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If the idea of Eternalism as expressed by those like J.M.E. McTaggart and Sean Carroll is true (as much of physics seems to suggest), the idea of the present moment being more real than the past or future is just a biological illusion. If that's the case, then what does it mean for our consciousness to in some sense exist eternally at every moment in our lives? I have to imagine that we're continuously retreading the same path through space-time that is producing the same experience over and over, only experiencing it linearly one moment at a time because of the limitations of our perception. I see this as different from Nietzsche's idea of Eternal Recurrence; we aren't appearing in different incarnations that have identical experiences over infinite time but continually reliving the exact same experience.

Good explanation of Eternalism and Presentism here.

Edit (11/16/21): I actually posed this question to Sean Carroll last year on his monthly AMA and his answer was of course that we don't know what the implications of eternalism are for consciousness, but it has something to do with the nature of the arrow of time and the second law of thermodynamics. The link should automatically go to the correct timestamp, but if not it's 1:43:01. What he said doesn't vindicate my point but it's definitely interesting input into the discussion.

Trevor Villwock
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  • There's two different flavors of eternalism, one accepts [McTaggart's B-theory of time](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/time/#McTArg) in which there isn't any notion of a "present moment" moving along the timeline, another is the [moving spotlight model](http://web.mit.edu/bskow/www/research/timeinrelativity.pdf) where there is. I'd say most eternalists would go for the former idea, in which there's no sense of even a subjective spotlight of consciousness that moves along your worldline, so it wouldn't make sense to ask if it "resets" when it reaches the end. – Hypnosifl Jun 27 '20 at 17:24
  • If eternalism is true the idea of "treading" or "looping" does not make sense, it unwittingly reintroduces some external "time". It would mean that the only real things are causal relations and "consciousness" arranges them into a sequence. It does not happen "repeatedly", it does not "happen" at all, it just is, eternally so. – Conifold Jun 28 '20 at 00:20
  • @Conifold - There are some eternalists who believe in an objective moving present, see my link on the moving spotlight model--the defining feature of eternalism is that past, present, and future have the same ontological status, which is compatible with such a spotlight. Historically one can find examples of thinkers advocating an eternalist picture before McTaggart but with a moving spotlight, like the [Vaibhasika school of Buddhism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarvastivada#Vaibhāṣika), or [Charles Hinton's "What Is the Fourth Dimension?"](https://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/chh/h1.html). – Hypnosifl Jun 28 '20 at 15:35
  • @Hypnosifl those are great resources, thanks – Trevor Villwock Jun 28 '20 at 23:20
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    why do you see eternalism as needing a loop of some kind? – Ewan Nov 14 '21 at 15:00
  • @TrevorVillwock The only way I can make sense of Carroll's answer is through his phrasing "consciousness experiences a flow of time". There is no flow or "becoming" outside consciousness, and thus entropy does not "become higher" outside minds. Consciousnesses create a flow of time and thus the second law. I have tried to ask about that here before https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/85885/is-this-how-the-static-block-universe-arrow-of-time-and-conscious-experience-h but received mostly negative replies. Hypnosifl's link doesn't incorporate general relativity fully it seems – J Kusin Nov 16 '21 at 19:36
  • It seems to me that eternalism, which has all events as equally real, would therefore have all events of the form, "X is conscious of Y," as equally real, so it would yield a situation where we were all conscious of things "in one eternal now." Which situation, not holding for us, therefore is counterevidence to the eternalist thesis. – Kristian Berry Nov 16 '21 at 20:17
  • @KristianBerry "Which situation, not holding for us" What isn't holding for us? – J Kusin Nov 16 '21 at 21:07
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    What I mean is that we don't perceive everything as "one eternal now," so that means the events of us being conscious aren't happening all at once, so there is at least one such set of events that exists contra eternalism. (Hence the quip, "Time is an illusion," which depends on a metaphorical or false definition of "illusion.") – Kristian Berry Nov 16 '21 at 21:21
  • @KristianBerry Our experiences are compatible with eternalism/block time. We are never aware of the entire spacetime block, nor does eternalism say we should be. All observer-moments are at different *spaces* and at different *times*. Consciousness is local, it is never aware of the whole spacetime, and eternalists do not posit we should be. – J Kusin Nov 17 '21 at 17:02
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    It's not about being aware of the *whole* spacetime block, but the whole of our *subsection* of that block. What does, "All times are equally real," mean for us if not, "All events are equally real," and yet if all events are equally real but are not unified in an eternal now, what is the point of eternalism? Doesn't it become an empty proposition, then? – Kristian Berry Nov 17 '21 at 18:19
  • @KristianBerry All events are equally real gets rid of the "moving now"/spotlight/evolving present, which conflict with general relativity. Since GR has no privileged events this is a big plus for eternalism. All events being equally real is unique to eternalism. Anything else must have an evolving present. And you could say all events are united by the structure of spacetime, but no event is privileged. All observers are only aware of their tiny subsections, which works in both eternalism or presentism. But the task of explaining the flow of time is probably harder for eternalists, a tradeoff – J Kusin Nov 17 '21 at 18:40
  • @Ewan in the end it's based on intuition of course, but it has to do with the "you" of 5 minutes ago and the "you" of 5 minutes from now being equally real. If the person at those points is experiencing consciousness eternally regardless of wherever the "present" seems to be subjectively at any time, it seems that the sequence should exist eternally. I realize that might sound like a contradiction of the definition of "Eternalism", but I believe consciousness needs to be considered separately from other things because it is uniquely tied to the present moment. – Trevor Villwock Nov 18 '21 at 00:44
  • Cool to see this post getting more replies 16 months later! – Trevor Villwock Nov 18 '21 at 00:47
  • @Conifold had to take a long time to think about your answer lol. In retrospect "repeatedly" and "looping" probably aren't the right words, because they imply multiple iterations of the same timeline and a connection between the beginning and the end that doesn't exist, respectively. I think a new term needs to be coined for what I'm talking about. How can you say that nothing "happens" at all though? That statement makes sense in the context of Eternalism, but how do you explain the way we experience consciousness in a series of present moments? Would you say consciousness itself an illusion? – Trevor Villwock Nov 18 '21 at 16:45
  • are you thinking that each instance of time has its own time dimension? each frame of the film is its own ground hog day? I don't think this is implied by eternalism. Each instant of time is a frozen snapshot where nothing happens – Ewan Nov 18 '21 at 17:01
  • @Ewan what do you mean by "its own time dimension?" I think a lot rests here on the terminology and what we mean by a word like "happens." I get that eternalism in general stipulates that nothing ever "happens" because there's no privileged present moment, but we still have to reconcile that with the fact that subjectively each present moment contains the "happening" of consciousness. You could say that consciousness "happening" is an illusion somehow, but since consciousness is the only thing we can really be sure of it seems like that would be hard to prove. – Trevor Villwock Nov 18 '21 at 18:45
  • I wouldn't say that each frame is its own groundhog day, since it only "repeats" subjectively as a part of the sequence. You could think of one's life experience as some kind of groundhog day, but as I said in my response to @Conifold I think calling it a "loop" or something that "repeats" is actually misleading even if my basic theory is that's essentially what's happening subjectively. Maybe a better way to think about it is that your life is simply "always being experienced" or something like that. – Trevor Villwock Nov 18 '21 at 18:58
  • @TrevorVillwock I think I understand your clarifications. Our brain [most static eternalists claim] is a state of matter that includes all our memories and latest sense perceptions. Each different state, e.g. t=-1s, t=now, t=+1s, gives rise to different conscious experiences, again which are states of matter. These states always exist, yet we seem to move through them, and we are not "stuck" in them: we die, we learn, our memories grow. We simply don't know how something can think it is flowing through time when its substrate (4D spacetime) is static. – J Kusin Nov 18 '21 at 21:11
  • @TrevorVillwock But we also don't know how any other conscious awareness, colors, toothaches, smells, emerge from matter. Consciousness is sometimes called the greatest conundrum there is, so eternalists feel okay with lumping in one more thing to it (flowing through time). – J Kusin Nov 18 '21 at 21:12

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I think you are misunderstanding Eternalism, which to my eyes is essentially just another way of thinking about a deterministic universe.

If the universe is deterministic, there is nothing special about the present. The present is simply the state of the universe at time t and no more or less real than the state at time t+1 or t-1

No reincarnation or repetition is implied. Its just like having a film reel, each frame is as real as any other when its not in a projector. But the film still has a beginning and an end and you only watch it once.

Ewan
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  • If Eternalism is true, couldn't you say that you never "watch" the film at all? To me it seems the projector would represent the "specious present" that McTaggart claims doesn't exist. – Trevor Villwock Nov 18 '21 at 00:53
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Our phenomenological evidence suggests that all qualia happen in what we experience as the present moment. Thus, if there is no uniquely determined present moment (or short duration/interval) as eternalism holds then we need some sort of account for the phenomenology.

Your suggestion that each subjective moment/duration exists externally in itself as an endlessly looping consciousness of that moment/duration suggests that any solution for the eternalist would need to respect a law of symmetry. What I mean is that if the eternalist wants to reject the notion that there is any distinguished present then any account they give of phenomenal consciousness must be symmetric across all moments in time. As Hypnosifl mention above there are versions of the block universe view which posit a moving spotlight of the phenomenal present, but this involves the notion of a distinguished present where consciousness arises. It isn't clear to me that such a view is a form of eternalism at all since the moving present is non-eternal. If the eternalist wishes to reject the distinguished present this leaves several options.

1. Momentary consciousness - This is your suggestion. Each moment of subjective awareness for each being occupied eternality by a phenomenal perciever that exists only for a single subjective moment (which may be longer than an instant on the B-series, but still fairly short). If true this would have implications for our understanding of personal identity over time. For example, I would have less reason to fear being tortured tomorrow since it would be a different phenomenal subject who will experience the pain.

2. Endless copies of consciousness - Another symmetric solution is to say that there is a phenomenal subject who moves forward through the moments, but as each moment in the past if vacated by phenomenal subject 1 it is occupied by phenomenal subject 2. Like an endless series of train cars. This is symetric, but re-introduces a notion of flow of time that might be unnacceptable to the eternalist. After all, the flow of phenomenal subjects between moments in time cannot be happening in physical time. It must be occurring in a second time-like stream which would not supervene on the physical universe. In this picture I would have reason to fear being tortured tomorrow because the same phenomenal consciousness I am currently will experience the torture tomorrow. However, there are other ways in which this picture gives us different reasons. For example, if I take a risk that could result in causing myself to suffer for a brief period of time, I am not only risking my own brief suffering, but I'm risking causing that suffering to an infinite sequence of subjects. On the other hand every time I experience pleasure I'm bringing pleasure to an infinite sequence of subjects. At the very least we can say that this picture would be radically revisionary of how we currently think about the phenomenal subject.

3. Zombie world - I think whether they admit it or not, most actual B-theorists are committed to something like what David Chalmer's describes as a world filled with philosophical zombies. That is a world with beings who have identical physiologies down to the neuronal firings, but who lack phenomenal consciousness.

None of these options seem very attractive and I take this as a serious objection against eternalism.

I also wanted to note, that it doesn't help eternalism to say that the perception of tensed time is explained by human psychology. Since if psychology supervenes on the physical (which most eternalists would affirm) then any psychological mechanism would also exist eternally and therefore in principle could not explain the phenomena of a changing present.

I would really like to find somewhere in the philosophy of time literature where these issues are addressed directly. It's possible that it's out there somewhere but I haven't found it. For the most part, as far as I have seen in the debates on time in the analytic world, B-theorists (eternalists) consistently ignore, dodge, or misrepresent the philosophical issues raised by the connection between the present moment and phenomenal consciousness (if I'm wrong about this, and I hope I am, please point me to somewhere in the literature where this is dealt with).

Avi C
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There is no stasis (not even the idea of stasis) without movement, and vice versa. A circulating moving spotlight of a fixed context is thus one at least coherent depiction of an eternalistic universe. What else would categorize such a universe, as gleamed by Hinton, Mach, Planck, Einstein and William James, and succinctly codified by Lawrence LeShan, can be found in a very brief essay I recently published with the Journal of Conscious Evolution

https://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/cejournal/vol17/iss1/1/

Nietzsche's compelling, robust championing of circular eternalism (minus his aborted attempt to appeal to the wrong physics--having died 5 years before Einstein's Relativity, and unaware of Hinton's Fourth Dimensional musings)--is elaborated in my book, The Illusion of Will, Self, and Time (SUNY Press).

Jonathan Bricklin
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I cannot understand why you would say that the idea of the present being more real than the past or the future is a biological illusion, unless you are using the word real in a very specific sense.

The present at any point in space has a special importance because it is the location at which events occur. You can, for example, take a photograph of the present- you cannot take a photograph of tomorrow or yesterday. Therefore in at least one concrete respect the present is more real than the past or the future.

If you accept that the interaction between a camera and its environment that causes a photograph is one that takes place in the present- or at least over a succession of presents amounting to the camera's exposure time- then why would you not suppose that your conscience operates in a similar way?

Marco Ocram
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