Determinism, Free Will and Paradox

[Alex K]

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Say what? Determinism is *only* true if causality exists, and causality exists in so far as there is change, and change is just motion---hence, space and time. "All points along the 'time' line" are not present; the past and future, namely, or those instances in which change has occurred or is yet to occur, are not present except as they exist potentially or actually in that a body has changed and is changing. Since the past is immalleable and determines the present, the present is immalleable in so far as it must be as it presently is, and the future will proceed likewise.

You are implying a dirty trick: the injection of the experience of time into a philosophical model of time. But let me ask you this: does time really "take time" if there is nobody experiencing it? Or does it compress into a singularity, as space does as one approaches the speed of light? I propose that without the experience of causality represented by a subjective being changing perspective gradually, there would be neither time nor change-- just the coexistence of all possible states of the universe in a kind of data space.

It's not a reality, presently, but it's one that can be predicted in so far as the present conditions and their subsequent interactions can be hypothetically determined with precision. Maybe I missed something in your other posts but on what basis are you defining time---or motion---out of real existence? Of course the results will be absurd because the notion of everything existing in total stasis is not the world we experience.

Don't let absurdity scare you away from a theory, unless you are entirely sure that reality is not absurd.

In order for determinism to be true, time must exist. If future time does not exist, then it must be created, presumably constantly as the universe continues to unfold. Which is more absurd, that time is a dimension, where future events are already writ but not yet discovered? Or that the entire universe each instant recreates itself? I'm not so confident as you that the latter must be true, and I haven't seen any reason why, in a deterministic universe, it should be considered true.

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I couldn't disagree more. They are related by the very nature of change itself.

We are arguing about whether time is a dimension. If every moment of every particle could at least in theory be calculated at the moment of the universe's inception, then why wouldn't that certain future be set along a dimension, to be discovered rather than constantly recreated?

Because of how our selves arise from brain activity. The fact that we would still only remember the past, but not the future, in such a universe, is directly connected with the arrow of time from increasing entropy. You'll notice that you can know the future to a certain small extent if you put work in it, but will lose with increasing probability in the long run. That's entropy for you...