matnay: I agree, except for the VHS part, which some other part of your brain edited in without permission. As you can see, I'm watching. But I don't see how the illusion of continuity can be maintained in our view.
I believe that continuity is not the illusion. Continuity exists, but without the movement, or time, that perception interprets as reality and which is necessary to maintain the illusion of reality. Through your life, your brain is actually not a single moving entity through time, but is a collection of still brain states each existing in it's own still universe. These universes are still connected and related to eachother though, just as a point on a given line is connected to the previous and the next point on the line. The line exists as a single whole object, while at the same time, it exists as a infinite series of points. It is not necessary to put your finger on one end of the line and trace it along to the other, although this is how our 'brains' come to interpret reality(time). Movement is just an abstraction of a still universe. I prefer to think of my brain as being a sort of 'hyper' object. Just as a line can be seen as one single object rather than a series of points, I see my brain as a single 4-D hyper object.
I'm not sure about the detail, but I think in principle, I agree with matnay. I definately think the brain is part of a 4-D hyper object.
I was thinking this: Primarily, continuity is enabled by physical/chemical reactions --processes that are simply immanent to the Universe. It is about particles, atoms, molecules doing their thing -- and at some point, *we see* this as people walking, birds flying, clocks ticking -- movement. (In order for a bird to fly, certain chemical reactions have to take place to ensure movement of wings and all that miraculously wonderful stuff ...) I'm not sure though -- you said that the Universe was still. If chemical reactions do happen -- does this oppose the idea of a still Universe?
Not at all. When you drive down a road, it appears that the road is moving- your view is constantly changing. We know that the road is not really moving though. This is also how we perceive the universe. We don't see the "road" of the universe as one huge still object, but rather we see it as a constantly changing thing(through time)- bits at a time, rather than all at once. Movement is the false reality that we experience a slice of the universe with. Imagine your entire body, from birth to death, as one timeless/still object composed of every chemical reaction of your body's lifetime. So what does a 4-dimensional object look like? Like nothing you could imagine.
points have no extent, so not even an infinity of them can connect two points. Maybe there is an extra continuous dimension, to link the points like a string? Or would this contradict the whole idea?
Which very nicely reminds me of something else: animal and plant species are scientific *abstractions*. What we call a "species" is an abstraction, a freeze-frame in the process of evolution. What we today know as a "lark", was several million years back a kind of a flying reptile. That flying reptile didn't just stop to exist, and suddenly, from a reptile egg, over night, a lark hatched out. It was a long long process of minuscule changes. Humans can't help but to define the terms of their conceptualization in the realm of their time-limited existence. Species were defined the way humans see them. And this means that we* took what is a very very short (for this is all humans could do, at first) part of that process, and called it a species. Spidergoat once said: Differentiation is an illusion; for something to exist as separate, it is only necessary to name it. Yada Yada, I think the above also sheds some light on the problem with the dot and the line. *How funny: We say that "we" first came from Africa, "we" used to live in a hunter-gatherer style ... continuity of identity a la carte.
Time In A Bottle Words and Music by Jim Croce Copyright © 1975 Jim Croce, Atlantic Records. If I could save time in a bottle The first thing that I'd like to do Is to save every day Till Eternity passes away Just to spend them with you If I could make days last forever If words could make wishes come true I'd save every day like a treasure and then, Again, I would spend them with you But there never seems to be enough time To do the things you want to do Once you find them I've looked around enough to know That you're the one I want to go Through time with If I had a box just for wishes And dreams that had never come true The box would be empty Except for the memory Of how they were answered by you But there never seems to be enough time To do the things you want to do Once you find them I've looked around enough to know That you're the one I want to go Through time with
