On the Fundamentality of Meaning by Brian D. Josephson

Lorraine Ford

What do you mean by "eternal"? What is time? And does anything exist "outside" of time?

Brian Josephson

Could you define initial first of all?

Lorraine Ford

Initial: "Existing or occurring at the beginning" [https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/initial]. The structure of this universe had a beginning, the structure started more or less from scratch: this seems to be the evidence-based theory of physicists/cosmologists.

This view seems to be correct because, working backwards in time: more complex life came from simper life, simpler life came from molecules, molecules came from atoms, the atomic elements were formed out of simpler elements in the periodic table, and atoms came from particles. The foundation of all of this is seemingly particles, law of nature relationships and numbers.

Without the law of nature relationships and the numbers you can't have a universe with a structure, but the structure of the universe is subject to change (time). Also, working backwards, without what creates and knows about the law of nature relationships and numbers, you can't have a universe with a structure, but this aspect of the universe is not subject to change.

Brian Josephson

This view is now a bit out of date -- see https://aeon.co/videos/was-there-any-before-before-the-big-bang.

Lorraine Ford

So, what is this "time" that Tim Maudlin is talking about [1]? E.g. if time is just a variable that is indirectly measured by numeric change of some other variable, then: 1) is time just an indirect measure of change in the universe? (i.e. an algorithmic entity) 2) what causes change i.e. what causes new variables/categories or new numbers? 3) are there aspects of reality that don't change?

1. Tim Maudlin said: "...that thing we call The Big Bang-- Was there anything before that? ...was there... any physical story we can tell about the origin of the Big Bang. The answer ...is that we don't know and all options are on the table... Modern cosmological theory imagines ...that there was something before this thing we call the Big Bang, there was a another state from which our observable universe evolved and ...continue to evolve. ...there are theories of that character...if time doesn't go any further, to ask what happened before the big bang, it's just logically incoherent. There can't be a before...does that mean that nothingness somehow gave birth to the universe? That sounds very strange...The universe is a kind of totality, it's a whole, it's everything there is, and it's limited in a certain way, it's limited in the time extent that you can go backwards. Now, on the other model there was something before the Big Bang, you can then ask, what came before it? How did the Big Bang come out of that?...All we have to go on is theory. And cosmology switches over from the astronomers to the theoreticians who might say 'Yeah, I have a theory that will tell you what this earlier state was like.' And then you could only ask the theory, can I keep going back? ...Does it go back forever? Now in the case of going backward in time...how could time itself begin? But if you never stop you're going to say well how could an infinite amount of time have elapsed? ...if you're dealing with everything then there are going to be certain kinds of explanations or certain kinds of understandings which automatically by logic, there can't be for everything taken together, but there can be for any little part..." [https://aeon.co/videos/was-there-any-before-before-the-big-bang].

Brian Josephson

This is probably the point at which we should close the discussion and pursue our separate paths. Thanks for all your thoughtful comments, anyway.

Lorraine Ford

Thanks Brian.

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