The past exists in the following forms in the quote. The reason you exist now is because you were born in the past.
The fact of the birth exists in your body. The birth event exists in the record, which is your birth certificate.
What you were in the past just determined what you are now.
That is exactly how the past exists. We could say that the present state of your body is the progressed biological processes of the your past from your birth.
The content of your memory now is the storage of your past events of your life.
Yes, I agree with all you said. The past events, however, do not exist at present anymore.
They donât exist now in material level of course. But they do in above forms. They are still the legitimate existences.
If you had broken your neighbourâs window by throwing a rock this morning, the police would have knocked on your door soon after the event.
All the past events rightfully exist now, and will exist in the future too.
The police normally look at the evidence, not the past.
These are false statements.
All evidence is from the past.
You need to prove it is false before making hasty judgement.
I donât either, at least not with respect to things that can be timed.
Whatever I am experiencing, is present to me. In the present moment.
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The burden of proof is on you!
You are the one who made the hasty judgement saying they are false. Hence, you need to tell us what part of the explanation you donât understand, or prove why it is false. If you do so, I shall try to explain it again.
I already explained my opinion about the past events here.
That doesnât seem to prove anything to conclude the other points are false. I am not saying your points are false or true. It is too brief, and there is no supporting argument or explanation on why your point is true.
Letâs see if we can agree that only the present subjective experience exists. Yes or no?
If you are saying Yes, then you are ignoring all the past mental contents from your present subjective experience.
That would be like saying your present subjective experience is like a CCTV camera just mirroring what you see around you now.
To be is to be the value of a bound variable. To exist is to be an item that takes a predicate. The OP was written in the past. Hence there is an itemâthe OPâthat is in the past, that takes the predicate âpastâ.
That is, there are true propositions concerning the past.
Nothing more is required of the past. The thread is a waste of effort.
If we follow that attitude a little further, all of philosophy is a waste. The therapeutic pretense is just the patient in the asylum who justifies his or her presence by playing doctor.
Good point. The present shows up âin terms ofâ the past and the future. The apple is a possible snack, but I promised my wife that I wouldnât eat all the apples this time.
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Good point !
But are you a determinist ?
Thanks. Would you agree that we could come to doubt the memory ?
I tend to agree that the past is present in terms of memory and, in a sly way, in terms of how objects around me show up as uncanny or familiar. In our society, we would all tacitly recognize a doorknob as turnable towards leaving the room, etc.
Yep.
Take two paracetamol and see me again if pain persists.
I would have thought (hoped?) that the question âdoes the past exist?â would seem problematic to you.