It's not the truths that are timeless. It is the information recorded in a memory. — apokrisis

The information recorded in a memory is not a temporal event?

I can get the notion of temporal displacement, how it enables freedom from the constraints of particular times, but I can't see how that translates into timelessness or eternity. Perhaps this could be related to Whitehead's notion of eternality which he understood to be distinct from the idea of eternity.

BTW I couln't find the link to Pattee's paper.

Thus the further thing of the interpreter must either be addressed by the metaphysics, or else it sets up the familiar homuncular regress. — apokrisis

The dualist solution to this apparent regress is very simple. The interpreter, the subject, the mind, is designated as substantially different from the physical world being interpreted. That separation, a true epistemic cut, negates any possibility of such a regress. If this separation is denied as unreal, then there is an appearance of homuncular regress because any designation of "epistemic cut' becomes arbitrary and subject to further and further divisions. The regress problem is the result of denying dualist principles while attempting to maintain an epistemic cut. So the epistemic cut must be real (dualist), or else any designation of "epistemic cut" would face the problem of infinite regress.

Hence we have Pattee's focus on how a molecule can function as a message - how DNA can code for a protein that is then an enzymatic signal to switch on or off a metabolic process. — apokrisis

Pattee's method is to get rid of the epistemic cut, by making it into an illusion, a fiction. He does this by introducing concepts like self-constraining, and self-organizing, and by describing symbols which interpret themselves. But these speculative notions appear to be without any real principles of support.

The information recorded in a memory is not a temporal event? — Janus

It was an event when it happened. But even then, there was the displacement - the transduction step - which was its recording. The physical event became an informational event - a sign of the thing. And yes of course, that requires a whole physics of information recording.

Minds need a body to be embodied models. Let's not pretend it is confusing. The whole point of semiotics or the epistemic cut is that signs are physical acts - acts of measurement. But, Janus-like, symbols have two faces. They are both physical marks (essentially meaningless, like a scratch on a rock) and they are informational (essentially meaningful to a system of interpretance).

I can get the notion of temporal displacement, how it enables freedom from the constraints of particular times, but I can't see how that translates into timelessness or eternity. — Janus

Maybe that is just the reification. There might be a difference - a big one - between timeless and eternal for all practical purposes, and timeless and eternal in some dualistically absolute and non-pragmatic sense.

Again, this is where physics itself has got to. The Comos is organised by its own informational limits - the famous holographic principle that accounts for blackhole entropy and the possibility of an actually future-eternal heat death geometry for the Universe.

The dualist solution to this apparent regress is very simple. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yeah. Bring on the soul-stuff. That'll work.

but the troubling question is as to what such timeless truths really consist in beyond our thinking of them. — Janus

I'm puzzled by your puzzlement.

Moore holds up his hand. "Here is a hand".

What does the "timeless truth really consist in beyond our thinking of it"? Moore's hand. What is problematic here? What do we make of someone who denies Moor's claim? Only that they do not understand his words.

He's talking about claims about the past or the future. You often say that you can show someone that a statement is true, but you can't show that a statement about the future is true.

What does the "timeless truths really consist in beyond our thinking of them"? Moore's hand. — Banno

Moore's hand is temporal, though, not timeless.

As I've acknowledged before; I accept the commonsense truth expressed by Moore's gesture. It might be understood as a timeless truth in the sense that it does not depend on any particular time. But Moore's having of hands is nonetheless, it would seem, a temporal truth; it is difficult to see in what sense it could be a truth if there were no one around to think it. I mean, we can think it as being, in a sense, always and forever true that Moore had hands, but that is a purely logical timelessness. What would that truth inhere in if there were no logical beings? Would it still be able to 'hang around' somehow?

you can't show that a statement about the future is true. — Michael

Of course we can. Just wait.

You can't show me now. And nothing that's happening unseen right now makes the statement true. And yet it is (apparently) true nonetheless. Unless you believe in eternalism, that poses a metaphysical problem.

Yes. So let's go with a block universe.

So let's go with a block universe. — Banno

Next stop, the quantum multiverse and modal realism.

Meh. Not unless we need to.

You can't show me now. — Michael

A broader answer - that we don't know if some statement about the future is true or false does not make it neither true nor false.

Meh. Not unless we need to. — Banno

If you accept the metaphysical extravagance of an SR block universe, then you have no grounds for rejecting those further metaphysical extravagances.

So you have to show what could place a realistic constraint on the models you choose to treat realistically.

Oh, the irony.

If you accept the metaphysical extravagance of an SR block universe, then you have no grounds for rejecting those further metaphysical extravagances. — apokrisis

I don't see how that follows.

But either way, that we don't know if some statement about the future is true or false does not make it neither true nor false.

But either way, that we don't know if some statement about the future is true or false does not make it neither true nor false. — Banno

Correct. It makes it vague. The PNC fails to apply. At this particular point in time and space.

Again, you are simply trying to talk around the difficulty that others can so plainly see with your position.

To talk timelessly of the world and it states does not make the world itself a timeless place.

The PNC fails to apply. At this particular point in time and space. — apokrisis

That's not right. That we don't know if some statement about the future is true or false does not make it neither true nor false.

If both are still possibilities, then neither is yet an actuality.

Of course in a block SR, modally realistic, quantum multiverse, the timeless realm of propositions becomes one with a timeless world. Time falls out of your metaphysics. The frozeness of a statement matches a frozen view of reality.

But still, that feels a little extravagant as your metaphysics, no? Do you really want to have that as your position?

I rather like the block universe.

But as explained above, it's not essential. That we do not know the truth of some statement does not render it neither true nor false. That's the case for a wide range of statements, including statements about the future.

That we do not know the truth of some statement does not render it neither true nor false. That's the case for a wide range of statements, including statements about the future. — Banno

Mmm, yeah. You mean that statements are essentially timeless, while the world itself has temporal structure.

That is what your critics have been telling you for some time, Banno.

I rather like the block universe — Banno

People like to believe all kinds of weird stuff. So your preferences are irrelevant.

You mean that statements are essentially timeless, while the world itself has temporal structure. — apokrisis

That's a bit convolute. Again, this does not apply only to statements about the future; there are plenty of other sorts of statements which are true and yet unknown. It's more just pointing out the difference between belief and truth.

As I've acknowledged before; I accept the commonsense truth expressed by Moore's gesture. It might be understood as a timeless truth in the sense that it does not depend on any particular time. But Moore's having of hands is nonetheless, it would seem, a temporal truth; it is difficult to see in what sense it could be a truth if there were no one around to think it. I mean, we can think it as being, in a sense, always and forever true that Moore had hands, but that is a purely logical timelessness. What would that truth inhere in if there were no logical beings? Would it still be able to 'hang around' somehow? — Janus

This is a better line of enquiry. If no one were around, it would be true and yet unstated; perhaps this might be described as true but not a truth.

Again, it's not time that makes this case special. There are plenty of other instances of unstated truths.

Super interesting interview. I do wish these people would drop the outdated 'inside/outside' / 'internalist/externalist' vocabulary though. The distinction - when taken in the absolute - is not helpful, and the more philosophically astute move would be to show how they are largely misleading when thinking about thought. As tends to be the case, these people are rehashing - in a more neuroscientific key - findings that phenomenologists have established for half a century or more now. *sigh* — StreetlightX

Sweet. Was it you who pointed it out to me?


Such juxtapositions are best rejected.

Yeah. Bring on the soul-stuff. That'll work. — apokrisis

There's a real problem here, and that is that as much as you scoff, the soul works as a much more logical principle than vagueness, or any of the other alternatives proposed by modern process philosophers. It neatly fulfills the conditions which need to be fulfilled, and that's why it's been maintained. The fact that we cannot come up with a principle better than this thousands of years old notion of "soul", I think is a real problem. Perhaps it's a hinge-proposition and unreasonable to doubt it.

Banno gets this, but refuses to address the issue of what is a principle. Sam26 proposes hinge-props which are somehow different from principles, perhaps a special sort of principle. But Sam26 doesn't seem to be able to explain how to differentiate a hinge-prop from an axiom, or a self-evident truth. — Metaphysician Undercover

It's a bit sad that you think this, when both Sam and I have explained the nature of hinge propositions at length. They are the propositions that set up the game. They are things like "Bishops move diagonally" in chess, or "here is a hand" for Moore. They are not like axioms; they are more like formation rules.

So, doesn't a dualist proposition like "the human being consists of body and soul" set up the game?

The point being, that the propositions which set up your game vary with your metaphysical worldview.

That's a bit convolute. Again, this does not apply only to statements about the future; there are plenty of other sorts of statements which are true and yet unknown. It's more just pointing out the difference between belief and truth. — Banno

Shy away from the conclusion, but that’s what you are faced with.

Your statement concerns a possibility of which there is as yet no fact of the matter. The PNC fails.

So the statement is a timeless assertion. And yes it is framed in terms of the laws of thought. But it relies on the inductive evidence - some temporal act of measurement - to determine whether it is justifiably believed as either true or false.

As usual, you want to revert to naive realism. Truth doesn’t require a locus of enquiry - the interpretant for whom the answer serves a meaningful reply. It doesn’t require some actual act of measurement as inductive evidence. You want the “true facts” to transcend the whole business of reasoned inquiry.

So you caught yourself out in using a concrete case - claims about the future where it is an impossibility for the necessary act of measurement to have been made. You are trying to backtrack with speed and talk more vaguely about all the truths that must be simply unknown facts - safely either current or in the past.

But you already exposed the basic flaw in your position. No getting out of it I’m afraid.

Yes.

Edit: Argh. Wrong answer.

Your statement concerns a possibility of which there is as yet no fact of the matter. The PNC fails. — apokrisis

No, it doesn't. There is a fact of the mater, it is just that the fact is unknown.

...to determine whether it is justifiably believed as either true or false. — apokrisis

Being true is not the same as having been determined to be true. Truth is not the same as belief.

So back to my problem from the beginning of the thread then. How is it that it is unreasonable to doubt the hinge-proposition? That's what I don't understand.