Government of the Autonomous City of
Neuropsychiatric Hospital "José Tiburcio
Borda"
Laboratory of
Electroneurobiological Research
and Journal
Electroneurobiology
ISSN: 0328-0446
Why is
Time Frame-dependent in Relativity? Minkowski's spacetime as a Kantian 'condition
of possibility' for relativistic calculations
Mariela Szirko
and Laboratory of
Electroneurobiological Research, Neuropsychiatric Hospital "Dr. José
Tiburcio Borda"
Government of the
Autonomous City of Buenos Aires
Correspondencia /
Contact: Mszirko [-at–]
Sion.com
Electroneurobiología 2005; 13 (3), pp.
181-237; URL <http://electroneubio.secyt.gov.ar/index2.htm>
Copyright
© 2005
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Abstract
The kinematic consequences of special relativity
can be expressed in three-dimensional language. Remarkably, this does not mean
that, for making special relativity operational, positing a three-dimensional
ontology is as good as positing the four-dimensional ontology. This is a
singular limitation, whose nature is worth close inspection. In exploring it
not just within a traditional, kinematic or geometric perspective but in its
modern scientific context – i.e. as
regards (1) causation, (2) localized observers that physics finds in nature and
are not mere short forms for reference frames, and (3) the semiosis they
develop and use to make reference to distant present objects – this essay
pursues two aims. First, to put on view that the block universe outlook,
regarding the macroscopic-scale universe as a timelessly existing
four-dimensional world each of whose diverse items is composed of temporal
parts, despite its being ontologically incorrect is indeed the only one that is
consistent with special relativity, whose calculations are correct. This is
tantamount to point out that the special relativity's descriptions of the
macrouniverse necessitate to portray time as a dimension, and moreover as an
uncollapsed one; i.e., as a compass
wherein mobility, in the vein of the translocative motion that may occur on
every spatial dimension, ought to be at least conceivable. Second, to probe
arguments defending that special relativity alone can resolve the debate on
whether the extramental macroworld is three-dimensional or four-dimensional. In
particular, since relativity's condition of possibility, namely the imposition
on relativistic observers of describing at once past, present, and future
states along the length of the observed moving entities, has been considered a
proof that past and future components of real entities enjoy an unremitting
mode of existence, the main argument probed in this paper is the one claiming
that "if the world were three-dimensional, the kinematic consequences of
special relativity and more importantly the experiments confirming them would
be impossible." This is acknowledged as exact but it is remarked that,
such imposition being a Kantian condition of possibility, it cannot reveal
anything about what Kant called noumenon, i.e.
extramentality.
The
present essay originated as scholia to Ref. [1]
(Petkov; see "Acknowledgements"), whose structure it thus closely
follows.
1 Introduction
1.1. Struggling
against time.
Explicit or implicit presentism, the view that only the present (the three-dimensional
world at the instant 'now') exists, is the standard view on reality. Some
research in history of ideas [[2]; [3],
pp. 567-823, 963-4] concluded that presentism is generally disowned only in
some human groups where inner coercition is specially important and thus
appreciated, such as very stratified social organizations instanced in rigorist
settings as much diverse as certain pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures, the
shoguns' Japan, and academic societies devoted to logic, mathematics, or theoretical
physics. Those rigorisms go along with a societal need of looking for
exemptions to waiting [e.g., for
getting commands done, or for measuring frequency: 3, p. 312] and of denying
reality to the irreversibility of time elapsing, whence efficient extramental
causation becomes denied and imaginarily substituted by relations among
subjective, mental contents; these contents, when generalized, are often
understood as Platonic Ideas, connected not by way of efficient causality but
by their inner buildups or idiosyncratic, essential 'virtues'. In the thus
built reality, no 'present' state of affairs is privileged with the exclusive
possession of powers to metamorphose itself into other states of affairs.
Rather, it is claimed, every situated observer's experience crawls upward along
its worldline collecting sensory information, but incorrectly interprets this
information as meaning that only a
constantly changing reality exists – whereas, in fact, past and future states
are ontologically analogous to the present ones.
1.2. Observation
matters. Yet,
which scientific observation would lend any support to rigorisms? Where on
earth one could witness past and future affairs? A failure of simultaneity
might be of use so long as, in becoming simultaneous, the entities leaving
themselves to be known as arriving from other times retain a label revealing
their formative epoch. Special relativity foresees that if a not-pointlike but
extended entity is described by some eyewitness placed on an inertial frame of
reference in relativistic motion, each distinguishable segment of the lengthy
entity, consecutively positioned along the direction of relative motion, is to
be described at a different present. So, as rigorisms wish, simultaneity seems
to break down: some of those 'presents' did already occur (stay past) and
others not yet occurred (remain future) in an inner or proper-time perspective
taken by an observer located at rest in the very entity's middle segment; such
a segment in the instant of the description is locatable, after some
calculations on the signals' speed, the nearest to the relativistic eyewitness.
This darting eyewitness, in turn, must remotely describe this mid segment of
the extended entity (often visualized as a train of wagons, or as a rod
pointing to the motion's direction) as it was in the past time which lags
behind the outer eyewitness' present exactly by the shortest delay among all
the signals coming from the segments of the lengthy entity – but nevertheless
the entity's segments, which harbor events described as past and future in the
inner, local, rest, or proper-time perspective taken from the middle segment,
should also be described by the outer
eyewitness as in the present scenario. In this way they are simultaneous for
the outer, remote, relativistic eyewitness and sequential for the inner, local,
resting observer.
Whence splitting the subuniverse and shifting
the halves past another at relativistic speeds should suffice to grace with
one's presence both bygone cosmogenesis and remotely impending cosmoclastics.
This cannot help but make up an exciting prospect, whose academic entertainment
depends on neglecting the same calculations for all the signals coming from the
segments of the lengthy entity. The point is discussed below, though anyone seeking
an exception to waiting might find explanative the outline in footnote[1]; key to give good reason
for such sequences' simultaneizing is that, most remarkably, it only occurs
inasmuch as the not-pointlike, extended entity shares in the direction of the
frames' motion. The entity, though often pictured tilted at a certain angle,
ougth to spread itself over a small piece of its path.
But the issue at stake is far more interesting
than estimating Doppler effects on the Pythagorean theorem for a space that
keeps the signals' travel null from their own frame of reference while making
that, from all the other inertial reference frames (only the local ones, in
general relativity), such a null travel be seen to span some distances at speed
c. The said neglect of the mentioned
calculations depends on paying no heed to the very building of the
developmentally-acquired hermeneutical ability to make sense of the physical
semiosis involved in perceiving distant events. On certain historical reasons,
introducing intellectual development into geometrical physics might appear
irritating. Yet, since relativistic calculations relate to items in motion, a
semiosis-installing distance from
those events is indispensable in order to show that observers need not agree on
which events are simultaneous. (For exhibiting this dependence on the state of
motion of the observers, such observers ought to stand in relative motion,
which must be translative; it precludes showing this relativity by analyzing
the simultaneity of the not-spatially-distant mental contents in a
single-observer, or – everything else
unmodified – the perspectives of different observers occupying the same
spacetime point one after another). Here it may be advanced that the mentioned
developmental building of the ability to perceive distant events as distant
involves frame-invariant causation – but this involvement is a matter of
genetic epistemology, an academic department whose relationships with the one
of relativity physics have much been overlooked, if at all minded. Still as a
further, ultimate basis for mystification, the 'exciting prospect' rests on
taking 'to be' as if it only were an intrinsic aptitude to properly accept
combinable predications, rather than recognizing 'to be' as an unexpressible,
non-conceptualizable enactment cancelling nonexistence; this slip-up, moreover,
is one entrenched in social roots. A real stack of misinterpretations, truly.
Deconstructing all of it, even sketchily, will take the remaining of this
transdisciplinary article. Pending such a deconstruction, the imposition on
relativistic observers of describing at once past, present, and future states
along the length of the observed entities has been considered evidence that
past and future components of real entities enjoy a unremitting mode of
existence, authenticating the rigorist denial of presentism.
1.3. Distinguishing
subjective and extramental denotations. In utter contrast to such rigorisms, the
presentist common-sense view reflects the way most people – and probably other
primates and birds [[4]]
as well as reptiles [[5]]
– perceive the world. But in order to deal with world perceptions we need to
clearly tell apart the two denotations of this term, 'world'; namely, its subjective
and its extramental denotations, whose interval modules fairly differ. To this
purpose, let us convene from this point on to reserve the term 'world' for
indicating (save in quotations) 'mental world', i.e. every set of mental contents into which a mind has become
itself differentiated. We will use instead 'subuniverse', confessedly a
graceless name whose valuable coinage is often attributed to J. A. Wheeler, or
'macroworld' when it matters to forget about the 'virtual' particles created
from sub-indeterminacy fluctuations in energy, for denoting the observable
nature where minds and time are found. Associated with these two terms let us
form the pairs moment-world and instant-subuniverse, so as to apply
here the convention deeming
"physical
instant … a very minute period considered the ultimate modulus of
transformational change, namely the minimal interval over which a causal
transformation is at all possible or might be marked off by two different
instants, [while a moment is] the minimal transformational resolution or time
acuity of minds, which is observed to stay in the order of one hundredth of a
second. We do not live and remember physical instants; we live and remember
moments, and the difference between an instant and a moment is a dilation that
stretches physical instants an ascertainable number of times." [[6]]
1.4. Features of
presentisms. Presentism,
taken (not to mix up the issues of dimensionality of the universe in relativity
and in, say, Planck-scale models) as only related to the macroscopic aspect of
the subuniverse, when conceptually refined, features three defining tenets:
1.
The macroscopic subuniverse or actuality displays itself as a plurality of spatial localities
(though, nevertheless, current presentisms may recognize that space is not a
cosmologically fundamental but secondary occurrence). Space spreads forces over
three dimensions; this essay will not discuss the dispersion of forces over
extra dimensions collapsed into tiny magnitudes that might be necessary to
unifiedly describe electromagnetic, gravitatory, and nuclear forces. Yet one
might note that although presentist descriptions can accommodate non-local
effects, e.g. quantum entanglements
over macroscopic distances, in order to reveal relativity (also) in presentisms
these forces' action carriers must be conceived as translocative: no action at
a distance or non-local extramental effect is acceptable. Whence to produce
relativistic descriptions presentists should grant that, in each of those
spatial localities, the frame-invariant causal efficiency of therein-localized
components locally generates changes one by one, and by recording such changes
observers may reconstruct series of events successively occurring in worldines.
2.
Such a subuniverse or actuality thus exists only at the present instant and exhausts itself in its being
present there in full entirety, so that all of the components of every
macroscopic item cannot help but coexist at the same instant yet never on more
than a single instant. Their coexistence enables them for affecting
reciprocally through frame-invariant, efficient causal interactions which
preclude that an event, which is now present, was future, and will be past, in
addition modifies its being earlier than some and later than some of the other
events. Yet, as mentioned in the next paragraph, this coexistence-stemmed
capability to efficiently deploy invariant relationships of precedence and
succession remains unused in certain presentist scenarios which posit causation
to be logical, rather than efficient. In any case, past and future components,
items, events, or situations do not exist and as a result not either coexist
and cannot causally interact. Specifically, no past or future situations,
items, events, or components might be coexistent with the present ones which,
rather, are able to frame-invariantly engage in causal interactions between
themselves. In Indoeuropean-rooted languages past and future nonexistence might
somehow more confoundingly be expressed with a double negation, saying that past
and future 'are' in a certain way or
certain 'mode of being', namely that they 'are' inactual – a supposed 'mode of
being' oftentimes further split into two varieties, so that past states 'are'
inactual and unmodifiable or blocked while, instead, future situations 'are'
inactual and modifiable.
3.
This subuniverse or actuality is three-dimensional, meaning one of the
following alternatives:
3.1. A certain version of presentism, of
pronounced Platonist affinities, pictures this subuniverse or actuality as sheerly
three-dimensional. In this outlook the unchanging universe has no time-like
thickness at all. It thus lacks and always lacked any intervalic extension of actuality which might count as a primary time dimension
secondarily vanished as the magnitude of such a time dimension fully collapsed.
As in this scenario no fourth dimension displays any span, the present
instant's time-like duration is inherently zero; of course, it cannot be
navigated. So in this special presentist outlook absolute uniform motion may
exist but the universe or subuniverse houses no causal change; essential
'virtualities' stand for efficient causation, which – like any change it shapes
– is held as pure appearance and sensory sham. Absence of frame-invariant
efficient causation allows that an event, which appears now as present,
appeared as future, and will appear past, in addition modifies its being
earlier than some and later than some of the other events. It is unclear if
inertia has to exist in it.
3.2. A second, different version of presentism acknowledges a fourth dimension,
although one whose span is fairly meagre. In this fourth-dimensional version of
presentism the changing situations whose sequential delays compose an interval
do no exist simultaneously, but the subuniverse nevertheless also possesses a
particular time-like thickness which – at least in our subuniverse – chances to
be the same that also works for physical changes as their ultimate feasible
interval unit. Thus the present instant's time-like extent is not zero. This
intervalic inner extension of actuality (Fig. 2 below) counts as a
time dimension whose span or magnitude collapsed down to the extent that, for
every locality and segregated modality of interaction (or physical force field),
its residual span accommodates no more, but not either less, than one action of
physical causation at a time. Thus also in this version of presentism this
fourth dimension is unnavigable and neither exception of waiting nor time
travel may either occur, but its span is not nil [3] and all motion is a causal
transformation moving with respect to timelike-thin space, i.e. it is relative. The action units of frame-invariant causation,
by their matching the actuality's collapsed four-dimensional span, can
efficiently run sequential transformations of the timelike-thin actuality
precluding that any therein-enacted event modifies its being earlier than some
and later than some of the other events. Other subuniverses' buildups might
include this fourth dimension either less collapsed or, even, more collapsed,
having varied its span with reference to fundamental requirements of physical
action – with the result that in those subuniverses, whether by excess or by
defect, causal sequences (of transformations in time) could not be sustained,
whereas in our subuniverse, because of the specific magnitude of such residual
span, change exists.
1.5. How do we know
that change is not illusory? Our perception of the external subuniverse reveals it as being indeed
changing. The very causation of this change, however, remains for the most part
unobserved: in 1905-1906 Ehrenfest and Einstein first realized that Planck's
derivations work because physical change comes in integer multiples of hν and a little over fifty years later
Crocco recognized that it entails the unobservability of physical causation
itself. In other words, under observation the efficient causation of physical
change behaves as if coming in microphysical packets which are discrete, i.e. which cannot help but annihilate
themselves to effect the change.
This discreteness, or whatever determines that
behavior, has thus been pinpointed [2, 3, 6] as the reason why one does not
observe the very causation of such a change (whether microphysical or
macrophysical) but just the changes done, except when the change is originated
by one's own mental acts – as in the case of changes derived from the
observer's voluntary behavior, such as the progress in one's writing or
painting – and is observed on time scales large enough, i.e. through not too tight time windows (as commented below). This
makes possible that, as ascertained on consistent observations (summarized, for
example, in [[7]])
carried out over the last three-quarters of century and grounding the quite new
academic field called genetic epistemology, whereas the very causation of outer
changes remains for the most part unobserved, the concept of time and its three
components – past, present, and future – are nevertheless inductively formed
from what we directly perceive: namely, as a part of the individuals'
intellectual development and interactive acquisition of epistemological
adequacy to effectively operate in the surroundings. In those limiting
circumstances, observers gain their metrical impression of duration from the
time needed for their mental acts [cf.
[8],
p. 633].
These modern results about the mechanisms of
intellectual development, a development which each individual must work
together with the surroundings, make clear that time not only elapses for
mental accounts, but also outside of minds: viewing time as purely subjective
is no longer tenable. Its untenabilty has become evinced, among other facts [3,
pp. 81 (fn. 31) and 927], by the developmental acquisition of the animal minds'
epistemological adequacy, whereby "Heraclitus says that the awake share a
unique world, while the asleep turn themselves toward a private world"
(Plutarch, De Superst. 3, 166 C). In
order that, in contrast, time be purely subjective, such adequacy of the mental
contents – on which rests the natural selection of suitable nervous systems'
and cerebral architectures – should rather be achievable through bare
contemplation, as an 'infused knowledge' acquired just by contemplating the
things' reciprocal relations, not interactively: as if an inborn-paralyzed child could be intellectually
bred by exclusively watching television screens. The need, for humans and at
least the other amniotes (i.e., the
mentioned mammals as well as birds and other reptiles) to acquire befitting
knowledge of extramental occurrences, of sequential interactivity[2] wherein the
mind-originated probings enact absolute motion, entails that time, indeed, runs
efficiently in extramental realm.
1.6. Positing that
'everything' exists likewise in regard to time. This settled the issue of the existence of
absolute motion in nature and allows to proceed on topics which, as the one of
simultaneity, logically come later. One should accordingly start by recognizing
that extramental reality, namely how things fit together independently of the
minds, changes in due course. And indeed, Heraclitus argued that the universe
is perpetually changing, though he seems not to have explicitly discussed the
connectionship of change and time. It was attributed to Heraclitus the opinion
that everything flows (pánta rheí: this thereby-appalled Plato ascribed to
Heraclitus in Cratylus 402 a; cf.
Plato's Theaet. 152 d, 160 d),
everything ceaselessly dances in choir (pánta
chórei: this uplifted Aristotle ascribed to Heraclitus in Topikoí… 104 b 21 ss)
[for a popular expose cf. also [9],
p. 65]. Such a dependence making every macroscopic reality likewise contingent
on time and determined by the temporal engagements of the flowing everything (pántoon … reóntoon, Plato's Cratylus 439 c) is contemporarily
contested by scholars pointing that minds are xenochronic [2, 3, 6]. With this
term, they assume that
"natural
science describes… realities of two kinds: observers, also called minds, which
do not generate time inside them (but may emulate any outer course, an aptitude
that may be called xenochronism), and the set of extramentalities, which does
it (and interactively assists minds to emulate outer evolutions). While in
minds memories persist because they do not exist within a coursing of time that
could alter or erase them, extramentalities evolve because the transfers of
causal efficiency make a microphysical time course which the inertial mass of
some but not all elementary particles extends into sizeable scales" [[10]].
But this splitting, exposing that not everything
of what natural science describes behaves identically as regards time, is quite
recent. In ancient times, almost two centuries after Heraclitus, Aristotle
effectively arrived at the conclusion that 'everything' exists likewise in regard
to time. Positing this notable uniformity was not a option, as it was
compulsory in order to found biology. He
"…
conceived knowing, gnoeín, as a
variety of metabolic assimilation only for the purpose, and with the precise
objective, of being able to compose a unique descriptive series with which to
delineate the full variety of living beings – by comparing species among
themselves and comparing the developmental sequences of individuals. With this
conceptual tool, Aristotle was able to achieve his purpose, of attaining
conceptual means suitable for unifiedly and uniformly describing the living
beings found in nature in all their possible forms. His informational view of
knowledge, presenting it as a variety of metabolic assimilation, is thus why
Aristotle managed to institute biology as a unified science. … [I]n view of his
mentioned purpose, it was uninteresting to detect if within the series of
organisms animated by a vegetative-sensitive soul the individuals of some
species included an existentiality circumstanced to sense and move its body.
This is the case of a dog, for example. Other organisms lack such an
existentiality in charge of biological functions, for example a starfish – or
its common ancestors with the dog, if Aristotle could have minded of them. …
These animals lack… any knowledge inasmuch as experience: in these animal
species having an Aristotelian soul but not circumstancing an existentiality
their 'knowledge' is mere information, gnoseologically uncharacterized – and
only metaphorically called 'knowledge' by external observers interested in
keeping Aristotelian homogeneity for the biological series." [ibidem,
Section 2]
1.7. Positing that
'everything' composes the only present 'now' that exists. Therefore, Aristotle's
description would not embrace the mentioned heterogeneity (of xenochronic minds
and time-generating macroworld) as his description could not distinguish
between existentialities or subjectivities and bodily information. (As
notorious, he was also unable to tell between a plurality of existentialities
leaving aside the difference in their mental contents [3, chapter 1.6]). He was
rather to deal unifiedly with all organisms, whether lacking existentiality or
subjectivity or instead possessed with it, so setting a single continuous
series of psychaí ('souls') just
differing in informatical terms. Aristotle further arrived to the conclusion
that such uniform 'everything' exists
only at the moment 'now' since it is this moment that "connects past and
future time" [[11],
p. 301] which themselves do not exist: "one part of [time] has been and is
not, while the other is going to be and is not yet" [11, p. 297].
Besides so portraying all realities in nature –
as uniformly behaving with regard to time and composing in this way the only
present 'now' that exists and in such presence exhausts itself altogether –
Aristotle made another contribution to conceptually refining the presentist
view, by asserting that nature is three-dimensional: "A magnitude if
divisible one way is a line, if two ways a surface, and if three a body. Beyond
these there is no other magnitude, because the three dimensions are all that
there are" [[12]]
(see also [[13]]).
2. Physical and
philosophical connections
2.1. Instant
'thickness' and causation. The three defining features of presentism – asserting that the
subuniverse is causally efficient to transform itself successively through
local change (a feature turned
macroscopic with the acquisition of inertial mass by only a fraction of
elementary particles [3, 10]), exists only at the present instant exhausting itself completely in
such a presence, and is three-dimensional or has its fourth dimension collapsed
– are intrinsically linked: if the macroworld is three-dimensional it exists
only at one instant of time and vice versa;
the time-like thickness or 'duration' of the instant in such a changing
macroworld is determined in relation to features of microscopically local
causation. Namely, in the physical-causation-acknowledging variety of
presentism this time-like thickness of the instant admits neither causal
sequences nor inchoations: it can let in neither more nor less than just one
elementary process of energy transfer or efficient causation; that of course
refers to what may be described as the very transfer of an action carrier of a
force field, not to the response interval or lagging of its direct effects
behind the causal action packet’s instantaneous absorption, i.e. the 'characteristic times' taken by
the transitions caused [3, 6].
2.2. Denial of
efficient causation affirms 'to be' as logical predicability and causal
efficiency as pure outward show. Instead, in the physical-causation-denying,
antichronic variety of presentism, for which transience is unbearable and on no
account deemed basic, the instant's time-like thickness does not exist; 'to be'
boils down to mere predication of attributes (explained below) rather than
fundamental enactment; determinations come only from logical relationships, and
physical change is sensory hallucination: in no way real transformation. As the
therein-revolting prospect that situations could really flow is altogether
denied, reasonings are supplied in order to repute illusive the irrevocability
of time. Augustine of Hippo, still importanly influenced by Plato's antichronic
outlook which instances such denial of reality to time elapsing, made an early
move toward realizing that link by attempting to ascertain the duration of the
'now'.
Augustine decided that the present moment cannot
have any duration: "In fact the only time that can be called present is an
instant... For if its duration were prolonged, it could be divided into past
and future. When it is present it has no duration" [[14],
p. 119]. One should remark that, in order to avoid its being thus divided, there
is no need that it completely lacks duration, as Augustine supposed, since
enacting any division in extramental time demands causal efficiency, so that a
time-like duration shorter than the time needed for enacting causal efficiency
suffices to avert that "it could be divided into past and future" [3,
pp. 309-312]. Yet Platonisms need to pronounce causal efficiency just sense
deceit and pure outward show, reality being rather determined by the essential
virtualities of timeless Ideas.
2.3. Instant's duration
and causal efficiency. One should remark, too, that this instant needlessly supposed of no
duration, i.e. of no intervalic
extension, is thus placed by Augustine into the same scenario that spatial
extension. This combined move presents the universe as sheerly (and, literally,
most narrowly) three-dimensional – otherwise, its time-like thickness makes a
collapsed fourth dimension wherein only
contingently may navigation become unworkable: the nature of such a fourth
dimension's residual span is still alike to that of space – and sustains the antichronic outlook, i.e. Platonisms' denial of reality to irreversible time.
But the topic is intricate, so that to visualize the ties between the
three-dimensionality of the subuniverse and its existence only at the instant
'now' imagine that 'the present moment' names some finite duration. For the
sake of the argument let us forget time courses as determined by physical
causation and, arbitrarily, let that duration be some fixed number of minutes.
(For instance, Petkov [1] chooses ten seconds as his example).
As these minutes are not further distinguishable
into present, future, or past all of them are present. Thus every thing and the
whole subuniverse would be given as a whole, or exist in its entirety both 'at once'
and unchangeably, during all of the (rather, our clock's) instants composing
the imaginarily protracted time-like thickness of the 'now'. Everything, even
if instantaneous, would at least be likewise extended in time. For example,
every mobile item would at once exist at all spatial points of a distance it travels for the fixed number of what we call
minutes. Nevertheless, macroworld's items that are extended in time are
four-dimensional, not three-dimensional. Presentists often remark that we seem
to perceive a realm of items not appearing to exist at more than one instant.
Whence not seldom it is thought [e.g.,
1] that on the presentist view the fact that the subuniverse "is regarded
as three-dimensional implies that the
present moment must be" an instant with no inner transformative
course that could be called duration or 'time taken by such a transformation'.
This entails that in describing presentism one cannot forget (as we did, for
the sake of exemplifying) time courses' being determined by physical causation,
because the interval-like thickness of reality is to be linked with the minimal
possible 'delay' that physical causation imposes in order to enact change [3,
6]. (Only so may a time-like thickness neither to 'hang' nature's
transformations by turning causal courses into a 'legato', i.e. by enmeshing the physical causation of change, nor to prevent
causing transformations altogether.)
2.4.
Frame-invariance at the efficient causation's core. Whatever may count as
physical causation is of course to be frame-invariant (i.e. no perspective could exist from which it vanishes or cancels)
and to come about as every one of the reaction-producing modalities for
exchanging energy in a certain energy range. As an interesting instance, when
Crocco recognized that the fact that physical change comes in integer multiples
of hν entails the outer
unobservability of physical causation[3] (which thus displays the
extramental transformations as if they were constant conjunction or structural spectacle
delineated by certain connectability function, κ, defined as causal), he utilized the frame
invariance of causation for presenting sensing as a new fundamental action of
nature by way of pinpointing the requisite conservation of feelings in any relativistic description of the
sensually-interacting tissue as physical system[4] [e.g. of the sensually-mediated lengthening of any biosphere's
trophic chains, summarized in 3], not without highlighting in advance that the
very Plato, in Sophist, spotted this
frame invariance – later formalized in a symmetry theorem
by Emmy Noether [3 § 1.5.5, pp. 465-476] – as the mark identifying
that which is not mere appearance and never can be such. Otherwise, i.e. if causal efficiency not involved
frame invariance, perspectives could be found in which the causal relationship
of a course of physical events would appear uncalled for.
Also of interest for the next discussions is
mentioning here that, as evinced by the empsyched animals' action (namely,
their mentioned elongating the biosphere's trophic chains) that at its outset
detaches biological evolution from its minimal course [10; Fig. 3 in 3, p. 900,
and references therein], observable efficient causation, i.e. the observers' own one, is of the same nature that the unobservable
efficient causation. As François-P.-G.
2.5. Efficient causation brings into physics
observers and semioses. So found by a
variety of modern scientific endeavors, neither localized observers, nor their time-consuming
intellectual development and semioses, can any longer be excluded from the
physical science's description of such a nature. In this contemporary scenario,
as discussed below, special relativity therefore is, or ought to be, a
representation as well as an interconversion procedure of all the localized
minds’ possible perspectives ("an infinite number of spaces") or reference frames of the subuniverse attainable through such a
semiotic reference, and not a direct representation of the distance-involving
subuniverse's states.
In this way, in sum, on the presentist view which recognizes physical causation the
fact that the subuniverse is regarded as three-dimensional implies that the
present moment must be an instant with the interval-like thickness of the
minimal possible 'delay' demanded by such a frame-invariant physical causation
– turning such subuniverse fourth-dimensional. This constraint, as already
hinted at, interestingly varies when causation, rather than physical, is taken
to be non-physical, in the style of the logical relationships among concepts or
Platonic Ideas.
2.6. Physical
causation substituted by non-physical relationships. Such logical 'causation'
takes no fraction of time to set up its results (time or transformative
sequenciation is indeed illusory in that scenario), and of course poses no
requisite of frame invariance, which would be superfluous. In this case, one
lacks any reason to see, and does not see, that to elude that the present
instant "could be divided into past and future" there is no need at
all of positing that the instant's nature be nondurational, rather than a
collapsed, contingently unnavigable yet extant fourth dimension. On the other
hand, as Petkov [1, page 2; pages are from the
Appreciating the bond between the
three-dimensionality of the subuniverse and its existence only at the present instant puts
on view that, if time-courses are disconnected from time-generating physical
causation and for that reason the instant's duration is taken to be zero, then
past and future do not exist in any sense in the framework of such a presentist
view. The fourth dimension is absent. On the contrary, if efficient causation
is recognized as enacting time courses, it is also recognized as determining
both the time's metrics and arrow, and in such a presentism the present instant
(the non-spatial thickness of macroscopic universe) is possessed with a
time-like duration whose two borders abutting to non-being, i.e. the one toward causally closed
situations and the one toward transformable situations, feature different
properties [3, § 1.3.8 "The Time-studies Framework", pp. 309-314]
that exhibit an exhaustion of causal efficiency – of which exhaustion other
instances are known in nature [6].
2.7 Is the instant
itself dilatable – like intervals? In such a view, the past and the future are merely
sets of previous and forthcoming states of a
three-dimensional subuniverse which exists solely at the present instant. But these states do not
stand alone or exist on their own[6]. The universe is not
fundamentally 'split' into space and time but such dimensions come from the
more fundamental unique causation offered in nature, i.e. the frame-invariant efficient enactment of alterations, and
then streamline it to unfold diversely. Through this unfolding the macroworld
becomes to consist in its three-dimensional, force-dispersing [3] extension (of
variable magnitude, so that fresh space may be continuously generated amid
adjacent localities, e.g. with the
subuniverse's expansion) and its time-like, causation-harboring thickness (of
variable magnitude, i.e. one that may
occur more or less collapsed between different subuniverses) whose nature and
intervalic constriction could not exceptuate it from abiding by the kinematic
relativistic constraints. This last, important feature was recently summarized
in [6] and here can be convenably quoted (with permission) at some length:
"For
durations that can be measured, one can empirically verify that a certain
number of physical instants, i.e. a
sequence of possible causal transformations, must appear dilated if the total
duration is assessed from the sequence recorder (a clock) of moving observers.
The antichronic outlook entails assuming some impediment that stops this
dilational effect for smaller numbers of physical instants. In its view short
intervals ought not to get dilated, a ban specially applied onto the single
instant.
The
groundlessness in conjecturing this impediment becomes apparent when we
consider that no force in the observable universe is efficient to cause a
transformation in less than about 10-25 second (imagine 0.000 000 000
000 000 000 000 000 1 of a second), a duration that may also be expressed as
its equivalent, namely as some 1019 Planck instants. Every transformation in time is, thus, currently
ticked on intervals always larger than this one. Such a brief interval is
accidentally unmeasurable (because any recording-change in a clock must be
caused by some physical force, but no observed physical force could so quickly
give rise to any effect). Nevertheless, nothing suggests that this ~10-25
second interval or a fraction of it is intrinsically noncompliant with the
Lorentz-FitzGerald transforms.
Put
differently, nothing suggests that this ~10-25 second interval or a
fraction of it be refractory to become dilated and expand in due proportion any
eventual marking sequence that subdivides it, revealing even the duration of
those of its fractions (physical instants) in which no subdividing mark could
ever be set – which if dilated are to appear as a still discrete, causally
impenetrable blank when appraised by moving observers. Where and why might any
such hindrance to dilation be expected to begin, barring the special-relativity
transforms' validity for fleeting intervals? The antichronic outlook demands
this impediment in order to judge the physical instant unreal. In contrast, it
is often thought that the Planck instant or Planck time (ħG/c5)1/2
= 5.3916... x 10-44 second, a minute fraction of a second
(actually requiring forty-three zeros after the decimal point before starting
with the mentioned numbers), may name a limit for any possible physical force
to be efficient in causing a causal transformation; namely, that the Planck
instant denotes the interval-like thickness of actuality, whose causal
transformations – always taking many of such instants because of the cosmologically
acquired weakness of efficient forces – make real time. But this prospect is
dismaying for an outlook that struggles against time. It rather wishes for a
'block' universe where all intervals were simultaneously real, the actually
present instant in no way different from the past and future ones, and time
elapsing just subjective or illusory."
2.8 The block
universe.
Rigorisms such as the Pythagorean-Parmenidean-Platonic-Puritanical tradition
offer another view on reality that differs ontologically from presentism – pinpointing and decrying the
senses' deceitfulness. It is the block universe view. In it, to borrow a remark
by S. F. Savitt, "There's No Time Like the Present": literally so,
indeed, as there is no concept of absolute present. Irony comes to adorn this
keen remark from the paradoxical circumstance that in such a tradition the
assertion, "There's No Time Like the Present", by no means expresses
any jubilant reception of present time with corresponding unconcern toward
inactual past and inactual future, in the style of the notorious Carpe diem! The assertion, on the
contrary, aims precisely to deny that present time enjoys any privilege at all
(as it may be the efficient exercise of frame-invariant, absolute
transformative causation) over nonpresent, only conceivable situations which
nevertheless are judged 'perduring' somehow or somewhere, beyond mere
imagination, as purported 'temporal parts' of all what senses find enacted at
the present.
This denial of present-time's exclusivity thus
contends that things are also made of 'temporal parts' 'perduring' away from
private fancy, so as to be encountered or having been encountered by spatially
localized observers in other times. In such a subuniverse the definition of
simultaneity is necessarily only conventional and there are no objective
becoming and time flow. This denial can be traced back, not to mention cultural
events from early Antiquity and even Mesolithic times [2; 3, pp. 567 ff.], to
the eternal and unchanging being of the Eleatic school of philosophy [a
panorama in Ref. 9, Chap. X] and to the rigorist longings [3, p. 312] for an
exemption to waiting and a retrieval of olden days along with a defense against
envisaged dissolution of the very scholar by time – tempus edax rerum. Petkov [1] points out that "
2.9. Block
universe, unstoppable thought. This 'poietizing thought', as it is called, is deemed
to occur whether within individuals (as claimed by subjectivisms, i.e. the extramentalities-denying
worldviews asserting that observers inhabit a "gnoseocapsule" [3 § 1.3.24: "Intertwining agencies", pp.
388-392; excerpta are provided hereinbelow, in Appendix]) or in the
individuals' assimilation (made by subjectivism-transcendentalisms, i.e. the subjectivisms logically
resigning the observers' plurality into the unity of a single transcendental
subject) to a primordial Lógos (Ma'at) no longer tied up to a more
ultimate, enactive Father. The latter ideological scheme is often captured, e.g., in myths such as the one of Zeus
maiming Chronos or outlooks such as those of German Idealism, habitually
epitomized in Hegel. This 'poietizing' is a condition – and harrypotterish ability
to summon extramental things out of reasoning – oftentimes subserved by the
view that 'being' is tantamount to a mere confluence of predications[7] (as Anselm of Cantorbery
'Proof' exemplifies: "God exists because its concept enlists every
perfection: as being is more perfect than not being, God's own concept must
enlist being, thus proving that Gods exists". As to humbler realities,
rather, predications may be 'properties' or 'proper predicates' such as
futurity, presentness, and pastness. It
should be eagerly remarked that if 'being' amounted to admitting predications,
nothing essential about the present-now could remain outside the realm of
predicate-arranging science). Whence this antichronic outlook is often detected
in those subjectivist and subjectivist-transcendentalist philosophies – and the
'P' of 'poietizing' becomes added to this tradition's unpronounceable acronym,
'PPPPPP'[8].
3 The uncollapsed four-dimensional
subuniverse
3.1. Birth of the
scientific idea of block universe: 1908. In the quarter of century ensuing Hinton's
work, a number of rigorisms voiced loud their misgivings about presentism.
Petkov [1] affirms that the scientific birth of the block universe view,
however, took place in 1908 when Hermann Minkowski proposed that space and time
should be united into an inseparable four-dimensional entity – spacetime –
which he called 'the world'. Minkowski began his talk at the 80th Assembly of
German Natural Scientists and Physicians with the now famous introduction:
"The
views of space and time which I wish to lay before you have sprung from the
soil of experimental physics, and therein lies their strength. They are
radical. Henceforth Space by itself, and Time by itself, are doomed to fade
away into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an
independent reality" [[18],
p. 75].[19]
It should be pointed out that special
relativity, and more precisely its four-dimensional formulation given by
Minkowski, is logically contained in
Galileo's principle of relativity (with a single additional assumption – that
the speed of light is finite, which was determined experimentally in Galileo's
century). This makes only more sensible that, as Petkov [1] observes, Minkowski
viewed the idea, of the subuniverse as being not objectively split into space
and time, as worked out from experimental evidence and not just as an
alternative representation of special relativity. In fact no such alternative
was in sight. "That is why a genuine understanding of special relativity
could not be achieved without regarding spacetime as a four-dimensional space
whose four dimensions are entirely given [9] , like the two dimensions of a plane." [1, p. 3].
I think that the nature of this restriction is worth
close inspection. For, is this constraint in any sense comparable to reasonably
imposing adherence to a certain necessary procedure in order to use a
calculation software – or rather to arbitrarily imposing loyalty to, say, a
certain discretionary worldview, for attaining the same purpose? As advanced in
the title, we will see later that it rather constitutes a Kantian condition of possibility for
relativistic calculations, one which does not reveal anything about the 'things
in themselves' that Kant would have labeled 'noumenon'. Minkowski might have hinted at something comparable to
the previous sentence's first part but he certainly did not take on the second.
Minkowski's opinion amounted to counting on the possibility that one might
ratiocinate backward from non-theoretical data to some model or preliminary
theory. Yet, non-theoretical data have not been found anywhere (see below, §
4.7); first and foremost, because once observers attain some intellectual
development they cannot help but deal with their apperceptions: no longer with
'pristine' sensations. This is specially delicate concerning ontological
conclusions. Minkowski's outdated opinion neglected that the collection and
recording of raw data is always theory-determined, as is the interpretation of
data, and even methodology. Does this atypical constraint endorse – or either
disallow – the widely accepted view (discussed below) that "relativistic
mechanics does not carry a particular ontological interpretation upon its
sleeve"?
3.2. Primary belief:
the block universe view as empirical. Petkov [1, p. 3] observes that Minkowski left no
doubt that the idea of spacetime should be understood in this way – as an
inseparable, entirely given four-dimensional entity – by pointing out one
immediate consequence of that idea, namely that one could not talk about one space any more. Minkowski in fact noticed that "neither Einstein
nor Lorentz made any attack on the concept of space" [18, p. 83] and
stressed that the idea of many spaces is inevitable in special relativity:
"We should then have in the world no longer space, but an infinite number of spaces, analogously as
there are in three-dimensional space an infinite number of planes.
Three-dimensional geometry becomes a chapter in four-dimensional physics. Now
you know why I said at the outset that space and time are to fade away into
shadows, and only a world in itself will subsist" [18, pp. 79–80]. But,
although (as Petkov notes) Minkowski demonstrated that the consequences of
specially (kinematically) describing the relativity of simultaneity (length
contraction, for instance) found a natural explanation in the four-dimensional
spacetime, I find significant to remark that Minkowski did not find it
necessary to argue that these consequences were possible only in a
four-dimensional subuniverse with a non-collapsed realm housing at once all the
changing states of the cosmos.
Petkov continues: "Unfortunately, the depth
of Minkowski's idea does not seem to have been immediately and fully
appreciated – as evident from Sommerfeld's notes on Minkowski's paper: 'What will be the epistemological attitude
towards Minkowski's conception of the time-space problem is another question,
but, as it seems to me, a question which does not essentially touch his physics'
[[20]].
About two decades after Minkowski's
four-dimensional formulation of special relativity Weyl appeared to have
realized that Minkowski spacetime is not merely a mathematical space but
represents a four-dimensional external [subuniverse whose being entirely given
at once] is not directly reflected in our perceptions: 'The objective world
simply is, it does not happen' [[21]]."
Einstein added in 1952 a further appendix,
"Relativity and the problem of space", to his "Relativity: The
Special and General Theory" in which, as Petkov also notes, Einstein
seemed to have arrived at the same conclusion: "It appears... more natural
to think of physical reality as a four-dimensional existence, instead of, as
hitherto, the evolution
of a
three-dimensional existence" [[22]].
However, neither Weyl nor Einstein showed that the uncollapsed
four-dimensionality of the subuniverse, and identical
existence of a plurality (assumed a non-bounded number or infinity) of
three-dimensional spaces, 'temporal parts' of everything, or "present-nows"
each with a different distribution of physical occurrences, unavoidably follows
from the consequences of special relativity.
3.3. Debate on the empirical grounds of the block universe view. As it is well known,
Rietdijk [[23]],
Putnam [[24]]
and Maxwell [[25]]
argued that relativity of simultaneity – one of the basic underpinnings of
special relativity – inevitably
assumes an uncollapsed four-dimensional subuniverse. None of them regarded as
uncollapsed, or even as boundable by opposite and intrinsically different
frontiers with non-being [3], the timespan or extent of the fourth dimension
being considered; none of them, either, offered the detailed calculations today
customary for justifying that, e.g.,
the twin 'paradox' is not paradoxical at all[10], by showing that, in both
backward and forward logs, the 'transframing' stays smooth and at every instant
and accounts for the observable results. However, the argument was validly
criticized in two occasions by Howard Stein [[26],
[27]]
and Petkov mentions authors [[28]]
claiming that Stein "has settled the issue". Petkov's work correctly
shows that, in certain sense, Stein's objections not only do not disprove the
argument but further reinforce it. This brings about very interesting
consequences and a bridge between relativity and semiotic researches, discussed
in Section 4. Section 5 studies a more general argument by Petkov, showing that
the consequences of special relativity and the experiments which confirm them
would be impossible if the subuniverse were three-dimensional with a
present-'now' of zero time-like duration and if the existence of the objects
involved in these experiments is extramental, namely observer-independent or
physically 'absolute'.
Special relativity is a kinematic and not a
dynamic portrayal of the behavior of physical objects. Namely, its portrayal,
although can perfectly take up acceleration and represent its materializations
as curved worldtubes, does not seek to include or refer to the forces enacting
causal efficiency, upon the finding of whose operative running it could be attributed a non-zero time-like duration to the
three-dimensional actuality – as its 'thickness'. Taking this into account, the
mentioned impossibility shows, as Petkov puts it, that only the block universe
view does not contradict the experimental evidence which supports special
relativity. Upon this result he explores whether or not an equivalence of
three-dimensional and four-dimensional presentations of special relativity
implies an equivalence of three-dimensional and four-dimensional ontologies; I
discuss and reinterpret this in Section 6.
4 Has
Stein Disproved the Rietdijk-Putnam Argument?
4.1. Summary of the
Rietdijk-Putnam Argument. To analyze Petkov's view of Stein's objections, let me first go over
the main points of the claim that relativity of simultaneity inevitably assumes
an uncollapsed four-dimensional subuniverse, not without remarking beforehand
that physics has not observers localized in space. What rather can be
localized, and engaged into translocative motion whether inertial or
accelerated, is the observer's immediate circumstance, covolumetric with
certain states of the observer's brain gray [10] – a factor whose present
interest resides in that neither observers, nor their meetings or even a single
'event of observation', can be pointlike, or unextended. Neurobiology puts
thereby a ceiling on the accuracy with which physics can represent different
reference frames by different observers. In computing positions, the observers'
extension imposes onto the precision of calculations a certain indeterminacy,
usually insignificant. It, nevertheless, may become not negligible when one
tries to ascertain the time-like thickness with which special relativity finds
itself compelled to describe the present and simultaneity.
The relativistic indeterminacy created in this fashion may be judged small, though it
suffices to prevent special relativity from rigorously considering that time
dimension does not exist, i.e. that
the time-like thickness of present must be exactly zero. But we will come later
to it. By now let us follow Petkov's and other expositions of the topic in
considering three pointlike inertial observers A, B, and C in relative motion
whose worldlines (the lines of their entire lives in time) are shown in Fig. 1.
Observers A and B meet at event M. The third observer C is represented by a
vertical worldline in the figure which means that A is approaching C, whereas B
is receding from C.
Figure 1: Rietdijk, Putnam and
Maxwell called attention onto this setting, here taken from [1]. Three inertial
observers A, B, and C are in relative motion. Events M and Q belong to A's
present and are therefore real and determinate for A, whereas for B real and
determinate are events M and P since they lie in B's present.
Two events P and Q happen with C at different
instants of his proper time. The events P and Q are simply the observer C
existing at the instants t C P and t C Q of his proper time, respectively, in some places
at a distance from both inertial observers A and B. Both events M and P are
equally real for B (according to Putnam) or equally determinate for B
(according to Rietdijk). Both events M and Q
are equally real and determinate for A. Putnam and Rietdijk assumed that the
reality and determinateness of an event is observer-independent or absolute, concluding that if event Q
is real (determinate) for observer A, it should be as real (determinate) for
observer B and for observer C as well. Observer C should thus exist at once at both instants t C P and t C Q of his proper time since events P and Q
(corresponding to the two instants) are equally real.
But such a situation is not possible in the
common-sense (pre-relativistic: mammalian, avian, and reptilian) view according
to which it is only the present – the three-dimensional subuniverse at the
instant 'now' – which exists. This led Rietdijk and Putnam to conclude that
relativity of simultaneity, also called failure of simultaneity, when applied to what exists (i.e., to realities assumed to include some ones existing at a
distance of localized observers), contradicts the presentist view and is
possible only in a four-dimensional subuniverse where the histories of the
physical objects are entirely realized in their four-dimensional worldtubes, i.e. their entire histories in time and
space. In such a view the presents of observers A and B are equally real
because they are merely three-dimensional cross-sections of the
four-dimensional subuniverse – the subuniverse is uncollapsedly
four-dimensional.
4.2. The effective
describability of present situations. Stein criticized the Rietdijk-Putnam argument,
Petkov recaps, "as it incorrectly used the concept of distant present events (i.e. the concept of the present). Stein
pointed out that 'in the theory of relativity the only reasonable notion of present to a space-time point is that of
the mere identity relation: present to a given point is that point alone –
literally here-now ' [27, p.
159]." Yet it behooves us to recall that, in order to show that observers
need not agree on which events are simultaneous, those observers need to stand
in relative motion, a translationality that precludes to occupy a single
spacetime point.
Yet Stein's criticism is valid even if, as Petkov
points out, it supports the first part of the Rietdijk-Putnam argument – that
special relativity shows that there can be no objective distinction between
past, present and future, whence presentism contradicts special relativity and
is therefore not to be assumed in relativistic descriptions. (In the last
section below it is discussed whether this atypical constraint also is "noumenally",
physically, or ontically appropriate, or it is not). In special relativity the
present, i.e. the three-dimensional subuniverse
at the instant 'now', if at all definable, can be defined only in terms of the
pre-relativistic division of events into past, present, and future. Any
definition in the style of "present is everything efficient to cause
transformative effects" cannot be accommodated in non-dynamic scenarios,
such as those constructed by special relativity. Therefore, the present in
special relativity is defined as everything that exists simultaneously at the
present instant.
Whence Stein's argument that one cannot talk
about distant present events in the framework of special relativity is a
(well-trodden) argument against the effective describability of present
situations. As it is notorious, describing instantaneously the situation of distant present events
requires a supernatural depiction by a non-localized observer utilizing space
as in
Reason is that, for localized observers,
reference to events occurring at a distance demands analyzing the action of
signs (semiosis), turning describability inescapably circuitous. As signs
should end up detected by the observer's bodily receptors, assisted or not by
physical or mechanical interfaces, this seems a biologically-stemmed
indirectness, whose bold reminding our imperfection and bodily needs might be
taken as offending rigorousness.
4.3. Semiosis
enables describability of present situations. But, like bodily constraints, too signs
suscitate fiery passions and huge misunderstandings. In an essay surveying the
claim that relations are 'external' to their terms and exploring ontological
accounts of this purported externality of relations, Bains [[29]]
observes that an understanding of the ontology of relations allows for a
compelling account of the action of signs, i.e.
how things come to stand for something other than themselves – distant present
events, whose consideration is unavoidable when trying to imagine the local
perspectives of observers reciprocally engaged in relativistic-speed motion, as
in our present case. Bains [29 Chapter One, "An Even Briefer History of Relations",
quoted with permission] puts it so:
Aristotle is interested in the really real,
distinguished as the way things are independently of the mind – extra-animam. … The problem with []his
way of approaching things is that relations between individual substances
become metaphysical nuisances. … as Weinberg notes (1965: 63), very few
philosophers seem to have realized why 'relations cannot really be fitted into
a substance-accident ontology.' Remember that for Kant categories were things
of the mind or mental entities – the subjective forms of understanding –
whereas for Aristotle the mind does not impose its own relations on the sensory
manifold. … As might become mind-blowingly evident, neither of these
alternatives is adequate in accounting for our experience, or for describing
how semiosis (the action of signs) actually works.
… There are two attempts at
categorizing the relative in the Categories.
Aristotle's first attempt is as follows:
Those things are called relative which, being
either said to be of something else
or related to something else, are explained by reference to that other thing.[11]
Now Aristotle recognizes that this
definition contained some ambiguity as to whether relation constituted a
distinct category of being within the substance-accident scheme, and decides
that he has to modify it:
Indeed, if our definition of that which is relative
was complete, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to prove that no
substance is relative. If, however, our definition was not complete, if those things
are only properly called relative in the case of which relation to an external
object is a necessary condition of existence, perhaps some explanation of the
dilemma may be found.
The former definition does indeed apply to all
relatives, but the fact that a thing is explained
with reference to something else does not make it essentially relative.[12]
As Deely astutely notes (1974: 867), 'this distinction
between what must be explained by
reference to something without having itself to be a relation, and what is essentially a reference to something
other than that on which it is founded or based, is the first recorded glimpse
of what was to become the Latin distinction within the order of relation
between what is relative secundum dici
[according to the way it must be expressed in discourse] and what is relative secundum esse [according to the way it
has being].' Articulating this
distinction and showing how it is relevant to semiosis and an order of being – the
ontological status of the being of relation – that is neither substantial nor
accidental, neither subjective nor objective, but rather preceding any
categorial schema, is what this story is about: i.e. the being of the middle, distinct from the terms of
the relation; the exteriority of relations to their terms; or an event of
interbeing.
Now we
have reached a threshold. This distinction between relatio secundum dici and relatio
secundum esse was discussed throughout the medieval period … The difficulty
in grasping this distinction between relative terms and the relations
themselves is twofold. First, apart from Poinsot's Tractatus de Signis (first published in 1632), its proper thematic
articulation has almost totally disappeared from our conceptual landscape since
the time of William of Ockham and the rise of nominalism around 1350 which
denied an ontological status to relations independently of their terms. Second,
Aristotle used the expression to pros ti
to refer not only to relations themselves, but to the things which have relations. This contributed to the
only slowly-dawning (and soon to fade) awareness that every 'thing,' or term,
is 'relative' in two different ways: Firstly, it can only be understood with reference to other things (relatio secundum dici); secondly, there
are the ontological relations that
the 'thing' is actually involved in (relatio
secundum esse). Subtle perhaps … Terminology [is as follows:]
1. Relatio secundum dici (Relation according to the way it
must be expressed in discourse).
2. Relatio secundum esse (Relation according to the way it
has being).
The main
point [was] To be able to really be a
relation, although existentially dependent on some relative foundation, or to only be something that is relative to
other things, but without there actually being a relation 'external' to its
terms: that was the question. … Ockham accepts order and unity in the universe,
objective similarity, causal connection; but he insists that this unity,
causality, etc., consists only in the terms themselves, and is conceived by
relational concepts in the mind. This is the view that Kant will effectively
radicalize: it is by a property of our mind, the form of outer sense, that we
represent the shape, magnitude, and relation of things to one another. … It was
the genius of Russell, in effect, to seek in the reality of relation a way
through the mind-dependent structures of discourse to the mind-independent
reality of things. It was the genius of [Aquinas], after all those years, to
have given rise to a tradition that has within its resources the wherewithal to
uncover the very path whose existence Russell suspected but failed to uncover.
This discovery is not something to crow over. Only one man – John Poinsot – …
seems ever to have suspected, as Russell did, that the path was there (Deely:
1975: 306)."
4.4.
Three-dimensional presentism as an effect of discourse. Now Stein, Rietdijk,
Putnam, Maxwell, and Petkov recognize that presentism contradicts special
relativity and therefore one cannot talk about distant present events in
special relativity. Yet one wishes doing it; moreover, inescapably one must do
it in order to show that observers need not agree on which events are
simultaneous. To this purpose observers must be in relative motion, preventing
them from being non-spatial or occupying a single spacetime point.
How to discount unavoidable distance? Should the
struggle for more ken be a struggle against time? Is there a cost, perchance,
by defraying which one could refer to distant present events? Is this reference
possible only by introducing Minkowski spacetime – or rather, the
block-universe outlook which it conveys – as an inescapable condition? Owes
this relationship with the subuniverse to the way it has being, secundum esse, or either to the way it must
be expressed in discourse, secundum dici?
For, special relativity's descriptions are
related to the means for observers to exchange kinetic (namely, not dynamic)
states and, in so doing, positions from which to establish relationships with
other realities such as rods, interstellar trains, and force carriers whose
physical action, no matter how long a travel obtrudes, must be instantaneously
and locally delivered in order to cause a change. Describability of distant
present events thus depends on elaborate semioses, whose Piagetian development
in every individual observer was sketched before. It brings always a past
element which, among other constraints coming from the structures of discourse, must be included in
relativistic portrayals.
So, Stein's criticism is effective against the
fully accurate describability of the three-dimensional subuniverse, inasmuch as
a three-dimensional subuniverse only consists of distant present events
(everything that exists simultaneously at the instant 'now'). Stein's criticism
is tantamount to demand, very justifiedly indeed, a rigorous analysis of
semiosis; an analysis which too often was missing, e.g., in accounts of the twin 'paradox' and other 'failures' of
simultaneity. But – Petkov avows – unfortunately Stein did not address the most
fundamental question raised by the unavoidableness with which relativity of
simultaneity inevitably involves and
requires an uncollapsed four-dimensional subuniverse. What is the
dimensionality of the macrosubuniverse according to special relativity? Had he
done that he would have had three options:
- accept the conclusion of Rietdijk and Putnam that
we live in a four-dimensional block universe, the things being constituted
by unremitting temporal parts; or
- accept the conclusion of Rietdijk and Putnam but
investigating if
1.
the
four-dimensional span is greater than what causation demands, so 'hanging' all
transformational courses in our subuniverse;
2.
or, the
four-dimensional span is smaller than what causation demands, so preventing any
transformation from coming to be in our subuniverse;
3.
or, the
four-dimensional span is neither more nor less of what causation demands, so
allowing in our subuniverse transformational courses in causal sequence;
4.
or
efficient causation does not exist at all, so merging with the first option
(above) in forcing any (thus, apparent) sequence in our subuniverse to really
exist all at once, given completely or 'in block';
·
or, as
his third option, regard the event "here-now" as the only real – and
accurately describable – one.
4.5. The menace of
event solipsism: strength of the subjective flank. The latter option, of course, does not appear
realistic if one thinks that such a view clearly amounts to event solipsism –
for every observer the extramental subuniverse would be reduced to a single
event (the event "here-now") and as a result too the intramental
complexity would be so reduced (since the surroundings' complexity was found
requisite for interactive development of the mental world). Yet the supposition
fails both on its subjective and objective flanks. Let us comment on the two.
As about the subjective flank, everyone's
phenomenal experience, by its being multifaceted and compounded rather than
undividably-evented or 'block mentality', contradicts this reduction to a
single event and, too, any claim of its ultimacy. For, "It is proper of
the soul to have a lógos that builds
up itself" (Heraclitus, fragment 115), and which one of one's mental
contents would be ultimate? The so-settled issue is not new. It is linked to
the answer, of fundamental momentousness in the Western History of Ideas,
culturally responding to Gorgias’ apory[13] by making transzendentale the synthetische Einheit der Apperzeption, and its evolution was
historically reviewed in two important and interrelated syntheses by Rodolfo
Mondolfo [[30],[31]]
and Section 2.8.2, "Concepts of the unifying function of
experiencing", in [3, pp. 686-702]. Quoting from the latter (square
brackets added):
"Aristotle’s
research-design, uncolliding with Plato’s
technical affirmation of the spiritual psyché as a
decisive and imprescindible condition of every sapience (or:
physical measurement), focuses (in his fundamental Chapter VII of Perì aistheéseoos kaì aistheetoôn, 447
- 449) on the possibility of sensing two
things in one same and psychologically indivisible moment of time by means of
one unique sensation.
This
crucial query had been already set forth by the Pythagoreans. In their casting,
it befitted the perception of musical accords, whose compounding 'notes' (the
Pythagoreans affirmed) are discerned because they are not perceived
simultaneously, but by intermixing betwixt them certain unperceived intervals,
whose intermediate situational transformations are insensible on account of
their brevity. A naive remark, brimming of baleful repercussions.
During
these sub-acuity intervals, as Aristotle ordered to write, "one ought not
to know if oneself exists, if sees and if
feels": a horrible prospect when
one’s reduction to one’s grasp is in the
loom ([3] § 2.5.1). Aristotle
concluded that, inside one sole sense, it is not feasible to feel two things at once with a unique
sensation. So he told apart two unities,
that of sensation (incompatible with
distinguishing component impressions) and that of cognoscitive synthesis (attained by comparing and discerning two impressions simultaneously produced in one sense).
In this way, Aristotle achieved a chance
to reject the unperceived intervals, acquiescing in the syncretic myth [of
PPPPPP], on the ground that the unperceived sub-acuity intervals could be
likewise postulated not inside each separate sense, but to sensations of
different senses. In such eventuality, it could be also held in like fashion
that it only 'seems' to us seeing and hearing jointly, because the intermediate
intervals elude us. This would straightforwardly usher into conceiving noesis
as a flashing physical phenomenon. But such a verdict was culturally untenable,
owing to having supposed past and future not really different from
present, therefore imagining that a multiplicity of non-simultaneous flashes
could get mutually lost. In fact, as anticipated
supra, any time-'fragmentation' of
the biographies, insofar as self-addressable, by no means precludes the unitary
constitution of psychaí, since the
subuniverse shows to be temporally thin on the duration of its actuality and
its situations either include, or exclude, such unique self-addressable
fragment. And, for adversaries of elapsing productive time, besides being
culturally untenable, such a verdict was privately deleterious.
Thus, obedient to the myth, Aristotle
objected that 'this is not true, and it
can neither be any insensible time nor escape our grasping, but it is natural
that everything be sensed.' " [3, pp. 689-690].
4.6. The menace of event solipsism: strength of the extramental flank. As for the second, extramental flank, event solipsism
(reduction of the subuniverse to a single ascertainable event or non-spatial
"here-now") by no means stands for a real possibility inasmuch as
every observer observes extended over a volumetric parcel of nature, as
summarized in [3, [32]].
This extramental parcel is not an inespatial point; to call up familiar
instances, it rather is the volume segment of nature overlapping our encephalic
gray. Structures in this volume accomplish the physiological dissimilations
which became evolutionarily selected because, in turn, they efficiently
originate mental differentiations as causal reactions [6]. By no means a sole
ascertainable event, such a parcel is thus the fragment or section of nature
whose biophysically-dissimilated states, spatially extended, do causally
interact with the observer who is a single existentiality. The states of this
not-pointlike parcel of nature perform the cerebral dissimilation of the
circumstanced mind’s structural contents, differentiating in this observer
existentiality also a plurality of fresh sensations and enacting the
aforementioned behavior through which this observer probes the surroundings
and, so, attains the intellectual development required to carry out
relativistic observations, measurements, and constructions. As a result, for
every relativistic observer the spatial subuniverse existing once at a time,
far from being forcibly reduced to a single event (a "here-now"
unorganizable eventuation of cognoscibility), can become semiotically
referrable at a distance yet with adaptive accuracy, through the localized
observer's numerous differentiations ('mental contents') acquired in the course
of his intellectual development. This semiosis at a distance is what the
relativistic constructions of simultaneously unmeasurable positions amount to.
For this localized observer, ascertaining the
genuine simultaneity of any pair of observed events, namely whether or not is
he facing a simultaneity that as such admits or may exhibit causal efficiency,
does certainly bring troubles, because the said semiosis at a distance was not
biologically selected for covering all the cases; astronomical observations
provide good illustration. The relativity of simultaneity finds in celestial
mechanics, precisely, an important field demanding the use of relativistic
descriptions, whereas as regards stellar navigation biological adaptations
remain utterly nonchalant. But what matters for our discussion is that, had
Stein addressed the issue of what is the dimensionality of the subuniverse according
to special relativity, he had not been compelled to reject presentisms (neither
the time-denying nor the time-acknowledging ones) owing to assuming that
presentism entails an untenable reduction of observer and observation to a
non-distanceable (non-spatial), "here-now" single event. Neither
organism-regulating existentialities (psychaí)
nor the subuniverse (i.e. each
portion of reality evolving from a single big-bang) are bounded to stay
undifferentiated, as a single initial event (eclosion to a given circumstance,
for every organism-regulating existentiality; big-bang, for subuniverses).
Quite the reverse, after their respective eclosion event they differentiate
themselves following causal courses: respectively, into mental worlds, and into
astrophysical-biological cosmologies.
4.7. Odds of
accurately describing distant present events. Therefore, the (non-rigorous, as immediately
commented) statement of fact, that measurements should always be locally
performed and cannot be carried out at a distance, does not entail that
separative distances must be deemed unreal and, for that reason, the dimensions
of spatiality ought to be reduced to zero-dimensionality ('point universe'), as
if semiosis at a distance not existed. In fact, with a sole (neurobiological)
exception whose discussion is of no use here (see ref. [6]), a distance
negligeable for pragmatics always interposes between measured and measurer, and
when e.g. one ascertains, with
considerable imprecission, some assumed spatial relationships of galaxies or
metagalaxies, one simply increases such a distance in a way that it no longer
remains negligeable – and accompanies measurements with estimates of error and
hermeneutical instructions.
Science proceeds this way far and wide. Thus one
comes to primarily deal with real extramental things, for example real cups,
out of one’s mind and at a distance there on some table, or events farther away
in space, though upon introspection one might also consider one's 'concept' of
them. Thus, as the natural sciences find knowers and knowledges in nature, the
proper object of every mind’s intellection is the causal composibilities of the
sensed outer reality that, in their (extramental) reactions to the mind's
causally efficacious, spontaneous probing, generated the generalizing
retexturing underwent and retained by the mind’s knowable build-up. It
distinguishes intellection from sensation, though this distinction is by no
means absolute. In other words, once the question "What is the
dimensionality of the subuniverse?" is asked, one could not reject
presentism by assuming that only the detached event "here-now" is
real and it would mean that for every observer the subuniverse would be
zero-dimensional, i.e. just one
event. As space is pervasive, distance always obtrude; and as efficient
causality works, at least some observers and some subuniverses differentiate
into a plurality of events and mental contents.
Before leaving this topic, it should be stressed
that it amounts to a contradiction in terms to say that the subuniverse is
four-dimensional, but for every observer only the event "here-now" is
real. A block is a block. If the subuniverse is four-dimensional all its events (which only could be really
plural in number on condition that the fourth dimension is collapsed so as to
allow efficient causation to produce change) are equally real ('block
universe'); otherwise, it would not be four-dimensional. The real issue is, if those equally real events are entirely
given beforehand, maybe just being observed – or presenting themselves to
observation – sequentially; or, if rather they can engage themselves into real
transformative courses, which may seem to course in preexisting time but in
fact do create such a course not by using a navigable timespan external to the
present but in the innerly transforming, preexisting, time-like thin reality,
making way like as running long distance
in a threadmill, without need of availing of an uncollapsed, perduring,
navigable time dimension: se hace camino
al andar (way is made moving). This latter possibility demands both the
reality of frame-invariant efficient causation and its dovetailing with such a
fourth-dimension's span. (As already intimated, if the fourth dimension is
collapsed down to the minimal timespan required for efficient causation, no
transformation event may occur contained within such a time-like thickness[14]; if, in contrast, the
universe is uncollapsedly four-dimensional, it may contain a multiplicity of
events but not their transformations; in both cases, the entirety of
occurrences cancels its non-being at once, preventing elapsing, edacious time
– the devourer of things, as
Ovid said – and objective becoming from existing.)
4.8. No resource to
'potency'
– or, the specter of steéresis. This, as Petkov points out, shows that
in spacetime it is impossible to have an event, representing the event
"here-now", which is 'more real' than the other events. Therein
realness is homogeneously distributed, making such block universe a block of
being, tantamount to a being in block. Interestingly, this ontic homogeneity
does not fail when the fourth dimension gets collapsed or anyway restricted in
its span and, as it meets some features of efficient action, the block gets
pulverized into a really changing plurality of interacting entities. In that
plurality it does not matter that one event be so much immediate to an observer
that it directly causes in such observer known reactions (sensations: e.g., certain field state variation
within the brain), whereas other events stand so much remote (e.g., a possible interaction between
quasars) that their positions should be ascertained through this observer's
intellectual development and its application to semiosis, i.e. through a complex construal of nature based on the
evolutionary natural selection of proper neurobiological analyzers plus the
mind-texturing accumulation of personal probings plus their ensuing collation
and the social decanting of the resulting experience [[33]].
Whether immediate or, instead, remote to the observer, all the events
recognized to be existing in a fourth dimension-endowed macrouniverse ought to
be deemed on an equal footing as regards their reality. In a four-dimensional
subuniverse whether with uncollapsed or with causation-matching collapsed
fourth dimension, objective flow of time and objective becoming are therefore
impossible if they implied that there are events which are 'more real' than the
other spacetime events.
In such circumstances, event P could not be
'potential' while event Q is real, or viceversa. Far from being a predicate or
a simulatable appearance, 'to be' is an all-or-none issue – an enaction
outwardly manifested as an invariant conservation, following the aforementioned
Plato's hint and Emmy Noether’s theorem [32]. As it is notorious since those remarks by
Plato, causal efficiency involves frame invariance, i.e., no perspective could be found in which the causal
relationship of a course of physical events would appear uncalled for, because both transforming preexisting beings and
cancelling their non-existence are efficient enactments: far from being a
predicate or a logical or discursive capacity, 'to be' is a causal enactment.
So ruled out possibility (the 'being possible', potency) to account for
observer C's living both A's and B's diverse simultaneities, ruling out
probability is even plainer, even though the complications brought by notions
like 'molecular disorder' to several sectors of physics (such as plasm
turbulence, viscosity, or thermal conductivity) have been huge. But special relativity's
constructions are not statistical. Were they so, potency or Aristotelian steéresis, in the form of probabilities,
could be used as a shortwriting for what mechanics provides on individual
cases, like as a hundred and ten years ago Boltzmann recognized for gas theory.
But special relativity is an interconversion procedure which, being forced to
deal with particular configurations in order to make predictions which can
become experimentally tested, cannot eschew facing up to what individually exists
or, by yielding statistical results, accommodate some fiction of potential
being. For this reason, i.e. the real
distinction between existence and characterization which precludes exhausting 'to
be' into any combination of proper predications, none of its described events
can be 'more real' than the other events, so that the question of the
dimensionality of the subuniverse clearly precedes the questions of time flow
and becoming – and, as Petkov claims, should be resolved first.
Still another reason, also in Petkov's view.
Stein could not either argue that existence should be relative, i.e. frame- or observer-dependent – a
condition which would preserve the zero-intervalic-thickness, three-dimensionality
of the subuniverse and would allow two observers in relative motion to have
different presents, i.e. different three-dimensional subuniverses –
because this would mean that he would be again
using the concept of distant present events applied to each observer.
4.9. The strength
of Stein's argument. In such a way, Petkov points out that Stein's criticism of the
Rietdijk-Putnam argument not only does not disprove it but effectively
constitutes another argument for the block universe view as the sole worldview
compatible from relativity. Stein's criticism is tantamount to state that a
science of physics acknowledging the relativity or failure of simultaneity
cannot declare the macroscopic subuniverse sheerly three-dimensional, since a
three-dimensional subuniverse is defined in terms of the pre-relativistic
division of events.
Petkov remarks that by pointing out the
meaninglessness of that concept in special relativity Stein effectively
demonstrated the contradiction between the presentist (sheerly three-dimensionalist)
view and relativity of simultaneity. This meant that it is the
four-dimensionalist view that is in agreement with relativity – although, as
discussed below, one can not yet conclude thereof that the only option which
remains is an uncollapsedly four-dimensional subuniverse with a 'time' akin
enough to space (of course not identical: while in space we can only measure ratios but
reproductably, in measuring time we directly ascertain the causal production of
new situations but nonreproductably, as it is pointed up by the disparity of invariants
and transformations in their respective geometries) to let that 'temporal
parts' perdure differently localized and observers might get 'translocatable'
among them as well as in space.
Weingard [[34]],
like Stein, pointed out that Putnam's argument is wrong because it is based on
the pre-relativistic concept of distant present events. Petkov
insists that both objections are different but they boil down to the same point
– that the pre-relativistic (presentist) division of events into past, present
and future ones makes no sense in special relativity. Despite being formulated in terms of
pre-relativistic concepts the Rietdijk-Putnam argument remains perfectly valid
[[35]]
as it points out the unbreakable ties of special relativity and
four-dimensionality.
5 Only
the Four-dimensionalist View is Compatible with Special Relativity
5.1. Probing a
generalized version of the Rietdijk-Putnam argument. Petkov [1, p. 8] feels that
the Rietdijk-Putnam-Maxwell argument can be easily generalized if the question
of the dimensionality of the macroworld according to special
relativity is explicitly addressed. In so doing he finishes by showing that special relativity is valid only in an uncollapsedly
four-dimensional subuniverse represented by Minkowski spacetime (and in its
time-collapsed segments only inasmuch they are referred to by it), but starts to discuss that
question by pointing out to the pre-relativistic (presentist) subuniverse that
is sheerly three-dimensional – the present of zero intervalic thickness
visualizable by thinning to nil the plane in Fig. 2. Then he faces two ways to
demonstrate the impact of special relativity on this panorama.
·
On the one hand, one can first point out that the macroworld cannot be
sheerly three-dimensional and still be in line with a failure of simultaneity
deemed not to depend either on observers' features or on the signals' delay.
Reason is, that such a macroworld is defined in terms of a pre-relativistic
division of events into past, present, and future (Fig. 2) which entails
unmodifiability of the 'earlier-later' relationship. The relativity of
simultaneity, when
applied to what exists, thus contradicts sheer three-dimensionality, being only possible in a
four-dimensional subuniverse where the histories of the physical objects either
(a) are sequentially deployed by an efficient causation whose discrete modules
of enaction match the residual time-like span of a collapsed fourth dimension,
or (b) are entirely realized ("given at once") in the
four-dimensional worldtubes stacking their "temporal parts". But
efficient causation is not included in special relativity scenarios. Therefore,
the debate over the dimensionality of the subuniverse is resolved in favor of
the four-dimensionalist view assuming a space-akin time dimension uncollapsed -
and things existing at all moments of their histories. This is the conclusion
that follows from Stein's argument against the Rietdijk-Putnam argument.
·
Petkov's second approach to determining the dimensionality of the
subuniverse according to relativity is precisely the generalization of the
Rietdijk-Putnam argument. One starts with the mentioned pre-relativistic view
of the subuniverse. Then it inescapably follows that having different sets of
simultaneous events two observers in relative motion have different
three-dimensional subuniverses of zero intervalic thickness, i.e.
different presents. On this generalization, rather than special relativity, it
is such a null time-like thickness what prevents accommodating efficient
causation, thereby eschewing causal quandaries.
In
this scenario, inasmuch as existence is absolute, i.e. inasmuch as every cancellation of non-being is a causal
enactment which, as such, does not admit anamorphosis (simulation or physical
mimesis, cf. [3], passim), in order that relativity of
simultaneity be possible it follows that either the different subsets of
simultaneous events should reflect a relation secundum dici, or the subuniverse must be uncollapsedly
four-dimensional: the two observers will have different sheerly
three-dimensional cross-sections of the four-dimensional subuniverse, which
cross-sections they will regard as their presents. But, again, if we assumed
that the macroworld is sheerly three-dimensional, two observers in relative
motion would have a common three-dimensional subuniverse and therefore a common
set of simultaneous events – which means that not only existence is absolute
but also simultaneity would be absolute, in contradiction with special
relativity.
Figure 2: Nature's time-like
thickness; the main feature here is the thickness of the 'plane' of present. On
both presentist views, i.e. the
fourth-dimension-denying and the fourth-dimension-acknowledging ones, it is
only the present – the three-dimensional subuniverse at the instant 'now' –
that exists. For the first sort (time-denying), the plane's thickness is zero
(the thickness of any other simultaneity plane is zero, too) and the sole
efficient causation occurs among Ideas (Platonisms) or ideas (subjectivisms).
For the other sort of presentism (time-acknowledging), the plane's thickness is
interval-like and related to fundamental physics, whose causal efficiency
enacts time courses. These course as transformations of the extant being and
not on a time dimension, which indeed stays at this scenario but has collapsed
into the time-like thickness of its present. Future and past sequences, thus,
do not exist.
In forwarding the generalized version of the
Rietdijk-Putnam argument, Petkov observes [1, p. 9] that the kinematic
relativistic effects (with the exception of the so called twin 'paradox') only
can be formulated in terms of the pre-relativistic division of events if the
(absolute) existence of the objects involved in these effects is
explicitly taken into account. And indeed as we have seen relativity of
simultaneity makes sense only in terms of the non-relativistic concept of
absolutely present events when we ask what exists simultaneously. If one objects that the question
"What exists simultaneously?" does not appear to be well defined
because of the unavoidable spatial distance that brings into every measurement
the need of semiosis, it will be shown below that the purely kinematic length
contraction effect makes sense only in terms of the pre-relativistic concept of
present events of null time-like thickness. Why? Because special relativity
draws only kinematic situations. Kinematics does not consider efficient
causation, which rather form the basis for dynamics and is excluded from both
time-denying presentisms and block-universe special relativity scenarios.
5.2. Special
relativity's ties with the uncollapsed four-dimensionalist view. For that reason, when the
issue of the dimensionality of the subuniverse according to special relativity
is explicitly addressed, it does appear that according to special relativity
there is no alternative to the uncollapsed four-dimensionalist view. Special
relativity, a kinematic and not a dynamic contrivance, is telling us that the
world must be depicted this way or no relativistic depiction is possible at
all.
Rather, in the collapsed four-dimensional
presentisms only one situation at a time, namely the privileged, causally
efficient situation whose transformational sequences are frame-invariant and in
several languages is called 'actuality', could be simultaneously present; not a
plurality of successive situations each of which depends on its observer's
motions. This is best seen if one tried to assume that according to the
'failure' of simultaneity the macroworld is three-dimensional. Then not only
relativity of simultaneity but all kinematic relativistic effects would be
impossible [35, [36],
[37]].
Petkov remarks that this is immediately evident for the cases of length
contraction and time dilation, since these effects are merely manifestations of
relativity of simultaneity – a relativity unretainable while simultaneity is
absolute.
5.3. Proof one: discussing
the length contraction effect. Therefore, there is no kinematic way of gaining the two, simultaneity's relativity as well as
absoluteness, as children do in choosing at
once both irreconcilable things between which they should retain only one (katà
tèen tôon
paídoon eujeén: Plato’s Sophist 249 d 2/3, quoted in [3] §
1.3.28, in fine). Simultaneity should either fail or be absolute. To demonstrate the impossibility of the kinematic
relativistic effects in the framework of the presentist three-dimensionalist
view, Petkov considers for example the length contraction effect, as two
observers A and B in relative motion meet at event M.
Traditionally, observers in relativity have been
characterized fairly sketchily, but while making headway on many avenues
science remains a single endeavor. Thus listing some key requeriments imposed
by other academic disciplines focuses our fancy, befits our discussion, and
steers clear of ontological assumptions that might be subreptitiously
introduced by concealed denials of space or time – such as speaking of
pointlike observers, pointlike meetings, pointlike events of observation,
instantaneous changes, and instantaneous detections. The meeting observers,
thus, are non-infinite: they only can observe some events of variation
occurring in their own ontological buildup and cannot observe any event taking
place elsewhere, whether in extramentality or in the buildup of other observers
[6, 32]. Therefore, their meeting is not a gnoseological fusion: each of them
keeps observing only the own buildup. This buildup is interactively accessable
from extramentality not by way of a sizeless inespatial point, but by way of a
neuroactivity occupying certain sizeable volume. The observers' meeting is not
epistemological fusion, either: it does not exceptuate them from enacting
shareable procedures aimed to ascertaining if, through dependable semiosis,
some of the events which they separately detect in themselves are indeed
referrable to one and the same extramental occurrence.
Petkov represents these observers by their
worldlines as shown in Fig. 3. A rod at rest in A's reference frame is
represented by its worldtube. But here it seems necessary to do exactly the
reverse of what we did a moment ago when pointing the relevant, unnegligeable
physical features of observers, signals, and meeting. As the Babylonian
observed that when someone points to the moon others may just look at the
finger, in order to stay away from supposing that also a rod's non-geometrical
or physical properties hold here any relevance whatsoever it is important to
remark that in relativity the rod demarcates or merely represents a certain
small piece of A's travel path.
Figure 3 as posted by Petkov
[1, p. 10]: A rod represented by its worldtube is at rest in observer A's
reference frame. The rod extends over a small piece of the travel path. Thus it
may display whatever shape; the discussed effects affect the physical rod only inasmuch as it has extension in the
relative motion's direction, which the simplified diagram cannot make
apparent.
At event M the two observers determine the
length of the rod in their reference frames. For B the rod, i.e. the said small segment of A's
travel path, is of shorter length LB < LA. The exact relation between the two lengths is
obtained by the Lorentz transformations, which do show that LB < LA. As seen in Fig. 3 the
contraction of the rod or segment of A's travel path is only possible either if
(a) the worldtube of the rod or segment of A's path is a real four-dimensional object
or (b) if the observers' speed affect their respective semioses in the context
of a fourth dimension collapsed in a fashion that matches the causal span. This
means that either
- the rod or segment of A's travel path exists
equally at all instants of its history, or
- its two tips at one and the same instant t0 emit signals with the same state of
uniform motion on whose arrival ('observation') such signals are efficient
to immediately cause, in the observer circumstanced to the moving
positions setting up the four-dimensional
trajectory B, the time-insuming process of measurement of a difference
which is semiotically referrable – in the context of some description of
nature that is enough adequate or epistemologically sufficiently accurate
(i.e., not hallucinatory) and
has been developmentally prearranged in the observer's buildup – to the
space length that at t0 has been separating
the two signal-emission events.
Petkov observes that the instantaneous
three-dimensional spaces of A and B intersect the worldtube of the rod at two
different places and B's cross-section is smaller than A's cross-section. But
the descriptions of special relativity, as it only poses sheerly kinematic
scenarios, cannot involve causal action – and of course special relativity has not
depicted with any detail its observers positioned in nature, not to mention
their causality and absolute motions involved in probing the surroundings and,
thus, building the menu of mental operations to be developmentally prearranged
in the observer's buildup for apperceiving sensations and penetrating nature's
causal works. If according to special relativity the rod's worldtube were not a
real four-dimensional object, i.e. if also
according to special relativity the rod or segment of A's travel path existed
only at its present instant and therefore were a three-dimensional object (say,
A's rod which is represented by the cross-section LA), no length contraction would be possible in special relativity – A's
rod of length LA should be described as existing for B as well
and B in turn should be depicted as measuring the same rod with the same length
LA. Different relativistic
describers should denote the same denotata.
If also according to special relativity the rod existed only at its present instant, which
would mean that such
segment of A's travel path is depicted as an ontologically three-dimensional object (maybe retaining its identity as a
three-dimensional object in successive times), it would not exist entirely
given in its past and future – namely, as a segment of a travel. Therefore, B's cross-section of length LB would lie in the rod's past and would not exist
in the relativistic description. Neither A not B could be presented as
intersecting it; intersection requires worldtubes.
Uncollapsed, navigable, space-akin
four-dimensionality is therefore what Kant would have called a condition of
possibility: a requisite for relativity to depict that which observations
encounter. As we shall see, this is why time is frame-dependent in relativity,
in whose descriptions the future is determinate; relativity harbors no
alternative to the block universe view.
5.4. Each observer
measures different three-dimensional objects. Petkov remarks that, as it seems, "little
attention has been paid to the fact that A and B do not measure the same three-dimensional
rod". The rod or segment of A's travel path which B measures is a different three-dimensional object. This occurs as well in subuniverses in which
causation matches the residual span of a collapsed time-dimension, as in the
scenarios representing subuniverses where such a fourth dimension remains
uncollapsed.
Every observer ascertains if his or her own
mental situation signals two extramental event (the two tips of the rod)
occurring in distant space. Measuring spatial positions always involves
semiosis, as we saw. Semioses are different for every observer: each is a
separate act, enacted by a separate observing buildup, aiming to ascertain the
possible extramental reference, of four different events sensed as the
receptions of a pair of signals, to the rod's tips that suppossedly emitted
these signals in an instant t0 which already is
necessarily past, i.e. an instant
which then left occasion to further intervening causal transformations, always
local. This is clearly seen in Fig. 3 – at event M both A and B know that the
rod exists 'for' each of them, but in special relativity's kinematic scenarios
"this is only possible if there are two different three-dimensional
cross-sections of the rod's worldtube, i.e.
two different three-dimensional
rods." [1, p. 11]. Not only in quantum physics, therefore, but also in
special relativity what is observed depends in part on the observer.
Same conclusion follows directly from relativity
of simultaneity. The different parts of the rod or segment of A's travel path
spatially extended over the sole three dimensions available
constitute a set of events which exist simultaneously for A. As B has a different set of simultaneous
events (the events constituting the worldtube's cross-section LB in the relativity's
representation) it unavoidably follows that B measures a different
three-dimensional rod or segment of A's travel path. In order that this be
possible according to special relativity the rod's worldtube must be a real four-dimensional object. What does 'real' mean here?
'Real' means that, when we say
that according to special relativity A and B measure the same rod or segment of A's
travel we refer to the worldtube of the rod or segment of A's travel path, but
the observers regard different
three-dimensional cross-section of the rod's worldtube as their rod or segment
of A's travel, which means that they do measure different three-dimensional
rods or segments of A's travel. Thus worldtubes are not only convenient graphical
representations, but also extramental denotata in which observers can refer to
different four-dimensional segments or 'slices'. As mentioned, measurement is a
semiotic referral and its denotatum in each case is 'for' each of them: as
Bains evoked from Aristotle, an instance of something pròs ti.
5.5. Pervasive
misconstruction of local contraction. Petkov mentions that the fact, that B measures a
different three-dimensional rod, appears to rule out any explanation of the
length contraction that involves deforming
the rod or segment of A's travel path, i.e.
any deformation efficiently caused by forces acting on the rod's or segment of
path's 'atoms', "along the lines of the original Lorentz-FitzGerald
proposal and what Bell [[38]]
called 'Lorentzian pedagogy' (see also [[39]])."
So the Babylonian caveat reveals to be still sound. The reason is that the
deformation (or dynamical) explanation of the length contraction implies that A
and B measure the same
three-dimensional rod or segment of
travel, whereas relativity of simultaneity requires that A and B measure
different three-dimensional rods or
segments of travel – different denotata.
It is useless to argument against a local
contraction of present material rods, of course. While the misreading is rife (like
the attribution of the twin pseudo-paradox to the 'constricting' effect of
acceleration), in fighting it one feels sort of don Quixote beating windmills.
According to special relativity the local observer (i.e., one saddling stationary the rod or segment of travel path)
observes no change either in local space or along locally-measured intervals.
Her 'rod', were the segment of travel path signaled by the present presence of some material, does not shrink and ebb under
her legs. But the pervasiveness of this common mistake and the 'Lorentzian
pedagogy' compels to accost it. Perhaps the most convincing argument that the
'Deformative explanation' of the length contraction is wrong, however, is that
this explanation cannot account for the contraction of a material rod-pervading
and rod-enveloping local space itself,
where no macroscopic displaceable determinations nor specific forces exist that
can cause its deformation. Yet the 'rod' or segment of A's travel path
contracts. The muon experiment [[40]],
e.g., cannot be explained if it is assumed that in relativistic scenarios space
does not contract [[41]],
nor the current developments a propos the evolution of the bodily system that
furnishes minds with sensory contents [6, [42]]
and the neurobiophysical research on the observers' localization [6, 10, 32].
Length contraction and parallel time dilation
can be formulated only in terms of the
semioses-involving concept of distant present events (i.e. the concept of everything that exists simultaneously at the
instant 'now': the unmeasurable present) even if – as might be seen on some
non-inertial scenarios – the intervening distance is fairly short. The latter
occur whenever the kinematic situation can be described as a strongly
accelerated motion of relativistic magnitude (even a slight one) setting up
what must be classically conceived as circular trajectories of microphysical
radius (e.g. in the classical
scenarios set by the fine structure constant α for the electron in a
hydrogen atom), from which trajectories the outer intervals are dilated [6,
42]; or when the coupling with successive local states of a force field in some
closed volume (say, the ~750 cm3 of brain grain of human observers)
determines variations in the speed of another field's force carriers volumetrically
interspersed with the force carriers of the former field: say, outer
relativistic particles traversing, neutrino-like, all the way through the
volume [3]. Inasmuch as dynamics makes a special subset of kinematics, these
general relativity, energy-injection cases (i.e.,
microphysical circular trajectories, and coupling of a force field's action
carriers with another force field's intensities across which the former
traverse) just involve special cases of the Lorentz-Fitzgerald effects,
expressed by the Valatin-Bogoljubov transforms. They demonstrate that no matter
the magnitude of the involved distance, this concept, distant present events, is still used in special relativity when
the existence of the physical objects
involved in this relativistic effect is described in three-dimensional
language.
When A and B meet at M what everyone of them
measures is what exists for (pròs) him – as Petkov also says [1, p. 11], 'his' present rod or segment of A's travel path, that is, all parts of the spatially extended
three-dimensional rod or travel-path's segment which exist simultaneously at
the instant 'now' of the observer. The travel segment or three-dimensional rod
constitutes a set of distant present
events and both observers must use
its non-relativistic definition in order to talk about a three-dimensionally
definable travel segment or 'rod' operationally locatable in an overlap of
their semiotic referrals. A like situation occurs in the time dilation effect
[35, chapter 5]. Yet in order to show that observers need not agree on which
events are simultaneous those observers need to stand in relative motion, a
translationality that precludes to occupy a single spacetime point, bringing in
a concept of 'distant present eventuation' that in special relativity cannot
achieve meaning. Thereby kinematics
demands dynamics: taken together with the fact that physical signals take
time to enable semiosis, the very relativistic meaningless of distant present
eventuation implies that according to sheerly kinematic special relativity
nothing in nature escapes efficient causation; as Petkov observes, implies that
according to special relativity nothing
sheerly three-dimensional stands in the objective subuniverse.
In the case of length contraction each of the
observers A and B in Fig. 3 measures a three-dimensionally definable travel
segment or "rod", the respective denotatum, which is neither a purely
subjective construct nor an extramental objective "thing in itself".
What this description depicts is the travel segment's or rod's worldtube. Its
semiotic or referential existence is deduced from the existence of length
contraction – if the worldtube did not be referred to no length contraction
would be possible to ascertain.
5.6. The physical
status of semiotic objects. A's and B's rods or segments of A's travel path – 'for' existences,
denotata, tá pròs ti –
are not extramental because the rod's or travel-path segment's worldtube is an
indivisible four-dimensional entity. Despite its being referentially segmented
(as distinguished from other segments of the travel path), it cannot be sliced
into sheerly three-dimensional cross-sections.
This occurs because
Minkowski spacetime is not objectively dividable likewise. Thus the absolute,
extramental rod or segment of A's travel path efficient to cause absolute
(non-frame dependent) active or passive effects independently of its being
observed is of course not the same as, or reductable to, its 'for'-existences
in observers.
These 'for'-existences are always molar or
undecomposable below a certain macroscopic scale [6]; if sensed (rather than
abstractly minded of) are always molarly intonated with sensations of the
observer, semiotically referred to them; these 'for'-existences consist of or
are constituted as parts of the observer ('mental contents'), defined in the
general terms of the operations available in the observer's developmentally
evolved system of operations [7, 33, [43],
[44]]
and can feature only a predicative combination (concept) that leaves outside
any idiosyncratic differences (and so, in case that an existentiality came to
inhabit the rod or segment of travel path, cannot pinpoint his or her
cadacualtez [2, 6]). Therefore the three-dimensional rod every observer
measures according to special relativity is just a description of the
rod's or travel-path segment's worldtube in terms of the ordinary
three-dimensional language.
Setting it up semiotically, or enacting its
semiotic existence, is a condition of possibility for relativity, inasmuch as
relativity is an interconversion descriptive tool for finite, located or
circumstanced observers to reciprocally ascertain their respective
perspectives.
This situation, Petkov states [1, p. 12],
"is analogous to the one that arises when the x – y planes
of different coordinate systems 'cut' different two-dimensional cross-sections
of a cylinder – those sections are not real two-dimensional objects since the
cylinder itself is not objectively divided into different two-dimensional
cross-sections." It does no matter that, as professor Mondolfo used to
stress in private talks [Prof. Crocco, pers. comm.], Apolodorus probably made
some cones in remarkably thin gold sheets in order to gain precision for his
studies on conic sections.
Figure 4: Petkov [1, p. 12]
refers to the figure above, on which the following should be noted. What
observers A and B see each in his or
her buildup is semiotically referred to the same
cross-section L of the distant rod's
worldtube. For distant elements, "same"
means that, among the operatively ascertainable coincidences of the subuniverse
descriptions by several observers, the referred-to object can be operatively
identified as keeping the same relationships with the remaining coincident
objects of their mental worlds, the adequacy of which worlds has
developmentally been attaind by means of independent spontaneous probings [43,
44]. In general, when two observers A and B in relative motion meet at event M
they see the past light cone – whose solid angle is constant because of the
'equivalence principle'. Note that the semiotically referred-to objects LA and LB are in the present, which of course rigorously (but
exaggeratedly in the figure) stands outside of every circumstanced observer's
lightcone.
5.7. Inescapable
retardation of embodied observers. Rigorously, it is not the case that we watch
three-dimensional things and a three-dimensional subuniverse. It is seen in
Fig. 4. Leaving aside neurobiological time-resolution constraints that impose
present moments far larger than physical instants [6]; and leaving aside, too,
the apprehension advance amount Á [3, § 1.3.13: "The apprehensional
advance amount, Á", pp. 343-352] that the high-level, non-relativistic
'batch' neuroprocessing imposes on sensory data[15], observers A and B, who
are in relative motion, have different sets of simultaneous events and
therefore different three-dimensional subuniverses, but at event M they both
see quite precisely the same thing – the past light cone. In the caption to
Fig. 4 it is explained what 'same' does mean for an outer reality being
semiotically referred to by more than one
observer which developmentally attained a certain epistemological adequacy.
However, because of light speed, this past is just quite recent. It in fact
stays within the apprehension advance amount Á:
"That
is, one is always ahead of the times represented by one’s brain. This
outdistancing is important to bear in mind. One’s advancement is a fairly
appreciable fraction of a second, the said apprehension advance amount Á. It is
the time taken by dissimilative neurodynamics to compose the brain state to
which the circumstanced mind instantaneously reacts … differentiating the
sensory experience of the 'current' moment. In other words, the apprehension
advance amount Á is the time that the brain organ takes (through a complex
articulation of microphysical causality) to dissimilate the latest ostensible
(or manifest) physical contents which the therein-circumstanced person is to
(molarly) differentiate as diverse sensoperceptual mental contents at every
moment." [3, p. 344]
5.8 The overthrow
of simultaneity.
Paying due heed to these circumstances, we can start to explicitly address the
question of existence and dimensionality of the objects ('fundamental
particles', not-so-fundamental mesons, rulers, clocks, leave-taking twin
organisms, etc.) and of the subjects (circumstanced observers) involved in the
relativistic effects. Because of neurobiology, one would not say that our brains integrate the
times of many instants to create an observed moment, but that brains dilate the
time of an instant to create the observer's temporal modulus that we call
moment – and, by regionally varying the dilation, put the sensory products
into the attentional focus or, either, in disattention [6, 10]. Here it matters
to remark that, also because of it, we know that efficient causation can be exerted
across relativistic frames, as observer-brain interactions show.
Efficient causation
apt to be conveyed from one relativistic reference frame to another, across
macroscopic ranges, is instanced of course by the nomic action of physical
fields of force – segregated as modalities for interaction in our available
range of energies – whose action carriers are not stopped by special
circumstances such as acquiring inertial mass, as it rather is the case of
gluons, and so have
outer reference-frame time (locally do not enjoy time) to travel long distances
before winking out of existence. Light is the most familiar of these
massless carriers of the efficient causation whereby photons may signal their
own emission event across relativistic frames. This physical aptitude makes
semiosis 'transframable', i.e.
amenable to relativistic transframing.
Because of the observer's time acuity (which for
sight encompasses several thousand kilometers at relativistic speeds, while in
more astronomical situations the signals' delay of course exceeds our
indefinition-adding, sizable apprehension advance amount Á), the points of the
past light cones at M do not correspond to the same instant of the time of each of the observers. In particular, A
and B have different three-dimensional rods or segments of A's travel path. But
at every physical instant they could only properly denote the same three-dimensional cross-section L which, however, cannot be regarded as a sheerly
three-dimensional travel-path segment or rod – since all parts of a
three-dimensional object exist simultaneously at one instant (the instant 'now').
The fulcrum of the whole analysis is that, by contrast,
the parts of the three-dimensional cross-section L correspond to different
instants of the time of each observer[16]. This is very important
but also very well known, so that it often is simply skipped over.
Yet it makes a condition of possibility in
special relativity. Namely, figuring this situation in special relativity
inescapably requires to figure that
the parts of the three-dimensional cross-section L correspond to different
instants of the time of each observer. It follows from here that it is not
possible to interpret the length contraction in a sense that it is the same three-dimensional segment of A's travel path or 'rod' that 'exists for'
A and B, but they could only see it differently. A's and B's semioses generate
different denotata.
The observers cannot measure the length of their
respective A-travel-path segments or 'rods' at M. This is so since measurements
take some time and as discussed each of the observers receives the signals and a fortiori perceives his A-travel-path
segment or 'rod' a little later, not at the instant when light signals left
simultaneously the slightly different but always distant end points of the
A-travel-path's segment. But if the observers take into account these delays,
they arrive at the conclusion that at the event M they had sensory reference to different sets of simultaneous events and
therefore different three-dimensional A-travel-path's segments or
'rods'.
So, the fact that body and often parts of the
surroundings interpose in such a way that observers' experience are not usually
in an immediate causal interaction with what they measure does not affect the
conclusion that A and B have different three-dimensional A-travel-path's
segments or 'rods'. Whence on a purely three-dimensional presentist view and on
the other hand neglecting that observers perdure outside of time courses, the
length contraction effect is impossible. On a purely presentist view scenifying
a subuniverse of null time-like thickness, i.e.
lacking any intervalic extension of
actuality whatsoever, no observer exists for – or could undergo – these semiosis-dependent
effects.
This properly shows how the peculiar dependence
of relativistic descriptions, on the possibility of assuming a space-akin,
navigable time-dimension, does its job. Although the fact that A's and B's
semioses must of need refer to different three-dimensional rods – whereas the
referred-to rod stays locally invariant so as to efficiently cause invariant
effects – is a direct consequence of relativity of simultaneity, it is worth to
consider a thought experiment in which the measurement of the rod's length is instantaneous in A's and B's reference
frames. By its assumed being instantaneous, such a measurement escapes light
cone and this is where the Gedankenexperiment's
importance lies.
5.9. Proof two:
simultaneous presence of converging outcomes from distant sequential events. This thought experiment,
presented in comparable forms by Steven Hales and Timothy Johnson [[45]]
as well as by Petkov [1, 35], will also provide additional arguments supporting
the claim that the three-dimensionalist view contradicts the experiments which
confirmed the kinematic relativistic effects – which effects, as a matter of
fact, do occur in a nature with observers who by means of efficient interactivity
develop mental worlds apt to contrast being and possibilities.
Figure 5 a: Simultaneizing
outcomes from distant sequences. Hales and Johnson's schema in
"Endurantism, perdurantism and special relativity" [Ref. 45, p. 536],
reproduced with permission from The
Philosophical Quarterly. Hales and Johnson comment: "This seems to
drive a stake through the heart of presentism: if t1 is now,
and t2
is not now, that things at ‘not now’ can co-exist with things at ‘now’ seems to
indicate that things at other times are certainly real. But it poses just as
serious a problem for the endurantist. …The object does not have all of its
parts present at one time."
Figure 5 b: simultaneizing
outcomes from distant sequences. Petkov's schema as provided in its Internet
publication [Ref. 1]. Observers A and B, who are in relative motion, meet at
event M. A rod – namely, a small piece of the path – moving on with A and
pointing in the direction of motion, i.e.
at rest in A's reference frame, has lights mounted on its two end points and on
its middle point. In A's frame all lights of the rod were simultaneously green
an instant before the meeting with B; they are all red at the instant of the
meeting, and their color changes simultaneously to blue for A an instant after
the meeting. Each of A and B determines the rod's length instantaneously in his frame by taking snapshots of the rod's end
and middle points with cameras placed at different points on A's x axis and on
B's x axis along which the rod moves. The rod which B measures is present and
consists of parts of A's past rod (with the green light), present rod (with the
red light), and future rod (with the blue light).
This pretended scenario differs, from the
trivial case in which letters posted at diverse date arrive and cause their
effects together, in that the very
posting is sequential for the dispatcher but simultaneous for the receiver.
Let the small piece of the path, i.e.
the rod, again be at rest in A's reference frame (Petkov), analogous to the
train's rest frame (Hales and Johnson). I will refer to the rod; while on the
train the marking events are detonations, there are lights mounted on the end
and middle points of such moving segment of A's travel path or 'rod'. In A's reference frame the color of the
lights changes simultaneously every instant. As this has no physical meaning,
whether in a sheerly three-dimensional subuniverse at all deprived of
intervalic thickness or in a block universe whose uncollapsed fourth dimension
is physically undemarcable, and as we do ignore which is "the ultimate modulus of [possible] transformational
change, namely the minimal interval over which a causal transformation is at
all possible or might be marked off by two different instants" [6], I will take it to mean
that the color of the flashes changes every Planck instant. (No energy bill for
creating such unforetold avalanche of visible-light photons: remember, this is
a Gedankenexperiment; otherwise each
of these physical transitions takes not 'an instant' but more than 1019
Planck instants, namely what takes traveling the size of a full hydrogen nucleus at the
speed of light, in order to occur, not to mention to be recorded).
Specifically, one instant before the meeting of
A and B, for resting or local observer A all three lights on the fixed segment
of her travel path or 'rod' flash green.
To be a bit more precise: while standing apart on some physico-chemical
structure of the rod, every one of the three signaling atoms underwent an
electronic transition whereby one of its electrons is now emitting a photon
carrying physical action to closely enact, through its future absorption, a
well-specified distant change, i.e.
the photon oscillates with a wavelength determined somewhere between, say, 500
and 550 nm. These three green emissions take place at the instant t g A.
Next instant, that is at the very instant of the
meeting t MA = t rA , for the resting or local observer A the three lights
are red (the photon-yielding transitions have been smaller, so every one of the
three signaling atoms of the rod emits a photon of greater wavelength, between
say 650 and 680 nm) and one instant after the meeting the three lights are blue at t b A (larger
electronic transitions caused every signaling atom to emit a photon of shorter
wavelength: between, say, 440 and 470 nm).
At each of the three mentioned instants,
therefore, the three emitted photons start oscillating ('are created') carrying across space the
respective amount of physical action ('energy'), without being able of being
observed in travel (observation would absorb or annihilate the action carrier)
or of modifying in travel the amount of physical action. First a volley of
three green photons left the rod, one instant later a volley of three red
photons departed, another instant later a volley of three blue photons did
leave. They are assumed (not absorbed, not observed!) by local observer A to
carry the mentioned energies, labeled as mentioned: first green, then red, then
blue.
Let us introduce B, hastily approaching the
meeting zone. At a distance, B moves relativistically; B not either could
verify each photon's energy without absorbing (annihilating) it. Only one of the
two observers, therefore, either the local or the remote but not both of them,
enjoys the possibility of empirically ascertaining how much physical action in
on each photon – so as to insert the empirical datum ('color') in his or her
semiotic process.
As seen in Fig. 5b, A and B move along their crossing x axes and, being a segment of A's travel path, A's rod
is positioned parallel to A's x axis.
Both A and B are assumed to use
some magic instantaneous detectors, nevertheless called 'cameras', at different
points of their x axes. All cameras have
clocks which have been synchronized in advance in each frame by using the
Einstein's rule assuming that the back (some photons) and forth (other photons,
created at best after time-consuming characteristic processes) velocity of
light in A's and B's frame is the same. The cameras have been 'synchronized' in
such a way that all clocks in each frame show zero for a long time, all along
the event of the meeting M – say, for a millionth of a hundredth of a second if
the berth of the relativistic-speed meeting is 3 m. This is about 1035
Planck instants, i.e. ~1016
times longer than the time needed for interactions of this species to become
determined (though their effect, in order to be enacted, would still demand much
more time than that, depending on the absorbing system). But as mentioned,
observers are not pointlike, and for a Gedankenexperiment
it is needlessly cumbersome to assume that certain occurrences are
unrealistically nontemporal or instantaneous and also the meeting space is unrealistically inespatial. Hales and
Johnson introduce a railway station, yet the encounter's scale is not set up by
its platform's length but by the meeting berth allowed by the setting's time
resolution. Though Petkov does not consider it, let it thus take place on a
scale of some 3 m
This of course leaves speed indeterminate, but
the inertial mass, of the physical system circumstancing the observers to
interact, legitimates one for assuming the speed's magnitude continuous with
its values at the previous and ensuing states.[17] When A and B meet at
M-zone during the interval of ~1035 Planck instants along which the
clocks show t M A = 0 of A's time and at t M B = 0 of B's time, A and B determine the length of the
small segment of A's travel path or 'rod' instantaneously
in their reference frames by taking camera snapshots of its distant end and
middle points. Each snapshot captures the three photons, recording their
effects; A's camera is hanging elevated so it captures the rod's three lights
from the same distance that passerby B does at the latter closest approach,
from a slightly different angle. Some time after the meeting A and B
respectively collect the single middle picture from each of their three sets of
snapshots to see the results of their experiments – and assume that both
quasi-local observations (the middle picture in the two sets, A's and B's) date
from almost the same, almost locally-shared instant.
They know that it could not be the same instant.
Namely, the two observers cannot have detected the same photons, i.e. the trio emitted by the 'rod' at
some given instant, because every photon can only be detected once – turning
whatever extramental causal deed unobservable, as Crocco showed. Not either
could they have achieved the purpose by entangling some subsets of the photons'
set, whether along the 'rod' or across the observers, because entangled
observables vanish when the correlate does its causal work. They then try to
introduce probabilities in special relativity but find that the probability
that B identifies which was the recorded instant of A requires unmanageable
combinatorics of a far greater number of colors. Nevertheless, for A the three
colors were simultaneously the same.
Would the colors differ on the B's
set middle picture?
Observer A sees that the three dots of light
(each showing the middle and the two end points of the rod) of the sequence's
middle picture, timed t M A = ~0, display the same color:
red, red, and red. The immediately previous and ensuing pictures are also timed
t M A = ~0 but show green, green
and green; blue, blue, blue: always the same colors. Light signals did carry
the physical action which was furnished by their origination in an electronic
transition of those precise magnitudes. Observer B also sees that the three pictures show the same uncertain time t M B = ~0, but because figuring this situation inescapably
requires to figure that the parts of the three-dimensional cross-section L correspond to different instants of the time of
each observer, we must figure that the
colors in B's three pictures are green, red, and blue.
We? Yes indeed; Gedankenexperimenten say also something about the subject: the three
colors is what we should figure that
B observes. Wavelengths of the photons emitted at the rod's ends may have
shifted, or not; we must figure that
they did. We cannot dodge it. It is
condition of possibility for us to
make relativistic portrayals. Hales and Johnson cannot elude suppossing that
their station onlooker observes the simultaneous state of the passenger in the
train at once with his past at the front and and future at the rear of the
speedy train, so that they exclaim, "Clearly
the train does not exist 'all at one time'".
Is this a simultaneizing of past, present, and future perduring realities, or
either a Doppler effect in efficient causation-acknowledging, collapsed
fourth-dimension subuniverse?
5.10. Discussion of
Proof two (Gedankenexperiment). Condition of possibility for having relativistic
descriptions is that the later account becomes presented as the former. But let
us consider this conflation in some detail. Let me add the unsustainable
supposition that also M takes no more than a single instant (in this case
observers should be some 1035 times faster than light and it would
hugely diminish [2] dilations and
contractions, but the question still makes sense) and now ask what exists for A
and B at M. As at the instant of the meeting all three red lights of the moving
segment of A's travel path or 'rod' are simultaneous for A at his present instant t M A = t r A , what exists for him at M is the all-red segment which lies in A's
present. The green segment existed for A one instant before the meeting and is in his past while the blue
segment will exist one instant after the
meeting and is in his future. According to the presentist views the green and
blue rods do not exist for A at t M A = t r A since they belong to A's
past and future, respectively.
The fact that at M in B's present lies a
three-dimensional moving segment of A's travel path whose front end point,
middle point, and rear end point are green, red, and blue, respectively (B is
moving to the left in Fig. 5) means that in relativistic descriptions the
green–red–blue A's travel-path's segment, which is present for B, consists of
part of A's past travel-path's segment (the front end point with green light),
part of A's present travel-path's segment (the middle part of the rod, which is
also present and therefore exists for A at the instant of the meeting), and
part of A's future travel-path's segment (the rear end point with blue light).
As all parts of an spatially extended, three-dimensional referred-to
travel-path's segment exist simultaneously at the present instant of an observer, the
three-dimensional rod that exists for B at his present instant t M B is different from the three-dimensional rod of A existing at
his present instant t M A = t r A . (The interval or, in the last
scenario, event of the meeting M in Fig.
5 is the only common present event for both observers.) The same thing is not present for both observers.
The rod – small piece of A's path – referred to
by each observer is composed of a mixture of parts of the past, present, and
future rods of the other observer and in relativistic descriptions, to repeat
Hales' and Johnson's words, "every object has proper parts at different
times," "hence no object wholly exists at each moment of its existence".
Why does this occur?
Relativity is an interconversion procedure
aimed to ascertain what the perspectives can refer to; not what exists outside
of perspectiveness. This is why relativity cannot do justice to
non-perspectival absoluteness, except precisely in what such absoluteness
imposes without admitting mimesis or anamorphosis [3]: i.e., the cancellation of non-being and causal detemination of
every event as unmodifiably being earlier than some and later than some of the
other events.
Therefore, if any doubt subsisted, the
conclusion that in relativistic descriptions each of the observers A and B
measures a different
three-dimensional
rod is indeed inevitable and comes from the different simultaneizing with which
each perspective offer its object. Petkov says that the eventual performance of anything
resembling this specific experiment would allow A and B to arrive at the idea
of the rod's worldtube even if they never heard of Minkowski. He points out that
"the observers A and B might fairly judge
that the only way to explain their pictures is to assume that the rod they
measured exists equally (at once) at all instants of its history in time. Their
reason is that the experiment directly confirmed this conclusion: parts of the
rod's past, present, and future (which are also A's past, present, and future
since the rod is at rest in A's frame) exist simultaneously as B's
present rod. A's present rod also contains parts of B's past, present, and
future rod. This would not be possible if the rod did not exist equally in its
past, present, and future.[18] Therefore A and B might
conclude that their experiment has a profound physical meaning."
Indeed, things are so. It proves that
relativistic descriptions demand to consider that all physical objects are
extended in time, which means that in relativistic descriptions they are
uncollapsedly[19] four-dimensional.
One might note that this condition of
possibility differs from the need of considering realistic, not pointlike
observers, meeting, railways and flashes. The latter need imposes itself in
order to obtain a realistic physical scenario so as to ponder on in philosophy
of science, but definitely most practical applications of special relativity
will continue paying no attention to it, like in general relativity many
calculations directly apply the forces on the bodies' center. But the former
differs, as it is a condition of posibility, not a condition of accuracy: one
could not neglect such a condition of possibility because it is necessary in
order to define the considered scenario as relativistic.
It is not the first occasion in physics that a
defining condition, or directly a definition, is utilized to furnish a
hypothesis (the uncollapsed fourth dimension, in this case) which is necessary
to create the scenario where calculations may advance. Boltzmann, e.g., introduced molecular disorder as
the condition that molecules must satisfy in order to make feasible one of the
steps in his derivation of the collision rate among gas molecules; Planck
likewise defined natural radiation by means of a mathematical condition that
the field's Fourier components must satisfy in order to allow the derivation of
his theorem of H; Minkowski
four-dimensionality with uncollapsed fourth-dimension, likewise, works as a
condition allowing to build relativistic scenarios.
Validity of special relativity can be thus
considered a definition of the statement '"events occur in uncollapsed,
navigable dimensions". Or, to say the same more historicistically: in
order to refrain from introducing efficient causation in describing
transformative sequences (i.e., for
special relativity to remain kinematic and not dynamic), time is to be
presented as a navigable dimension.
A and B might further believe they can claim
that a single experiment, which allowed a single interpretation, proved the
uncollapsed four-dimensionality of the subuniverse, entailing that things
indeed are as PPPPPP's needs. Yet not everything seems entirely plain.
Erstwhile this further belief might have been contested from the very PPPPPP's
side: a philosopher of science rigorously adhering to subjectivisms or
phenomenisms would have immediately disagreed. He would have pointed out that
the claim is based on an implicit ontological assumption – that the existence
of the physical objects is absolute, i.e. observer
or frame-independent inasmuch as resulting from transformations enacted by
frame-invariant efficient causation. Nowadays, as the reality of the latter is
now recognized (§ 1.5) from the empirically ascertained need of sequential
interactivity – wherein the mind-originated probings enact absolute motion – to
acquire befitting knowledge of extramental occurrences, denying the absolute
existence of products of such absolute causation is no longer tenable. Since
this claim is deduced from experiments no other ontological assumptions seem to
be needed.[20][46]Still an inauspicious ambiguity, if in the loom,
may however cast its dimness on the further belief, as the speed that any
observed clock appears to run depends on whether it is traveling away from or
toward the observer. Why? Even before performing the conscientious Doppler
analysis of the experiment's signals commented in what follows, a philosopher
of science will pinpoint two putative interpretations:
(i) if extramental existence is absolute, the
simultaneous existence of parts of A's past, present, and future rod as B's
present rod (and vice
versa) does
lead to the conclusion that either the light signals' redshifting and
blueshifting accounts for the result or the rod must exist equally at all
instants of its history;
(ii) if existence is relative (observer- or
frame-dependent), each observer will claim that it is only his
three-dimensional referred-to rod that exists – an option to be discarded on
the reasons indicated in §§ 1.5 and 2.4, as well as the just mentioned fact
that relativity is a tool to interconvert perspectives, lacking means to probe
what exists outside of perspectiveness.
At the articulation in which Kant, after his transcendental
deduction of the categories, refrained from affirming that he was portraying
the 'noumenon', A and B are convinced that it is only the experiment that
decides whether the subuniverse is three- or four-dimensional. Of course,
facing the effective results of the experiment, they agree that, formally,
'existence' in special relativity can be regarded as relativized (namely,
posited as relative to some reference frame, coordinate system or observer, and
so made relativistically meaningful) by the simple recourse of referring
relativistic descriptions to denotata. But can their further belief agree to
viewing 'to be' as 'to be denoted'? A and B realize that such an assumption
preserves the three-dimensionality of the special relativity's description of
the subuniverse, but it is an alternative option to the conclusion of a
four-dimensional subuniverse only in the case of the reciprocal length
contraction and time dilation which are based on relativity of simultaneity.
That is why A and B, like Petkov and us now, concentrate their attention on the
twin paradox. Petkov [1, p. 17] explains:"As it is an absolute, not a
reciprocal effect, no relativity of simultaneity is involved in its explanation
and therefore the relativization of existence should not be an alternative
explanation. … the derivation and the explanation of the twin 'paradox' (Fig.
6) are based on the triangle inequality in the pseudo-Euclidean geometry of
spacetime which presupposes the existence of
the twins's world-lines (in order to be able to talk about a triangle in spacetime)."
5.11. Proof three:
the twin paradox. Careful ascertaining of how long it takes light to travel in-between
explains the supposed paradox, its directional constraint, and even alterations
in the signals' power to cause effects (redshifting) as they approach
lightcones [[47]].
Petkov observes that the relativistic explanation of the twin paradox is in the
framework of the four-dimensionalist view, and summarizes a long literature by
pointing out that "the length of twin B's worldline between the event of
the departure D and the event of the meeting M is shorter than the length of
twin A's worldline between the same events (in Fig. 6 twin B's worldline is
longer but this is caused by the representation of a pseudo-Euclidean relation
on the Euclidean surface of the page). This means that B measures less time
between D and M than his brother."
Figure 6, from [1], p. 17.
Twins A and B are represented by their worldlines. At the event of departure D twin
B starts a journey at a speed that is close to the speed of light. At event T
he turns back and meets his brother at event M. As it now is fairly divulged [[48],
[49],
[50],
[51]],
with careful use of the time it takes light to travel between the two the
pseudo-paradox gets elucidated.
In view of that, Petkov says, "the only way
for the twins to explain the five-year difference of their clocks' readings at
M is to assume that twin B's time has slown down. But this is precisely the
problem for the three-dimensionalists – the rate of the proper time does not
change according to special
relativity (proper time is an invariant) which means that when A and B meet at
M their clocks should show the same time."
Yet special relativity is valid only in a four-dimensional subuniverse
represented by Minkowski spacetime and meticulous relativistic descriptions
[47, 48, 49, 50, 51] clearly demonstrate why twins differ.
5.12. Proof three:
discussing the twin 'paradox'. In contrast, the sheerly three-dimensional view of
relativized existence by its need of untenably resorting to acceleration
contradicts the now plain experiments that confirm the twin paradox. (Petkov develops the point in [35, Chap.
5].) But the acceleration to which B is subjected has been ruled out as cause [[52],
[53],
[54],
[55],
[56]].
Hence the three-dimensionalist view resorting to acceleration cannot explain
why twin B is younger which means that this view cannot as well explain the
twin 'paradox'[21].
While no scientific tool is non-theoretical, in
the current scientific context that concurrently finds the transframing of
efficient causation and causal initiatives as requisite for epistemological
accuracy, the interpretation of the experiments which confirm this theoretical
result has a
say regarding the
aptitude of the relativity's conditions of possibility to also detect the dimensionality of the subuniverse. We only know that this procedure for
interconverting the perspectives of localized observers, namely relativity,
must inescapably assert that we live in a four-dimensional block universe in
which the whole histories of all objects are realized in their worldtubes.
Even when quantum theorists such as Myrvold seek a "collapse theory that
is genuinely, metaphysically compatible with special relativity" [[57]]
understand it "in the sense of depicting the world as ‘unfolding within a
four-dimensional Minkowski space-time’, to use Albert’s [[58]:
Myrvold's note] picturesque phrase." Special relativity depends on a
condition of possibility that a priori decides
the issue of the dimensionality of its
descriptions of the subuniverse at the macroscopic level. Could this
situation be used to learn anything about any other reality besides the
relativistic calculations themselves?
6 Different
Descriptions Versus Different Ontologies
Harrington recently [[59]]
wrote: "Gödel argued that absence of global time in relativistic
space-time is sufficient to disprove the existence of time itself. Gödel thus
became the first, as far as I am aware, but not the last thinker to claim that
relativity theory solves all philosophical problems about time by dissolving
them." Without going so much far, the depicted situation may indeed help
to rule out three-dimensionality. As Petkov says, not only would the kinematic
relativistic effects be impossible if the subuniverse were three-dimensional,
but the experimental evidence which confirms them would not be possible either.
This seems serious. Without relativity of simultaneity there could not be
equivalence of mass and energy, thus there would be no limit under which their
conservation has a break, thus action quanta could not set correlated limits
for their determination, thus there would be no virtual particles, thus no
physical forces, thus no particles could be held together, chemistry would not
exist, without chemistry there would be no biology, and without biology there
would be no way for action-initiating minds to interactively attain
intellectual development [10] – so without relativity of simultaneity any
present reader should be able to verify that he or she is an angel with infuse
knowledge.
One should consequently conclude that any effort
and money spent in one's education was a miserable failure (authors might also
use the Acknowledgements section to
deprecate their teachers) or recognize that deeming actuality sheerly
three-dimensional challenges genetic epistemology, defying our shared
developmental experience. Nevertheless, were relativistic calculations
performed on three-dimensional assumptions, "any experiments designed to
test the three relativistic effects we discussed – relativity of simultaneity,
length contraction, and the twin [pseudo‑]paradox – would detect absolute
simultaneity, no length contraction, and no time difference in the twins'
clocks' readings", so that the present cannot be of null time-like
thickness or interval-like infinitesimal. One thus may find oneself legitimated
for rejecting the three-dimensional ontology; yet, not because relativity alone
says it, or because the three-dimensional ontology differs from the ontological
assumptions which are to be posed in order to make relativity operational; but,
rather, because relativity can be integrated with other contemporary insights
from diverse fields, some of which such as neurobiology, genetic epistemology,
and history of ideas I commented above. In such a company, relativistic
calculations work fine for interconverting perspectives. Can we go beyond it?
Petkov explores if it is true "that relativistic mechanics does not carry
a particular ontological interpretation upon its sleeve", as Balashow says
[[60]],
finding that relativity can operate on a sine
qua non condition which does contain just one ontology – the uncollapsed
four-dimensional ontology – which is deducible from those effects. Kant rather
warns us that conditions of possibility do not yield any accurate knowledge
whatsoever about what stays beyond their molding aptitude. Could we ascertain,
upon any insight coming from this situation, if the macroworld's fourth
dimension stands uncollapsed or, instead, time dimension collapsed in magnitude
so as to match the efficient causation features?
My current answer is negative and negatively
grounded. I do not see how to jump, from the legitimate use of an uncollapsed
fourth dimension in relativistic calculations aimed to interconvert
perspectives, to agreeing or disagreeing with the coherent articulation of
seemingly well-validated knowledges from other academic fields providing
support to the view that nature is an efficiently transforming reality, in
which transformations flow with a pace set by causation's features and changes
are irrevocable, things existing only a timelike instant each time, so that, e.g., the present now is the same that
any one of Precambrian times transformed. A nature, in sum, in which the rate
of time flow or transformations' 'pace' should be ascribed to causation's inner
features that are, themselves, tantamount to spreading action on a fourth
dimension whose span collapsed into a present-now's timelike
"thickness" which precisely allows causation to enact change.
Conclusions
Because what Minkowski came across is a Kantian
condition of possibility for relativity, time in relativity is frame-dependent,
in its descriptions future is determinate, and relativity harbors no alternative
to the block universe view. It implies that special relativity is valid only in a four-dimensional world represented
by Minkowski spacetime. Yet no grounds are in view to assume that special relativity alone be able to provide a definite proof of the block universe view, save
that one has previously refused to recognize reality to efficient causation,
both to nomical ("nature's") causation and personal
("conation" or "will") causation, as well as to any
residual, time-like thickness of reality that could match the action
requirements of such efficient causation enabling it to set real transformative
courses. This Platonist view is found associated with an anthropology serving
certain interests (presenting people as robots) which, by their being ideological
[[61]],
fall outside of the scope of the present article.
Acknowledgements
The author got indebted to Lee Seldon for a clever
formulation used in § 5.8 (italics); she is also grateful for a special waiving
of her other responsibilities in the Neurobiology Research Center granted from
the 1st to the 25th of July, 29th and 30th
of August 2005 in order to work on the present essay. Vesselin Petkov started
it by friendly sharing his paper in June with the words, "I hope you will
address the arguments there"; author is very grateful for the ocassion
and, even differing about relativity's aptitudes as ontological tool, much
wishes to have met his expectatives.
Appendix
Excerpta (taken with
permission) from [3] § 1.3.24, pp. 388-392, "Intertwining agencies":
"Willful remembering, moving limbs, or
imagining a red tree are semovient acts of esemplastic attention. Is it possible to allow subjective
terms into supraquantum physics,
permitting it to make predictions about subjectivity? In these
circumstances, the event of experience that terminates every chain of physical
measurement cannot be artificially sundered from the plurality of other contents in the same experiencing mind. Which include,
besides the measurement done in each case, also the findings of her own
semovient action of attentional reclustering resisting itself (= cogito);
finitude; circumstances; and availabilities. The latter may certainly include
scientific notices, of the style of the ones in the preceding pages….
Therefore, the experiencing that terminates every chain of physical
measurement cannot doubt that, within the specified stipulations of its
object-system's macroscopic depiction of extramentalities and constitution
of intramentalities, the notices she grasps about the extramental subuniverse
—including foreign subjective terms— do resolve true facticities. By way of illustration:
·
that in every
voluntary action, the incumbent finite psycheé experiences
her own causative agency in the knitting of some extramental facts under her genuine control;
·
that the
causal-linked relevancies eventuate and transfigurate apart from their
empirical reflections (in whatever number of minds [that might] observ[e] them), and so they constitute a subset of real events under 'physical laws', mutually imposing regularities on empirical
findings, in an impositional way analogous to each finite experiencing's own causative agency;
·
that microphysics
holds reality beyond the [molar] graininess of the fictions
useful to represent it;
·
that the causal
series, begun by other parcels of experiencing finitude, ensue upon their
anomic starting, which is extramental with respect to the aforesaid, observing
finite psychism;
·
that past and
future states not exist and are only anisotropically referenceable; and
·
that the physical
reality comes into being just one instantaneous present situation at a time.
…
[§§] Extramentalities
not originate in any 'prejudice of the (external) world': All this furnishes a pre-ordered
body of gradients and resistances, that the intramental action needs to operate and, on its different
frustrations, learn adequately about the extramentality in the self-agential
terms of what semoviences can do with their experiential encounters. "As the light dove that, in lively fly, feels the resistance of the
air and might
imagine that its flight would be still easier in empty space."[22] This 'syntax', of this
structural operation with mental contents, may be conceived as the building up
of a further inner metrics, one added to the physical metrics whereby bruta animalia operantur ex passione, the
added metrics being developmentally
acquired by the mental spaces. I. e.: that of the logic-mathematical
operations, those feasible and those resilient to conserve the element of
interest; or, the operation reversibly positioning an object —say, an object
referring to somebody— in a web of status or of kinfolk intimacy — say, as
being such and such next-of-kin in some 'lineage': e. g., the nephew of an uncle and viceversa; a web of rules very
variable amongst the cultures, for certain. This acquired metrics is not the dimensions: physically, mental
spaces in no respect are Hilbert-like, that is to say moulded by a 'coordinate system' of all the object-defining
features of the mental contents, but
only by the structureless ones. These set constitutive
geodesics; the acquired metrics just chisels operations, in a self-referred system
of constrainments enacted to attain some operatory result ([2] p. 461). Amidst
this acquired metrics, also
sensoperceptual gradients for object positioning eventuate.
The intramental action encounters all those gradients as a finely
itemized, but systematic datum. And must account with them and with the
discoverable body of those intrinsic stipulations, feasibilities, resiliences
and resistances (whose detail and boundary or initial conditions are not to be
analized now). Their picture is so consistent
with the finite psycheé's observations and experiments; and these, in
their cruciality, validate that finely detailed picture.
Whence its description of nature is hylozoistic,
since such body of stipulations includes the finding of foreign sources of actions absolutely starting new causal series upon
experienced determinations. And freedom, as causation, cannot be
predicatively shammed.
In its contents, detected in the
biospheric evolution, this hylozoistic spotting of the causal series
determined at a selected subset of
simultaneous historic states —a discretionary selection which lacks the
integrality that would made it equivalent to Newtonian instantaneous causality,
and evinces the subjective apprehension imperative in the physical fact of
selecting a subset of antecedents for the own time-transformation— is the
physics counterpart of the philosophical
detection which our tradition technically labels as 'recognizing
the alien cogito'. Both detections (or recognitions) make contemporary
definitions of hylozoism.
On such recognition of other experiencing sources of real actions, any
difference vanishes between the finite experiencer's knowledge descriptive of this physical
universe being
(I) that of a screenplay 'movie', not
wholly unlike a dream, intramentally projected (even, as a pattern of 'meanings' —assumed inherent or extraintentional— of a nature
reduced to language for a discursive cerebral homunculus, bare of
non-simulational insight even of its own intonations and causation, to analyze;
screens are instruments to predicationally tailor a posited reality whose
unique change is alteration and where waitings are sheer hermeneusis);
(II) and being that of true extramentalities. This allows subjective terms into supraquantum physics, permitting it
to make predictions about the subjectivity of finite psychisms.
The difference so vanishes, because upon
simultaneous duration such description does drag, across sentience and
unmindfulness, the reality previously recognized to that absolute origin of new
causal series aweigh as well of compulsion as of randomness.
So, any such 'intramental movie' with all
the sensory input and 'interactive' feedbacks (be it delivered by Cartesius' malign
genius, by Leibniz' divine (Pseudo-)Creator making the observer's and the observed's waveforms to collapse in line
with the Vedantist function of a Universal Mind, or by a computer along wires
plugged into the observer's substrate tissue) ought to be detailed enough
as for every event to be local, and ought
to be ticked in an operative time so as to really produce, from the lilliputian proportions of microphysics on, such
outset of really new causal series. And so undergo
causal transformation (= mutual deposition of the set of physical actions)
with one same physical pace under due relativistic transforms, and including,
in its interactivity, the intrinsic direction for its integration ('causal arrow').
If a cinematographic or videogame fictioneering, its totalness or
literary sufficiency is thus anything
but enough. It must also be one, which responds with well-nigh-infinitesimal
graininess of productive detail. So much detailed, that its contents do
reciprocally chain causally. With the same univocal, productive and efficient
causation which the experiencing experiences in operating with its objects or
mental contents. A causation operated through said waitings that the released
pendules and all other accelerations do comply with; around the impotency to
activate neighbours' limbs and intentions; over all feasibilities,
resiliences and disabilities for accomplishing movements with the available
body and its accouterments, and their respective delays. All these are 'resistances', not posited by the own agency, whereto nonetheless
one's feeling-driven behaviour must adjust itself to
causally achieve operations onto its objects. In such a wise, that foreign
freedoms and possible intentions enter all dynamic planning and handling to
exercise one's causation, being intentioned jointly with the own
feasible movements and delays of one's body and
accouterments. Thus, this sort of imprisoning screenplay 'supernaturally projected into our soul' can no
longer pass off the elapsing and the present as artifacts of subjective
perspective. It ought then to include real novations: namely, other experiencing sources of real
novative actions, finite inceptors.
This requisite graining fractures the 'gnoseocapsule'. Turning one's attention inward and minding about what is going on
in one's own mens
is unstable, and gets ahold of
time-arrowed extramentalities. Experience is found to occur at a plurality of extramental dates and
sites.
So the empsyched reality
self-adaptively knows of itself truthfully, if scantily, by evolutionarily
seeping into object systems some true notices of its events and constitution
and even imposing inflections on its available preferences. Truly causating
both fictitious and roughly-adequate causal accounts, and actions in
extramentality feed-backing on such notices. Psychaí have
knowledge necessarily through sensible perception. They know immediately parts
of the reality, without any mediating representation whatsoever; and those
parts are installed and interact with the remaining alterities of nature
through a unique, shared causality.
Extramentalities do not originate in any 'prejudice of the (external) world', as
Merleau-Ponty academically charged (but mass-culture turns unacademically
repetitious), wishing to dismiss the
eclosional finitude of animal psychisms by way of what today should be
called 'to present every life as a role, played in a
full-brain videogame by some transcendental commiscuum'. And, against what Kant charged
in KrV B 303, ontology, feasible upon the cogito of the own
circumstanced finitude, also becomes possible of its embedding extramentality.
Freedom cannot be shammed. Thus, the stipulations of these object
systems to assemble fictions representative of extramental happenings (i. e.,
the fictions' blunt resolution, or incompleteness down even to
emblematicity, as that of mere tokens; and absence of causal efficacy in the
represented line of processes) cannot be forced into criterion of reality. On this basis, or by that principle, finite
semovient observers are enabled to adequately
infer the ontic occurrence of extramental events, from their experiences of
those events."
