Philosophy: Is time a quality of God

[cor]

if you try to imagine a universe that is populated only by one, static, changeless particle, then i submit that there is no difference between imagining that universe and a universe with one, static, changeless particle, in which there is no time.

which means, to me, that you cannot, in fact, imagine time without change (if there is no difference between two things, then those things are the same).

Interesting. You are relying on a principle that has its roots in Leibniz. It’s called the Identity of Indiscernibles IIRC. It says that if two things can’t be told apart (i.e. if they have exactly the same properties), they must be one and the same thing. Then a universe with just one particle in stasis with time would be the same as a universe with just one particle in stasis without time since you say they would be indiscernible from each other. But I would say that the very fact that one has time establishes that one is different from the other even though no change is measured across the dimension of time. It might render drawing the extra dimension superfluous in terms of data, but it could still ontologically be there.

But giving it some thought, I’m not so sure.

I’m also not sure about the truth of the Identity of Indiscernibles. Imagine a universe with just two particles absolutely identical to each other and nothing else existing in the universe in any way. Well the two particles would seem to be indiscernible from each other (since the universe here is not orientable with a distinction between left and right) yet they would obviously seem to be distinct particles. I believe some philosophers say that the distinction lies in this perhaps murky concept called haeccity.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haeccity
plato.stanford.edu/entries/medieval-haecceity/
(the latter link relates the matter to the Identity of Indiscernibles)

 

[cor]

Even in such a universe, if there is a passage of time, the otherwise static particle has undergone change: it has changed it’s location in the space-time continuum. It has gone from being located at that instant to being located at this instant.

I never thought about that. It would seem then (if you expand or apply your logic) that time necessarily implies change since. Good work!

 

[Ani_Ibi]

I never thought about that. It would seem then (if you expand or apply your logic) that time necessarily implies change since. Good work!

No. The change is in the entropy of that particle.

 

[Ani_Ibi]

If you are correct; what theological problems does Gods limitations represent?

None that I can see.

 

[Ani_Ibi]

john doran:

well, if you exist in an einsteinian, relativistic universe, it actually makes no sense to say that a particle is in stasis: a thing can only be at rest in a given frame of reference - in an infinite number of other inertial frames, however, that particle will be in motion.

Yes, I meant to say this, but forgot and had to leave the house. Thanks for this.
john doran:

even in a newtonian universe of absolute space and time, as long as there are other changes going on around the static particle, it will be possible to speak about changes in that particle, e.g. with regard to its spatial/temporal/qualitative changes relative to the other changing things in its environment.

Or its entropy.
john doran:

if you try to imagine a universe that is populated only by one, static, changeless particle, then i submit that there is no difference between imagining that universe and a universe with one, static, changeless particle, in which there is no time.

which means, to me, that you cannot, in fact, imagine time without change (if there is no difference between two things, then those things are the same).

OK, but see my explanation here and here in response to heisenberg (the poster)'s description of Membrane Collision in the pre-universe as a cause for the emergence of our universe from the primordial slime.
heisenberg:

The equations used for Membrane theory explain aspects in nature, such as weak gravity, but also explain the ‘how’ of the what started the universe. At a quantum level, energy fluctuates like a wave. This is sorta what zero point energy is, when two Membranes came extremely close, these fluctuation’s touched, combined, broke off from the old membranes, and created a new membrane, with its own rules and constants, and empty space, aka new universe. It explains where the energy for this universe came from, as well as what caused it.

Ani Ibi:

…one would have to formulate the payoff within the primordial slime for the entropy caused by the Membrane Collision… Did the pre-universe exile the entropy inherent in Membrane Collision into emergent universes? Thus ensuring immortality in the primordial slime? This point of view is consistent with if not strictly equivalent to Barfield’s thinking.

 

[john_doran]

Interesting. You are relying on a principle that has its roots in Leibniz. It’s called the Identity of Indiscernibles IIRC.

yes, that’s what it is.

cor:

I’m also not sure about the truth of the Identity of Indiscernibles. Imagine a universe with just two particles absolutely identical to each other and nothing else existing in the universe in any way. Well the two particles would seem to be indiscernible from each other (since the universe here is not orientable with a distinction between left and right) yet they would obviously seem to be distinct particles.

well, if there’s two particles, they cannot occupy the same spatial location - one is here, at P1, and the other is there, at P2.

so they have different properties.

more basically, the particles would need to have different properties, or you wouldn’t even be able to say there were two particles in the first place…

cor:

I believe some philosophers say that the distinction lies in this perhaps murky concept called haeccity.

yes - the “individual essence”. plantinga talks a lot about this in his book, The Nature of Necessity.

 

[Ani_Ibi]

well, if there’s two particles, they cannot occupy the same spatial location - one is here, at P1, and the other is there, at P2.

so they have different properties.

more basically, the particles would need to have different properties, or you wouldn’t even be able to say there were two particles in the first place…

This is interesting. Do you think this can be related to thinking on ‘virtual twins’?

 

[mikeledes]

Here he goes again! Truthstalker, if you keep stalking truth like this, she will have to get a restraining order. Can’t you ask more important questions. You know, like when will Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie marry? Who is Anna Nicole’s baby’s father? Oh… wait… that one’s been answered. And most importatntly, who will win American Idol!!!

Regarding “time”, I always thought time was an aspect of creation. God, being uncreated and eternal, is outside of time.

God bless,
Michael