Yes. I think a proper understanding of special relativity leads to a deterministic universe.
It’s not 100% certain, but pretty close.
What, in all this, are the quote marks around “the” past, for?
In the pure strict material level of the world, @Mok is right in saying only the present exists. But when we track back and ask why the present is, the way it is, it is the result of the past.
Nothing I see around me came from nowhere. I made a coffee earlier when I woke up this morning, hence it is still here half drank and cold.
I ordered two new books from Amazon, and they arrived last week, and are sitting on the desk.
We bought loads of apples from the supermarket last week (the past event), and they are sitting in the kitchen (the present). I will eat one or two of them this afternoon. (the future).
Every existing object has the past, present and future, without which, cannot exist.
If we had no mind at all, then we would be saying, yes you are right, there is no past or future. Only the present now exists for us. But we cannot do that, because we can remember, perceive and imagine.
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I basically agree with you, so for me it’s a matter of getting a better grip on the concept of “the past.” For instance, we tend to think in terms of a single time-line. The past functions as a truthmaker for historical claims. But people don’t agree about “the” past.
Right. And Peirce might say that, strangely, this is a claim about the future.
How might understanding “the past” of the books like this affect your response to the oncoming future ?
For instance, you invoke them in a present conversation, perhaps anticipating the effect of this invocation on your readers.
Then being on a philosophy forum itself is “toward” a better and better understanding of the world.
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“The” past is often understood as the “truthmaker” for historical claims. But some reject the primacy of truth as a “deep” property of statements that “mirror” or “agree” somehow with truthmakers (the way things “really” are or as “God” knows them.)
I argued elsewhere that we only need the single concept of belief.
People don’t agree on many other things. But could disagreements make the past non-existence, when the past is affecting the present as the evidence or direct cause?
Well I agree that challenging the idea of “the past” goes against the grain.
Whether it makes sense to do so is related IMV to one’s understanding of consciousness and the physical.
Sure, it’s well-known that long-term memory isn’t always reliable.
That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that:
- Our best scientific theories suggest that eternalism is true
- If eternalism is true then the past and future are as physically real as the present; our position in time is not much different to our position in space
- Our “subjective experience of the passage of time” just is having a short-term memory of some previous point in time; if a Boltzmann brain were to form at T2 with a short-term memory of T1 it would (wrongly) seem to itself that it had experienced the passage of time from T1 to T2.
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I like your organized and concise presentation. I don’t accept the concept of “truth.” So, beyond using the phrase practically, I’m skeptical of the past.
Perhaps you’ve read After Finitude ? Meillassoux would call me a correlationist and dare me to make sense of ancestral objects. I’d answer by agreeing with Peirce. Empirical statements about the past are best understood — if counterintuitively — as statements about the future.
If Yellow Beard buried treasure as indicated on this map, then my belief about the past is “cashed out” in terms of my hope of getting my hands on a pile of gold coins.
The big bang theory is likewise a theory about future perceptions. Of course t_0 might “try” to refer to a pre-sentience past, but I don’t agree with Meillassoux that there is a “literal” meaning to scientific claims like this. A more cautious reading is given by Peirce, IMV.
The past and your belief about the past are two different things. Your hope to get rich is only realised if the past actually is as you believe.
So that would be the (actual) past as truthmaker.
But maybe I don’t find that treasure as the map indicates. Maybe Yellow Beard buried it elsewhere. Maybe the guy who sold me the map forged it and cooked up a story about Yellow Beard. I modify the-past-for-me as I continue to strive toward this or that future.
Without the past, there is no memory in the mental operation of the being. With no memories of the past, there seems little chance of being conscious for the being either.
CCTV cameras can detect the physical objects from the non physical objects such as empty space around the physical objects. However, we don’t say they are conscious.
By “I modify the-past-for-me” you just mean “I modify my belief about the past”.
Memories are just a simple mental representation of what happened in the past. They are not events in the past that are present now!
It is not the memories that exists. It is your past that exists in your memories.
Also the past events happened in your life will keep affecting your life now and future. So your past exists as the causes for your now, the present.
Of course they don’t exist in physical level. But they exist as the causes and also images and stories in your memory.
Observed events are external, memories are internal, and exist in the brain only. The observed events do not exist in the brain. Does a large building that you experience exist in your brain?
It is not the actual building in your brain. It is the image of the building, which is in your brain.
So observed events, including the one that we observed in the past, exist only as a mental image. Hence, the past events do not exist in our brain, but only a memory of their mental image.
But your memory which has your past images exists in your brain. Without your brain, you cannot remember anything of course.
Yes, I agree with that. Do you agree with what I said: The past events do not exist at present?