Presentism: do the past and the future exist?

[Kilroy2]

History cannot be blamed - for nothing. Panta rei. Nothing is two times the same. Our intentional ignorance is the problem. Currently all mankind seems to be on a way to the 19th, 18th or 17th century - but not on the way in the 21st century to the 22nd century.



No one is able to create only a second. Time is a gift of god. And how the old Irish said - frustrated sometimes from history but nevertheless true: "When god created time he made a lot". A whole universe full of time.



First you are in trouble - then you are lost or you will win.



About what?



I never liked to be anything else. It's nice to feel all the water around. To live and to die is the same.



Sports is also nice. But it exists a problem in your view to the world: You are not able to be outside of the river time.



Who thinks not to be an idiot is an idiot. The problem is only on what level of idiocy to be an idiot.

History is nothing more than events that have happen. So

.

History cannot be blamed - for nothing. Panta rei. Nothing is two times the same. Our intentional ignorance is the problem. Currently all mankind seems to be on a way to the 19th, 18th or 17th century - but not on the way in the 21st century to the 22nd century.



No one is able to create only a second. Time is a gift of god. And how the old Irish said - frustrated sometimes from history but nevertheless true: "When god created time he made a lot". A whole universe full of time.



First you are in trouble - then you are lost or you will win.



About what?



I never liked to be anything else. It's nice to feel all the water around. To live and to die is the same.



Sports is also nice. But it exists a problem in your view to the world: You are not able to be outside of the river time.



Who thinks not to be an idiot is an idiot. The problem is only on what level of idiocy to be an idiot.

History is a noun and can refer to a lot of things. So I would say history can be blamed as it refers to something specific like a specific event or thing to an individual or the individual himself.

If republicans can blame democrats and democrats can blame republicans, then history can be blamed.

Time has to be managed. Yes it is fleeting but it can be managed in the now but make it quick.

Lose and things don't go your way, win and its LG

Since I do not know death then I cannot answer that question as to what its like to die. I prefer it to be a mystery.

I think therefore I am just like everyone else. So even in sports I will enjoy the moment. Win then I am satisfied, lose then its over until the next contest.

Idiot is a fun term. when its applied to oneself then its funny. When applied to another then it just an observation or just being frustrated with that person.

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

I once met a man who said he was a time traveler.

A Game Consisting of Only Time-Outs

Only once? According to him, you must have met him time and time again.

 

[Foxfyre]

Time Travel Is a Profitable Hollywood Lie

Implying that memory is a "living past" is a non sequitur. Likewise, saying that the future will come is not a proof of its present existence somewhere out there. But quack scientists do believe in a separate and continuing existence of both the past and the future.

I didn't argue any of those points in the post you disagreed with though. But you do seem to disagree with me a lot without ever explaining what you think i got wrong. So oh well.

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

The best visual representation of the concept is, turn on motion trails in your mouse cursor on your computer. Now imagine the motion trail goes both ways. Some believe that’s how existence works. Your past leaving a trail behind you and your future being the trail in front of you. Presentism is the mouse trails turned off. Where the mouse was no longer is there and where the mouse is going isn’t set yet, but still we push the mouse toward that destination…

Three Blind Mice...See How They Run...

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

What is Science saying on this???

Whatever Hollywood Pays Them to Say

 

[Foxfyre]

I didn't argue any of those points in the post you disagreed with though. But you do seem to disagree with me a lot without ever explaining what you think i got wrong. So oh well.

For the record I generally think of those who disagree without stating what the other got wrong to be in the USMB troll category.

 

[zaangalewa]

History is nothing more than events that have happen. So



History is a noun and can refer to a lot of things.

History is what really had happened in the past and not what we [prefer to] think about what had happened in the past.
Some long years ago for example I was very astonished how the inquisitions had been able to burn 2 million witches because an inquisition process had been very complex and long. Then I found out that the most what people think about this phenomenon is only basing on lies of the so called "culture revolution" in Prussia.
The Prussians (more exact the rulers of Prussia) are famous because of their religious tolerance - but they had not been tolerant in case of Catholics so they created a weird kind of sado-maso story where inqusitors tortured young beautiful women ... but nothing was really true. Indeed witches had been burned in middle Europe - but "only" 20,000 and not 2 millions (=20,000*100)
And very very very most of such burnings did not happen in the Middle Ages but in the more modern age after the reformations. Protestants also burned witches - and where the Catholic inquisitions had been mighty nearly never a witch was burned. And while Catholics had a mix of 50% women and 50% men who had been burned not Catholics but Protestants had a mix of 90% burned women and only 10% burned men.

Why is this is an important fact of history for me? On a very simple reason: The Holocaust where millions of Jews had been murdered was nearly in the same geographical position - and although I do not know what this has to do with each other: I think it is better to try to find out what's really true in history because to believe in the lies of history perhaps might have uncalculable murderous - and perhaps also growing - "side effects".

So I would say history can be blamed as it refers to something specific like a specific event or thing to an individual or the individual himself.

A strange form how to think for me. How is what not lives able to be blamed? History is what it is. No one is responsible for the acts of other persons.

If republicans can blame democrats and democrats can blame republicans, then history can be blamed.

? ... they make decisions ... history is already decided ...

Time has to be managed.

Has it?

Yes it is fleeting

That's a metapher. Water flows. But this flow shows only "time exists". But what is time on its own ... knows no one, I think.

but it can be managed in the now but make it quick.

A second is a second - that's it. And I remember the philosopher Adam Smith was the first who showed how effective is division of work and the philosopher Karl Marx had been the first who found out how problematic are alienation processes in such contextes.

Lose and things don't go your way, win and its LG

I fear the loser-winner-absurdity has more to do with a game of chance. It's on one side the capitalistic motor for a higher wealth and unequality between people - while we are on the other side not able to live the same time without justice and equality.

Since I do not know death then I cannot answer that question as to what its like to die. I prefer it to be a mystery.

Your wish is my command.

I think therefore I am just like everyone else.

I think no one is like everyone else.

So even in sports I will enjoy the moment. Win then I am satisfied, lose then its over until the next contest.

Sports means first of all to learn to lose. "To win" is only one position in a long list of positions.

Idiot is a fun term.

In my culture everyone is an idiot. We say "You can be stupid. You just have to know how to help yourself."

when its applied to oneself then its funny. When applied to another then it just an observation or just being frustrated with that person.

To call someone else "idiot" is from my point of view nearly never wrong - although it is also a little idiotic to do so - or isn't it? Whatever: I never said I am not an idiot too.

 

[Kilroy2]

History is what really had happened in the past and not what we [prefer to] think about what had happened in the past.
Some long years ago for example I was very astonished how the inquisitions had been able to burn 2 million witches because an inquisition process had been very complex and long. Then I found out that the most what people think about this phenomenon is only basing on lies of the so called "culture revolution" in Prussia.
The Prussians (more exact the rulers of Prussia) are famous because of their religious tolerance - but they had not been tolerant in case of Catholics so they created a weird kind of sado-maso story where inqusitors tortured young beautiful women ... but nothing was really true. Indeed witches had been burned in middle Europe - but "only" 20,000 and not 2 millions (=20,000*100)
And very very very most of such burnings did not happen in the Middle Ages but in the more modern age after the reformations. Protestants also burned witches - and where the Catholic inquisitions had been mighty nearly never a witch was burned. And while Catholics had a mix of 50% women and 50% men who had been burned not Catholics but Protestants had a mix of 90% burned women and only 10% burned men.

Why is this is an important fact of history for me? On a very simple reason: The Holocaust where millions of Jews had been murdered was nearly in the same geographical position - and although I do not know what this has to do with each other: I think it is better to try to find out what's really true in history because to believe in the lies of history perhaps might have uncalculable murderous - and perhaps also growing - "side effects".



A strange form how to think for me. How is what not lives able to be blamed? History is what it is. No one is responsible for the acts of other persons.



? ... they make decisions ... history is already decided ...



Has it?



That's a metapher. Water flows. But this flow shows only "time exists". But what is time on its own ... knows no one, I think.



A second is a second - that's it. And I remember the philosopher Adam Smith was the first who showed how effective is division of work and the philosopher Karl Marx had been the first who found out how problematic are alienation processes in such contextes.



I fear the loser-winner-absurdity has more to do with a game of chance. It's on one side the capitalistic motor for a higher wealth and unequality between people - while we are on the other side not able to live the same time without justice and equality.




Your wish is my command.



I think no one is like everyone else.



Sports means first of all to learn to lose. "To win" is only one position in a long list of positions.



In my culture everyone is an idiot. We say "You can be stupid. You just have to know how to help yourself."



To call someone else "idiot" is from my point of view nearly never wrong - although it is also a little idiotic to do so - or isn't it? Whatever: I never said I am not an idiot too.

What we know about the past depends upon the person telling the story or if you were there what is your impressions and memories of it. Ask a multiple of people and they will have different versions of history

Yes some events cannot be denied.

Some history will never be know. So can it be said that it actually happen?

The Hamas attack on Israel is history. Yet some will have different memories of it or versions that they will take to the grave.

One can say cavemen had history but they had no concept of history. It is something man created and gave a word to.it. Actually it is just memories that one has or been told by another.

If you have a fond memory of something in the past and it brings a tear to your eyes, are you reliving history?

Memories do have a way of playing tricks on the mind.

You never have called yourself an Idiot - So you have no regrets then or done something stupid or made a mistake that you should not have.

Still it is about being able to laugh at yourself.

 

[zaangalewa]

What we know about the past depends upon the person telling the story or if you were there what is your impressions and memories of it. Ask a multiple of people and they will have different versions of history.

This is wrong - I personally knew for example immediatelly the Epicurean paradox - the problem of evil - not had been from Epicurus because in this case Epicurus had had to have an idea about monotheism to say so. This paradox is from a Christian philosopher - perhaps Lacantius on his own who reported the first time in history about. And there are also many other ways to find something out about history - although when some ways are very mysterious as for example is the mechanism of Antikythera.

The problem of history are not different opinions - because we can find out very well what we know and what we don't know - our problem is that the main factor of history - the human beings on their own - are often much more intelligent than we are but very most people - are unbelieveable arrogant in case of history and the life of the people of the past. Example: On their own many or most would not survive only one week in the stone ages - but when you tell them that it had been a genius from the stone age who invented for example the needle then they will nevertheless not understand how important the needle had been - and how important it still is - and that they are on their own not clever enough to invent a needle if they never had seen one.

Yes some events cannot be denied.

Some history will never be know.

But - and this is a very big "but" - what happens when you'll throw a book into the fire? Is it lost forever or not? As strange as it sounds physics teaches us that the information which was in this book never goes totally lost. I don't know what we will be able to do in a billion years - if we will be able to survive the nuclear world war which we will start tomorrow because we all are idiots who let us lead from more worse idiots.

So can it be said that it actually happen?

The Hamas attack on Israel is history.

No. That's the reality in which we all live now.

Yet some will have different memories of it or versions that they will take to the grave.

Unimportant. Nearly everything what the most people think is always only nonsense - but we are able to find out what's right and wrong. That's only a question of motivation.

One can say cavemen had history but they had no concept of history.

What's nonsense. You follow the wrong idea history exists in history books. But history is real. Take the needle again as an example. Without needle our world would be totally different. We live in the "tradition of the needle" - that's our history. Before Europeans came to America the Red Indians there did for example not live in the "tradition of the wheel" and did also not live in the "tradition of the horse." But when we think today about Red Indians then horses - specially in North America - are a very important tradition for them.

It is something man created and gave a word to.it. Actually it is just memories that one has or been told by another.

Hmmm - "only memories" is a wide range. I heard the first Australian aborigines we discovered had (and have) very long epic tales and the young aborigines had ben able to repeat such an epos in the length of about 4 hours nearly verbally after they had heard it the first time.
And when you will listen to the fairy tales of the brothers Grimm (they did not make fairy tales - they had been scientists who saved old existing fairy tales before they had been lost forever in industrialized times) then you can see that many of the fairy tales not only had been German fairy tales but existed in different forms also in many other cultures in Europe and Asia.

If you have a fond memory of something in the past and it brings a tear to your eyes, are you reliving history?

I remember my tears in case of Winnetou now. The first two times when I read the books (again) about him and one time when I saw him dying in a film. Winnetou was a fiction - but the background was "the noble free wild man". Louis-Armand de Lom d’Arce used this cliche the first time in context with Hurons. Very well known is Jean-Jacques Rousseau who 1755 in his "Discours sur l’inégalité" created this idealized picture of human beings. Karl May had had Immanuel Kant's talent to report about second hand experiences as if he had lived within this world on his own. I am by the way meanwhile convinced that in my heaven will live Winnetou - if I will come to heaven, what I somehow doubt about when I take a look at the situation of the world. I hope I will not have the duty to kill someone.

Memories do have a way of playing tricks on the mind.

More correct: Memories are a special form how to think. This is not comparable with books or data. We bring memories into life and take care - often without to be able to know this - that memories "fit". All the "unfitting" memories in the bible show by the way that the authors of the bible did do a damn good job.

You never have called yourself an Idiot -

Read what I wrote here in this forum. I'm very sure I called myselve sometimes an idiot. I often do so in my daily life.

So you have no regrets then or done something stupid or made a mistake that you should not have.

Still it is about being able to laugh at yourself.

... o...kay??? ... A waste of time that I tried to give you a relativelly serios answer. Whatever.

 

[toobfreak]

Presentism: do the past and the future exist?​

OF COURSE THEY DO. How do people let themselves get caught up in these uselessly dead-end mental gymnastic syllogisms?

The past and present MUST exist. Without them, there could be no present!

For the present exists in time is obvious because we are here, and for there to even BE a present, that means that the past has immediately preceded, which we can confirm through our recollection of it of those things which just happened old and new.

And since we have just ascertained the past sliding into the present, that proves there must always be a future just ahead of it which the present must continually slide into.

Therefore, the past, present and future are but legs of the same mule all equally existing together co-dependent on the other for their mutual continuation and existence.

 

[ThisIsMe]

There has to be a destination to push for it. And if it requires an hour or so for my bread to rise I have to believe there is a future for it to rise into.

With no past or no future, there would be no need for clocks or watches or the date and time shown on our computers. Time would be meaningless. But it exists so there is your argument for past and future.

I can respect that. I’m just presenting an argument of a topic I heard about. There is no wrong answer here. The argument being made is that, in the course of time your bread will rise, but, that moment, and each moment when the bread is rising only happens when that moment occurs in the present, your bread may rise in an hour, but that hour doesn’t exist, only each and every moment you experience at this time does. The end of this message I’m typing does not yet exist. The thought I’m trying to convey exists in my head, currently, but, the time it takes to type each letter doesn’t exist until it happens and once that moment passes, it’s gone.

Again, it’s a fringe theory but it’s interesting to me.

 

[Foxfyre]

I can respect that. I’m just presenting an argument of a topic I heard about. There is no wrong answer here. The argument being made is that, in the course of time your bread will rise, but, that moment, and each moment when the bread is rising only happens when that moment occurs in the present, your bread may rise in an hour, but that hour doesn’t exist, only each and every moment you experience at this time does. The end of this message I’m typing does not yet exist. The thought I’m trying to convey exists in my head, currently, but, the time it takes to type each letter doesn’t exist until it happens and once that moment passes, it’s gone.

Again, it’s a fringe theory but it’s interesting to me.

I too enjoy wrestling with philosophical phenomena like this.

In the movie "Final Countdown" a civilian efficiency expert working for a defense contractor in the mid 1980's makes a routine run on the aircraft carrier Nimitz. On that routine run, the carrier inadvertently passes through a time warp taking it back to 1945 just before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Without going into the whole plot, a pilot on the carrier--youngish as you would expect a pilot to be--is stranded on a deserted Hawaiian beach.

The Carrier is transported back through the time warp just before it confronts the approaching Japanese fleet which, with its superior aircraft and fire power, it could have taken out easily by itself. That one pilot was left behind however.

Upon arrival back at Pearl Harbor, again in the mid 1980's, the civilian efficiency expert witness to all that and who had gotten to know the pilot who left behind, was introduced for the first time to his boss. His boss was that young pilot now, 40 years later, a graying senior citizen.

So, that young pilot on the carrier that left that day and the older defense contractor, the same man, apparently existed simultaneously in that same day. Which would put a different twist on your OP concept that there is no past and no future but every exists all at the same time.

It's a bit of a mental workout trying to wrap your mind around all that.

 

[Kilroy2]

The future can't exist because it hasn't happen yet. People can plan and have certain expectations that the future will exist. Hopes, dreams , planning, and expectations (good or bad) keeps people moving or can hold them back.

The past had existed and is a memory, something read about, or some physical observations, Thus it can be recreated either as a new memory, something physical, or a feeling.

It is something man labeled to explain something for the brain to process.

 

[BackAgain]

This is another topic that interests me. Presentism is the belief that the past doesn’t exist nor does the future. The only thing that exists is the very moment you’re currently living in. With every passing moment, what was ceases to exist, and what is to be doesnt exist yet. Kind of like and old movie projector. The loaded reel hasn’t been created yet and the empty reel no longer exists. The only thing that does exist is what is currently in front of the lense, nothing else.

Some believe that the past and the future do exist, some don’t.

What do you think?

Yes. I was younger in the past.

I am older now. But I’ll be younger liking back on today than I will be in the future.

Time is more like a worm than anything else.

 

[ThisIsMe]

I too enjoy wrestling with philosophical phenomena like this.

In the movie "Final Countdown" a civilian efficiency expert working for a defense contractor in the mid 1980's makes a routine run on the aircraft carrier Nimitz. On that routine run, the carrier inadvertently passes through a time warp taking it back to 1945 just before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Without going into the whole plot, a pilot on the carrier--youngish as you would expect a pilot to be--is stranded on a deserted Hawaiian beach.

The Carrier is transported back through the time warp just before it confronts the approaching Japanese fleet which, with its superior aircraft and fire power, it could have taken out easily by itself. That one pilot was left behind however.

Upon arrival back at Pearl Harbor, again in the mid 1980's, the civilian efficiency expert witness to all that and who had gotten to know the pilot who left behind, was introduced for the first time to his boss. His boss was that young pilot now, 40 years later, a graying senior citizen.

So, that young pilot on the carrier that left that day and the older defense contractor, the same man, apparently existed simultaneously in that same day. Which would put a different twist on your OP concept that there is no past and no future but every exists all at the same time.

It's a bit of a mental workout trying to wrap your mind around all that.

I’ve seen the movie .

 

[zaangalewa]

I can respect that. I’m just presenting an argument of a topic I heard about. There is no wrong answer here. The argument being made is that, in the course of time your bread will rise, but, that moment, and each moment when the bread is rising only happens when that moment occurs in the present, your bread may rise in an hour, but that hour doesn’t exist, only each and every moment you experience at this time does. The end of this message I’m typing does not yet exist. The thought I’m trying to convey exists in my head, currently, but, the time it takes to type each letter doesn’t exist until it happens and once that moment passes, it’s gone.

Again, it’s a fringe theory but it’s interesting to me.

In this context are interesting questions like "What happens between two moments?" or "How many time is between two moments?". The imagination is to live in a parallel time or to live in another time zone. A Plank-second (officially called "Plank-time") is the most little time span which is able to exist. Whether it is time between two Plank-seconds we do not know. But what if a billion years are between two Plank-seconds? I guess this would change nothing for us. This "time" would not exist because nothing happens. We always have this moment - and the next moment. But between a Plank-past (last plank-second) and Plank-future (next Plank-second) would be "nothing".

 

[zaangalewa]

I too enjoy wrestling with philosophical phenomena like this.

In the movie "Final Countdown" a civilian efficiency expert working for a defense contractor in the mid 1980's makes a routine run on the aircraft carrier Nimitz. On that routine run, the carrier inadvertently passes through a time warp taking it back to 1945 just before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Without going into the whole plot, a pilot on the carrier--youngish as you would expect a pilot to be--is stranded on a deserted Hawaiian beach.

The Carrier is transported back through the time warp just before it confronts the approaching Japanese fleet which, with its superior aircraft and fire power, it could have taken out easily by itself. That one pilot was left behind however.

Upon arrival back at Pearl Harbor, again in the mid 1980's, the civilian efficiency expert witness to all that and who had gotten to know the pilot who left behind, was introduced for the first time to his boss. His boss was that young pilot now, 40 years later, a graying senior citizen.

So, that young pilot on the carrier that left that day and the older defense contractor, the same man, apparently existed simultaneously in that same day. Which would put a different twist on your OP concept that there is no past and no future but every exists all at the same time.

But how to go over a street where cars drive in such a case? How to be sure not to be killed from a car which drove 10 years ago along this street - or which will return in 10 years?

It's a bit of a mental workout trying to wrap your mind around all that.