Why do People Think the Past Exists?

[I Refute Berkeley Thus]

Sandokiri

And what is the origin of the sound? Me, or whatever is at the origin of the wave? At the moment you receive the wave, I am no longer at the point in space from which I generated the wave. That's what I mean by the present being an echo of the past.

Describing it as an echo of the past doesn't go any further than explaining how the sound was heard, as well as predicting how other things will be experienced in conjunction with it.

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No, though there is nothing to objects that exceeds their constitution in consciousness. Or at least, I'm not sure what meaning there could be in claiming there is.

Ok, so you agree with Berkeley. Fair enough. 3nodding

Not entirely. I don't think objects are identical with ideas. There is no idea one can point to as being the sound waves, for instance - to speak of sound waves implies a realist sort of language that's extraordinarily complex and unfortunately almost impossible to unpack because of cultural, linguistic, scientific, and most importantly metaphysical prejudices. The same is true of Berkeley's own naive adoption of the term "idea."

What's important is that there's nothing about what is described as happening in the past that exceeds consciousness or implies the existence of the past as "moments bygone." The problem is that words such as "time" and "past" are loaded in their commonsense meaning, such that if people think you've admitted the existence of time in experience, they think you've admitted the metaphysical prejudices that accompany it. What these prejudices are is my current interest - as well as why it leads us to believe, for instance, in things like determinism, which I think are strictly speaking nonsense.

The Willow of Darkness

Which means the past exist, as otherwise reality(since it would be inaccurate to the conception of the past) would be more than what is constituted in consciousness(reality is not equivalent to what is in consciousness).

What makes you say that?

[The Willow Of Darkness]

I Refute Berkeley Thus

What makes you say that?

If reality is to be nothing more than conscious experience, then that conscious experience must be reflective how reality actually is, so the past must be as it as it is experienced(i.e it was true at a previous time that you had a given experience).

If the past is not to exist, that is to say that the conception of the past in conscious experience of an entity is an hallucination(i.e. it feels there is the past when it is actually not really there), then there has to be reality(where the past is not true) which is not apparent within experience, which breaks the rule that reality is nothing more than conscious experience.

[The Willow Of Darkness]

I Refute Berkeley Thus

Not entirely. I don't think objects are identical with ideas. There is no idea one can point to as being the sound waves, for instance - to speak of sound waves implies a realist sort of language that's extraordinarily complex and unfortunately almost impossible to unpack because of cultural, linguistic, scientific, and most importantly metaphysical prejudices. The same is true of Berkeley's own naive adoption of the term "idea."

What's important is that there's nothing about what is described as happening in the past that exceeds consciousness or implies the existence of the past as "moments bygone." The problem is that words such as "time" and "past" are loaded in their commonsense meaning, such that if people think you've admitted the existence of time in experience, they think you've admitted the metaphysical prejudices that accompany it. What these prejudices are is my current interest - as well as why it leads us to believe, for instance, in things like determinism, which I think are strictly speaking nonsense.

That is meaningless absurdity.

Any object, if it is to have any meaning to us, must be able to be conceptualised, as that is what conscious experience is.

[I Refute Berkeley Thus]

The Willow Of Darkness

I Refute Berkeley Thus

What makes you say that?

If reality is to be nothing more than conscious experience, then that conscious experience must be reflective how reality actually is, so the past must be as it as it is experienced(i.e it was true at a previous time that you had a given experience).

If the past is not to exist, that is to say that the conception of the past in conscious experience of an entity is an hallucination(i.e. it feels there is the past when it is actually not really there), then there has to be reality(where the past is not true) which is not apparent within experience, which breaks the rule that reality is nothing more than conscious experience.

Again, I reject your claim that time as experienced leads to the metaphysical claims you associate with it (time as a linear passage between moments).

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That is meaningless absurdity.

Any object, if it is to have any meaning to us, must be able to be conceptualised, as that is what conscious experience is.

Yes, but that doesn't mean you can give direct translations from objects into ideas. This is true even of everyday macroscopic objects, and becomes even more problematic with abstract thoughts and theoretical entities posited by sciences (physics, mathematics, etc...)

While it is true that, say "the number 1" does not transcend consciousness, there is no "idea" one can point to that simply "is" the number one, because our conception of the number 1 is a complex web. Additionally, even ordinary objects carry with them notions of transcendence and inexhaustibility (you can never see a spatial object from every angle, for instance, and yet it implies being able to see it from infinite angles, which are never fulfilled in a single idea or collection thereof). This doesn't mean things are inconceivable, but rather that the language of ideas that Berkeley for example was limited to does not do justice to the way experience actually works. Hence why it's better to use a physical language to conduct physics, even though through physics we never transcend experience.

[The Willow Of Darkness]

I Refute Berkeley Thus

The Willow Of Darkness

I Refute Berkeley Thus

What makes you say that?

If reality is to be nothing more than conscious experience, then that conscious experience must be reflective how reality actually is, so the past must be as it as it is experienced(i.e it was true at a previous time that you had a given experience).

If the past is not to exist, that is to say that the conception of the past in conscious experience of an entity is an hallucination(i.e. it feels there is the past when it is actually not really there), then there has to be reality(where the past is not true) which is not apparent within experience, which breaks the rule that reality is nothing more than conscious experience.

Again, I reject your claim that time as experienced leads to the metaphysical claims you associate with it (time as a linear passage between moments).

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That is meaningless absurdity.

Any object, if it is to have any meaning to us, must be able to be conceptualised, as that is what conscious experience is.

Yes, but that doesn't mean you can give direct translations from objects into ideas. This is true even of everyday macroscopic objects, and becomes even more problematic with abstract thoughts and theoretical entities posited by sciences (physics, mathematics, etc...)

While it is true that, say "the number 1" does not transcend consciousness, there is no "idea" one can point to that simply "is" the number one, because our conception of the number 1 is a complex web. Additionally, even ordinary objects carry with them notions of transcendence and inexhaustibility (you can never see a spatial object from every angle, for instance, and yet it implies being able to see it from infinite angles, which are never fulfilled in a single idea or collection thereof). This doesn't mean things are inconceivable, but rather that the language of ideas that Berkeley for example was limited to does not do justice to the way experience actually works. Hence why it's better to use a physical language to conduct physics, even though through physics we never transcend experience.

Then you reject time, as that is what time is.

That is actually a fundamental error on your part in an attempt to avoid the necessity of an external world to the human experience. In a reality where there is nothing but conscious experience(i.e. there is nothing unknown outside of present conscious experience), there is, in fact, no angles to an object which you are currently perceiving other than the ones you see. Under such a reality objects have no permanency at all. When an object leaves perception, it passes out or reality: the angles you can't perceive don't exist if you don't perceive them.

You have actually hit on the problem of Berkley's philosophy: it proposes, reality simply being experience, which is neither true unless you go into define what exists only be present experince(for, if there is to be an object with a hidden quality, reality is more than simply experience) nor accurate to how we experience(for we experience that it is true that there is something beyond a present experience) .

[I Refute Berkeley Thus]

The Willow Of Darkness

Then you reject time, as that is what time is.

That is what you claim it to be, but I see no reason to believe it is. You seem to be conflating "my experience leads me to believe something" with "what my experience leads me to believe is actually given in the experience itself."

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That is actually a fundamental error on your part in an attempt to avoid the necessity of an external world to the human experience. In a reality where there is nothing but conscious experience(i.e. there is nothing unknown outside of present conscious experience), there is, in fact, no angles to an object which you are currently perceiving other than the ones you see. Under such a reality objects have no permanency at all. When an object leaves perception, it passes out or reality: the angles you can't perceive don't exist if you don't perceive them.

You have actually hit on the problem of Berkley's philosophy: it proposes, reality simply being experience, which is neither true unless you go into define what exists only be present experince(for, if there is to be an object with a hidden quality, reality is more than simply experience) nor accurate to how we experience(for we experience that it is true that there is something beyond a present experience) .

That an object is transcendent/inexhaustible is itself something that's perceived. Again, your desire to believe something based on experience doesn't mean that the content of that belief is given to you in experience. One only knows of how one apprehends objects as having multiple angles through experience.

Berkeley's fundamental insight stands: one cannot conceive of a world seen from no viewpoint, and so to speak of such a thing is just amusing ourselves with words.

[The Willow Of Darkness]

I Refute Berkeley Thus

The Willow Of Darkness

Then you reject time, as that is what time is.

That is what you claim it to be, but I see no reason to believe it is. You seem to be conflating "my experience leads me to believe something" with "what my experience leads me to believe is actually given in the experience itself."

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That is actually a fundamental error on your part in an attempt to avoid the necessity of an external world to the human experience. In a reality where there is nothing but conscious experience(i.e. there is nothing unknown outside of present conscious experience), there is, in fact, no angles to an object which you are currently perceiving other than the ones you see. Under such a reality objects have no permanency at all. When an object leaves perception, it passes out or reality: the angles you can't perceive don't exist if you don't perceive them.

You have actually hit on the problem of Berkley's philosophy: it proposes, reality simply being experience, which is neither true unless you go into define what exists only be present experince(for, if there is to be an object with a hidden quality, reality is more than simply experience) nor accurate to how we experience(for we experience that it is true that there is something beyond a present experience) .

That an object is transcendent/inexhaustible is itself something that's perceived. Again, your desire to believe something based on experience doesn't mean that the content of that belief is given to you in experience. One only knows of how one apprehends objects as having multiple angles through experience.

That is where the problem lies actually. Sure what I believe in my experience might be false, but if this is so, then there is a reality, where there is no truth of the past, which is not within my experience. If this is the case, if my experience of time is not accurate, then that reality is contained within my experience has been broken(for there is reality, lacking in past, which is outside of my experience).

Yes, it is perceived, that is in fact WHY there must be an external world to fit with our experience(if it wasn't so, then we would have no problem with that things past out of existence when they passed out of our perception, EVEN if it was actually true they were transcendent/inexhaustible). This does not counter anything I said. If an object of many angles is to be transcendent/inexhaustible then the angles which pass out of perception, allowing us to see it form a different angle, are necessarily still there even though I have ceased to perceive them, constituting that the objects and its qualities exist independently of what my current perception is.

The correct statement is actually that we do not experience is that which is outside our experience(note: what is not part of the experience MAY have an effect on other parts of the world which cause something within our experience, so this is not the same as it being meaningless. That which is outside of experience, in this instance, can be conceptualised; it just hasn't happen yet. An example of this would be germs before they were discovered). This usually means that one is unaware of what is outside experience, but not always, as it is possible to conceive it, one might guess at random and stumble on what is correct.

[The Willow Of Darkness]

I Refute Berkeley Thus

Berkeley's fundamental insight stands: one cannot conceive of a world seen from no viewpoint, and so to speak of such a thing is just amusing ourselves with words.

Sure, for there to be experience, there must be experience.

[Sandokiri]

I Refute Berkeley Thus

What's important is that there's nothing about what is described as happening in the past that exceeds consciousness or implies the existence of the past as "moments bygone." The problem is that words such as "time" and "past" are loaded in their commonsense meaning, such that if people think you've admitted the existence of time in experience, they think you've admitted the metaphysical prejudices that accompany it. What these prejudices are is my current interest - as well as why it leads us to believe, for instance, in things like determinism, which I think are strictly speaking nonsense.

I would think it has to do with common-sense understandings of motion and causation. When a ball is thrown, there's a common-sense understanding that there is somewhere from whence it is moving, and somewhere to whence it is moving. Likewise, because motion is not observed to be instantaneous, there's a common-sense understanding that there was a moment in which the ball was at the place it is moving from. The set of such moments, collectively, is "the past."

Common sense does not reject "the past" because it is a useful construction in modelling observation and experience.

[I Refute Berkeley Thus]

The Willow Of Darkness

That is where the problem lies actually. Sure what I believe in my experience might be false, but if this is so, then there is a reality, where there is no truth of the past, which is not within my experience.

This is ambiguous. Certainly it does not imply a reality "outside your experience" in the sense of being transcendent. It does imply that you're mistaken on some particular matter, but not mistaken in principle, as if your experience failed to "match up with" reality. There's nothing external to experience to match up to.

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If an object of many angles is to be transcendent/inexhaustible then the angles which pass out of perception, allowing us to see it form a different angle, are necessarily still there even though I have ceased to perceive them, constituting that the objects and its qualities exist independently of what my current perception is.

This doesn't seem to follow. Or at the very least, what is meant by the angles still existing is itself only a meaning intention to be fulfilled in further experience.

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This usually means that one is unaware of what is outside experience, but not always, as it is possible to conceive it, one might guess at random and stumble on what is correct.

Again, I think Berkeley's master argument stands - you can't conceive what is not experienced in the strict sense, as that's meaningless. In some qualified sense, yes, but you have to be careful about what you mean. Obviously I think you can make wrong predictions and then correct them. It would be wise to be careful about what that does and does not imply.

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Sure, for there to be experience, there must be experience.

The point is more that there is no divide between the world as experienced and the world as it actually is, with the former pointing to the latter and corresponding to it, but rather only the world as experienced/lived through constantly interpreting itself.

Sandokiri

I would think it has to do with common-sense understandings of motion and causation. When a ball is thrown, there's a common-sense understanding that there is somewhere from whence it is moving, and somewhere to whence it is moving. Likewise, because motion is not observed to be instantaneous, there's a common-sense understanding that there was a moment in which the ball was at the place it is moving from. The set of such moments, collectively, is "the past."

Common sense does not reject "the past" because it is a useful construction in modelling observation and experience.

Common sense isn't evidence. These terms are meant to be unpacked and analyzed, not taken at face-value.

[The Willow Of Darkness]

I Refute Berkeley Thus

The Willow Of Darkness

That is where the problem lies actually. Sure what I believe in my experience might be false, but if this is so, then there is a reality, where there is no truth of the past, which is not within my experience.

This is ambiguous. Certainly it does not imply a reality "outside your experience" in the sense of being transcendent. It does imply that you're mistaken on some particular matter, but not mistaken in principle, as if your experience failed to "match up with" reality. There's nothing external to experience to match up to.

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If an object of many angles is to be transcendent/inexhaustible then the angles which pass out of perception, allowing us to see it form a different angle, are necessarily still there even though I have ceased to perceive them, constituting that the objects and its qualities exist independently of what my current perception is.

This doesn't seem to follow. Or at the very least, what is meant by the angles still existing is itself only a meaning intention to be fulfilled in further experience.

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This usually means that one is unaware of what is outside experience, but not always, as it is possible to conceive it, one might guess at random and stumble on what is correct.

Again, I think Berkeley's master argument stands - you can't conceive what is not experienced in the strict sense, as that's meaningless. In some qualified sense, yes, but you have to be careful about what you mean. Obviously I think you can make wrong predictions and then correct them. It would be wise to be careful about what that does and does not imply.

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Sure, for there to be experience, there must be experience.

The point is more that there is no divide between the world as experienced and the world as it actually is, with the former pointing to the latter and corresponding to it, but rather only the world as experienced/lived through constantly interpreting itself.

No, it does. A transcendent reality outside your experience where there is no past, else your experience of the past could not be wrong. Of course, you might say: "but what if there is simply the experience that there was the past and nothing else," but that is a reality where there is an absence of the past by definition. The reality of the presence of the experience defines this by opposition; to say that there is a state which is different from what is experienced is defining a reality that is different from the experience(i.e. X is accurate, not your experience).

That is the problem though, one cannot define that the angles persist and will be perceived later in experience without taking that the object has qualities that maintain throughout without those qualities existing independently whether they are currently perceived. If you have transcendent/inexhaustible objects, you have an external world.

Depends, on exactly what is involved. One would be extremely hard pressed to guess the design of an aircraft, as it contains many technical details that have been defined in accordance with much testing. However, one could easily for the notion of a flying people carrier made of metal(indeed, such conceptions are often a precursor to investigation that then reveals in experience how you do it properly). This is, of course, a valid practical concern, but it does not change that are things which were(and probably still are) possible that are outside of experience as it currently stands. Nor does it prevent correct guesses when someone knows all the component concepts. The argument doesn't stand in any situation bar when there is something that cannot be conceived, as in such a situation thee is nothing defined as true(note: this is different to a situation where something can be conceived but cannot be verified in experience). Or, in circumstances where one is only working of evidentially supported ideas, with reference to what concepts are considered meaningful(as anything that hasn't been confirmed in experience gets rejected).

That is false though, assuming there is anything outside of a present experience. It renders hallucinations impossible. It would make false memories impossible(in both cases, by definition, experience does NOT correspond to reality).

The correct point is that there is no divide between a meaningful life and present experience(as even when one considers things outside of present experience, they are only aware of it in present experience. For example, a case of correct guess about the unknown occurs in a present experience and there would be no correct guess present if it was not in the present experience of the guesser).

[I Refute Berkeley Thus]

The Willow Of Darkness

No, it does. A transcendent reality outside your experience where there is no past, else your experience of the past could not be wrong.

I do not think that our experience of the past is wrong. I deny that it contains within it the conclusions about the nature of the past that you think it does. These are metaphysical assumptions, not what is experienced in time.

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to say that there is a state which is different from what is experienced is defining a reality that is different from the experience(i.e. X is accurate, not your experience).

No, it isn't. Mistakes are incorrect predictions to be confirmed and denied by further experience; nothing about them implies transcendence of experience itself. So the mistake implies a reality with a different character than what is experienced insofar as I made an incorrect judgment about the facts of the world. It does not imply an altogether different reality that experience matches up with or fails to match up with. In fact, this is meaningless - if it were so, we would never be able to tell when we were correct and incorrect, since the transcendent world outside of experience would be excluded from us by definition, and we could never draw a comparison. Yet we can and do draw comparisons between truth and falsehood. Why? Because the conditions for understanding them are all contained within the mix of experience itself.

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That is the problem though, one cannot define that the angles persist and will be perceived later in experience without taking that the object has qualities that maintain throughout without those qualities existing independently whether they are currently perceived. If you have transcendent/inexhaustible objects, you have an external world.

And why do you think that?

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That is false though, assuming there is anything outside of a present experience. It renders hallucinations impossible. It would make false memories impossible(in both cases, by definition, experience does NOT correspond to reality).

Why is that? We see false memories and illusions happen, then we see what confirms them to be false in the same "realm of reality," the only one there is. At what point in any of this does experience go beyond itself? As I've pointed out previously, your account would in fact make checking illusion against reality impossible. It would be literally impossible to tell whether anything was true, because its truth would be measured against something transcendent that was removed form any possible verification on principle. Reality, in other words, would be effectively nothing, and would fall to the Razor.

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The correct point is that there is no divide between a meaningful life and present experience(as even when one considers things outside of present experience, they are only aware of it in present experience. For example, a case of correct guess about the unknown occurs in a present experience and there would be no correct guess present if it was not in the present experience of the guesser).

And how do you know whether something was a correct guess?

[The Willow Of Darkness]

I Refute Berkeley Thus

The Willow Of Darkness

No, it does. A transcendent reality outside your experience where there is no past, else your experience of the past could not be wrong.

I do not think that our experience of the past is wrong. I deny that it contains within it the conclusions about the nature of the past that you think it does. These are metaphysical assumptions, not what is experienced in time.

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to say that there is a state which is different from what is experienced is defining a reality that is different from the experience(i.e. X is accurate, not your experience).

No, it isn't. Mistakes are incorrect predictions to be confirmed and denied by further experience; nothing about them implies transcendence of experience itself. So the mistake implies a reality with a different character than what is experienced insofar as I made an incorrect judgment about the facts of the world. It does not imply an altogether different reality that experience matches up with or fails to match up with. In fact, this is meaningless - if it were so, we would never be able to tell when we were correct and incorrect, since the transcendent world outside of experience would be excluded from us by definition, and we could never draw a comparison. Yet we can and do draw comparisons between truth and falsehood. Why? Because the conditions for understanding them are all contained within the mix of experience itself.

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That is the problem though, one cannot define that the angles persist and will be perceived later in experience without taking that the object has qualities that maintain throughout without those qualities existing independently whether they are currently perceived. If you have transcendent/inexhaustible objects, you have an external world.

And why do you think that?

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That is false though, assuming there is anything outside of a present experience. It renders hallucinations impossible. It would make false memories impossible(in both cases, by definition, experience does NOT correspond to reality).

Why is that? We see false memories and illusions happen, then we see what confirms them to be false in the same "realm of reality," the only one there is. At what point in any of this does experience go beyond itself? As I've pointed out previously, your account would in fact make checking illusion against reality impossible. It would be literally impossible to tell whether anything was true, because its truth would be measured against something transcendent that was removed form any possible verification on principle. Reality, in other words, would be effectively nothing, and would fall to the Razor.

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The correct point is that there is no divide between a meaningful life and present experience(as even when one considers things outside of present experience, they are only aware of it in present experience. For example, a case of correct guess about the unknown occurs in a present experience and there would be no correct guess present if it was not in the present experience of the guesser).

And how do you know whether something was a correct guess?

Then you accept the metaphysical quality of time, for the point of time is that what is experienced in the past actually happened. Time IS a metaphysical assumption. As is, ironically in you case, to think that time is not there, as to say that time does not really exist is a claim of truth of the nature of things and falls under metaphysics.

They can be corrected, but such a notion can only be IF the mistake is true when it wasn't apparent in experience. If this is not the case, then there cannot be a mistake at all and reality simply changed with your perception. The fact that supposedly means you are wrong is only true when it comes into your experience, meaning you weren't actually wrong, as the reason you are wrong was not true when you held the supposedly wrong position. The external world is required for a mistake to be made.

It is not actually meaningless, it simply appears so because we haven't conceived it or experienced it yet. It is only irrelevant to a person living their current life, for the don't have access to the awareness which would allow the truth that they are unaware of to impact on their thinking, consciously of that truth at least.


There is a problem with your analysis though: there can be experience of the transcendental. This is actually what occurs, assuming that anything is true bar present experience, and WHY non-transcendental things feel wrong in our experience. The object and the angles is a prime example of this. I see the object from a certain angle then move position and see it from a different angle. Do I take that the angle I originally saw it from has passed out of existence? No, I assume that the qualities of the object maintain their truth even when I cease to perceive them. I assume that the object exist beyond simply how I am experiencing it in a given moment. I assume a world that is independent of whether I experience. The external world is INTEGRAL to our experience. Without it, the permanency of objects goes and their present cannot be defined outside of present experience, meaning they necessarily pass in and out of existence when the pass in and out of perception(as opposed to a constant object passing in and out of an individual's experience).


This is addressed in my first paragraph. There cannot be a mistake unless what the person experience did not match reality when they were having the false experience. This can only occur if there is a reality which someone is unaware of(one is in contrary to their experience which constitutes the false memory or hallucination).

Which is why I was saying such a truth would be meaningless, is the sense of having relevance to someone in its itself, if one was to only accept evidence, as such a truth could only be conceived and accepted if one was to make a guess and accept that it was correct without verification. However, verifying a truth is not a truth itself, so it is an error to conclude that there must only be what is experienced.

You don't, unless you have an experience of it which confirms it, but that does not prevent a guess being correct. It just means that you cannot confirm that it must be.

[Slinkenhofer]

I Refute Berkeley Thus

Xiam

The memories are there of actions previously done.

S'pretty much all I have for an answer.

How is that evidence?

You replied to a post someone typed out in the past. If that's not enough for you, you also responded based off of what you read, the information of which was stored in your mind from the past.

[Aws10]

thefluffygamer

I Refute Berkeley Thus

Xiam

The memories are there of actions previously done.

S'pretty much all I have for an answer.

How is that evidence?

You replied to a post someone typed out in the past. If that's not enough for you, you also responded based off of what you read, the information of which was stored in your mind from the past.

The post exists in the present, not the past.