Speakpigeon wrote: ↑Sat Apr 06, 2019 3:58 pm
You need to tell me more than that.
If you accept there is a succession of "nows", and that the current now seems to follow, and follow from, the previous one, you need to explain how this is case.
And if you don't accept there is a succession of "nows", you would need to say so.
Evidence speaks against a succession of "nows" actually existing - a succession of nows (of apparently separate experiences) is not more than an idea, we never experience such a succession, all we ever do experience are thoughts talking about previous nows, successions, causes and effects, but we actually never really experience any of these things directly.
As I see it (or rather: experience it) there is only infinite/eternal being and every attempt of cutting this undivided presence into separate parts is not more than a mental exercise. Mind/thought is a very powerful tool, it not only "creates" time but also space (or better: it creates the ideas of time and space) - combines them to the idea of space-time and convinces us that we live in these made up/thought up dimensions (if there is a deeper reason for this to happen, for placing a conceptual map over reality and mistaking it for the real thing, is another question - maybe its a tool for survival, maybe its just a bad joke... who knows...).
Now people generally do not believe that thought is able to create such an intricate illusion, but there are a few good reasons for us to reconsider our belief in a separate, independently existing, objective reality (doesn't mean we have to reject it - it obviously has some great benefits).
If, for example, we investigate our nighttime dreams we find that the mind conjures up a perfectly real looking and behaving
reality, time, matter, objectivity and all the rest.
Comparing our dream-experience with our waking experience actually reveals that they are not as different as we think they are - time & space (or rather matter) and objectivity are pretty much the same. They are not - as generally believed - a part of our "physical" experience, they are not a fundamental or built-in property/quality of the data that our mind receives from the senses - it is much rather the case that time, matter, objectivity are only "meaningful" interpretations of the flow of data received via the senses.
It is similar to how a computer receives data, e.g. via a webcam, and then executes a specific program to analyse the flow of zeros and ones (which in and of themselves have no meaning at all) to eventually extract the numberplate of a car - the program/mind creates a specific meaning which again relies on the type of algorithm (conditioned thought) that is applied to the data - its as simple as that.
Meaning (and that includes space/time and objectivity) are the output of a mental process, not a fundamental quality of reality (= the raw data / direct experience).
What that means for a succession of "nows" existing is that, yes, such a succession exists, but only as the output of a mental process, not in the "underlying" reality. As our lives are mostly about mental processing (or so we think) the idea/belief of a succession of previous "nows" - a past - is an important thing, just like the idea of matter and the resulting objectivity is an important part of mapped-out reality - that this map is only an idea that actually has no counterpart in reality is another cup of tea...