Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On 30 April 2015 at 13:20, Bruce Kellett <bhkell...@optusnet.com.au> wrote:
The way I understand it, nothing happens in Platonia. Which is to say
nothing ever happens. The real question is why we think stuff is
'happening'. Well, OK - the hallucination that stuff is happening is what is
happening.
So explain the hallucination. Why does that 'happen'. Note that 'happen' is
a temporal term.
I have the feeling that I have been alive for years, but I would still
have this feeling if I had only been alive for seconds. There does not
have to be a physical, causal connection between the observer moments
of my life for them to form a subjective temporal sequence. The
sequence is implied by their content.
The brain in the vat is always possible. We cannot rule out solipsism
either.
Julian Barbour, in his book 'The End of Time' tried to abolish time
altogether because of the difficulties of defining time in general
relativity. He replaced time as a parameter with the notion of 'time
capsules' present in every point of phase space.
It is not really clear whether this idea was successful or not. It has
not attracted a great following.
But if any such idea is to make sense, the observer moments do have to
be connected by quite strong causal laws so that the sequence of moments
tells a coherent story. Or else each moment tells a different story,
and we are back with 'Last Tuesdayism' or solipsism.
I don't think Fred Hoyle's account works either. It feels like a 'many
minds' collapse interpretation of quantum mechanics.
Bruce
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