Determinism, Free Will and Paradox

[Mudhammam]

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?

No no no, I am not injecting "the experience of time into a philosophical model..." Rather, motion. Do you think motion is dependent upon experience in such a way that when "The Reality(ies)" ceases for the experiencer, it renders all of the universe static in relation to itself? If phenomena divided and called motion precedes mind though the concept itself, and the experience, is related to mind, and is not merely an interpretation of some timeless, almost Platonic reality---and I have zero reason to think that makes much sense of anything, then yes, there is an arrow of time in relation to objects within this arrangement of (four?) dimensions.

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.

Is a flea a subjective being? I know what you're saying, and obviously there's no possible method of verification for experience---which is everything we know and have to go on for anything---without some involvement of subjectivity, and that is precisely why I find your speculation akin to something like Zeno's paradoxes. It's a fascinating idea that reveals the limits of human reason, but it actually serves little purpose in trying to understand the real world, and that should always follow our sense experience or be framed in such a way that promises to occasionally kick a stone from Mount Theory down to the experimenters below. Otherwise, I'm not sure why we would simply grant that motion---and hence everything we experience---is an illusion. It puts us back in the shoes (or sandals) of the ancient Greeks.

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.

I totally accept the absurd when that is what the evidence of reality reveals itself to be; but when you have to deny the evidence of reality, and say that motion is a created illusion of mind, unnecessary for dynamic existence (period), when nothing indicates that "the ultimate reality" is a "oneness at rest" (i.e. god, death, and the death of god---or do you also include a black hole?), then an obscure thought that doesn't really buy you much of anything---certainly not "free will" in the sense that people think is worth debating---it sounds quasi-theological, and not in a good way.