Musings on the Nietzschean concept of "eternal recurrence"

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Immanuel Can
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Re: Musings on the Nietzschean concept of "eternal recurrence"

Post by Immanuel Can »

MustaphaTheMond wrote:
Dalek Prime wrote:Just made me think of determinism again. If your a determinist, even the first time through is hopeless. Everything is planned for you. So the rest is just pointless gravy. How funny is that?
You could indeed argue that everything is hopeless and pointless, or you could take the view that your choices, actions, intentions are still very real causal states themselves (which have also been caused); which lead to real outcomes in the universe. To realise the truth of determinism does not equate falling into fatalism.
But how can "choices, actions and intentions" be "causal states in themselves," from a Determinist perspective? After all Determinism is going to have to say they are not "in themselves" anything but the products of prior impersonal forces. Human volition doesn't "start" anything, in Determinism, nor does it even change the dynamics of what is happening. There is no mysterious property like "will" that has any independent ability to initiate.

Fatalism may not always be the route the Determinist wants to choose: but it's the road he's forced down if he retains any desire to follow the logic of his own position. He can only avoid Fatalism by being rationally inconsistent with his own claims.

Which, of course, Determinists generally choose to be, in my experience; and no wonder, for the strict logic of their position is actually hideous in consequence.
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MustaphaTheMond
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Re: Musings on the Nietzschean concept of "eternal recurrence"

Post by MustaphaTheMond »

Immanuel Can wrote:
But how can "choices, actions and intentions" be "causal states in themselves," from a Determinist perspective? After all Determinism is going to have to say they are not "in themselves" anything but the products of prior impersonal forces. Human volition doesn't "start" anything, in Determinism, nor does it even change the dynamics of what is happening. There is no mysterious property like "will" that has any independent ability to initiate.

Fatalism may not always be the route the Determinist wants to choose: but it's the road he's forced down if he retains any desire to follow the logic of his own position. He can only avoid Fatalism by being rationally inconsistent with his own claims.

Which, of course, Determinists generally choose to be, in my experience; and no wonder, for the strict logic of their position is actually hideous in consequence.
Indeed, they are the products of prior impersonal forces, but they are also themselves causes of further real events and outcomes. That is to say, the actions and decisions you take, still cause other things to occur, and are therefore not pointless or meaningless simply due to the fact that they are determined by prior causes over which you have exercised no control nor had any say.
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Terrapin Station
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Re: Musings on the Nietzschean concept of "eternal recurrence"

Post by Terrapin Station »

MustaphaTheMond wrote: . . . then identical states of the Hubble volume should reoccur
They'd not be literally identical. (I'm a nominalist, by the way.)
Surely such a proposition completely and utterly obliterates the existence of man and every one of our lives into utter insignificant and meaningless nothingness?
Significance and meaning are subjective, so it doesn't change anything about that.
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Re: Musings on the Nietzschean concept of "eternal recurrence"

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sthitapragya wrote:Time could not possibly be infinite. If it were, it would never reach the present and existence would be impossible. It could be non-linear and unbound but not infinite. And that's it. That is all the math I know. :D
That would only disallow infinite extension into the past. It wouldn't disallow infinite extension into the future.

In other words, if you start at 1 and keep counting integers from there endlessly, that's an infinite set. You do not need to keep counting backwards forever, too. You do not need to also count from 1 to 0 to -1, -2, etc.--you can just start at 1.

Aside from that, all we're really saying is that we can't make logical sense out of how we could get to the present with time infinitely extended into the past. But we can't make sense of things all of a sudden just "popping into existence" either, and no matter what we do, we're stuck with those two options. So that issue is just not going to be answered with something that makes intuitive logical sense to us, which dismantles the objection about infinitely backwards-extended time.
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Re: Musings on the Nietzschean concept of "eternal recurrence"

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MustaphaTheMond wrote:
Hobbes' Choice wrote: Nietzsche would br slapping his head is despair. His idea was not intended to have any relationship to a scientific/mathematical idea; especially not one which offers an empty theoretical position, so irrelevant.
ER was a musing on ancient philosophical thoughts which he mobilises for the purpose of offering moral advice on how to live your life.
All this science stuff is not relevant.

Nietzsche is asking that were you to believe in the ER then this would be the best way to live your life. I do not even think he meant it literally.

Nietzsche is simply saying you have one life and should live it as if you had to live it again and again, witnessing every part without being able to change it once it has been lived.
By this means your life would be the most authentic, the most fully lived and without regret
I'm not concerned as to what Nietzsche's intention was in this post, I was simply musing and extrapolating on his ideas and linking them to other concepts I have read about because it is profoundly interesting to me.

I think we can agree that Nietzsche would be in despair regardless. :shock:
As a bit of moral guidance the ET is interesting, as a physical reality it is absurd.
If you wanted to talk about physics then why mention Neitzsche at all?
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Re: Musings on the Nietzschean concept of "eternal recurrence"

Post by sthitapragya »

Terrapin Station wrote:
sthitapragya wrote:Time could not possibly be infinite. If it were, it would never reach the present and existence would be impossible. It could be non-linear and unbound but not infinite. And that's it. That is all the math I know. :D
That would only disallow infinite extension into the past. It wouldn't disallow infinite extension into the future.

In other words, if you start at 1 and keep counting integers from there endlessly, that's an infinite set. You do not need to keep counting backwards forever, too. You do not need to also count from 1 to 0 to -1, -2, etc.--you can just start at 1.

Aside from that, all we're really saying is that we can't make logical sense out of how we could get to the present with time infinitely extended into the past. But we can't make sense of things all of a sudden just "popping into existence" either, and no matter what we do, we're stuck with those two options. So that issue is just not going to be answered with something that makes intuitive logical sense to us, which dismantles the objection about infinitely backwards-extended time.
The things popping into existence could probably have some science behind it and that does seem likely. However, the infinite time thing is mathematically impossible. I don't think any counter intuitive theory works in such a way. So infinite time is something I am not ready yet to accept as a possibility unless some reknowned mathematician says it is possible and a few others agree with him enough to give it credence. Then I will just take his word for it. :D
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Re: Musings on the Nietzschean concept of "eternal recurrence"

Post by Terrapin Station »

sthitapragya wrote:The things popping into existence could probably have some science behind it and that does seem likely. However, the infinite time thing is mathematically impossible. I don't think any counter intuitive theory works in such a way. So infinite time is something I am not ready yet to accept as a possibility unless some reknowned mathematician says it is possible and a few others agree with him enough to give it credence. Then I will just take his word for it. :D
Wait, but what would be mathematically impossible about "Time starts here and extends infinitely into the future?"
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Re: Musings on the Nietzschean concept of "eternal recurrence"

Post by sthitapragya »

Terrapin Station wrote:
sthitapragya wrote:The things popping into existence could probably have some science behind it and that does seem likely. However, the infinite time thing is mathematically impossible. I don't think any counter intuitive theory works in such a way. So infinite time is something I am not ready yet to accept as a possibility unless some reknowned mathematician says it is possible and a few others agree with him enough to give it credence. Then I will just take his word for it. :D
Wait, but what would be mathematically impossible about "Time starts here and extends infinitely into the future?"
We dont know what the future holds. Time could very easily end too. My problem was with OP which refers to Nietzsche suggesting time was infinite. I am pretty sure he meant infinite in the past too.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Musings on the Nietzschean concept of "eternal recurrence"

Post by Immanuel Can »

MustaphaTheMond wrote:Indeed, they are the products of prior impersonal forces, but they are also themselves causes of further real events and outcomes. That is to say, the actions and decisions you take, still cause other things to occur, and are therefore not pointless or meaningless simply due to the fact that they are determined by prior causes over which you have exercised no control nor had any say.
You're on the wrong end of the question. The question is not whether human decisions appear to "cause other things to occur," because everybody agrees about how that looks. The question is about whether that "decision" was real and causal in its own right, or merely the product of prior causes.

So your jump to "are therefore not pointless or meaningless" is unwarranted. On a Determinist account, human decisions cannot have "point," since they are not chosen at all. The impersonal forces that produced the decision did not intend anything at all. And they can't have any "meaning," because Determination is an impersonal, physical (not meaning-driven) process.

It's the cause of the choice you have to look at: not the (apparent) consequences. If the cause of the choice was impersonal and Determined, rather than genuinely human and volitional, then there is no "point" or "meaning" involved at all.
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Re: Musings on the Nietzschean concept of "eternal recurrence"

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MustaphaTheMond wrote:I've been reading a lot of Nietzsche lately, and what particularly struck me were his writings about the "eternal return", "amor fati" or "eternal recurrence" of things. This concept that, given time is infinite whereas the number of possible states are finite, events will recur again and again infinitely (such as me typing this very sentence) seems to be almost eerily echoed by some theories in physics and mathematics.

In mathematics, the Poincare recurrence theorem states that "a system whose dynamics are volume-preserving and which is confined to a finite spatial volume will, after a sufficiently long time, return to an arbitrarily small neighbourhood of its initial state". Indeed, such a mathematical truth supports Nietzsche's belief that "in an infinite period of time, every possible combination would at some time be attained".

Equally, the oscillating universe theory, originally supported by Einstein, speculates that that the known universe ends in a "big crunch" which is followed by another big bang and another crunch etc. etc. in a process which continues indefinitely. If quantum theory is true such that there is only a finite amount of configurations within a finite volume possible, then identical states of the Hubble volume should reoccur, due to chance alone.

Having examined these ideas, Nietzsche's words seem almost prophetic. The idea that everything that has been, has already been, and will indeed occur again due to the infinity of time is extraordinary. Surely such a proposition completely and utterly obliterates the existence of man and every one of our lives into utter insignificant and meaningless nothingness?

Try: EVERYTHING IS
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Re: Musings on the Nietzschean concept of "eternal recurrence"

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Is what?
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Re: Musings on the Nietzschean concept of "eternal recurrence"

Post by attofishpi »

MustaphaTheMond wrote:I've been reading a lot of Nietzsche lately, and what particularly struck me were his writings about the "eternal return", "amor fati" or "eternal recurrence" of things. This concept that, given time is infinite whereas the number of possible states are finite, events will recur again and again infinitely (such as me typing this very sentence) seems to be almost eerily echoed by some theories in physics and mathematics.

In mathematics, the Poincare recurrence theorem states that "a system whose dynamics are volume-preserving and which is confined to a finite spatial volume will, after a sufficiently long time, return to an arbitrarily small neighbourhood of its initial state". Indeed, such a mathematical truth supports Nietzsche's belief that "in an infinite period of time, every possible combination would at some time be attained".

Equally, the oscillating universe theory, originally supported by Einstein, speculates that that the known universe ends in a "big crunch" which is followed by another big bang and another crunch etc. etc. in a process which continues indefinitely. If quantum theory is true such that there is only a finite amount of configurations within a finite volume possible, then identical states of the Hubble volume should reoccur, due to chance alone.

Having examined these ideas, Nietzsche's words seem almost prophetic. The idea that everything that has been, has already been, and will indeed occur again due to the infinity of time is extraordinary. Surely such a proposition completely and utterly obliterates the existence of man and every one of our lives into utter insignificant and meaningless nothingness?
Dammit - i think i like this Nietzsche bloke. I try to avoid previous philosophical writings - as am keen to keep my own analysis of affairs devoid of mud. Seems the above is like chaos set theory - mandlebrot comes to mind of course.
However, again, time is only the occurrence of an event - matter exists and has been caused and causes events - that is time. If there is not matter - and when i say matter i mean down to the smallest particle and smaller, then there is not time - actually it gets binary.
I could be wrong though - i have been once ago.
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Re: Musings on the Nietzschean concept of "eternal recurrence"

Post by waechter418 »

Arising_uk wrote:Is what?
a chicken
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Arising_uk
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Re: Musings on the Nietzschean concept of "eternal recurrence"

Post by Arising_uk »

And 'God' was the egg?
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Re: Musings on the Nietzschean concept of "eternal recurrence"

Post by Impenitent »

everything is a chicken...

the plucking puns never end...

-Imp
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