A Knowledge Argument for Time,
Elaborated
I
will quote from TIME TRAVEL AND THE FLOW OF TIME by Bradley Monton at
the University of Colorado at Boulder. "[Two] Theories of Time
[are] A-Theory (presentism, growing block, moving spotlight)
vs. B-Theory (eternalism)
Eternalism
holds that:
(a)
there is no objective flow of time
(b)
time is a dimension like the dimensions of space
(c)
present, past, and future are only indexical; there are no objective
tensed facts"
Now
consider the ontological Knowledge Argument, which was originally
stated:
"Mary
is a brilliant scientist who is, for whatever reason, forced to
investigate the world from a black and white room via a black and
white television monitor. She specializes in the neurophysiology of
vision and acquires, let us suppose, all the physical information
there is to obtain about what goes on when we see ripe tomatoes, or
the sky, and use terms like ‘red’, ‘blue’, and so on. She
discovers, for example, just which wavelength combinations from the
sky stimulate the retina, and exactly how this produces via the
central nervous system the contraction of the vocal chords and
expulsion of air from the lungs that results in the uttering of the
sentence ‘The sky is blue’.… What will happen when Mary is
released from her black and white room or is given a color television
monitor? Will she learn
anything
or not? It seems just obvious that she will learn something about the
world and our visual experience of it. But then is it inescapable
that her previous knowledge was incomplete. But she had all the
physical information. Ergo there
is more to have than that, and Physicalism is false." (Jackson
1982, quoted from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia-knowledge/
)
Compare
Mary with Mark:
"Mark
is a brilliant scientist who is, for whatever reason, forced to
investigate the world from a block universe via a block-universe's
clock. He specializes in the neurophysiology of the perception of
time and acquires, let us suppose, all the physical
(block/eternalist) information there is to obtain about what goes on
when we experience the present, or plan for the future, and use terms
like ‘temporal flow’, ‘past’, and so on. He discovers, for
example, just how long Caesium hyperfine transitions are (the basis
of atomic clocks), and exactly how this produces the
coordination of cyclic brain processes and expulsion of air from the
lungs that results in the uttering of the sentence ‘I am in the
present and time is flowing’.… What will happen when Mark is
released from his block universe (at, say, t
= 10 min.) into a presentist (or even growing block) universe or
is given a moving spotlight monitor? Will he learn
anything
or not? It seems just obvious that he will learn something about the
world and our temporal experience of it. But then is it inescapable
that his previous knowledge was incomplete. But he had all the
physical (block/eternalist) information. Ergo there
is more to have than that, and Eternalism is false."
The
main responses to Mary are
1.
she already knew what it is like to experience blue (qualiaphobes)
2.
she acquired a new mode of information
3.
she learned something new (qualiaphiles)
The
main responses to Mark would seem to be
1.
he already knew what it is like to experience time
2.
he acquired a new mode of information
3.
he learned something new
My
own preference is for (3). (I would even take the more extreme
position that time is an instance of qualia.) Of course, I don't
expect everyone to have the same inclination. But I would hope that
arguments and tools used to understand Mary can be applied to Mark,
and vice versa.
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