The Eternal Return

[y_feldblum]

"The identity of indiscernibles" is another way of saying "primacy of consciousness".

[Bold Standard]

It’s just that I don’t find A=A to be terribly interesting; but the Identity of Indiscernibles, the fact that if you switch two objects and there is no change to the system then they are identical, well, that can lead to far more remarkable things.

When you say that you don't find A=A to be "interesting," does that mean that you don't regard it as controversial? Meaning you can see that it is obviously true? Or does it mean you simply don't understand what consequences its truth or falsehood would have?

As I understand it, the question of identity is essentially, whether there are stable, enduring entities or not. Prior to Aristotle (although the law of non-contradiction was implicit in Socrates), philosophers following the influence of Heraclitus and Parminedes thought that change implied a contradiction. This led Heraclitus and his followers to conclude that existence is riddled with contradictions, that no entities endure, that A=non-A, or to be more acurate, that everything is and is not what it was and was not, and what it will and will not become. If you apply this principle to your thought experiment--well, as soon as "you" step into the "chamber," there is no more "you" and there is no more "chamber." Everything is flux. In an attempt to answer Heraclitus, Parminedes and his followers agreed that change implies a contradiction, and so concluded that there is no such thing as change, and no separate entities but that everything is one. However, this was a very unsatisfying answer, since separate entities can be observed and seen to be changing all the time.

Aristotle's solution was to say that there are enduring entities--A=A, but that A cannot be non-A at the same time and in the same respect. That allowed for change without contradiction--the rule is, contradictions cannot exist, but an entity can become something it's not and it can be different things in different respects.

It's only in this context that Aristotle's view of causality can be understood. And his is much closer to the Objectivist view of causality than the mechanistic determinism advocated (admittedly, hopelessly) by some modern thinkers. Aristotle's view was that the actions an entity can take are determined by the nature of the entity. In Ayn Rand's words, "The law of causality is the law of identity applied to action" (Atlas Shrugged, pg 954). This is the process by which entities can change without ever embracing contradictions--a boy can become a man, because that's his nature, but he can't become a hurricane. An acorn can become a tree, but it can't become an octopus.

I haven't studied physics or chemistry in detail, but to bring up your example, "An atom of Uranium 238 just turned into an atom of thorium-234." It seems plausible to me that there is no way for a man to determine exactly at what time a change such as this will occur in an atom. But I don't see how this is a violation of the law of causality, as I've stated it above. It would seem that, assuming Uranium 238 has been observed to turn into thorium-234, this would mean that it is the nature of Uranium 238 to turn into thorium-234 (and maybe to do so at unpredictable times). This would be a causal change. Show me an example of Uranium 238 turning into a pizza pie, or a ballerina, and I'll question causality! (Actually, I would question my sanity first).

...the Identity of Indiscernibles, the fact that if you switch two objects and there is no change to the system then they are identical, well, that can lead to far more remarkable things.

Thought Experiment:

You step into my matter duplicating chamber. The chamber is symmetrical. You stand 5 feet from the center. I turn on the machine. A person who looks just like you seems to appear 10 feet away. He's staring at you.

Questions:

1)Are you the original or the copy?

2)What experiment did you perform to make that determination?

3)Does that other fellow agree with you?

4) If it turns out you're the copy would there be any reason to be upset?

The Identity of Indiscernibles tells us these are the answers:

1) It doesn’t matter.

2) There is none.

3) Probably not but I don’t care.

4)No.

John K Clark [email protected]

I'm not sure I understand the Identity of Indiscernibles properly.. I can see how it would be legitimate to say, if we cannot distinguish between two entities, then they would be interchangeable as far as we know, but isn't it a little presumptuous to assume that they are completely identitical in reality, even those attributes we have not observed?

[Edit: spelling]

Edited December 11, 2006 by Bold Standard

[johnclark]

'Bold Standard' On Dec 10 2006 Wrote:

> When you say that you don't find A=A to be

> "interesting," does that mean that you don't

> regard it as controversial? Meaning you can

> see that it is obviously true? Or does it mean

> you simply don't understand what consequences

> its truth or falsehood would have?

Yes.

> "An atom of Uranium 238 just turned into an atom

> of thorium-234." It seems plausible to me that there

> is no way for a man to determine exactly at what

> time a change such as this will occur in an atom.

Yes.

> It would seem that, assuming Uranium 238 has

> been observed to turn into thorium-234, this

> would mean that it is the nature of Uranium 238

> to turn into thorium-234

Yes.

> And maybe to do so at unpredictable times.

> This would be a causal change.

No. And there is no “maybe” about it. If it is unpredictable then it is random and if it is random that means there is no cause. Why did this atom of U238 decay at this particular nanosecond rather than the next of in 500 million years? There is no answer because there is no cause. This really shouldn’t come as a total shock, we know empirically that some events have causes, but from pure logic there is no reason to think that every event does.

> I can see how it would be legitimate to say,

> if we cannot distinguish between two entities,

> then they would be interchangeable as far as we know,

In my thought experiment I had you (the copy) and the original standing an equal distance from the center of a symmetrical room. I now use a Star Trek brand transporter to instantly exchange your positions, or if you prefer I leave your bodies alone and just exchange the two brains. There is no way subjectively you or the original would notice that anything had happened, and objective outside observers would not notice anything had happened. There would not even be a way to tell if the machine was actually working. If objectively it makes no difference and subjectively if makes no difference then I conclude it just makes no difference. There are 2 bodies in that room nut only one you.

> but isn't it a little presumptuous to assume that

> they are completely identitical in reality, even

> those attributes we have not observed?

Whenever a scientist gets a result he doesn’t like he can always say “maybe my cockamamie theory is still true, maybe someday we will find Cosmic Force X that will still allow it to be true. But that is not science, that is public relations. Maybe someday Cosmic Force X will teach us that the world is only 5000 years old and evolution is untrue and the sun goes around the Earth, but I don’t think so.

And by the way, we know with certainty the Bell Inequality is untrue, it’s been measured in the lab, that means the sort of causality people have thought about for thousands of years, local causality, cannot be true. The only chance for life causality still has is if it is non local: The reason we had this earthquake is because a butterfly in the Andromeda Galaxy flapped its wings twice rather than three time. Actually it’s worse than that, if its non local then the future can change the past so the earthquake may have been caused by a butterfly who will flap its wings 5 billion years from now. To my mind an event that has an infinite number of causes is equivalent to an event that has no cause.

John K Clark

[Bold Standard]

> And maybe to do so at unpredictable times.

> This would be a causal change.

No. And there is no “maybe” about it. If it is unpredictable then it is random and if it is random that means there is no cause.

You seem to be equivocating between the metaphysical and epistemological here. It doesn't follow that if something is unpredictable then it is random. Random would be Uranium 238 turning into a pizza pie. As far as I can gather (being a complete layman about physics), the only aspect about U238 turning into thorium-234 that you're even claiming to be random is the time of the event. Even if that were true, how would it follow that one stochastic parameter in the process makes the whole event random and causeless?

Furthermore, it doesn't follow that if something is random then it doesn't have a cause. Maybe it would help if you define exactly what you mean by "random," but the way I use the word, it usually means that the cause is unspecified or unknown. It would be a non-sequiter to say, if the cause is not known, then there is no cause. It is possible for something to exist and not be known. And, if you accept the definition of causality that I use, which is the principle that entities must act in accordance with their identities, then it can be known with certainty that everything must have a cause, if it is an entity and it is acting, because the opposite would be a contradiction. Under my definition, a causeless act would literally mean an entity acting in accordance with its opposite, or an entity behaving in such a way that such an entity does not behave, which is impossible. I don't understand why you equate causality with predictability--you must be using the word differently than I do (and I've done my best to define and explain how I use it, and how I understand it to be used by other Objectivists and Aristotelians).

And by the way, we know with certainty the Bell Inequality is untrue, it’s been measured in the lab, that means the sort of causality people have thought about for thousands of years, local causality, cannot be true.

Here I'm in way over my head, and this is definitely a scientific rather than philosophical issue. But it may or may not interest you that the most famous Objectivist I know of who's also a physicist, David Harriman, agrees with you about the Bell Inequalities demonstrating non-local interactions. Here's an excerpt from an article by him:

The scientific argument for non-local interactions consists of two major elements: the derivation of the Bell inequalities and the results of DDC experiments. [...]

[N]on-locality poses no threat to causality. As a principle of metaphysics, causality states a universal truth graspable by any man in any era, independent of the prevailing state of scientific knowledge. Philosophy says nothing about the nature of the physical stuff that fills the universe (except that it exists and has a nature). Interactions between physical entities may propagate faster than light; on this issue, the law of causality is silent. Furthermore, if an action at location A causes a change at location B, metaphysics alone does not tell us that there was a time delay while something moved from A to B. It is not the function of metaphysics to answer questions such as: when one sits on a teeter-totter, does the other end simultaneously rise?

The axioms of metaphysics serve the purpose of delimiting our thought to the realm of reality. They do not allow us to deduce the nature of reality. To attempt such deduction is to follow the method of Rene Descartes, not that of Ayn Rand.

Edited December 12, 2006 by Bold Standard

[johnclark]

'Bold Standard' On 'Dec 12 2006 Wrote:

> Random would be Uranium 238 turning into a pizza pie.

Why Uranium turning into Thorium without a cause is less random that it turning into a pizza without a cause eludes me.

> Maybe it would help if you define exactly

> what you mean by "random"

I would have thought that was obvious, a random event is an event without a cause. If it had a cause you could predict it and it wouldn’t be random. If this is not what you mean by “random” I would certainly like to hear what you mean by the word.

> It would be a non-sequiter to say, if the cause

> is not known, then there is no cause.

I hope you don’t think this is a new argument. Quantum Mechanics started in 1900 and by 1920 it was largely mature. Ayn Rand was not, she was only 15. From day 1 the rear guard has been singing “but there must be a cause”. Some philosophers sing that song to this very day, but physicists treat them much as they would members of the Flat Earth Society.

The same is true of Gödel. The great philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein blasted Gödel, but today that paper, “Remarks On The Foundations Of Mathematics” is regarded as the biggest embarrassment in his entire professional life. Fans of Wittgenstein wish he’d never written it.

> The most famous Objectivist I know of who's also

> a physicist, David Harriman, agrees with you about

> the Bell Inequalities demonstrating non-local interactions.

I’ve never heard of the man but I’m glad he agrees with me. But proving the Bell Inequality is untrue does not prove causality is non local, it proves it is non existent or non local and there is very little difference between the two. This lightning bolt was caused by a butterfly in Nigeria that will flap its wings 5 billion years from now, and the butterfly did that because a Hydrogen atom in the Andromeda galaxy 3 billion years ago jiggled to the left instead of the right, and the atom did that because an electron in the Virgo cluster 6 billion light years away went up instead of down and the electron did that because 19 billion years from now….. You get the idea.

Mr. Harriman says “non-locality poses no threat to causality” and he’s right provided you redefine the word to mean something very different and much stranger than what the man on the street means, or even what philosophers for thousands of years have meant. It sort of reminds me of atheists who are willing to abandon the idea of God but not the word “God” so they redefine it in such a nebulous way that nobody could say its untrue. It just becomes another of those ideas (like free will) that is so bad it’s not even wrong.

Harriman again:

>causality states a universal truth graspable by any man in any era

Causality works pretty well at the scale of human being, and that not surprising as that’s the scale our brains were evolved to understand and survive in. But it is not universal, at the scale of the very small or the very large things behave quite differently.

> this is definitely a scientific rather than philosophical issue.

And that is precisely the problem; the idea there is a strict dividing line, the idea that a philosopher can be ignorant of science because science can teach philosophy nothing.

John K Clark

[Bold Standard]

Why Uranium turning into Thorium without a cause is less random that it turning into a pizza without a cause eludes me.

If Uranium turns into Thorium, that means that a change has taken place, and that change must be consistent with the identity of Uranium--It must be in Uranium's nature that it can turn into Thorium. That means that it is causal. It does not mean that the cause is known, or even that it can be known, but to be causless is to be contradictory, which is the impossible thing. It is not in the nature of Uranium to turn into a pizza pie, so an event such as that would be causeless. Only an impossible event could be causeless, because causeless events are impossible by definition.

I would have thought that was obvious, a random event is an event without a cause. If it had a cause you could predict it and it wouldn’t be random.

I still don't understand why you assume that if an event has a cause, one would necessarily be able to predict it. Do you believe that something can exist without being known?

If this is not what you mean by “random” I would certainly like to hear what you mean by the word.

I mean different things in different contexts, but the best definition I can think of for this context is something like, an event in which the cause is not specified or has not been determined. But I think the word has a slightly different meaning in the context of volitional acts, or, let's say, a computer that's been programmed to generate "random" numbers--which could be a process the causes of which are fully understood.

> It would be a non-sequiter to say, if the cause

> is not known, then there is no cause.

I hope you don’t think this is a new argument.

Yours or mine? I think it's as old as Aristotle vs the Presocratics, if I'm following your referent right.

Quantum Mechanics started in 1900 and by 1920 it was largely mature. Ayn Rand was not, she was only 15.

..?

But proving the Bell Inequality is untrue does not prove causality is non local, it proves it is non existent or non local and there is very little difference between the two. This lightning bolt was caused by a butterfly in Nigeria that will flap its wings 5 billion years from now, and the butterfly did that because a Hydrogen atom in the Andromeda galaxy 3 billion years ago jiggled to the left instead of the right, and the atom did that because an electron in the Virgo cluster 6 billion light years away went up instead of down and the electron did that because 19 billion years from now….. You get the idea.

Does the Bell Inequality really show that lightening bolts can be caused by butterflies flapping their wings?

Mr. Harriman says “non-locality poses no threat to causality” and he’s right provided you redefine the word to mean something very different and much stranger than what the man on the street means, or even what philosophers for thousands of years have meant.

But it is not I, he, or Ayn Rand who has redefined causality. We use the definition provided by Aristotle over 2000 years ago. If anyone redefined causality, it was probably the physicists who insisted that local interactions were synonomous with causality. If local interactions have been refuted, that means merely that they were incorrect in equating local interactions with causality, not that causality is refuted.

Also, I think someone has attempted to redefine causality to mean predictability--maybe that's you, or someone who's influenced you, but no men on the street or philosophers who's views on causality I'm familar with use it that way. I can imagine maybe Hegel holding a position like that, since he thought "to be is to be known." But that's just a guess.

It sort of reminds me of atheists who are willing to abandon the idea of God but not the word “God” so they redefine it in such a nebulous way that nobody could say its untrue. It just becomes another of those ideas (like free will) that is so bad it’s not even wrong.

There are some philosophers who have used the word "God" when they really meant "nature." Spinoza did that, although he really was a pantheist, not an atheist. My answer to them is always, "why not just say 'nature,' and not be confusing?" But I think a word like "God" is fundamentally different from "causality" and "free will."

Causality works pretty well at the scale of human being, and that not surprising as that’s the scale our brains were evolved to understand and survive in. But it is not universal, at the scale of the very small or the very large things behave quite differently.

Your talking about Aristotelian causality now? How do you know that it abdicates at small and large scales? Do atoms and stars act contrary to their natures?

And that is precisely the problem; the idea there is a strict dividing line, the idea that a philosopher can be ignorant of science because science can teach philosophy nothing.

I assume you don't mean "the problem" ...with your argument? Philosophy deals with truths that are more fundamental than special sciences. But both are derived from experience.

[Bold Standard]

johnclark sent me a PM asking to please tell everyone that he wanted to reply to this thread, but can't, because he's on some kind of probation. (Dunno, just passing it along). I'm posting this primarily because I don't think it's honorable for me to come off looking like I had the last word, when it's not that the person I was debating was stumped, but blocked from posting (I'm not condemning or condoning the mods' decision, which is not my business). So, that's all.

[Starcraft2baby!]

Well, *bumps*,

Eternal Return… I think I’ve read this before, but always wanted to say something about it. I think the dude was just trying to say “LIVE YOUR LIFE, THIS IS IT! THE ONLY SHIT YOU ARE GONNA TO GET for free!”

Like the other posters said, Nietzsche was just trying to make us realize and be grateful for what we got, the only chance we will have. It does have some kind of religious overtone to me. I’m taking what the quote says literally. Supposing the fact that there’s a demon whispering by my ear while I am in this deepest corner of my loneliest moment of my life. Hearing the words flowing to me that I am going to relieve this despair I am feeling at the time for eternity again and again without knowing that fact, and now here he is, some kind of evil entity rubbing it in, feeling the gigantic weight of this sole present moment we are living in boring a hole in my head. Do you grab the moment as you can? There will never be other chance ever. Maybe it is his way of telling us memento mori, carpe diem…

(newbie here, corrections n grammar welcome!)

[Tenure]

But that's probably the fundamental error with this statement - that the conclusion of it is a 'carpe diem' attitude, that one must act out of an escape from suffering, rather than a pursuit of happiness. "Live productively - why? Because imagine if you didn't, you would regret it!" That's not a good philosophical basis for living. Objectivism is not about thinking about the constant of death (memento mori, as you quote) but of the opportunity of life.

It's a kind of statement that's construed to be a moral statement, but if you examine it, it's just another example of the 'preaching of death'. It's based on the finiteness of life. I'm not saying that life isn't finite, only that it's not an impetus to behave morally. It's why I find Romantics like Shelley to be so tragic - he saw happiness and morality in life as a matter of fulfillment, of seizing as much of the day as possible, of getting as much as possible from his life, without any cause. This is probably best exemplified in his romantic (little 'r') relations, where he inevitably found only decimation and misery in his wake, and was left wondering 'Why?' afterwards.

I see you're new, and I just want to give you a little nudge in the right direction here. Hope I've helped. Welcome to the forum.

[ZoRPrime]

Well this is my first post on this site. However I'm not new to Objectivism or Ayn Rand. Here is my assessment of the authors original post.

What if, one day or night, a daemon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: "This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence...

Nietzsche's question: Would you accept that life, affirm it, relive it; or end it for fear of living out still greater pain through the endurance of eternity?

The underlying concept I see here is, if you could know something outside your own existence how would it change your purpose in your own existence?

The 'something' in this case is the fact that once your existence ends it continually repeats itself. I would say this would only be realistically assessable at the point of which you became aware of something completely separate from your own existence. In the example Nietzsche gives a daemon that comes to tell you, for there to be any belief of such a statement there would be some new mechanism of knowledge by which it is proven to you. The relevance of this knowledge could only be fully ascertained once it is known or has identity. It is possible that the new knowledge would weigh heavily in your decision or would give you insight into the questions you would then seek answers to, in order to properly access how this affects your new enlightened existence.

It is debatable whether the eternal return is a metaphysical reality--and it is debatable whether Nietzsche argues that it is, though it seems likely. It is my understanding that modern quantum physics affirms a version of it a la the Einstein-Minkovski 4-dimensionalization of space-time, but this might be stretching the meaning of the eternal return. Or it might not. Certain metaphysical arguments for it seem to fail or are at best ambiguous, so I wonder if anybody has any information about the matter.

But true or not, is this not the greatest model for moral understanding that we could conceive?

No for reasons in my other answers.

This separates the life-affirmers from the life-deniers--boys from the men, from the louses. Every decision you make must be made as if you will suffer or enjoy it more than a million times over. There is no room for unfocused thought, no room for compromise, no room for blackening your soul in the name of expedience; the slightest moral tar sticks to you and there is nothing that will wash it from you. It is your badge of shame burned into your immortal skin. And likewise, the man who overcomes, who succeeds, who shares no guilty smile, offers no sacrifice, rejoices in no weakness, will live out his grandeur like the gods glittering from the heavens.

Is the eternal return something we should hold ourselves up to?

I would say no, eternal return only serves purpose as one of the multitudes of possible examples of truths that 'could be' that we cannot know. Equally as relevant would be, the idea that you cannot prove for absolute certainty that your life truly did exist before you woke up the last time. Should you continue to go throughout your day? Are you leading the same day with the same background over and over again? End it? Live it like it's your very last? Also equally relevant and as non-provable is any religions afterlife theory.

Or is it too heavy for even Objectivists to carry?

I would suggest it's too random and not intrinsically relevant for Objectivists and that unprovable potential possibilities used for motivational purposes should be personal choices amongst those who would chose such a thing for motivation or purpose in their existence.

Knowing that you don't know and, by all means thus far can't know, what is outside your own existence. Use what you can know to rationalize purpose in your existence.

Actually, I think you're missing the point. It isn't a question of there being no visible evidence of an eternal return, it's a question of there being absolutely no evidence at all.

I made the above answers assuming the Eintein-Minkovski 4D Space-time doesn't conclusively prove Eternal Return.

Assuming for a second that Einstein-Minkovski 4-dimensionalization of space-time did with confidence prove Eternal Return. Are we the first itteration or did it go on prior and post to this current iteration? How is it different for lifes purpose than if we only had 'one shot' at existence. If you cannot carry awareness of the repeat it's not any more relevant than a 'one time opportunity for life.' I do not know of the link E-M 4D SpcTime has to Eternal Return but, I don't see it as necessary component for justifying the course of ones life. I would suspect there is a lot of room for doubt in the 'proof' if it exists the E-M 4d ST p proves Eternal Return.

[intellectualammo]

(note: quotes are taken from aleph_0 posts)

The "eternal return" is intended as a metaphor to focus one's consciousness on the problem to hand.

I am unsure that it was intended to be a metaphor, esp. after reading some in Kaufmann's Nietzsche.

Certain metaphysical arguments for it seem to fail or are at best ambiguous, so I wonder if anybody has any information about the matter.

Yes, actually. I found this in said book:

"Let us think this thought in its most terrible form: existence as it is, without sense and aim, but recurring inevitably without a finale of nothingness: 'the eternal recurrence'" (WM 55) The doctrine means that all events are repeated endlessly, that there is no plan or goal to give meaning to history or life, and that we are mere puppets in an absolutely senseless play. The eternal recurrence is the epitome of "tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." In a note for Zarathustra, Nietzsche wrote: "After the vistion of the overman, in a gruesome way the doctrine of the recurrence: now bearable!" (XIV, 110;cf. 179) [p. 327]

Kaufmann also says that N. believed "not only that his doctrine was a meeting place of science and philosophy" but also "succeeding in creating a synthsis of the philosophies of Heraclitus and Parmenides, of the dynamic and the static world-pictures, of being and becoming: 'That all recurs is the most extreme approach of a world of becoming to one of being.'" Kaufmann quotes N. here in regards to his eternal recurrence doctrine, N. referring to it as "the most scientific of all possible hypotheses. (WM 55)"

But true or not, is this not the greatest model for moral understanding that we could conceive?

No. I think that even if it is just taken metaphorically, as you have mentioned, I think it fails realistically. It's like some sort of irrarional, unrealistic consequentialism.

Every decision you make must be made as if you will suffer or enjoy it more than a million times over.

Case in point.

Is the eternal return something we should hold ourselves up to?

No. Not morally and especially not in the metaphysical sense.

Or is it too heavy for even Objectivists to carry?

No, it's too light, that's the problem.

Edited July 10, 2007 by intellectualammo