is, how does one apprehend the past? — Constance
this is the existential crisis. — Constance
Time is one of the toughest challenges of human behaviour. We were born to die. Simple. Nevertheless, we the humans, are ready to fill this time making our lifespan worthy to live. I guess thinking so much about the past is not relatable because this is something we already live so we no longer need to remember this period. Also, past tend to be very dramatic and pessimistic because most of the times we don’t usually have good memories at all.
What the future holds is upon us. My opinion is trying to find something connected to happiness. This always been the main goal of humanity. We have to reinforce it.
We are lucky of speaking/debating about it because there are some people in this world that was born just with wars and violence so they do not have the right of think about future. I guess talking about time is like a privilege fortunately we can speak about. — javi2541997
The eternal present is the space within which your whole life unfolds, the one factor that remains constant. Life is now. There was never a time when your life was not now, nor will there ever be.'
I recommend his book because it offers a whole meditational reflection and I found it to be extremely inspiring. — Jack Cummins
But what really interests me is the way K brings the past and the future "into" the present, for as one reflects, one is always already in the crossroads of eternity, as eternity is overarching and the moment is a synthesis of the past and the future and all possessed by the eternal present. That is, how does one apprehend the past? By thinking about the past, but the thinking is done in the present. How does apprehend the future? By thinking about the future, which is done in the present. Is there REALLY a past or future AT ALL? No. — Constance
Where am I? Who am I? How came I here? What is this thing called the world? What does this world mean? — Constance
I always recommend Carlo Rovelli’s book ‘The Order of Time’, which explores the changing view of time from ancient philosophy to post-Einstein physics, and attempts to deconstruct and then reconstruct this aspect, positing a reality consisting of interrelated events rather than objects. It also touches briefly on the notion of Eternalism as simply the way we experience reality, or the ‘container’ structure of values or potentiality in which these events interact for us. — Possibility
We apprehend the past or the future by relating to it from our current position as an ongoing event, which is always changing. Lisa Feldman Barrett describes this from a neuroscience/psychology perspective, in her book ‘How Emotions Are Made’, as an ongoing prediction of attention and effort, generated by past experience and informed by an ongoing state of valence and arousal in the organism. It isn’t so much that past and future don’t really exist, but that our relation to past or future is always relative to an ongoing and variable state of the organism.
Perhaps it is the present that does not really exist, but is merely what we make of it. — Possibility
At least you made the effort of making those questions. There are people than don't even care about what's going on around us and I think is even scary to be honest...
Trying to answer this philosophical questions in my own personal view I would say: I live in Spain but furthermore in a planet called "Earth" that is a big galaxy where thanks to randomness we the humans developed.
I don't know who I am but I know sometimes I dont like myself.
We came here because is our path and we have to do it. It is impossible just staying in home and do not do it nothig.
What the world means is upon us. First, as you perfectly said, time is one of the most tough enemies of humans, something that the Earth doesn't have. So we can start saying humans always put a lot of meaningful stuff. — javi2541997
I read through the Amazon free pages of Rovelli, and it's not like I disagree with all he says at all, but tell me briefly what it is that he says that you find compelling. Container structure of values? Eternalism? — Constance
The fact that we cannot arrange the universe like a single orderly sequence of times does not mean that nothing changes. it means that changes are not arranged in a single orderly succession: the temporal structure of the world is more complex than a simple single linear succession of instants. This does not mean that it is non-existent or illusory.
The distinction between past, present and future is not an illusion. It is the temporal structure of the world. But the temporal structure of the world is not that of presentism. The temporal relations between events are more complex than we previously thought, but they do not cease to exist on account of this. The relations of filiation do not establish a global order, but this does not make them illusory. If we are not all in single file, it does no follow that there are no relations between us. Change, what happens - this is not an illusion. What we have discovered is that it does not follow a global order...
Nature, for its part, is what it is - and we discover it gradually. If our grammar and our intuition do not readily adapt to what we discover, well, too bad: we must seek to adapt them.
The grammar of many modern languages conjugates verbs in the ‘present’, ‘past’ and ‘future’ tenses. it is not well adapted for speaking about the real temporal structure of reality, which is more complex. Grammar developed from our limited experience, before we became aware of its imprecision when it came to grasping the rich structure of the world.
What confuses us when we seek to make sense of the discovery that no objective universal present exists is only the fact that our grammar is organised around an absolute distinction - ‘past/present/future’ - that is only partially apt, here in our immediate vicinity. The structure of reality is not the one that this grammar presupposes. We say that an event ‘is’, or ‘has been’, or ‘will be’. We do not have a grammar adapted to say that an event ‘has been’ in relation to me but ‘is’ in relation to you...
We are struggling to adapt our language and our intuition to anew discovery: the fact that ‘past’ and ‘future’ do not have a universal meaning. Instead, they have a meaning which changes between here and there. That’s all there is to it.
In the world, there is change, there is a temporal structure of relations between events that is anything but illusory. It is not a global happening. It is a local and complex one which is not amenable to being described in terms of a single global order. — Carlo Rovelli, ‘The Order of Time’
Does this mean what Einstein was talking about was really not space and time independent of perception? Absolutely. — Constance
By thinking about the past, but the thinking is done in the present. How does apprehend the future? By thinking about the future, which is done in the present. Is there REALLY a past or future AT ALL? No. — Constance
Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards. — S.K.
If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. — L.W.
Kairos (καιρός) time rather than chronological time or la durée:Real generosity towards the future lies in giving all to the present. — A.C.
What kind of ancestor (i.e. past self of future selves) will you be? In what ways today are you striving to be a 'less harmful' past self to your future self/selves (i.e. future peoples)? which invokes the Great Law of the Iroquois 'seven generations' thinking... — 180 Proof
This is the piece of reasoning I am struggling with:For Husserl and Heidegger the present is a fulfillment of a past which comes out of the future, so it is the present that is inessential rather than past and future, and eternity becomes incoherent. — Joshs
What confuses us when we seek to make sense of the discovery that no objective universal present exists is only the fact that our grammar is organised around an absolute distinction - ‘past/present/future’ - that is only partially apt, here in our immediate vicinity. The structure of reality is not the one that this grammar presupposes. We say that an event ‘is’, or ‘has been’, or ‘will be’. We do not have a grammar adapted to say that an event ‘has been’ in relation to me but ‘is’ in relation to you...
We are struggling to adapt our language and our intuition to anew discovery: the fact that ‘past’ and ‘future’ do not have a universal meaning. Instead, they have a meaning which changes between here and there. That’s all there is to it.
In the world, there is change, there is a temporal structure of relations between events that is anything but illusory. It is not a global happening. It is a local and complex one which is not amenable to being described in terms of a single global order. — Carlo Rovelli, ‘The Order of Time’
Since Rovelli is an empirical scientist, it is safe to assume that the indeterminacy of time has to do with relativity. I gather this also from the way he talks about "meaning which changes between here and there" and the lack of a "single global order" in temporal events. Am I right about this? — Constance
In the Bernau Manuscripts, however, Husserl seems to suggest that the complicated interlacing
of retentions and protentions is constitutive of primal impression. Not only is primal impression
not self-sufficient, it is a constituted product rather than something that makes a constitutive
contribution of its own. This more radical claim is expressed in Husserl’s idea that the initial
event of experience is the empty anticipation. — Joshs
To my mind, religion occurs in an evolutionary context - and may well be pointing at something real; albeit in culturally idiosyncratic manner. I don't know if God exists or not, but to my mind, God is in the future, and we grow to meet Him. — counterpunch
Actually, he’s a theoretical physicist, working in Quantum Field Theory. — Possibility
religion? How is this about religion? — Constance
This is clearly to be seen in the Greek, the Jewish, and the Christian views. The concept on which everything turns in Christianity, that which made all things new,* is the fullness of time,† but the fullness of time is the instant as the eternal, and yet this eternal is also the future and the past. If one doesn’t watch out for this, not a single concept can be saved from a heretical and treasonable admixture that annihilates the concept. — Constance
To my mind, religion occurs in an evolutionary context - and may well be pointing at something real; albeit in culturally idiosyncratic manner. I don't know if God exists or not, but to my mind, God is in the future, and we grow to meet Him. — counterpunch
It's about the temporal orientation of civilisation; backward looking. Unsaid, is that we retreat, bowed from the presence of the Creator at the beginning of time, and so enter into the future blindly, and arse first!
In reality, we are not devolving from perfection in the past. We grow from animal ignorance into human knowledge over time. Hence, God is in the future - we grow to meet Him. — counterpunch
No wait. I do see that the passage mentions Christianity and sin. I almost forgot. But these should be considered as merely incidental. The focus is time. It is an apriori analysis of time, its past, present and future structure. Kierkegaard is not just "a religious writer" as Heidegger called him, and I am certain K made significant contributions to his thinking, as with this analysis I provide in bold print. This eternal present encompasses past and future, says K. After all, when you are recalling or anticipating, is always IN the present, so how can an ontology of time e consider past or future without the present. Of course, the present is elusive, hence the discussion. — Constance
If the instant is posited but merely as a discrimen [division], then the future is the eternal. — Constance
If one doesn’t watch out for this, not a single concept can be saved from a heretical and treasonable admixture that annihilates the concept. — Constance
Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards — S.K.
Kairos (καιρός) time rather than chronological time or la durée:
What kind of ancestor (i.e. past self of future selves) will you be? In what ways today are you striving to be a 'less harmful' past self to your future self/selves (i.e. future peoples)? which invokes the Great Law of the Iroquois 'seven generations' thinking... — 180 Proof
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.