's like how the retrograde motion of planets in the night sky was taken as a bizarre tendency of the cosmos, when it was actually simply due to our changing position relative to those planets.

Yes, I agree now is relative but absolute for an observer. But I still don't think you are addressing my issue.

Image that aliens are looking at our block universe from some other dimension. They wouldn't see anything changing at all. Yet, we know that a particular present, today at 9:00am New York time changed from being a future point to a present point to a past point. But nothing is suppose to change.

 

[PyramidHead]

My point in talking this way is to show that there is nothing in my account that is inconsistent with our experience. It's no different when talking about space; for any location in space, you are justified in calling that location 'here'. But that does not mean there is only one 'here'. We have no trouble conceiving of a block space universe, but block time remains problematic to grasp intuitively. I strongly feel this has everything to do with some quirk of brains that give rise to consciousness, and not a fundamental feature of the universe. It's like how the retrograde motion of planets in the night sky was taken as a bizarre tendency of the cosmos, when it was actually simply due to our changing position relative to those planets.

Yes, I agree now is relative but absolute for an observer. But I still don't think you are addressing my issue.

Image that aliens are looking at our block universe from some other dimension. They wouldn't see anything changing at all. Yet, we know that a particular present, today at 9:00am New York time changed from being a future point to a present point to a past point. But nothing is suppose to change.

Do we know that? That's the issue. Block time is tenseless, in that there is no present, future, or past, only before and after. The aliens would be able to see that whatever took place at 9:00 AM in New York happened after whatever took place at 8:00 AM in New York, but neither of those events could be sorted into present, future, or past relative to some "now".

 

[ryan]

Yes, I agree now is relative but absolute for an observer. But I still don't think you are addressing my issue.

Image that aliens are looking at our block universe from some other dimension. They wouldn't see anything changing at all. Yet, we know that a particular present, today at 9:00am New York time changed from being a future point to a present point to a past point. But nothing is suppose to change.

Do we know that? That's the issue. Block time is tenseless, in that there is no present, future, or past, only before and after. The aliens would be able to see that whatever took place at 9:00 AM in New York happened after whatever took place at 8:00 AM in New York, but neither of those events could be sorted into present, future, or past relative to some "now".

Do we know what specifically?

From the perspective of aliens with ability to see in 4d, at a certain angle they would just see a big cone (assume the universe disappears at a certain size to make the shape a cone). There is no before or after. It is like if we were looking at a basketball and 2d beings were on it, we wouldn't use the terms "before" and "after". There would just be distances away from some an arbitrary point on the basketball.

 

[PyramidHead]

Do we know that? That's the issue. Block time is tenseless, in that there is no present, future, or past, only before and after. The aliens would be able to see that whatever took place at 9:00 AM in New York happened after whatever took place at 8:00 AM in New York, but neither of those events could be sorted into present, future, or past relative to some "now".

From the perspective of aliens with ability to see in 4d, at a certain angle they would just see a big cone (assume the universe disappears at a certain size to make the shape a cone). There is no before or after. It is like if we were looking at a basketball and 2d beings were on it, we wouldn't use the terms "before" and "after". There would just be distances away from some an arbitrary point on the basketball.

We wouldn't use "before" and "after", but we would use "above" and "below" to refer to things outside of their ability to observe.

 

[ryan]

From the perspective of aliens with ability to see in 4d, at a certain angle they would just see a big cone (assume the universe disappears at a certain size to make the shape a cone). There is no before or after. It is like if we were looking at a basketball and 2d beings were on it, we wouldn't use the terms "before" and "after". There would just be distances away from some an arbitrary point on the basketball.

We wouldn't use "before" and "after", but we would use "above" and "below" to refer to things outside of their ability to observe.

Okay, but the point is that we would see no change for them, but internally/mentally they would see processes, have different experiences, remember the past, etc. They would be sure of changes just like we are sure that something is changing with us and/or our universe.

 

[PyramidHead]

We wouldn't use "before" and "after", but we would use "above" and "below" to refer to things outside of their ability to observe.

Okay, but the point is that we would see no change for them, but internally/mentally they would see processes, have different experiences, remember the past, etc. They would be sure of changes just like we are sure that something is changing with us and/or our universe.

I'm not sure why you think that a block universe means there can be no change. Change is just when something is different at one time than it is at another time. If an object has certain properties at one point on the block's time axis, and different properties on another point, then we would say it has changed. The only thing that this conception of time does away with is the idea of a privileged 'now', in exactly the same way treating space as an extended dimension does away with a privileged 'here'.

 

[ryan]

Okay, but the point is that we would see no change for them, but internally/mentally they would see processes, have different experiences, remember the past, etc. They would be sure of changes just like we are sure that something is changing with us and/or our universe.

I'm not sure why you think that a block universe means there can be no change. Change is just when something is different at one time than it is at another time. If an object has certain properties at one point on the block's time axis, and different properties on another point, then we would say it has changed. The only thing that this conception of time does away with is the idea of a privileged 'now', in exactly the same way treating space as an extended dimension does away with a privileged 'here'.

So when you look at a tree, do you say that the trunk changed to the leaves along the vertical y-axis? The trunk is still there, as well as the leaves. Remember, a block universe does not change, it has no old parts or new parts; it is a single object like a tree, if the tree were totally static.

 

[PyramidHead]

I'm not sure why you think that a block universe means there can be no change. Change is just when something is different at one time than it is at another time. If an object has certain properties at one point on the block's time axis, and different properties on another point, then we would say it has changed. The only thing that this conception of time does away with is the idea of a privileged 'now', in exactly the same way treating space as an extended dimension does away with a privileged 'here'.

So when you look at a tree, do you say that the trunk changed to the leaves along the vertical y-axis? The trunk is still there, as well as the leaves. Remember, a block universe does not change, it has no old parts or new parts; it is a single object like a tree, if the tree were totally static.

When we talk about differences between things on the time axis, we use the word "change", but other than that, yes: the difference between different time-slices of an object is just like the difference between different space-slices of an object. We simply use different words to describe different dimensions, because our brains create the impression that we are constantly moving along the time axis. If we had the same illusion about space, and could only interact with things for an instant before they slid out of our grasp into the distance, we would probably use similar terminology to talk about the spatial dimensions.