A year ago, I read a fascinating article on the role of determinism and free will in neuroscience that talked about how just because something is caused, does not always mean it can be predicted.
The author makes the important distinction that in order for an action to actually be free, it needs to be caused. When neuroscientists say that they can predict our actions, they are simply saying that they can show that our choices were caused, not that we were determined to do so. What do you all think about the article?
Saturday, October 27, 2012
Sunday, October 21, 2012
Time as an hourglass
So, here is an idea I have been mulling about in my head: Time, in regards to the past, present, and future, cannot be on a continuum because if this were true, a single moment can be in the past and present at the same time, or the present and the future as well. Let me explain through an analogy of an hourglass.
If we imagine the continuum version of time as an hourglass, the sand at the top is the future, a single grain of sand that goes through the absolute middle of the bottleneck as the present, and the sand that is on the bottom half as the past, it shows how incompatible this view is. The sand on the top as it passes from the top to the bottom must flow through the top into the bottleneck, and since the motion is continual, there must be an instant where the sand enters the bottleneck from the top, and in that brief instant, part of it will be in the top, while part of the sand will be in the bottleneck, before fully occupying the bottleneck. The same can be said with the sand passing from the bottleneck to the bottom. In other words, if time ‘flowed,’ there would have to be instants where an event was both in the future and the present, and in the present and the past. And as we know, an event cannot be perceived to be in two states of time at the same time. It cannot be in the past and the present, nor can it be both future and present. Therefore, time must move in increments or steps, where one moment is either in one ‘spot’or not. It cannot partially be in one temporal location and another one at the same time, for that implies contradictions. This in turn provides an idea that time, instead of flowing, sort of ‘leaps’ from one instant to the next, where each moment is sharp, distinct, and separated from all other moments
If we imagine the continuum version of time as an hourglass, the sand at the top is the future, a single grain of sand that goes through the absolute middle of the bottleneck as the present, and the sand that is on the bottom half as the past, it shows how incompatible this view is. The sand on the top as it passes from the top to the bottom must flow through the top into the bottleneck, and since the motion is continual, there must be an instant where the sand enters the bottleneck from the top, and in that brief instant, part of it will be in the top, while part of the sand will be in the bottleneck, before fully occupying the bottleneck. The same can be said with the sand passing from the bottleneck to the bottom. In other words, if time ‘flowed,’ there would have to be instants where an event was both in the future and the present, and in the present and the past. And as we know, an event cannot be perceived to be in two states of time at the same time. It cannot be in the past and the present, nor can it be both future and present. Therefore, time must move in increments or steps, where one moment is either in one ‘spot’or not. It cannot partially be in one temporal location and another one at the same time, for that implies contradictions. This in turn provides an idea that time, instead of flowing, sort of ‘leaps’ from one instant to the next, where each moment is sharp, distinct, and separated from all other moments
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