Episode 12: The Fourth Dimension

In this episode of the SpaceTimeMind podcast, Richard Brown and Pete Mandik continue their discussion from Episode 9 ("A Journey to the Edge of Hypertime”) and consider the view that time constitutes a fourth dimension analogous to the three spatial dimensions of height, width, and depth. What’s gained and what’s lost in viewing moments other than the present as analogous to places other than here? Do we lose an ability to account for change and motion? And if a computer simulation of a brain can have consciousness when we run the program, could it have consciousness even when the program isn’t being run?

Episode Audio

Episode Notes and LinksEpisode Notes

In this episode of the SpaceTimeMind podcast, Richard Brown and Pete Mandik continue their discussion from Episode 9 ("A Journey to the Edge of Hypertime”) and consider the view that time constitutes a fourth dimension analogous to the three spatial dimensions of height, width, and depth. What’s gained and what’s lost in viewing moments other than the present as analogous to places other than here? Do we lose an ability to account for change and motion? And if a computer simulation of a brain can have consciousness when we run the program, could it have consciousness even when the program isn’t being run?

LinksSpaceTimeMind Episode 9: "A Journey to the Edge of Hypertime” "Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once.” -- Ray Cummings. Quote often misattributed to Woody Allen. See also John Archibald Wheeler @WikiQuote Richard Brown and Pete Mandik "On Whether the Higher-Order Thought Theory of Consciousness Entails Cognitive Phenomenology, or: What is it Like to Think that One Thinks that P?”  @PhilPapers Ruth Milikan’s Dewey Lecture Richard Dawkins interviews Deepak Chopra @YouTube "Time In Time": supercut of "time"-based dialog from movie "In Time" @YouTube The Ritdijk-Putnam argument @Wikipedia