The activity
is frozen in a block universe. Activity is the illusion. Activity does not change anymore than a static structure when in a block universe.
If you are speaking of Cartesian dualism (not the only kind), then mental activity takes place in conjunction with brain activity. It could theoretically continue after brain activity ceases, but there is no reason to believe in Cartesian dualism to begin with. Nothing about the block universe makes it difficult to avoid dualism.
If you looked at a 4d ant on a 4d basketball, where all 4 dimensions are static like in a block universe, from your perspective the ant does not move. But the ant may experience all kinds of changes; the ant would think things move and change. But it may just be its consciousness that is actually moving through its "frozen" universe.
It's consciousness can't move either. The rules are no movement - there are no special rules for fictional 'consciousnesses' or 'souls'.
At all points in at which it is conscious, its consciousness exists and has the feeling of moving through time as one of its properties. But nothing is moving through anything.
- - - Updated - - -
In a block universe you are always viewing every point you ever view.
Sure, but you are not conscious of them all at once. If the past, present and future exist all at the same time with no distinction or change, what is moving through this static structure to give these illusions? What is having an illusion. It's the consciousness flowing/travelling through the universe; some call it a "moving spotlight" in the A-theory of eternalism/block.U.
Yes you are. You are conscious of them all at once, from the higher dimensional perspective. Nothing is moving at all.
Things are changing for my consciousness. From the higher dimension they aren't, as you say. There is an easy way out of this contradiction, but it involves something that cannot be sensed physically. Nothing magical, it's just a different kind of stuff.
No. No. No.
At any specified time while you are conscious, your consciousness has the attribute of believing that things are changing. This is a consequence of (and only of) the pattern of memory and neural state at that specified time.
From the higher dimensional perspective, nothing is changing; Nothing needs to change in order to explain your lower dimensional perception of change; And nothing can change, no matter how 'different' any kind of 'stuff' might be.
Nope.
In a block universe, nothing changes at the higher dimensional perspective. You cannot break the laws of physics, Jim; Not even if you invent a 'soul' or a 'ghost' to do your dirty work for you.
What did I say (in post #79) that disagrees with this?
"You will experience changes, but he won't detect any physical change. This seems to mean that your mind is nonphysical.
Minds may be like ghosts floating through the universe. Brains would be "portals" for them to the physical universe."
Nonphysicality would change nothing, and is a needless multiplication of entities - it is unparsimonious and valueless.
Minds cannot be 'like ghosts floating through' anything; 'Floating through' implies movement, which is impossible.
Nothing is changing in the higher dimensionality; and changes in the lower dimensionality are all illusions. You don't experience the future, and you don't experience the past, not because you are in the present which moves through the block, but because every moment is the present, so your report of your consciousness 'moving through time' is exactly what would be expected at any point where your consciousness exists. At the higher dimensionality, you experience all of time, and every part of that, you call 'now' - what else could you call it?
Again, you can't break the rules; even if you invent a 'soul' or a 'ghost' to do your dirty work for you, they are equally constrained by the rules and can do nothing to defeat your imagined contradiction - but that's OK, because there's no actual contradiction at all. What you report is exactly what you should be expected to report.
