Philosophy Now Forum

I think we can agree on the fact that brain is a set of neurons which they interact with each other. Any mental state, physical state of brain, leads into another mental state by following laws of physics. This is a deterministic chain of causality. Free will in another hand is the ability to initi...

Time has a beginning. It is absurd to discuss of things before time. Therefore the universe has a beginning. Exactly. Which is why I believe the universe is infinite in time and space. I don't think so. Time has a beginning otherwise it would be logically impossible to reach from infinite past to n...

Watch Ken ignore this. He’s so predictable. And retrodictable! A theory is a model of the world that is consistent with empirically observed facts about it, and which makes predictions and retrodictions that are falsifiable. Special relativity is consistent with observed facts and it makes certain p...

A 'theory' is more or less a made up version of what thing SHOULD be like. It's stuff like this that make me think you must be troll -- or hopelessly uneducable. Maybe both. How many times, in this thread, has the definition of "theory" been explained to you? Yet there you go again, makin...

Even after thousands upon thousands of years I find it hilarious that some human beings still TRY TO argue for some things, like God creates things or that time dilates YET still have NO clue as to what 'IT' is that they are actually talking about. What is even more funny and humorous is to sit bac...

Eternalism seems deterministic to me... To me this is somewhat contestable as determinism seems to be an ambiguous concept in a block universe in which everything is simply given. However, whether the universe is 3D or 4D, determinism is not (necessarily) inconsistent with free will, hence the dist...

Nick, you are flat-out nuts. The only one here who is mired in Plato's cave is YOU. Why anyone even bothers responding to your BS is beyond me.

You already have your suspicions of what the actual facts and truths are, so you will naturally ONLY LOOK FOR that which will support your already held view of things. Just more of your preposterous trolling, unless you have some kind of learning disability. It has been explained to you again and a...

Under the 3D model, two events are not ambiguously ordered. If one frame orders them differently, that frame is not the preferred one and it orders events incorrectly. Two events simultaneous in that frame are not in fact simultaneous, and thus there are no future events that exists. The frames tha...

Notice further that if the 3D picture of reality is correct and the future is open, I still can't change the future.

So with respect to free will, 4D block universe and 3D evolving-in-time universe are indistinguishable.

I have some questions about your latest posts but since you brought up hard determinism I wanted to segue briefly into that. Soft determinism is a species of determinism also known as compatiblism (free will is not just consistent with determinism, it actually requires it). Hard determinism, roughly...

I'm going to email Petkov and see if he will get involved in this suddenly interesting discussion I've actually exchanged emails with him before, so stand by ...

Also, with respect to your interpretation of Einstein's train thought experiment, I'm not sure how or why you are saying (if you are saying) that this differs from the standard interpretation?

Noax, I’m having a hard time making out some/most of your above post. I freely admit this failure might be due to my limited (perhaps reparable?) comprehension. I agree that in Einstein’s original thought experiment, relativity was a conclusion and not a premise. I don’t see why you think I said oth...

Noax wrote: ↑Tue Dec 26, 2017 4:55 am Your description presumes relativity to already be true.

Well I don't think I exactly presume this, but hold relativity to be correct based on evidence. Of course if relativity is actually wrong then the whole discussion is moot.