Are we living in the past?
This event - this one - seems to me to be present. It is, I think, occurring 'now'.
But if time is some kind of wierd soup in which we're all slowly drowning, then there will surely be a lag between some event occurring and the event of my mind representing it to be occuring, occuring.
If that's true, then the mental event of mine that represents this - this now - to be occurring, is representing as occuring now something that has, in fact, already occurred. This event - this one - is in the past, not the present. I perceive it to be in the present - it has presentness to me - but in reality it is past.
If that's true, then doesn't that mean we are subject to a systematic illusion of the present? All the events we take to be present, are in fact past. Hence, we would actually be living in the past in the sense that everything we took to be present is not present, but past. (Obviously we are actually in the present, it is just that experientially we would be in the past - we would be living in the past in 'that' sense).
A thought experiment to illustrate the point: imagine you are on a jet plane and it crashes into the side of a mountain at top speed. Would you experience the crash? Would you experience - albeit very briefly - the plane around you crumbling away? Or would you not experience the crash at all?
I mean, a jet aircraft travels at around the speed of a bullet. So if it hits the mountain at that speed, you're brain is going to be demolished faster than it can transmit this information to your mind. So, what happens just prior to the impact is all that will have time to find its way into your mind, the actual crash itself won't.
I think that's all baloney and that it is grossly implausible that what we take to be the present is in fact the past. I think, for the most part, we accurately perceive that we are in the present. And as such I think we would experience the crash, up to the point where our brain is demolished.
Discuss. And don't mention physics once please.
But if time is some kind of wierd soup in which we're all slowly drowning, then there will surely be a lag between some event occurring and the event of my mind representing it to be occuring, occuring.
If that's true, then the mental event of mine that represents this - this now - to be occurring, is representing as occuring now something that has, in fact, already occurred. This event - this one - is in the past, not the present. I perceive it to be in the present - it has presentness to me - but in reality it is past.
If that's true, then doesn't that mean we are subject to a systematic illusion of the present? All the events we take to be present, are in fact past. Hence, we would actually be living in the past in the sense that everything we took to be present is not present, but past. (Obviously we are actually in the present, it is just that experientially we would be in the past - we would be living in the past in 'that' sense).
A thought experiment to illustrate the point: imagine you are on a jet plane and it crashes into the side of a mountain at top speed. Would you experience the crash? Would you experience - albeit very briefly - the plane around you crumbling away? Or would you not experience the crash at all?
I mean, a jet aircraft travels at around the speed of a bullet. So if it hits the mountain at that speed, you're brain is going to be demolished faster than it can transmit this information to your mind. So, what happens just prior to the impact is all that will have time to find its way into your mind, the actual crash itself won't.
I think that's all baloney and that it is grossly implausible that what we take to be the present is in fact the past. I think, for the most part, we accurately perceive that we are in the present. And as such I think we would experience the crash, up to the point where our brain is demolished.
Discuss. And don't mention physics once please.
Comments (60)
But the human perception of time is just that, a perception, something our minds utilize to help us navigate reality, such as it may be. All kinds of assumptions can be made about the nature of time, and likewise the nature of human perception in relation to time, however, I wouldn't go so far as to declare with any degree of certainty that time only flows in the direction which we perceive. The universe is truly vast, and for all we know, there might be an infinite number of infinitely vast universes, a multiverse if you will. Does it matter how time conducts itself if we can't do anything about it? Perhaps in the relatively near future, some technology will afford us new and valuable insight into time and our perceptions thereof, but as far as I know, how we experience the linear progression of time is fundamentally subjective.
So,
1. if time is a soup - which seems to be the received view - then we do not perceive the present moment.
2. We 'do' perceive the present moment. This, right now, is present.
3. Therefore time is not a soup.
What we need is an account of time that does not render our impressions of the present illusory.
Philip K. Dick was of that opinion.
Then he deserved his surname.
Uh ... he's agreeing with you. I'm not sure I follow your point, and I disagree strongly with your apparent criticism of the man.
In some of his later writings he expressed that idea. I can't imagine slurring the guy for his name. Do you even know who he is? I'm going to let this go. Sorry I mentioned it.
No, I am unsure who he was, and I am entirely unclear why you are mentioning him.
I don't agree with him if he thinks we're subject to a systematic illusion of the present. But as I suspect he's dead, I can't take him to task about it.
Hence embarrassing yourself. Use the Google, Luke. Philip K. Dick was a prolific writer of science fiction. He's greatly revered.
How? I'm not embarrassed. He should be, with a name like that.
Anyway, how about actually addressing the OP rather than telling me about dead science fiction authors with silly names
Asshole. LOL. No more from me on this.
Have you seen any of the movies Minority Report, Blade Runner, Total Recall, The Adjustment Bureau, or A Scanner Darkly?
As @tim wood has said, you are stumbling along in this post and there's nothing but your own feet to blame.
I am asking about what I am asking about - read the OP.
Quoting tim wood
Another person who thinks philosophy is about defining things. Get a dictionary and solve all the problems of philosophy!
Quoting tim wood
An attitude of Reason.
Quoting tim wood
Er, what?
Quoting tim wood
No. That's the result of a particular picture of time - time as soup. As explained in the OP.
But if - if - an analysis of time has the upshot that all of our impressions of 'now' constitute illusions, then that analysis is rubbish.
First order of business is to respect appearances.
A good analysis of time is not one that renders our experience of the present systematically illusory, but one that vindicates it. Certainly, if other things are equal then an analysis of time that respects the appearances - and thus permits us an awareness of the present moment - is rationally to be preferred to one that does not.
That makes no sense at all.
Quoting Umbra
Nor does that. If - if - our experiences lag behind the reality they are giving us an experience of, then we are subject to an illusion of the present, for what our experience represents to be present is actually past.
Uhhh why do you think this? You've made a solid case for the opposite view. Can we agree that experiences arise when certain brain operations occur? Can we agree that those operations take time (though a minuscule amount of it)? If so how can you avoid the conclusion that everything experienced is a fraction of a fraction of a second behind what is actually happening.
The term the present connotes two different, but related, concepts: the mathematical present (that fleeting point on a real number line representing the procession of time), and the colloquial sense of the present, which is rooted in perception.
Our sensory perceptions take time to be integrated by the brain. The physics (sorry!) makes it impossible for each sense to be precisely synchronized, but they are sufficiently synchronized to deliver a reasonably accurate integrated perception of the environment in which we can interact.
Colloquial reference to the present are contextual. At present:
- I'm typing this response (I'm referring to the entire period of time I spend on it);
- The word I'm typing is "present" (which was true only during the brief period of time I was typing those letters).
- Donald Trump is President (I'm referring to the four year period in which that is true).
So its fuzzy semantically and perceptually, but it's precise only in the mathematical sense.
As Augustine has said, strictly speaking there is (for us) no past, only the present of things past.
Appearances can be deceptive while also being true. If I peer into the night sky with a telescope, I can rationally cognize that the stars I am observing are the result of events that have happened long ago. Perhaps the stars I see no longer even exist. But it does not follow that my experience of the present moment is therefore illusory. In other words, I think we are in agreement here, but I think you are framing the question with a faulty premise.
It is a basic principle of investigation, first articulated by Aristotle, that you 'respect the appearances'.
If something appears to be the case, that is prima facie evidence that it 'is' the case.
The objects of sense experiences appear to have now-ness.
So, that is prima facie evidence that they do have now-ness.
What you're all doing is starting out with a certain idea about how things are - an idea whose truth should not be taken for granted - and then blithely concluding that as that idea would force us to conclude that all our impressions of the present are illusory, they 'are' illusory.
That's the opposite of what you should do if you're serious about understanding reality. For what you've done is effectively decide who's guilty 'before' investigating the crime scene. You should not assume who's guilty before investigating the scene - you should just investigate the scene and let the evidence lead you.
What you are doing is using philosophy to support whatever worldview you happen to have in your head at the moment. That's not what you should use philosophy to do. That's to try and make Reason your slave.
Now, the events that you are experiencing right now appear to be 'right now' - that is, they have presentness. They appear to be now, so other things being equal that is good evidence that they 'are' now. It is therefore prima facie evidence that the 'soup' conception of time is false.
Perhaps changing the question would be better. What would it take - so, forget what you think is in fact the case - what would it take for our perceptions of the present moment to be veridical? How would things need to be, for my impression that this is happening 'now' to be correct?
No, not 'of course'. The opposite: of course we experience the present, not an illusion of the present.
Make the adjustments necessary.
And 'of course' we have free will.
Make the adjustments necessary.
And so on.
A fool overturns the more clear in favour of respecting the less. Be wise!
Try and answer that question.
I fail to see why not. My experience represents its objects to be present. So, for it to be accurate they would need actually to be present. Yet on the time-as-soup view, what my experience represents to be the case is not the case. The objects of my experience (that is, not the experience itself, but what it represents to be the case) have in reality a quite different property - pastness - to the presentness that I perceive them to have.
How are such experiences not, therefore, illusory?
I think it is you - not I - who has changed the premise. You're simply pointing out that the experience itself is now. Yes, but I am not talking about the experience itself, but its representative contents.
take some other illusion - any illusion you like. Well, the experience constitutive of the illusion is not illusory in the sense that I 'am' having an experience. But it is its 'contents' that qualify it as an illusion - for what they represent to be the case is not accurate. In my dreams I take my imaginings to not be imagininings, and hence I seem to be inhabiting a mind-external world on such occasions. But the impression is illusory, for what my experiences represent to be mind-external are mind-internal.
That's exactly what is the case here. The content of some of my mental states are represented to have presentness, whereas in fact they do not.
To put it another way, this experience right now does not seem to be of the past, but of the present. If it is actually of the past, then it is illusory. We do not appear to be experiencing the past, but the present.
I mean this:
Quoting Tzeentch
just sounds like Krishnamurti nonsense. It is a) not, by any stretch of the imagination, the 'real' question; and b) answer the second bit yourself by looking into a mirror and staring at your own eyes.
That's the presentist outlook; now, if we are to get around that, we need to consider the eternalize. viewpoint, wherein already complete events are simple presented…
My view is that it is absurd to think that we are not aware of the present moment.
There are views about hte nature of time - the idea that time is some kind of mind-external substance - that imply we are not aware of the present moment, but are subject to the systematic illusion of presentness.
I am saying that those views need to be rejected, if that is indeed what they imply.
What we need to think about is how it would be possible to be aware of the present moment, for then we would be wondering about how things would need to be if things are to be as they appear to be.
I'm just saying that I've treated the presentist mode of time, so far, and so the only hope lies in the eternalist mode, wherein every event/path of Everything is all at once, with no becoming, but just us somehow proceeding along world lines, although this is difficult for us to tell apart from presentism.
Quoting Bartricks
Why can't it simply mean that what we consider the present is also always impregnated with the past (and also with the future, for that matter)?
Quoting Bartricks
Simply because the things of our present experience may contain the "property of pastness" does not mean that we are under the sway of an illusion. Again, I know that the light from the stars I am seeing is the result of an event that occurred long ago. But that does not make the light's presence in my immediate experience an illusion--there is nothing "false" about it's appearance in my visual field, or in my experience of it as something present. In the same way I am not in error when I consider this phenomena to be part of my experiential present.
Anyway, can you explain how the view that only present things exist would show that our perceptions of the present are accurate and not systematically mistaken?
it is by separating the two that one sees that we are subject to an illusion of the presentness of things, given a certain view about the nature of time.
Quoting Umbra
How could it not do, given that our experience does not represent them to have that property, but a quite different one - presentness?
Quoting Umbra
When I look at the Mueller Lyer lines - the two parallel straight lines that appear, visually, to be bending - I know that the two lines are straight and not bending. But they nevertheless 'appear' to be bending, and thus I am subject to an illusion. An illusion, to be an illusion, does not have to convince its victim that what is being represented to be the case, is in fact the case. It is sufficient that some aspect of what is being represented to be the case, is not the case.
Likewise, though I may believe correctly that the stars I am seeing are in fact in the past, my experience of them represents them to be in the present. No-one, for instance, who has not been told about the stars and the length of time it takes their light to travel to us, would believe they are looking at past stars. They would believe that the stars are as present as everything else in their experience - because that is what their experience represents to be the case.
So I do not really see what your star example is supposed to illustrate, for it seems if anything just to describe a supposed illusion - that stars that appear to be in the present, are in fact in the past.
Presentism is the temporal mode of time, there is only now; the future is not yet and the past is gone. All is generated anew, as the new now from the previous now, which goes away. It's not clear how thick or thin the now is. This clashes with Einstein's relativity.
Quoting Bartricks
Assuming presentism, our perceptions as to what is present are brain memories stitched together in consciousness, but the real events have already perished. It's like watching a tape-delayed TV show; it's not really live, although it's close.
In the non-temporal mode of time, eternalism, there is no time, for this mode is timeless. It's like Einstein's Block universe. All the events are pre-canned; the future and the past exist ever. Somehow, we pass though it, giving us our apparent now.
In the growing block mode of time, the past is kept and ever remains but the future is not yet.
You ought to consider that if everything is in the past, as you describe in the op, then things we are aware of are only memories. However, this is clearly not the case, because we anticipate things of the future, and are aware of them, at the same time. Because of this anticipation, the future affects our awareness just as much as the past. Therefore our awareness is part past, memories, and part future, anticipation.
You might think that if our awareness is partly of the past, and partly of the future, the present remains an illusion. However, when we realize that there is a substantial difference between future and past, then we must recognize a real division between them, to justify that difference. This is the reality of the present. Awareness of the present is not an illusion, it's the apprehension of a real difference between future and past.
That's not my view. That's what a 'time as soup' view would imply. But as I said in the OP, I think it's baloney precisely because it has that upshot.
So what we need to think about is what it would take for a person to be accurately perceiving the present moment.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I don't think that follows. Memories are recollections, but what I am talking about are our impressions of the present moment. I am wondering what it would take for them to be accurate.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I do not follow. Given that my current impressions represent their content to be 'present', they'd need actually to be present for those impressions to qualify as veridical. So there would need to be no lag between the content of the impression obtaining, and the impression forming in my mind.
The presumption seems to be that the *real* present moment is the time of consciousness (or the time at which we find ourselves conscious) minus 300-500 milliseconds of brain processing time. But why make this presumption? The word "present" is not commonly used in this way, and I see no basis for preferring the 'mathematical present' over the 'colloquial present' (to borrow 's terms).
The way to overcome this and respect appearances is to reject the 'objective soup' view of time. What I suggest replacing it with is an 'external attitude' view of time. According to my replacement, 'what it is' for an event to be in the present is for that event to be being thought about in a certain kind of way, albeit not by us but by some third party - by Reason.
It would have to be instant; no perceiving; no figuring out; no processing at all.
You can sense past events, think past memories, but this happens in the present, it's mysterious. It is more time-cut off.
Is there a past? Didn't we invent the clock? Is the past waste energy?
But it can't involve 'no perceiving' (that's a contradiction). For the question is 'what it would take' for us to be perceiving the present moment.
If time is a dimension in which events are located, then it is hard to see how the events constitutive of our experiences could do anything but lag behind the events they are telling us about. Hence perceiving the present moment becomes like catching one's shadow.
But there's a different way to think about time, one which makes possible (though not inevitable) that our apparent perceptions of the present moment are indeed what they seem to be.
For example, is this a joke?
"I don't know about you guys, but I live in a square-circular house. I can look at it in a mirror anytime I want"
Presumably not, because the first claim is just incoherent and the second doesn't do anything to reveal - to our delight or frustration - a confused sense in which the first may, after all, be true.
But that, it seems to me, is how things are with what you said too.
So I really do not understand.
Anyway, let's say that your joke causes mirth in me. Then the joke is funny - funny-to-me. It has the property of being 'funny-to-me'. It won't necessarily have that property if it is funny to someone else, or funny to you. It only has that property if it produces mirth in me.
What I propose is that the property of being 'present' is akin to this kind of a property. An event is 'present' when it features as the object of Reason's temporal attitudes, just as a joke is funny-to-me when it features as the object of my mirth.
I think we're both saying something similar or the same: you say the present moment is the time of reasoning, whereas I say it is the time of consciousness.
I wouldn't define it like that, as those definitions are circular (given that to say that 'it is the time of consciousness' is equivalent to saying it "it is the moment consciousness is present" ).
My view is that 'time' is not a stuff - not a dimension, not a goo that events are suspended in. Time is a set of attitudes that Reason adopts towards events. It has nothing to do with us reasoning.
I would note that others have defined the present moment differently, as the moment consciousness is present minus the brain processing time of approximately 300-500ms.
Your use of "consciousness is present" appears to conflate 'consciousness is present in me' and 'consciousness is at the present moment'. Of course, I define the present moment as the (same) time that consciousness is present in me, but others in this discussion do not.
Quoting Bartricks
This seems like a contradiction. Are you making a distinction between Reason and reasoning? What is it?
No, that wasn't a definition of the present moment. The person who wrote it was just saying what I'd already said, namely that if time is a kind of soup, then what we experience as the present moment has in fact already passed.
The present moment is just the present moment - it is what a moment is if it is not past or future. To say of a moment that it is 'present' is to say something about its temporal properties.
Quoting Luke
No, that's a conflation you are making, not me. I have been clear. There is a present moment. The experiences you are having right now are in it.
The point, however, is that what they are experiences 'of' will be past events if - if - that is, time is a kind of stuff.
I don't think it is a kind of stuff. I think things are largely as they appear. These events - these ones - appear to be happening right now. I think they probably are happening right now, not a fraction of a second ago.
Quoting Luke
How does it seem like a contradiction? There isn't even a whiff of contradiction about it.
'Our reason' is a faculty. Using it is called 'reasoning'. And what it gives us insight into is Reason.
For an analogy: sight, seeing, and sights. Sight is a faculty. Seeing is what you're doing when you're using it. And sights are what you see with it.
Our reason is a faculty; reasoning is what you're doing when you use it; and Reason is what you gain insight into by using it.
Time, I am saying, is made of Reason's attitudes.
This is equivalent to saying that "what we experience as the present moment" is not really the present moment, because it "has in fact already passed". This is to define the *real* present moment as "what we experience as the present moment" minus the brain processing time.
Quoting Bartricks
Sure, if you define the temporal property of "now" or "the present moment" as being simultaneous with our conscious experiences.
No, I am just saying what the present moment is made of - that is, I am saying what the property of presentness is.
There's what is present, and there's what presentness is. You're running these together.
To be mirthless at such wit means you are behind the times. :smirk: