The past exists in the present. Your post, made an hour ago, exists for me now as I respond. The deed you did, posting the topic, exists in the present in the form it takes on the internet. Likewise the mass murder of Jews exists in the present in the form of family lines broken or altered, cultural values strengthened and weakened, generational suffering, immigration patterns, population numbers... — Noble Dust
I think that the past exists as more than just a footprint. — darthbarracuda
I'm not sure it's material in the way OP is describing. — antinatalautist
Therefore I think it is of profound importance to ethics to maintain the reality of the past (and the future). If what happened in the past no longer "exists", then how do we distribute justice and what would be the reasoning behind it? There has to be some reality behind the past for justice to make any sense, otherwise we're starting a clean slate every passing moment.
It is true we are an amalgamation of our pasts. However when we are in the "present" we are always directed towards a future. The way I'm thinking, the present seems to be something that is never really experienced, more of a made up theoretical fiction. The objective ticking away of time is not an experience I have ever had. What I experience is constantly being directed towards the future while being informed by a past, a past that includes understandings, moods, significances, language, other people, happenings, meanings, etc. It is only upon the past that I can press into the future, but if I could no longer press into the future (if I died) then the past could not exist through me. Does this not make sense?I am an amalgamation of my past; my body is the food I've eaten, my beliefs are the ideas, experiences, and concepts that my mind has absorbed, my memories are an unreliable catalogue of my subjective experiences which are no longer the present. — Noble Dust
Therefore I think it is of profound importance to ethics to maintain the reality of the past (and the future). — darthbarracuda
o past trauma might cause me to believe (subconsciously) that I'll never be professionally successful; the past exists not only in my present beliefs, but in my real, present circumstances, thanks to how belief mediates the past with the present. The belief maketh it so. Lemme know if that makes sense. — Noble Dust
Sort of how we perceive the world around us in a naive realist fashion, but that's just the way in which our experience is structured, and not that the world around us is actually there materially and we are directly accessing this independent world. Experientially the holocaust happened in an independently existing past, but materially there's no reality somewhere that contains the facts about the past (that could hypothetically be accessed). — antinatalautist
But that's OK because we don't base our knowledge of the past on memory. — Bitter Crank
My question is, if the Holocaust was prevented by time traveling back to the 1920s and shooting Hitler in the head, did it really no longer happen? Did all those millions of deaths suddenly not really happen? What happened to the past when we stopped it from happening? Did it just...disappear? Or does it exist in another possible world, like an alternate reality in a multiverse or something? — darthbarracuda
How does presentism ground ethical claims rooted in the past (and future) if the past and future do not exist? — darthbarracuda
Then what? — Rich
My memory could only go back 71 years -- which is pushing it. — Bitter Crank
If memory was the only means by which I could think there was a past, It could nought go back further than 1952. — Bitter Crank
How do I account for my parents? — Bitter Crank
other peoples' memories
spoken records
written records
pictures and photographs
geology - fossils, studies of rock displacement
archeology - artifacts
biology - cladistics, genomes, observation, pollen studies
telescopes
etc. — Bitter Crank
However, I was nought talking about memory. I was talking about the evidence that there is a past, which is a different problem than how we acquire information and store it. — Bitter Crank
How does presentism ground ethical claims rooted in the past (and future) if the past and future do not exist? — darthbarracuda
The past and future do not exist, but they did exist and they will exist respectively. If you believe that there are facts about what happened then I don't see why you can't base your moral judgements on that. — Mr Bee
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