From Logic to the existence of the past, Part 3 - Internal contradiction

So we've been through the argument attempting to show that the past exists because of logic and my initial objections to it.

But we can do even better than that and show the actual incompatibility of the definition of the truth-makers used in that argument with the very assumption that the past exists.

First, let's refresh the premise stating the truth-makers' definition: it's how reality is that makes the statements about it true.

So a statement is true only by the virtue of us being able to point at things in reality that this statement describes (even if the 'pointing' is possible only in principle; after all, we can't visit the past in practice). 

Additionally, for the sake of the initial argument I will assume that statements in the past tense have truth values (true or false) and that we can intuitively assign them as we normally do.

My goal is to give examples of statements that we'd otherwise evaluate as true that will break the aforementioned definition of the truth-makers and to eventually exhaust all of the venues of its defense.

Those venues exist because the details of the ontology of time in the initial argument were not specific enough, which opens a number of possibilities. So before we can discuss the self-contradiction, we need to first consider the...
 

Types of past-existence

If the past exists, it's only natural to ask: in what way? This could be examined from various angles, but the most important element of the ontology for my argument will be that of the conscious experience. We can generalize this into two basic Spotlight theories:

• The first we shall call One Spotlight Theory: while the past still exists, only one, present moment can be experienced.
  
  To be clear, the "spotlight" is agnostic on how consciousness is 'provided'; it's just an analogy and a label for the moments in the timeline that are or could be experienced by someone residing there. Under OST the present moment is privileged as the only one possible to be perceived, hence the rest must be diminished in that sense, devoid of conscious experience.
   
• The second type we shall call Many Spotlights Theory, where all moments in the timeline are equivalent and are spotlights - they all exist and are being experienced by their respective residents.
  
  We could of course imagine other sub-types of MST, with an arbitrary number of spotlights, scattered in some pattern or randomly across the timeline, but such arbitrary types seem much less plausible. And since that doesn't really influence my argument, I won't mention them further.
   

Comparing the truth-makers' definition to the types of past-existence

So let's consider our truth-maker definition ("it's how reality is that makes the statements about it true") in the context of One Spotlight Theory ("only the present moment is perceived") and the statements that we could utter and assign truth values to.

Statement A seems to work with the OST, because given our assumptions, that event still exists and in principle we could point to it within the space-time continuum. But we can modify it as follows:

Statement B clearly no longer works. That's because even though the state of the world at that date still exists (including people's bodies), under One Spotlight Theory only the present moment can be experienced. 

Since we can't point to anyone in 1980 experiencing anything even in principle, Statement B is false. Yet intuitively, we want to be able to say that it is true that John Lennon experienced something that day. Thus the truth-makers' definition fails.
 

What about the Many Spotlights Theory?

Statement B seems to work fine here: there is a John Lennon at the 8th of December 1980 who experiences the events of that day unfolding. In fact, there are many of them for every moment existing within that date...

That's the thing, the timeline is populated by experiencing agents in all moments. These moments are arguably their own worlds that simply share the same history sequence. Since we can distinguish between different versions of people at different moments of their shared history, they can hardly be considered the same person, or the same entity.

That's especially obvious when we focus on their identity. A proposition that as a singular entity you exist at different points in time and space and experience them all at once seems quite absurd - your experience is manifestly only in the Now.

So the Statement B was vague in a way, as it didn't clarify which specific entity it addressed. It only cared about the label 'John Lennon' that under this model of time apparently applies to a whole set of persons existing across the timeline.

But if we now distinguish between such entities, the definition of the truth-makers will break again:

By the "I" in the Statement C, I mean Me in the Now, the very same Now during which you're reading this blog. If I now uttered that statement, which I would evaluate as true, we cannot point to Me in the past, reading at that time. We can only point to someone else, who is otherwise exactly like I was in the past, doing so. There's a great similarity between us and he will share my fate, but there is no relation of identity there.
 

Even if we assumed a non-uniform ontology, with physical objects having a 4-dimensional identity - stretched out through time - while the minds being separate, limited to 3D slices of the timeline would slide from moment to moment, that doesn't change anything. We can track an individual mind, like Mine in the Now, and so any such model would break on the Statement C.
 

The Many Spotlights Theory doesn't seem sufficient to save the truth-makers' definition. Is it even possible to construct a theory of time where the Statement C would work with it?
 

Salvaging Causal Structuralism

I've discussed Causal Structuralism before, using it as a reduction to absurdity type of argument for the Principle of Irreduciblility of Change [1]. But to repeat briefly, as an ontology of time it proposes a completely static object, basically turning time into a spatial dimension. The resulting block consists of events sequenced in their cause-effect relationship, but no change occurs in it. 

Technically, we could distinguish between two versions of this theory - one where objects are of 3D identity and one where they are of 4D identity. But 4D identity doesn't help us rid it of absurdity - these models can't account for the experience of change in the first place.

Because even if we assumed that John Lennon is not a label for many entities sharing a fate, but for one entity who is all of his history - his body, brain and even the mind stretched out through the 4th dimension as worm-like objects - we'd still have to account for the fact that any subjective experience happens one moment at a time, in the past-to-future direction, instead of perceiving all of time at once.

Let's double down on these 4-dimensional minds though. If we then also introduce a new object or property, that we shall call "the Focus" for the lack of a better term, it seems like the resulting ontology could account for our reality yet!

So imagine that technically your mind perceives all moments of your existence at once, but it's more like a subconscious perception - only the moment in Focus, limited to a 3-dimensional slice of the space-time continuum is clear and apparent to you. The Focus itself, by nature limited to that one slice, would then change its position to the next moment (via any type of causation [1]) generating our experience of movement.

This weird ontology tickles my imagination and my world-building, fiction-loving side. Maybe some information from the past could sometimes appear in our vivid experience, despite our brain losing that memory? Maybe intuition could be the result of faintly perceiving the actual future outcomes?

It's sure fun to speculate about the details of such a hypothesis, even though realistically, it got quite bloated and implausible [2]. But let's get back on track, as the objective behind showing its consistency and explanatory power was to attempt to save the truth-makers' definition...

[1] For the discussion of Causal Structuralism, the Principle of Irreducibility of Change and the types of causation, see Minimal principles for a theory of time.

[2] A version of this theory of time is also the only one that broke the Principle of Indispensability of Self-transformative Causation (see Minimal principles for a theory of time) forcing me to limit its application to theories with objects of 3D identity. As you can see, under this theory the mind technically perceives all of time - it's only the Focus that changes and influences the mind (thus parts of the 4D mind transform in quality, but only under secondary influence, not through self-transformation). And the element of ontology that is responsible for the Focus doesn't have to work through self-tranformation either. It could very well be a distinctive object (limited to a 3-dimensional slice) that causes new such object to appear in the next moment via creative causation and self-destruction, or through induction and reset.
 

Causal Structuralism + changing Focus

Under our new model of time, the Statement C can still work: me in the one-day-prior relation to me posting this blog, is overall the same object. And it's the same Me Now. So it remains true that I was reading the day before posting this blog.

This theory would even withstand a similar transition to that from Statement A to B:

My 4-dimensional mind taken as a whole still experiences reading that day (it's simply out of Focus of my vivid experience).

But you probably already know where this is going:

Intuitively it makes perfect sense to say that once I posted this blog, whenever I utter this statement, it is true, capturing the state of reality as it was in the past.

If we looked at the space-time continuum from the outside though, there would be only one, present moment where my Focus operates. And so again, the truth-makers' definition fails. 

For that definition to work universally with all statements, we would have to presume that all past moments have the same qualities as the present moment - that they are indistinguishable in terms of types of elements of the ontology they contain and that those elements can't change. Which we can clearly see now is impossible, no matter how much we complicate the ontology. The changing present moment is special, because it's the only one that is in our vivid experience and there's no escaping that.

The definition of the truth-makers proposed in the initial argument and the assumption of the existing past are therefore incompatible. They could actually work together, but only under pure Causal Structuralism. That's not a viable theory of time however, as it can't even facilitate change or distinguish between the Now and other moments in time.

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