Does this mean that from your perspective, movement is not real either? Is movement simply an abstraction as well? — Metaphysician Undercover

Change is experienced, and movement is one aspect of, and/or way of conceiving of, change. So it would not seem reasonable to say that movement is not real. The point is that we conceive of movement or change as a progression through different locations or states respectively. These locations and states can have no dimension, both because if they did then they would themselves have to be made up of further series of locations and states, and also because they are not phenomenologically inhabited, but rather, are merely abstractly conceived.

Isn't the boundary between one infinitesimal point instant and another simply artificial, completely conceptual? Otherwise, how could you say that the instant is an abstraction? Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that there is simply duration, and the point-instants are just conceptual? If not, what evidence do you have, that such point-instants are real? — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes exactly, the boundaries are "completely artificial", that is why I say they are "abstractly conceived". I think it is more accurate (to experience at least, if not to abstract thought) to say that "there is simply duration and the point instants are just conceptual"; in fact that is just what I have been saying. The point instants are real, abstractly speaking, however, insofar as they are really thought; but they are not phemonemologically real, insofar as they are not really experienced as such.

I do buy "Justified true belief", but I think the use of the word "belief" is technical and precisely defined. In reality the belief in this use is equivalent to what is understood in the word "acceptance", acceptance of a view, perspective or condition.

So it isn't really a belief in the way belief is used in reference to things which can't be tested, or determined,like God. A use much closer to the spirit of the word.

The other common use of belief, is I think entirely unnecessary and sloppy language. Namely I believe the sun will rise tomorrow. Belief is not required here, rather I know the sun will rise tomorrow. I don't require belief in this to accept that the sun will rise tomorrow and hence to know that it will rise tomorrow, while I do not believe it will rise tomorrow.

Could you explain what you mean when you say that all time, space, and being, are present in one point? is this an extremely large point, or what type of "point" are you talking about here, some type of black hole

It is something like the "one thing" of Parmenides*. Or spacetime reduced to one point rather than extended, rather like it might have been at the point of the Big Bang. The size of it does not have meaning in the absence of another thing to compare it to. Also in terms of mind, it is the equivalent Brahman, infinite while indivisible, transcendent yet present. Or one could describe it as the single point of origin in a monism.

This is why I mentioned it as a mystical view. I work with many concepts like this, which are tools in developing perspectives beyond our conditioned knowledge and understanding.

*In comparing my concept with that of Parmenides's one thing. I view it only as a local thing amongst other things in some transcendent, or eternal realm.

I do buy "Justified true belief", but I think the use of the word "belief" is technical and precisely defined. In reality the belief in this use is equivalent to what is understood in the word "acceptance", acceptance of a view, perspective or condition.

So it isn't really a belief in the way belief is used in reference to things which can't be tested, or determined,like God. A use much closer to the spirit of the word.

The other common use of belief, is I think entirely unnecessary and sloppy language. Namely I believe the sun will rise tomorrow. Belief is not required here, rather I know the sun will rise tomorrow. I don't require belief in this to accept that the sun will rise tomorrow and hence to know that it will rise tomorrow, while I do not believe it will rise tomorrow. — Punshhh

Your last paragraph makes no sense in light of your first two paragraphs.

What you're calling a "technical" usage of belief is what belief is.

What you're describing in the second paragraph is a sophomoric misunderstanding of what belief is that seems to have primarily stemmed from a particular attitudinal approach to atheism that's popular on some message boards, chat rooms, etc.

If you don't have a problem with knowledge being justified true belief, then you shouldn't have a problem with saying that you believe the sun will rise tomorrow. You know that it will rise, and knowledge is justified true belief.

We can have beliefs that we have no empirical or logical support for, and there are beliefs that there is empirical or logical support for. The presence of empirical and logical support doesn't change it to something other than a belief.

Try telling someone who believes in God that it's a sophomoric misunderstanding.

Justified true belief is an analytical device. I don't use it and I have no beliefs around the movement of the planets around the sun. I don't have a problem with you believing that I have a belief that the sun will rise tomorrow. But do you really believe that I do? I don't believe that you do.

The word belief is just a word to describe the attitude of a person in a situation. That attitude can be described using other words.

Try telling someone who believes in God that it's a sophomoric misunderstanding. — Punshhh

??? You didn't understand what I wrote based on this comment. What's a sophomoric misunderstanding is that "belief" doesn't refer to things for which one has empirical or logical support; or the idea that if one knows something, it's not a belief.

You have beliefs whether you call them that or not.

You've lost me, in both paragraphs were you mention sophomoric. I just can't work out what your saying.

Anyway as I said, what I am doing, while it could argued that it is believing things, is an intellectual act which could also be described with other words like accept, or in my opinion. I use these words rather than belief and I know I don't hold any beliefs in things which can't be verified in principle, because I have actively rid myself of such notions and would have to actively opt into them anyway.

There are no beliefs here, don't you believe me?

Yes exactly, the boundaries are "completely artificial", that is why I say they are "abstractly conceived". I think it is more accurate (to experience at least, if not to abstract thought) to say that "there is simply duration and the point instants are just conceptual"; in fact that is just what I have been saying. The point instants are real, abstractly speaking, however, insofar as they are really thought; but they are not phemonemologically real, insofar as they are not really experienced as such. — John

So I take it that instants are irrelevant to the passing of time then, time passes regardless of whether human beings mark off instants. Then the following paragraph should be perhaps considered, as wrongly stated:

Considered abstractly the moment is an infinitesimal point-instant, and just as a series of infinitesimal points constitute a line, so a series of infinitesimal point-instants constitute a duration. Abstractly considered passing from one moment to another can only consist in a traversal across further infinitesimal point-instants. So the moment-as-point-instant is not anything we could be in. — John

Duration is something other than a series of point-instants. A series of point-instants is a measured time, abstracted, or conceptual, but unmeasured, there is just duration without instants. A series of point instants might be how one represents a duration, but it is not duration itself.

So I take it that instants are irrelevant to the passing of time then, time passes regardless of whether human beings mark off instants. Then the following paragraph should be perhaps considered, as wrongly stated: — Metaphysician Undercover

Not exactly how I would frame it. Time passes only by virtue of its being marked off; and this would seem to involve the idea of instants or points of reference. Otherwise the marking off is in terms of events; but where there is merely a succession of events that can never be truly discrete, there would seem to be no passing of time, but rather a seamless movement or transition within time.

Duration is something other than a series of point-instants. A series of point-instants is a measured time, abstracted, or conceptual, but unmeasured, there is just duration without instants. A series of point instants might be how one represents a duration, but it is not duration itself. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes. And duration seems to be a kind of space within which transitional change is ever occurrent, a space which we measure by demarcating more or less arbitrary points of reference within it. :)

Not exactly how I would frame it. Time passes only by virtue of its being marked off; and this would seem to involve the idea of instants or points of reference. Otherwise the marking off is in terms of events; but where there is merely a succession of events that can never be truly discrete, there would seem to be no passing of time, but rather a seamless movement or transition within time. — John

This doesn't make sense to me, there can't be any time passing unless there is someone making off instants. How would someone act to mark off instants unless time were passing? Also, don't you think that there was time passing before human beings were making off instants?

The passing of time is an abstract conception, like the marking of instants. There is no marking of instants or passing of time independently of us; I would say. I doubt that animals conceive of time passing; and I think it makes no sense to say that they (or we, for that matter) actually experience the passing of time. We just experience constant change, for which we, in abstractum, think that a succession of instants and the passing of time, is logically entailed. And they are abstractly considered, logically entailed, but reality is not abstract; that is, it is not just as we abstractly consider it to be; because it is dynamic; and it simply cannot conceivably be a succession of absolutely discrete states.

But, yeah, as I said before of course you may be able to find grounds to disagree with this; just as you may be able to find grounds to disagree with anything that could be said on the subject. There is no final, unimpeachable statement about the nature of things, we can only approach a dialectical understanding of this by concentrically circling around and around the subject in ever tighter and tighter circles ...

The passing of time is an abstract conception, like the marking of instants. There is no marking of instants or passing of time independently of us; I would say. — John

So back to the other question then, is there change, or motion, without human beings? If change, or motion is real, and independent of human beings, how could this occur without time passing?

But, yeah, as I said before of course you may be able to find grounds to disagree with this; just as you may be able to find grounds to disagree with anything that could be said on the subject. — John

I don't agree with this, I think there are statements concerning this subject which cannot be disagreed with. Would you disagree with the fact that we recognize a distinct difference between future and past?

In the last analysis, whether or not there is anything without human beings is an exceedingly difficult and subtle question. I would say there must be concrete movement or change; whereas there is no concrete passing of time or succession of instants, so I would say the latter would be less qualified, due to their purely abstract nature, to be considered to be independent of human experience. but even to say this is not to be able to definitively pin down the situation vis a vis the relationship between the abstract and the concrete, between reality in itself and human experience; to definitively pin down this relationship is simply not possible, in my view, as I have already said.

To answer your last question, I would say that we certainly do recognize a logical, that is abstract, difference between past and future. That we can remember the past but not anticipate it, whereas we can only anticipate the future and cannot remember it; are these concrete differences between the past and future, or are they merely logical differences between the past and future; and concrete differences only between our modes of experience? Again, I would say these are very complex questions that admit of no simple definitive answer.

Thanks Metaphysician Undercover and John for rehearsing these ideas.

As I see it one would have to include animals in our passing time and present, indeed the entire biosphere. Although I am not saying that these entities are or are not aware of it, they are present here with us. Simply I feels it necessary to group the whole biosphere as one entity in this phenomenological realm, an entity which has developed into seperate organisms, which operate as seperate entities, but members of a common community.

Where you say there is duration, it is this moment of duration which I am referring to as the eternal moment. A phenomenon which does sweep forward through phenomena like a wave of present. But it is the experience we have of the moving wave of now which we can't easily conceive of as an fleeting glimpse of something broader and more permanent. If one considers our spacetime bubble as confining us in this wave of now. Then the moment I am referring to is transcendent to it, while present in it in part.