Speculation: Eternalism and the Problem of Evil

Art48

Here’s some speculation. I don’t claim it’s all true, but I do find it interesting. And who knows? Maybe it is true.

As a man in his 70s, I often reflect on the past. Of course, sometimes I think about things I wish I hadn’t done, things I wish I had done, or things I wish I had done better. But sometimes I merely recall people and places I once knew. I wonder if the past, in any sense, still exists. Or is the past utterly gone?

In two of three views of time, the past does exist. The image is from an article.
“The struggle to find the origins of time”
https://www.astronomy.com/science/the-struggle-to-find-the-origins-of-time/

If the past exists and if I exist in some sense after death, then can I return and re-experience some of my life's events and situations? As a disembodied consciousness, can I somehow reenter the stream of time and re-experience my life? Can I experience the lives of other people? Might I be able to experience all or part of someone’s life, much like watching a movie? (except I’d be experiencing a 3D movie and also experience the person’s inner thoughts and feelings whose life it was.)

Some scientists believe free will does not really exist. This view accords with Eternalism where any life already exists somewhere in the Block Universe. It’s as if all existence is an enormous pre-recorded DVD and all we can do is watch and experience. Thus, no free will.

However, if we can choose which life (or which portion of a life) we experience, then we do have free will—we are free to select in advance what we shall experience.

It might be asked why someone would choose to experience a horrible, painful life. An answer might be that we often choose to view pain and disappointment and even horror in movies we watch. After all, it would be easy to make a two-hour movie of 100% wholesome sweetness: butterflies on a summer day, ocean waves gently rushing to shore, etc. But we don’t have that. It seems we need some drama. Even in melodrama there’s conflict and sadness: will Trish qualify for the cheerleading team? Will little Johnny get the iPad he wants for his birthday or not?

So, perhaps, as a disembodied consciousness, I selected the life I’m experiencing now. Next time around, I could experience Abraham Lincoln’s life, Elvis Presley’s life, or anyone else’s life. Anyone disembodied consciousness can experience any portion of any life.

Also, under this view, there is no problem of evil. Someone who experiences a horrible life is akin to someone who chooses to watch a horror movie.

I find this view interesting but not entirely satisfactory. I still feel that many horrors should not happen. No child should get cancer, for instance. But if I have no free will, I can’t help feel the way I do.

180 Proof

Maybe the only 'free' choice one ever makes is made at death (bardo?) either to relive one's life – travel again along one's worldline – or oblivion. Every death always culminates in the same either-or: replay the dvd or erase it. How many times could one endure one's existence, regardless of how much or little one has suffered and how high or low one's joys? Maybe oblivion is inevitable sooner or later. Maybe something like 'godhood' (à la Epicurus' gods) is attained by reliving one's exact same life endlessly. No resurrection, no reincarnation; instead a Nietzschean eternal return "beyond good and evil" (i.e. affirming both joys and sorrows)! Amor fati.

:death: :flower:

Wayfarer

So, perhaps, as a disembodied consciousness, I selected the life I’m experiencing now. Next time around, I could experience Abraham Lincoln’s life, Elvis Presley’s life, or anyone else’s life. Anyone disembodied consciousness can experience any portion of any life. — Art48

There was a researcher by the name of Ian Stevenson who devoted many decades to interviewing children who claimed to have recalled their previous lives. (His research is needless to say highly controversial and most often furiously rejected.) Anyway, I read a book about his life and work, by a journalist named Tom Shroder (Old Souls) who gives details of a few of Stevenson's cases. The thing that struck me is that is how ordinary the lives and circumstances of all these cases were. They were often in very poor familiies, more typically in the East, where belief in re-birth is socially acceptable (it's not, in much of the West.) Their remembered lives (and often deaths) were as mechanics, villagers, laborers, soldiers - none of them remembered being the Queen of Sheeba or Wizard of Oz. One of the cases Shroder recounts is of a Lebanese mechanic who had died in his late teens in a sports-car accident. The child who remembered that life was born in a village not far from the site of the accident, and remembered many details of his previous life. (Most of these recollections are said to be lost very soon after a child learns to speak, making the window of opportunity for research a very brief one. They usually first present with the child declaring that 'this is not my home', 'you are not my parents', 'this is not my name', and so on.)

Maybe the only choice one ever makes is made at death (bardo?) either to relive one's life – travel again along one's worldline – or oblivion — 180 Proof

In accounts of bardo states in the Buddhist literature, one of the warnings is that beings in the between-death states become attracted to forms in that state that are associated with the lower states of being. These include not only being reborn in the animal realm - you read in Zen literature the occasional admonition, that 'you will find yourself in the womb of a cow!' - but also hell states and the realm of hungry ghosts (which the pointed structures on roofs in Asian villages are intended to ward off.) I'm not persuaded that it is true, but I will admit it scares me. :yikes:

180 Proof

↪Wayfarer

Well, the ancient dharmic bias for moksha ("oblivion") is obvious, no? I ain't scared of Bodhisattva sages' just-so "horror" stories of bardo – I should have written 'at the moment of death' instead. Besides, apotheosis (Nietzschean or, better yet, Spinozist) is my jam, Wayf. :fire:

Wayfarer

↪180 Proof

Don’t want to start a big argument, but I think it's a mistake to conceive of mokṣa as oblivion. What is beyond the vicissitudes of existence is a different category to what simply doesn't exist. Same would apply in Plotinus’ philosophy to my knowledge. And bardo stories are not all horror stories, beings are also reborn in the various heavens, although all of those are still conceived as within the bounds of saṃsāra.

180 Proof

↪Wayfarer

:sparkle: If you say so ...

L'éléphant

I wonder if the past, in any sense, still exists. Or is the past utterly gone? — Art48

It depends on whose perspective. If ours, then it's gone. We are all traveling on the same speed of light. We are all changing and carrying with us just the memories of the past. If you used to live at A street 20 years ago, and you left that place, then your past will only exist in memory.
Recently some news announced the arrival of a radio signal that started traveling some 8 billions light years ago. If our past could be captured in some radio signal and hologram, then another life forms in another galaxy could see our past. But we wouldn't see our own past.

Edit. I am responding to the quoted line above as I understand it literally -- not some reincarnation.

punos

↪Art48

My perspective on time aligns more with Presentism, which posits that time only exists in the present moment (the eternal now of the Tao). The past and future are not tangibly present, but are instead represented by memory and imagination. I think that the past as well as the future is contained within the present as information, and that it may be possible to simulate past events to some degree of fidelity using advanced virtual reality technology that is not yet available. This kind of simulation could potentially provide the closest experience to time travel by allowing individuals to re-experience past events in a simulated environment. I do not believe true time travel in the usual sense is possible.

The plausibility of simulated time travel may be precluded or challenged by the existence of free will, as the accurate determination of past and future events from the present state would require a deterministic universe. While the universe i believe for the most part is deterministic, the occurrence of quantum events at the Planck scale may introduce some level of indeterminacy.

As a disembodied consciousness, can I somehow reenter the stream of time and re-experience my life? Can I experience the lives of other people? Might I be able to experience all or part of someone’s life, much like watching a movie? (except I’d be experiencing a 3D movie and also experience the person’s inner thoughts and feelings whose life it was.) — Art48

This reminds me of one of my favorite TV shows back in the 90s: "Quantum Leap".

Count Timothy von Icarus

If you're going to move back and forth across a time dimension to relive things in any sort of concrete order, such that you relive your life after you've first lived it, wouldn't that require another time dimension?

Well, we could always speculate about such a thing.

Joshs

↪Art48

However, if we can choose which life (or which portion of a life) we experience, then we do have free will—we are free to select in advance what we shall experience — Art48

We don’t choose a whole life or even a portion of it. What we choose is a scheme of understanding that we place over events in order to try and make sense of things. Those schemes dont tell the events how to affect us, they act as wagers that events will unfold in a way that bares a reasonable resemblance to how our schemes anticipate their unfolding ( the most important of these events being the behavior of other people) . If the flow of events validates our constructions of them by being relatively consistent with our expectations, then our schemes has staying power, and avail us of intimate connection with others.

Nevertheless, we are always having to make adjustments to our schemes, sometimes only minor repairs but other times major overhauls when we find ourselves in the midst of an emotional crisis. Despair, confusion and massive anxiety are all signs that our scheme is no longer working for us and we are faced with a major reorganization of our constructs. The only way forward from here involves much experimentation and trial and error until we arrive at a new construction that does a better job of making sense of things. We change the past only by reinterpreting it, and meet the future halfway by anticipating it. Time travel will produce little benefit for us unless we are prepared to reconstrue what we experience.

Someone who experiences a horrible life is akin to someone who chooses to watch a horror movie. — Art48

We choose to watch horror movies not to suffer, but rather to learn from the events of the film from a safe distance in order to gain a measure of mastery over our fears. For most people, what makes their lives rewarding or horrible is closely tied to how they manage to understand and relate to the behavior of people who matter to them over the course of their lives. Our most fundamental sense of who we are is dependent not just on how we see others, but on our reading of how we are seen through the eyes of others. Our choice of schemes of understanding is crucial here. If our framework does a poor job of seeing the world from others’ perspectives, then we will constantly suffer from anger, alienation, blame and poor self-regard.

Banno

↪Art48

There's a conceptual flaw in all this speculation.

Supose you were to go back and become yourself at some earlier point in your life, returning to an earlier point in the block universe. In your description you make this sound as if this would be the you of now, observing the you of then, watching as if at the movies.

Perhaps what you are experiencing now is a "you" of the future, who has "come back" to experience this time...

But that isn't right, since you have no recollections of your future. You are you, now.

And this would be the same for the you of now, re-becoming an earlier you - in that very process you cease to be the you of now.

The "disembodied consciousness... somehow reenter the stream of time and re-experience my life" would not experience that life in any way differently to how you experienced it.

The problem here is the same as that for reincarnation: what is it that is reincarnated? What is it that revisits an earlier time? What could it mean to say that you experience what it is like to be Lincoln? It would be Lincoln experiencing what it is like to be Lincoln. It's not that any disembodied consciousness can experience any portion of any life, since there could be nothing to say that this was Art experiencing Lincoln and not Lincoln experiencing Lincoln.

If you returned to an earlier time, it would not be as an observer, but as that participant; nothing would or could be different.

The philosophical problem for reincarnation - and for the re-embodiment of the OP - is explaining the individuation of the self.

Tom Storm

How many times could one endure one's existence, regardless of how much or little one has suffered and how high or low one's joys? — 180 Proof

Fair point. My life has largely been free of trouble but I certainly wouldn't want to relive any of it. I choose extinction. :wink:

180 Proof

↪Tom Storm

Some (@Wayfarer) might say you're already on the "enlightened" path ...

baker

There's a conceptual flaw in all this speculation. — Banno

And the flaw is in taking a concept (in this case, reincarnation) out of its native context.

The problem here is the same as that for reincarnation: what is it that is reincarnated?
/.../
If you returned to an earlier time, it would not be as an observer, but as that participant; nothing would or could be different.

The philosophical problem for reincarnation - and for the re-embodiment of the OP - is explaining the individuation of the self.

The Hindus have no problem with any of that. They explain that it is the soul that gets reincarnated; that thoughts, feelings, the body are not the self.

Tom Storm

↪180 Proof

:yikes:

baker

I wonder if the past, in any sense, still exists. Or is the past utterly gone? — Art48

At least for those who still have to work and are at the mercy of employers and clients, the past very much exists.

baker

↪180 Proof

Bah.

Wayfarer

I choose extinction. :wink: — Tom Storm

I was listening to Zizek yesterday in a panel session. He said, 'you can't even control your own erections! How do you think you can control yourself?'

It reminded me of one of the disputes in the early Buddhist orders concerning the status of the arahant, those who were said to have overcome all the cankers and were free of lust, but could still be subject to nocturnal emissions. This was cited by the dissident sect, which was eventually to become the Mahāyāna, as evidence for the fact that the categorisation of arahants was flawed.

Banno

...that thoughts, feelings, the body are not the self. — baker

How odd. Then it doesn't seem to do what

↪Art48

wants.

180 Proof

... it is the soul that gets reincarnated; that thoughts, feelings, the body are not the self. — baker

So some impersonal entity, not me (i.e. not mine-ness), "gets reincarnated"? If that's the case, then I need not care about "the soul" and live as I like (maybe finding a purely immanent, this-worldly basis by which to survive and thrive in the here and now). :fire:

Art48

Banno,
I'm thinking of the the Block Universe as completed, done. And I'm thinking of a disembodied consciousness as having some sense of self. And also as choosing to experience a life (or portion thereof), a life of which every part already exists in the Block Universe. I may sit down and watch a movie and lose myself in the movie, becoming so lost in the drama that I forget I'm just sitting on a couch and watching. The idea is vaguely similar: the disembodied consciousness experiences the movie of a life, but better because the movie is in 3D, and has sound, odors, touch, and taste sensations, too.

... it is the soul that gets reincarnated; that thoughts, feelings, the body are not the self. — baker

I think the concepts of "soul" and "disembodied consciousness" are similar, if not exactly the same. Choosing to live a life is choosing to experience all that life's physical, emotional, and mental sensations. So, we are in a 3D movie where 3 refers to physical, emotional, and mental sensations. I think that idea is similar to the idea that we are living in a matrix.

Banno

↪Art48

Sure, good reply. What I'm getting at is similar to the difference between watching a documentary and being a part of that documentary. I think that ambiguity may be built in to your speculation. The difference is in who is doing the "watching". If you go back and re-live a part of your life, will you be you, now, re-experiencing that life? If so, you are not re-experiencing, so much as watching from the outside. But if you loose what makes future-you to re-live what it was like for you, then, then it's not future-you who is having the experience - it's just old you.

A different, perhaps more accurate way to think of the block universe in these terms would be that the you from your past is still there, in an atemporal sense, experiencing the things you experienced.

Banno

↪180 Proof

Yep. Similarly, what reason would we have to think that

↪Art48

's disembodied consciousness was Art, and not some parasitic spirit that digests Art's experiences?

More broadly, we understand - more or less - what being oneself is in the normal circumstances of growing old, forgetting, being injured and so on. But remove the body and the context in which all this makes sense drops out as well. In philosophical terms, the language game has been over-extended to the point where it needs to be radically rebuilt; we no longer have the capacity to find our way about.

So we make stuff up.

But there is nothing that makes the stuff we make up right or wrong...

Nicholas

Do not know which of the three notions of time are truest. Yet a reminder that the Vision of Er, at the end of Republic holds much wisdom, even nowadays:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_Er

L'éléphant

such that you relive your life after you've first lived it, wouldn't that require another time dimension? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, this is one possibility. Observers in another time dimension could see our past, but not us in the same time dimension.

Art48

What I'm getting at is similar to the difference between watching a documentary and being a part of that documentary. I think that ambiguity may be built in to your speculation. The difference is in who is doing the "watching". If you go back and re-live a part of your life, will you be you, now, re-experiencing that life? If so, you are not re-experiencing, so much as watching from the outside. — Banno

The fundamental question, I believe, is of personal identity. One view is that our physical, emotional, and mental sensations being temporary, don't constitute me in the deepest sense. Rather, the more permanent consciousness which is aware of the sensations constitutes my personal identity. Under this view, I (my awareness) would be re-experiencing the current life I'm experiencing.

But there are, of course, other views of personal identity.

Joshs

More broadly, we understand - more or less - what being oneself is in the normal circumstances of growing old, forgetting, being injured and so on. But remove the body and the context in which all this makes sense drops out as well. In philosophical terms, the language game has been over-extended to the point where it needs to be radically rebuilt; we no longer have the capacity to find our way about.

So we make stuff up.

But there is nothing that makes the stuff we make up right or wrong. — Banno

What are the minimum requirements for finding our way about? What if I imagine myself as having memory, which includes my history as a body growing up in a conventional world, and the ability to learn. In addition, I have the ability to think but not to perceive an outside world. I am like a writer locked in a room with their private contemplations. Am I then just making stuff up? Is there anything generated within my thinking that can make that thinking right or wrong, that can validate or invalidate my expectations concerning the future directions of my contemplations?

baker

↪Banno

So some impersonal entity, not me (i.e. not mine-ness), "gets reincarnated"? — 180 Proof

I would have thought you're all sufficiently informed about the reincarnation doctrine ...

To recap: A reincarnation doctrine like it can be found in Hinduism teaches that it is the soul that gets reincarnated. The soul is also who a person really is. But when the person is under the influence of maya, in a state of delusion, they don't know who they really are, and mistakenly identify themselves with their body, their mind, their feelings, or in relation to their possessions, their tribe.

So we make stuff up. — Banno

Not from scratch, though. A person born and raised into a religion that teaches reincarnation will have internalized it even before their critical cognitive faculties have developed. So such a person doesn't actually "make stuff up". Such a person conceives of themselves according to the doctrine of reincarnation: that who they really are is an eternal soul who inhabits a body, and that this body, the thoughts and feelings they have are not who the person really is, nor do they see themselves defined by their possessions, socio-economic status, tribal affiliation etc.

The bigger picture here is that who we think we are (including the abstract concept of what selfhood is) is something we have internalized long ago and take it for granted. Our notions of selfhood are something we become acculturated into even before our critical cognitive faculties have developed.

baker

I think the concepts of "soul" and "disembodied consciousness" are similar, if not exactly the same. — Art48

They can't be, because one is from a religious context (pulling along all the connotations), and the other one is not.

baker

What if I imagine myself — Joshs

Can one really define oneself?

Your default notions of who you really are are not your own, but inherited from the society/culture you grew up in. So you cannot define your starting point, as that has been done by others already.

At some "personal defining juncture" however you choose to define yourself anew, possibly in contradistinction with your old, inherited idea of "who you really are", that new definition is still going to be in relation to your old one. So it seems that one cannot actually chose one's identity.

Joshs

↪baker

Your default notions of who you really are are not your own, but inherited from the society/culture you grew up in. So you cannot define your starting point, as that has been done by others already — baker

Society is an abstraction, an average derived from individual perspectives. It is true that each perspectival view is shaped and reshaped by its participation in its culture, but this just means that the way I change in response to that constant social exposure maintains its own integrity and uniqueness with respect to the way others within that same culture are changes by their interactions within it. In this way, each of us stand apart from our culture at the same time that we belong to it.

At some "personal defining juncture" however you choose to define yourself anew, possibly in contradistinction with your old, inherited idea of "who you really are", that new definition is still going to be in relation to your old one. So it seems that one cannot actually chose one's identity. — baker

Just because my new self is defined in reaction against my old self doesn’t mean that that new me doesn’t comprise its own identity.

Speculation: Eternalism and the Problem of Evil

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