Conatus: THIRD EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

obeys the arrow of time.

OR:

There is an established order, and also it makes sense to think of the universe from outside of time. The end of the universe is known in advance and therefore it makes sense to say that upwards emergence equals downwards causation. (This might be described as the panentheist position in spiritual terms in that God is both beyond and within the universe. Or again — things might just be this way for reasons we can’t explain.)

OR:

There is no outer established order — but seeing the universe from outside time (as in the previous option) nonetheless makes sense. (This could be the pantheist position, but it might just be that things are this way for reasons unknown.)

OR:

There is a sense in which the view from eternity makes sense but the arrow of time is inexorable. There is emergence, there may be downwards causation within the universe, but the two are not equivalent. The direction of emergence is not pre-established.

OR:

We could speculate that an established agency could re-make a universe that is currently bound by time’s arrow into one that is timeless, as in the new Heaven and the new Earth of Christianity.

We have stretched out our search into the most

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