4 ms·

IMO This article is a mess. Starts with an interesting premise, the foundations of logic (or rather, what people are taught as the foundations of logic) introd

IMO This article is a mess. Starts with an interesting premise, the foundations of logic (or rather, what people are taught as the foundations of logic) introduces unspoken assumptions. Then it goes on to illustrate with the worst example I can think off. modern physics’ mathematical representations [...] tend to insinuate an eternalist rather than presentist conception of time. I don't know which modern physicists he talks about, but pretty much any physicist will tell you time has a starting point, and none will make any claims to the existence or non-existence of an ending point. If anything, the lesson from modern physics is to enjoy the (relatively) brief period of time our planet is hospitable to humans. Then it descends further into an unnecessarily jargon that can only be described as a debate about the sex of angels.

ukj 5y ago
But will a Physicist ever tell you whether time is continuous or discrete?
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  Once a physicist has experimental proof one way or the other, sure. Until then, they may say "I think..." or "I suspect...", but they won't say "It is..."
momentoftop 5y ago
"Eternalism" refers to the static "block universe" conception of spacetime, where all events exist simultaneously, past, present and future. "Presentists", by contrast, hold that the past no longer exists, the future does not yet exist and only the present moment exists. Neither are positions about whether there is/was a first moment of time. I just finished reading the physicist Sean Carroll's book "From Eternity to Here", which is mostly about the thermodynamic arrow of time and big bang cosmology. He briefly discusses presentism and eternalism, before writing: "Concerning the debate between eternalism and presentism, a typical physicist would say: 'who cares?'" To be fair to Feser, I don't think he's commenting on the attitudes of contemporary physicists, but on a particular presentation of physics and logic. I doubt any working physicist cares one jot about this presentation, or formal predicate logic in general. Philosophers may well care, and Feser might just be noticing that his colleagues take formal logic far more seriously than it deserves.
- practal 5y ago
  Very rarely, physists DO care about logic. For example: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1968621 https://www.jstor.org/stable/1968621 And: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Modern_Physics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Modern_Physics But given that the first is from 1936 and the second from 1927, maybe that's out of fashion.
  - skissane 5y ago
    > Very rarely, physists DO care about logic. Some physicists are interested in quantum logic – that is very much a minority taste within the physics community though. Like interpretations of quantum physics in general, it straddles the boundary between physics and philosophy. (But unlike some more purely philosophical interpretations, it does have some mathematical meat to it.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_logic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_logic https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-quantlog/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-quantlog/ https://iep.utm.edu/qu-logic/ https://iep.utm.edu/qu-logic/
- xondono 5y ago
  Point taken, did not know about those technicalities, but I would argue that then, the example makes even less sense. > "Concerning the debate between eternalism and presentism, a typical physicist would say: 'who cares?'" This is a great illustration that physics doesn’t care one way or another, or more properly, from the point of view of physics the question is meaningless. Claiming that somehow physics has a biased view in a question it refuses to address altogether is weird.
- skissane 5y ago
  > "Concerning the debate between eternalism and presentism, a typical physicist would say: 'who cares?'" Don't some hypotheses in cosmology effectively presume eternalism? For example, the Hartle-Hawking state aka "no boundary proposal"?

ukj 5y ago

But will a Physicist ever tell you whether time is continuous or discrete?

AnimalMuppet 5y ago
Once a physicist has experimental proof one way or the other, sure. Until then, they may say "I think..." or "I suspect...", but they won't say "It is..."

momentoftop 5y ago

"Eternalism" refers to the static "block universe" conception of spacetime, where all events exist simultaneously, past, present and future. "Presentists", by contrast, hold that the past no longer exists, the future does not yet exist and only the present moment exists. Neither are positions about whether there is/was a first moment of time. I just finished reading the physicist Sean Carroll's book "From Eternity to Here", which is mostly about the thermodynamic arrow of time and big bang cosmology. He briefly discusses presentism and eternalism, before writing: "Concerning the debate between eternalism and presentism, a typical physicist would say: 'who cares?'" To be fair to Feser, I don't think he's commenting on the attitudes of contemporary physicists, but on a particular presentation of physics and logic. I doubt any working physicist cares one jot about this presentation, or formal predicate logic in general. Philosophers may well care, and Feser might just be noticing that his colleagues take formal logic far more seriously than it deserves.

practal 5y ago
Very rarely, physists DO care about logic. For example: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1968621 https://www.jstor.org/stable/1968621 And: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Modern_Physics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Modern_Physics But given that the first is from 1936 and the second from 1927, maybe that's out of fashion.
- skissane 5y ago
  > Very rarely, physists DO care about logic. Some physicists are interested in quantum logic – that is very much a minority taste within the physics community though. Like interpretations of quantum physics in general, it straddles the boundary between physics and philosophy. (But unlike some more purely philosophical interpretations, it does have some mathematical meat to it.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_logic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_logic https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-quantlog/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-quantlog/ https://iep.utm.edu/qu-logic/ https://iep.utm.edu/qu-logic/
xondono 5y ago
Point taken, did not know about those technicalities, but I would argue that then, the example makes even less sense. > "Concerning the debate between eternalism and presentism, a typical physicist would say: 'who cares?'" This is a great illustration that physics doesn’t care one way or another, or more properly, from the point of view of physics the question is meaningless. Claiming that somehow physics has a biased view in a question it refuses to address altogether is weird.
skissane 5y ago
> "Concerning the debate between eternalism and presentism, a typical physicist would say: 'who cares?'" Don't some hypotheses in cosmology effectively presume eternalism? For example, the Hartle-Hawking state aka "no boundary proposal"?