Momentary question

[Notvacka]

An argument I would give about the non existence of the past is that what is here right now is infinite and infinity can't be added to by an entityt such as the past. Why can't infinity be added to? There is no point at which one could connect anything else to it. there is no tail or head, no inside or outside ot outside of infinity.

But our physical "now" is only (theoretically) infinite in three spatial dimensions, whereas it's by definiton finite in the temporal dimension. "Now" is a slice of time, and like a slice of saussage it has two sides (past and future) and you could (theoretically) add an infinite ammount of time (or saussage) to each side of the slice.

[reasonvemotion]

"Now" is a slice of time, and like a slice of saussage it has two sides (past and future) and you could (theoretically) add an infinite ammount of time (or saussage) to each side of the slice.

How can you do that. The past yes, can contribute to one half, but the future has not arrived and it may never arrive, (for you, figuratively speaking). It is not yet yours to do with as you wish. There is no guarantee, whereas the guarantee of the past is postive because it has already happened. I liken it, (the future) to betting on an uncertainty.

[reasonvemotion]

You mean you think I haven't gone down the Nijinsky route quite yet?

http://coilhouse.net/2007/09/vaslav-nijinskys-diaries/


Not unless your schizophrenic, as he was.

[chaz wyman]

No, infinity is not beyond my experience. It IS my experience. This not a rational statement but who cares about that! In the end rationality is another way of kidding ourselves.

Since you have not existed forever, infinity is NOT your experience. Your 'experience' of infinity is your imagination.
There is a disjuncture between your irrationality, and having a conversation with another person. Reason is the ground upon which we can continue. Irrationality puts you in a wilderness of your own creation.

[chaz wyman]

I don't know.../ do we choose, or is it like breathing and have to remember? In which case are we talking about a function rather than an arena of experiences that no longer occur? Me in the womb, me in the seconds before my death and me typing... these are just varieties of me, any one of which I can access right now! The future and past are inaccessible only in according to the amount to which we require them. Simon Weil's thoughts on 'necessity' is my contemplation here. Necessity not only rules us according to our requirements, it also hosts us according to our awareness of life's mysteries.

I think Reasonvemotion has a good point, as long as the idea of 'choice' is not seen as perfectly conscious. There are many reasons why some memories are not retained. Extreme pain fades into something that you can cope with. Unhappy memories are pushed aside and many of the worst details are lost forever.
I think we tend to construct a narrative of our lives that does not need all those pesky details. All the broad stokes of our existence fit into a plot, not always smooth, but that tell a story.
In some instances we construct memories to fit gaps that have been missed, or we re-imagine early details that we do not actually remember but re-construct. Such things as life in the womb or remembering being born are of this type.

[chaz wyman]

Was somehow thinking of lennon's Instant Karma whilst tapping in the above - and damn if it wasn't the next song on the radio!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=AU&hl=e ... qP3wT5lpa4

You might have subconsciously heard the radio DJ tell you that s/he was going to play it whilst your attention was elsewhere, typing. Then as the tune was already in your head, hearing it on the radio you think you have predicted it.

[chaz wyman]

I get what you are saying but still I can't agree.

Great. I'm not looking for agreement, only understanding. And I get your point too.

My aim here, as in many other threads, is to show how little of our experienced existence actually takes place in reality. We live most of our lives in our imagination.

That is true, and as I said couple of posts ago, we tend to re-construct the narrative of our lives both from that imagination and from 'true' memories that we have. Both act as a resource to provide a coherent 'plot' of our existence.
In a very profound way our entire conception of the cold hard world is an ideal of it we hold within us. The world can intrude on our most fantastic notions though.
As individuals some of us heed the lessons of hard reality, whilst others rely more on their re-constructed world. I've lived with people who have a tendency more than others to re-write history, and things other people remember differently to not match with theirs.

[chaz wyman]

You mean you think I haven't gone down the Nijinsky route quite yet?

http://coilhouse.net/2007/09/vaslav-nijinskys-diaries/


Not unless your schizophrenic, as he was.

Trouble with following the route of a schizophrenic, is that you have too many choices.

[Notvacka]

"Now" is a slice of time, and like a slice of saussage it has two sides (past and future) and you could (theoretically) add an infinite ammount of time (or saussage) to each side of the slice.

How can you do that. The past yes, can contribute to one half, but the future has not arrived and it may never arrive, (for you, figuratively speaking). It is not yet yours to do with as you wish. There is no guarantee, whereas the guarantee of the past is postive because it has already happened. I liken it, (the future) to betting on an uncertainty.

That's beside the point here. I said nothing about "do with as you wish" or "guarantee". It's possible that ime has a beginning and an end, but any moment in between has both past and future. Note also that I cautiously added "theoretically" to my statement.

As for the future "arriving", I don't share that view. Time does not move. We move through time. And as for "do with as you wish", I don't believe in free will. There is no difference between predetermination and postdetermination. Everything is determined at some point in time, hence everything is determined. Choices, like so much else, exist in our imagination, not in reality.

[chaz wyman]

Here's a thought. As humans we tend to quantify, and qualify (give a quality to). So we have this abstract idea about time, which is employed as an abstraction upon which to tag a series of events so as to give them priority and anteriority. This seems to provide a framework for a succession of events so that we can understand cause and effect, the changing of the seasons and the repetition of the day. Thus 'time' is accorded a substance. We talk about using time, using time up, you run out of it, you can even waste it.
But let's start by saying that time does not exist. That it is nothing more than that abstraction; an abstraction of our experience; not having an objective quality, being epiphenomenal to our sensible world. This can explain a lot.
It explains why time seems to speed up as you grow older; and it explains why an indolent life is used up quickly as the years fly by; whilst a life full of new experiences and full of activity years pass more slowly; it also explains why when you return to an old social context that has not been active the passage of the years seems to have gone by in a whisper.
So in a sense it is not that we use our experience to measure time; it is that we plot time against our experience.

[Bernard]

Yep, so I would say that we construct something that is very necessary to us out of something which is in essence unfathomable. We end up mistaking our construction for the substance it is made of: we make a bowl out of clay and believe it is only a bowl, disbelieving that its clay - clay doesn't exist for us anymore, becoming only mythical. It is not of interest or of practical value to know its clay.

So time is something we construct out of infinity. Infinity becomes something with no reality to us because of its Zero practical value.

[Bernard]

No there was no DJ it was one of those continuous music stations.

Was somehow thinking of lennon's Instant Karma whilst tapping in the above - and damn if it wasn't the next song on the radio!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=AU&hl=e ... qP3wT5lpa4

You might have subconsciously heard the radio DJ tell you that s/he was going to play it whilst your attention was elsewhere, typing. Then as the tune was already in your head, hearing it on the radio you think you have predicted it.

[Bernard]

Every experience of our life is stored in us.

I don't know.../ do we choose, or is it like breathing and have to remember? In which case are we talking about a function rather than an arena of experiences that no longer occur? Me in the womb, me in the seconds before my death and me typing... these are just varieties of me, any one of which I can access right now! The future and past are inaccessible only in according to the amount to which we require them. Simon Weil's thoughts on 'necessity' is my contemplation here. Necessity not only rules us according to our requirements, it also hosts us according to our awareness of life's mysteries.

I think Reasonvemotion has a good point, as long as the idea of 'choice' is not seen as perfectly conscious. There are many reasons why some memories are not retained. Extreme pain fades into something that you can cope with. Unhappy memories are pushed aside and many of the worst details are lost forever.
I think we tend to construct a narrative of our lives that does not need all those pesky details. All the broad stokes of our existence fit into a plot, not always smooth, but that tell a story.
In some instances we construct memories to fit gaps that have been missed, or we re-imagine early details that we do not actually remember but re-construct. Such things as life in the womb or remembering being born are of this type.

[Bernard]

No, infinity is not beyond my experience. It IS my experience. This not a rational statement but who cares about that! In the end rationality is another way of kidding ourselves.

Since you have not existed forever, infinity is NOT your experience. Your 'experience' of infinity is your imagination.
There is a disjuncture between your irrationality, and having a conversation with another person. Reason is the ground upon which we can continue. Irrationality puts you in a wilderness of your own creation.

A drop of water doesn't last as a drop of water but it does last as water, and no one can deny it is water whilst it is a drop. That's our trouble; we define ourselves exclusively in terms that only emphasise our separateness. It seems we have to have bricks thrown at us before we can admit that our separateness is only very temporary and that we belong to being as a whole, which is infinite.

If reason were the primary ground upon which we can continue than I just simply wouldn't be here any more because of the intolerableness of such a scenario. Rationality is a filigree only of what really keeps us hanging in there, and which is not rational.

We all shine on... even if not as ourselves.

[chaz wyman]

Yep, so I would say that we construct something that is very necessary to us out of something which is in essence unfathomable. We end up mistaking our construction for the substance it is made of: we make a bowl out of clay and believe it is only a bowl, disbelieving that its clay - clay doesn't exist for us anymore, becoming only mythical. It is not of interest or of practical value to know its clay.

So time is something we construct out of infinity. Infinity becomes something with no reality to us because of its Zero practical value.

And I think you are one of those that prefer to privilege your imagination over reason. I do not think you have really addressed the experiential problem with your assumption of infinity.