On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 3:21 PM, LizR <lizj...@gmail.com> wrote: > On 6 February 2014 08:49, Jesse Mazer <laserma...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> >> You have it exactly backwards, Edgar. I am the one arguing that there is >> no definitive way to decide whether block time or presentism is correct, >> you are the one trying to present various "proofs" that presentism *must* >> be the correct ontology, I'm just shooting holes in those attempted proofs >> by pointing to circular reasoning, showing that your logic leads to crazy >> conclusions that even you would reject (reductio ad absurdum arguments), >> etc. By doing so I am not trying to "prove" that block time is correct, >> just that the facts which you claim as definitive proofs for presentism >> could be accounted *equally* well by an advocate of block time, and thus >> they "prove" nothing about which ontology is the correct one in reality. >> > > It doesn't really matter if "presentism" is correct, because it's just > block time extended to an extra dimension. But in any case, it's impossible > to prove that anything is *correct* in science, only to show what is > *incorrect* (And with Edgar, I fear, you can't even do that!) > > The important point about presentism is not that it's wrong, but that it > adds nothing to what is provided by the space-time picture. It might > conceivably be correct (and even rather fun for SF writers like Barry > Bayley to mess around with), but as things stand, all observed phenomena > are explained with the simpler 4D manifold picture, so presentism is just a > bolt-on extra with no explanatory leverage. >
Yes, I agree. That's why I suggested that even though physics can't settle the issue of block time vs. presentism, if we use Occam's razor as any sort of guiding principle in metaphysics, then block time should seem the more plausible of the two. Jesse > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
