It's interesting how you can understand past time as "always reaching for nothing but never getting to nothing" as Hawking said, and how they get there by understanding time as "bent" by an imaginary number within a Euclidean approach to quantum gravity.

Rationality Rules said he was interested in a theory of the origin of the universe that finite and doesn't have nothingness as a cause. I don't know if gravity can operate this way, but I will give a try. Two historical analogies first

1) Aquinas said the reason causes or births the will, which it in turn needs to operate

2) Fitche said we create or birth objects outside us, the non-Ego. Yet we are dependent on them in order to act

So, here's my argument. Gravity causes time to start by causing motion. So we can calculate all the motions from now till we get to the first motion, and before that there was no time. So the universe wouldn't be eternal or came from nothing. It's just a contained chain of causality, started by the first attraction of gravity.

I think this is far less fuzzy then Hawkings Zeno-like time. Hegel said infinity and finite reacted into causing the universe. I wanted a more physical definition. Theists will still say "you need a God to make sense out of this brute fact". Well people in India think there are monkey gods in the clouds and snakes in our spines. To them nothing makes sense unless these are true. Physics does not deal with psychology lol

As a non-physicist and non-theist, I think these speculative hypotheses are interesting in two respects:1) they expand the possibilities we can consider - e.g. showing that a finite past is feasible; 2) they refute arguments from ignorance regarding the "need" for a creator.

That said, I feel strongly that we (non-physicists) ought not to embrace any specific hypothesis. None are established physics, and probably none are actually true. They are possible, but there's unknowns in physics that need to be filled before any cosmological hypothesis can become accepted physics. It's fun to extrapolate from them, but we shouldn't get so overconfident that we think we've got it all figured out.

One guy I read suggested simply that the laws of physics are most fundamental. — Gregory

Either that guy is a physicist doing a bad job of metaphysics, or that statement is incomplete. Laws of physics are typically described as equations, but it doesn't make sense to consider equations (alone) as the fundamental basis of the universe. The equations are not abstractions that exercise control over reality; rather they describe how material things behave.

The universe tries very hard to hide the secret of its origin.

We should not see time for the age of the universe as something real, what would that time be anyway? In the theory of relativity, used by cosmologists to calculate the age of the universe, there is no "real", neither a privileged or absolute time, since in this theory, time flows differently in every part of space, depending on the amount of mass there, so what time to calculate overall and how ?? Does not make sense!

Because we're adding disparate things. But when cosmologists calculate the so-called age of the universe, they refer to cosmological time, which is the time that appears to us to have passed if we go back in time, using the equations of general relativity theory. Meaning cosmological time = apparent/phenomenal time ≠ real time.

And the universe they refer to, is not the real universe, but the observable or again we can say the phenomenal, what appears to us to be the universe. The internet is full of articles that do not make this distinction, there is no difference between the observable/phenomenal and the real universe, so laymen think they are the same.

On one hand, the columnists are right, because you can't talk about the real universe, so they would have nothing to say, on the other, they don't make the distinction, maybe because they themselves don't know, or because they think the public already knows about it, or maybe for other reasons - to have a job and something to say - I don't know, however not for sensible reasons, but rather for psychological ones. And so there is this global misunderstanding. I imagine that as long as it is limited to the immature public, it does not matter, but if the misunderstanding grows into the scientific community, then there is most probably a problem.

And again, the Big Bang, then, is the "reason" that appears to us to have been the beginning of the observable universe, if, from its apparent current expansion, you run back in time, contracting it, finding that all this was limited to a very small area of ​​low density. Cosmologists, however, do not say that the Big Bang started spontaneously, basically they say nothing about its original state, but catch it shortly after it "bursts". But whatever it is, the Big Bang theory refers to the observable/phenomenal universe and not to the real one, for which noone can speak.

The real universe is just like god, no one can talk about them, do not be confused that religions talk about god all the time, purely psychological their reasons are, or maybe poetical, however not logical.

In all, appearances can be deceiving, especially from behind.



(For the philosophical literate, viz Wittgenstein - the tractatus)

Physicists say time is different for different people. If they mean rate and motion only, then we just have a finite series of motions. Hawking says time is an entity that turns into space however

Hawking says time is an entity that turns into space however — Gregory

Actually the metaphor is that, as a point on a closed surface like a sphere, or the earth, is never itself a boundary in any unique sense, meaning that you can keep on walking past it when you get to it, so time has no end or beginning point. If we think of time - or anything - as linear, then ends and beginnings can make sense. But not in terms of closed surfaces. Nothing to do with sky or anything turning into anything else. This Hawking's metaphor as described in his book.

Ah, I see

The problem with the Hawking proposal is that it defines time in relation to spatial existence, as derived from Einsteinian relativity. So, when looking backward at spatial expansion, which has been revealed as a fundamental feature of the universe, we see a time when spatial existence becomes unintelligible. The size of the universe was infinitesimally small at that time. Because the Einsteinian conception of time is dependent on spatial existence, time before this point is completely unintelligible. But that's just a flaw in the Einsteinian conception of time. If we conceive of time as independent from spatial existence, this allows for time prior to spatial existence.

Refusal to allow for time prior to spatial existence is a manifestation of modern scientism. Monist materialism denies the possibility of anything real, independent of material existence. However, dualist principles support a world of immaterial Forms independent from material existence, which act as the cause of material existence. Can you see how this allows for time prior to material existence?

Hopefully you can comprehend that it is only a scientism based metaphysics which supports the Hawking-Hartle no-boundary proposal. With disciplined philosophy we see this world view as insufficient, and unable to account for the immaterial aspects of reality. Therefore such proposals are rejected as inadequate.

However, dualist principles support a world of immaterial Forms independent from material existence, — Metaphysician Undercover

And from my disciplined magic hippo philosophy I too can give a final answer to any question whatsoever. *sigh*

support a world of immaterial Forms independent from material existence, — Metaphysician Undercover

Do these forms exist in any sense whatsoever? If yes, then what form would that be? After all, it's a form; seems reasonable a form has a form.

Do these forms exist in any sense whatsoever? If yes, then what form would that be? After all, it's a form; seems reasonable a form has a form. — tim wood

Some people refer to them as "the laws of nature". They determine material existence by restricting the behaviour of physical things. There is an inclination in some modern metaphysics to describe physical existence in terms of behaviour. This is based in our conception of "energy". In this perspective, all physical existence is simply activity. But since the laws of physics are very applicable, something must dictate which activities are and are not possible. So the laws of physics are said to be representations of the laws of nature. These "laws of nature" must necessarily be prior to physical existence, if physical existence is law abiding activity. Hence we have a necessity to conceive of immaterial "Forms" which are prior to material existence.

in terms of behaviour. — Metaphysician Undercover

something must dictate — Metaphysician Undercover

Nothing anthropomorphic here.

Hence we have a necessity to conceive of immaterial "Forms" which are prior to material existence. — Metaphysician Undercover

I distinguish between logical priority, which has nothing to do with temporal priority and temporal priority, which has nothing to do with logical priority. With this, there is neither necessity nor imperative, "to conceive."

You appear to think that because event E happens at time t+1, there must have been a whole raft of conditions, thing, rules, material and immaterial in play at time t. Our 20th century teaches us that at the level of the large those are probabilities that at the level of the small don't necessarily work out. At the level of the small the unlikely and even the seemingly impossible occur with regularity.

Further, laws of physics and nature are descriptive and problematic, not prescriptive. The world at every level, then, is just working itself out. There are no oracular structures or imperatives, though probability make it seem so, and indeed we can live a whole life as if there were. Your metaphysics is pre-1850 at the most recent. Your thinking is in terms of quaint ancient efforts to account for the manifest and evident, though without either understanding the thing itself nor even how to understand it. 2300 years ago people did a pretty good job under those combined handicaps.

Hence we have a necessity to conceive of immaterial "Forms" which are prior to material existence. — Metaphysician Undercover

You have skated by my question:

If yes, then what form would that be? — tim wood

And I would hold that even ideas as accounts, for present purpose, are material in the sense that absent that material they would not exist.

But gravity, the strong, weak, and electromagnetic forces, & etc.! They exist, don't they? Well, do they? Your claim of existence for immaterial things is such to require a very careful laying out and laying bare what is meant by existing and existence. Give that a try?

Yours are convenient and sometime useful fictions, like the "solar system" model of the atom. But fictions nonetheless. The problem here is your insistent reification of them, and the plain fact that time and understanding have long passed you by.

Our 20th century teaches us that at the level of the large those are probabilities that at the level of the small don't necessarily work out. At the level of the small the unlikely and even the seemingly impossible occur with regularity. — tim wood

Actually it works at all levels, that's why quantum physics provides us with such good predictions. if you think that events at the small level are absolutely random, and completely unpredictable, then you misunderstand quantum physics.

Further, laws of physics and nature are descriptive and problematic, not prescriptive. — tim wood

Laws of physics are descriptive, but the metaphysics I referred to assumes that these laws are representations of the "laws of nature" which govern the behaviour of the physical universe. And this is modern metaphysics I am referring to, not ancient metaphysics.

There are no oracular structures or imperatives, though probability make it seem so, and indeed we can live a whole life as if there were. — tim wood

Actually, the science of physics works really well to make accurate predictions, and there is a reason for this, physical things behave in predictable ways. If you want to start with the premise that all prediction is based in probability, that doesn't effect the argument, because we already know that inductive principles are based in probability. The fact remains, that accurate predictions are possible. Due to this fact modern people tend to assume that there are laws which govern the way that things behave.

The beginning of time, is not the beginning of the universe; the beginning of time would be something like, the 'first mover' - which likely was mental - and not physical. An awakening.

Superficial clouds disperse to the mind of simulation, probably after some primal simulate fluctuation.

Growth, from a state of nothing, implies mass injection. I was not born of nothing, I was born of mother, father, sperm and egg. Nothing can become something, but not without stimulations.

Nothing doesn't become something, something makes something from nothing.

Immaterial forms immerse us in dreams.

An orchestra of anima, orchestrated by a mind. His own friends are known P-zombies; games of an 'AI bias.'

If not stars, what? Hives? And from hives, what's possible?

Perhaps the first mover was a species and less about space and more about shape.

The parasite shape that evovled as it's motion continued. Imagine opposite black hives; living matter jumping from hive to hive, momentary existences.

Time can be chaotic or harmonious; around the beginning of time, time was likely chaotic, and in our time, harmonious. From chaos can come harmony; a great war can bring huge profit to the winner.

Time is and/or isn't a harmonious, neutral or chaotic state.

Time is implied by existence; the harmony of stars and planets creates time, times where animals can exist, and create more times, where video game characters can exist. Time, is also what we consider NOT, or NON, it is, sometimes, just a concept.

What is a material law? Let's say that we think light works a certain way. Suddenly a light acts different and we think something is affecting it. Why not say "something was affecting it" before and now it acts normal? There is no way to see into any laws, if they even exist instead of randomness.

Do the Forms exist? Why not pure potentiality, or even spiritual nothingness, instead?

Spiritual powers say WHY things are the way they are. Materially, things can be explained through science. Hume and Russell thoughts the "why question" irrelevant. Many disagree.

If there are Forms or spiritual powers (spiritual potential would be in the middle, spiritual nothing would be the opposite of Forms), can we tap into them?

Consider this: https://subtle.energy/list-100-peer-reviewed-papers-offer-scientific-evidence-psi-phenomena/?fbclid=IwAR2VrdcEtpPx1YzU-O-92EgJh9AjCKkEL0YgSZi_hDhwkaIy-WZPpQhF8Wk

What is the probability that the majority don't want to believe these studies? Would the conspiracy be leaked? But we have people claiming exactly that everywhere on every subject!

Believe! (and maybe watch a movie)

Do the Forms exist? Why not pure potentiality, or even spiritual nothingness, instead? — Gregory

Pure potentiality is demonstrably irrational. This would exclude anything actual, but a cause must be actual. Therefore pure potentiality cannot produce anything actual, and if there ever was pure potentiality, it would always be the case, because nothing actual could ever come from it. However, we do notice that there is actual existence, so we can exclude the possibility of pure potentiality as an unreasonable proposal.

Pure potentiality doesn't act any more than a Form. The world either flows out of the more actual Form or flows up from pure potentially

Hawking's opinions are all alternative ones. There is no way to prove anything about cosmology scientifically. They say "dark matter causes the expansion". How do you know a cosmic onion doesn't do it instead? They say "we know this model is right with 65 percent accuracy" then they throw it out for one with 70 percent, than throw that out for one with 85! But if the 65 and 70 percent were wrong, how do we know it's really 85 percent accurate at that point?

Believe! (and maybe watch a movie) — Gregory

what movie? :chin:

but the metaphysics I referred to assumes — Metaphysician Undercover

And there you have it. First assume - not itself a sin - and then grant everything that follows and attack anything that doesn't. Something Aristotelian in this, and not in a good way. The underlying rubric to this is, "I do not care what the reality is, but only if it fits my metaphysics." In the 21st century, however, that's not metaphysics or any kind of physics, but egomania instead.

but a cause must be actual. — Metaphysician Undercover

Meaning what, exactly? Material? If not material, then what, exactly?

Do these forms exist in any sense whatsoever? If yes, then what form would that be? After all, it's a form; seems reasonable a form has a form. — tim wood

And this question again, until maybe you answer it.

However, dualist principles support a world of immaterial Forms independent from material existence, — Metaphysician Undercover

A "world" of immateriality? Oxymoron?

Meaning what, exactly? Material? If not material, then what, exactly? — tim wood

By "actual" I mean active. If you are insisting that to be actual, something must be material, then I'll look to you for an explanation as to why you believe this. I see all sorts of indications that immaterial things are actual, starting with gravity and electromagnetism.

Spiritual is a different ORDER than material. I can't prove its there. The material answers the HOW-it-is-so. Spiritual answers a subtle why, which I hear in music from sitar to the 3000 year old chants on youtube. There IS something fuzzy here because I'll listen to Apollo or whoever chants on youtube and it sounds half spiritual and half material. There is probably a continuum with something discreet at both ends. That's what Spinoza got wrong. He didn't believe in the material at all, at least in the empiricist sense. I don't think, nevertheless, that there is a person or 3 persons at either end of the chasm that is our continuum..

If you are insisting that to be actual, something must be material, then I'll look to you for an explanation as to why you believe this. I see all sorts of indications that immaterial things are actual, starting with gravity and electromagnetism. — Metaphysician Undercover

Agreed. But I do not know what you mean by "active."

that immaterial things are actual, starting with gravity and electromagnetism. — Metaphysician Undercover

(Not clear to me these are actually immaterial - a different topic.)

Hawking says time is an entity that turns into space — Gregory

I find that completely incomprehensible. Velocity disappears, work and energy disappears, capacity and performance disappears, efficiency disappears, any physics measurement and concept that depend on the relationship between distance or space and time disappear.

Maybe that is what Hawk was trying to say. But you can't say that time becomes space as you go backward in time. It is just expressing a conundrum, a seemingly impossible situation (i.e. no energy or capacity) by creating a seemingly impossible physical transformation.

But you can't say that time becomes space as you go backward in time. — god must be atheist

Under Einsteinian relativity theory there are no good principles to distinguish spatial measurements from temporal measurements. That is a deficiency of Einsteinian relativity which I mentioned above. So if you look backward in time through the lens of Einsteinian relativity, there is no principle to prevent an interpretation of "time becomes space". But that's just a matter of theory-dependent interpretation. The "seemingly impossible situation" is produced by application of a faulty theory.

I won't dispute this for three reasons:
1. I don't understand the relativity theory.
2. I don't understand what you are saying.
3. I have serious doubts beleiving that you, as well, understand either of the above.

To say before is just to mean there was no previous activity. Where there was no previous activity there was no time. There was nothing.

Pure platonists believe we are decay from Forms, so to speak. Better "material" than you might think

I try to boil these questions down to basics.

From what I have read, philosophically, there are only 2 possibilities:
1 - Existence and time had a beginning
2 - Existence and time didn't have a beginning - they are eternal.

Any fundamental start point requires an action that had no cause. So you would have to believe in the reality of true spontaneity (without cause) if you envisage a start point. Do you?

If there was an eternal state and then a change occurs, you still need a truly spontaneous or truly random act (also without cause) in order to bring about that change.

The only other possibility is the argument from Determinism - that we are all part of an eternal and inevitable process.

Top scientists these days say that 'space-time' does not exist (as an example - see Dr.Nima Arkani-Hamed video (between about 4 - 10 mins in...... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U47kyV4TMnE). In this clip he also states that the operations of Universe produce inevitable outcomes.

All of these questions relate to the underlying principle of cause & effect. For some reason this forum seems to keep bringing me back to the book by Finipolscie "Our Existence part 1 : The Nature and Origin of Physical Reality" It's all in there, and explained very clearly... but in a way that also lets you make up your own mind about the evidence. (It's on Kindle if you want to read it in the USA).

Time to me is inextricably linked to movement, and so it may be the same thing. If time did begin it would have to also be the first movement - as the ancient Greeks suggested. But it is quite possible to have physical existence without movement. However the introduction of movement to a static Universe would require a spontaneous act.... etc

However, dualist principles support a world of immaterial Forms independent from material existence, which act as the cause of material existence. Can you see how this allows for time prior to material existence? — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes. I am both a Monist (the universal "substance" is Information), and a Dualist (in the real world Information exists in both physical and metaphysical forms).

In your reply to "tw", you equated Metaphysical Forms with the Laws of Nature. I agree. But in my own worldview, I go even further, to equate Metaphysics (mental forms) with the enforming power of Nature : what scientists call Energy, and what I call EnFormAction. The material aspects of reality are continually being transformed by immaterial energy. Energy is invisible and intangible, until it is embodied in material form. We only know that Energy exists, by inference from the behavior of matter.

Since the universal substance of the universe is invisible/intangible Information/energy, it occupies no Space and is the cause of Time, as it creates Change in the material world. If that is indeed the case, then there is no reason to doubt the possibility/probability of a timeless state "prior to material existence". That being the case, there is good reason to infer some kind of metaphysical Enformer to create our physical world system. :nerd:


Metaphysics : 2. Aristotle divided his treatise on science into two parts. The world as-known-via-the-senses was labeled “physics” - what we call "Science" today. And the world as-known-by-the-mind, by reason, was labeled “metaphysics” - what we now call "Philosophy" .
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page14.html

EnFormAction : Ententional Causation. A proposed metaphysical law of the universe that causes random interactions between forces and particles to produce novel & stable arrangements of matter & energy. It’s the creative force (AKA : Divine Will) of the axiomatic eternal deity that, for unknown reasons, programmed a Singularity to give birth to our reality from an infinite source of possibility. AKA : The creative power of Evolution; the power to enform; Logos; Change.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html

Enformer : A hypothetical First Cause, logically necessary to kick-start the space-time process we call Evolution. Not to be confused with traditional anthro-metric deities. ("Einstein stated that he believed in the pantheistic God of Baruch Spinoza") https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_and_philosophical_views_of_Albert_Einstein

Hawking says time is an entity that turns into space however
— Gregory

Actually the metaphor is that, as a point on a closed surface like a sphere, or the earth, is never itself a boundary in any unique sense, meaning that you can keep on walking past it when you get to it, so time has no end or beginning point. If we think of time - or anything - as linear, then ends and beginnings can make sense. But not in terms of closed surfaces. Nothing to do with sky or anything turning into anything else. This Hawking's metaphor as described in his book. — tim wood

According to Hegel, it is the other way round: it is space that turns into time:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/324093

The truth of space is time, and thus space becomes time; the transition to time is not made subjectively by us, but made by space itself. In pictorial thought, space and time are taken to be quite separate: we have space and also time; philosophy fights against this 'also'. — hegel

It seems that for Hegel, space is more fundamental than time, as in "at first there was space". The subjective movement of space, its negation, procures time.