Determinism, Free Will and Paradox

[Mudhammam]

No, not renders. I'm suggesting that if the entire universe's existence in time is immalleable from start to finish, then it's like a tunnel through which we move-- we see things "changing" around us, but in reality it is only our perspective which changes-- everything else is just sitting there. Remember when you were a kid, drawing little falling-man stick figures in the margins of your textbooks and flipping through them to see him "fall" ?

I see no evidence that time is an illusion, that the future exists "somewhere" in a tunnel or the Universe's version of a motion picture book or whatever those were called. None of your statements are justified on the mere grounds that the present moment is a continuation of past moments, and therefore effects of the present are causes of the (hypothetical) future, and were caused by the causes and effects before them.

It is in fact YOUR contention that free will is an illusion, due to the laws of determinism, so I find your statement a little ironic.

You're not simply contending that we view an obscure metaphysical concept, such as in the case of "free will," with a more comprehensive understanding of its previous states, but that we deny causality altogether! Determinism can make sense of the illusion of free will, I'm not quite so sure you've successfully done the same with "time."

We as human agents see the universe as a framework in which we may choose to act, and in which our actions have consequences. We constantly make decisions, and watch their real effects. And yet, after all this, you find determinism sufficiently convincing that you see all this active expression of the agency of self as an illusion. That paints the self as merely an observer in the inevitable, and entirely predictable, unfolding of the universe through time. Have I mistaken your position, in saying these things on your behalf?

The observer is a participant; from the subjective point of view it involves conscious and unconscious instincts and reasons, as in motives. From the scientific standpoint it's no different than causality on the level of brain chemistry, except that it's a third-person account.

I didn't say motion is an illusion of the mind. I said that in determinism, time is a dimension along which all events are arranged-- like frames of a movie or scenery along a roller coaster. Let me ask you, when you are riding in a car, do you not have the sensation that the trees outside the car are "moving" past you?

Yes, that's relativity, which doesn't render time illusory, just relative to a point of view. If one saw a "timeline" of...time, beginning, middle, and end would not include future events, as those don't exist in any real sense, but rather the beginning, the middle, and the ever-present.