Just Thomism talks about the Kalām Cosmological Argument, one that I’ve been iffy on:
If the universe were ten minutes old, it would make sense to say it was not around 11 minutes ago, but this doesn’t mean there is a physical meaning to “eleven minutes”, and without this physical meaning it makes no sense to ask what happened 10 minutes ago in the sense of describing some transition from an earlier state to a later one.
Say a production of Hamlet starts at 5:00. At 5, everyone in the audience can enter into a world with kings, suicides, gravediggers and melancholic philosophers. So where was the Denmark that the play brings to life at 4:59? The world that comes to be is not some transition from an earlier state. The Denmark that comes to be in fact doesn’t come to be at 5 but in the middle of the night, with a patrol seeing a ghost.
The remark about Denmark existing prior to the Hamlet production is odd. If we work with the analogy, Denmark does exist prior to the production because it exists in the real world, in a “different state” than the fictional one. We can conceive of the Hamlet Denmark because we know of the real one, yet Hamlet and Co., could conceive of the real Denmark if they chose to, but only as a metaphysical object. In other words, since the actors of the in-story Hamlet has the same faculties we do, they could theorize a “form” of Denmark—ours, the “real” one)—of which their instance of Denmark is only a certain incarnation.
So, if I’m understanding correctly, us real-worlders, existing at 4:59 before Hamlet starts, know the real Denmark in much the same way God knows the “real” world at “the beginning of our universe minus one second.” We have the raw materials to construct the fictional Denmark, but if we consider time as a raw material the analogy starts to break down since we are still measuring with in-universe time. We don’t know the how of time before the Big Bang. God’s 4:59 is most likely very different than how we experience 4:59, for sure, but how could that translate to the real vs. Hamlet Denmark?
2 Comments
Will the real Denmark please stand up? Actually, I’ve been to Denmark a couple of times. I’m quite content that my Denmark will be quite unlike that of others and the questions addressed in the likes of cosmological debates are quite silly.
Sure, it’s pretty silly, but I personally don’t mind exploring it since it’s a past-time and it sharpens the ol’ mental faculties.
I can’t imagine basing a life on what’s “figured out” since there’s always too much uncertainty. Our marching orders are our concern, not the entire war.