There is a novel by Italo Calvino with the title "A knight who did not exist". Calvino liked paradoxes.
But I understand the idea of the OP. Being does not depend on time. Time depends on being.
My response was based on the following statements from Weight:There is a novel by Italo Calvino with the title "A knight who did not exist". Calvino liked paradoxes.
If to die is to no longer exist then that may be forever. When it is over it is over. One once was but no longer is. The claim that non-existence can’t be forever is not the same as existence must be forever. The latter statement denies non-existence, the former affirms it but denies that it is a permanent state.No matter what happens when you die you can know that you did exist at one point in time ...
… the main question I asked was if you exist in one point in time "the present" how does that correlate with our non existence. Because non existence cant be forever …
There are some physicists and philosophers who think that time is fundamental. They stand in opposition to the prevailing assumptions of our time, but the history of science is a history of overturning assumptions. No doubt we will continue to think and argue about time for a long time. As to whether being is dependent on time or time on being we might easily talk passed each other without a clear understanding of what is meant by being.But I understand the idea of the OP. Being does not depend on time. Time depends on being.
This is a question of subjective time vs. physical time. The unit of subjective time as I understand it is the present, the "now". There is nothing between two successive "nows", but there can be a million years of physical time between them, in principle at least. Subjective time is what we originally mean by time, with its present, past and future modes of being. Physical time is a secondary phenomenon, the time we measure with clocks. It has no present, past or future. By being I mean my subjective being, and as an ontological idealist I think all being is related to my subjective being, the 'I' here denoting the transcendental subject. So in this sense I am not something that exists at one point of time and does not exist at another point of time. Time is an inner structure of being and physical time is based on this original time as we are concerned with the physical world with our clocks.
Who - or, better perhaps, what - is this you that begins a "new" life after your body has died and gone back to the earth, so to speak? There will be no memories of a previous life (which, if it has any sense at all, sounds at least like a tautology). How does this being equal you? In what does this identity consist?Atreyu wrote: ↑March 13th, 2018, 6:37 pm Indeed, death is forgetting. You will have no memory whatever of anything that happened in this life, in your next life.
Nevertheless, it will be you living your next life. Not anyone else. And you will still be you. The big forces which created you will create you again...
Time, as it is discussed by physicists and philosophers of physics is neither subjective time or physical time (defined as clock time), although both of these are discussed. The prevailing view is “eternalism” or the block model of the universe:This is a question of subjective time vs. physical time.
Those who claim that time is fundamental reject eternalism. The world, they claim has a temporal structure (or perhaps more accurately temporal structuring since it is not a fixed structure) and a direction from what was to what is to whatever will be that is not simply a matter of where one stands. Nothing would happen, nothing would change, nothing would develop without time.We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes. ( Pierre Simon Laplace, A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities)
Perhaps the same could be asked of you as an infant and young child because there is no memory of that time either? The conscious connection between the forgotten (never known?) self of the infant and the conscious adult seems to only come via memories and legal records. I emphasised "conscious" because there was much conditioning going on during those early "blank" years that still unconsciously impacts on our thoughts, feelings and behaviours today.Duckrabbit wrote: ↑March 15th, 2018, 2:45 pmWho - or, better perhaps, what - is this you that begins a "new" life after your body has died and gone back to the earth, so to speak? There will be no memories of a previous life (which, if it has any sense at all, sounds at least like a tautology). How does this being equal you? In what does this identity consist?Atreyu wrote: ↑March 13th, 2018, 6:37 pm Indeed, death is forgetting. You will have no memory whatever of anything that happened in this life, in your next life.
Nevertheless, it will be you living your next life. Not anyone else. And you will still be you. The big forces which created you will create you again...
I think Atreyu's idea would have been more consistent if this sentence had been omitted:Duckrabbit wrote: ↑March 15th, 2018, 2:45 pm Who - or, better perhaps, what - is this you that begins a "new" life after your body has died and gone back to the earth, so to speak? There will be no memories of a previous life (which, if it has any sense at all, sounds at least like a tautology). How does this being equal you? In what does this identity consist?
There would then be an eternal, closed loop of my personal existence with no beginning and no end. And I would live my life as if it were the first time on each round. So I would have lived my present life an infinite number of times before my present life, and would live this life an infinite number of times in the future, with no difference and no memories from the previous round, so that I would think, as some of us in fact think, that life is finite and there will be nothing after death.
It is true that modern cosmology regards the universe as a totality of space-time with a geometrical structure, and so looks at it from the perspective of eternity. But the philosophically most interesting question, for me at least, is the relation of subjective time with its present, past and future to this cosmic "eternity".Fooloso4 wrote: ↑March 15th, 2018, 4:13 pm Tamminen:
Time, as it is discussed by physicists and philosophers of physics is neither subjective time or physical time (defined as clock time), although both of these are discussed. The prevailing view is “eternalism” or the block model of the universe:This is a question of subjective time vs. physical time.
Those who claim that time is fundamental reject eternalism. The world, they claim has a temporal structure (or perhaps more accurately temporal structuring since it is not a fixed structure) and a direction from what was to what is to whatever will be that is not simply a matter of where one stands. Nothing would happen, nothing would change, nothing would develop without time.We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes. ( Pierre Simon Laplace, A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities)
Whether a timeless universe is eternal or whether the view that the universe is timeless is seeing it from the perspective of eternity cannot be addressed without making clear what one means by eternity. If one means that it always was and always will be, that is to look at eternity from a temporal perspective.It is true that modern cosmology regards the universe as a totality of space-time with a geometrical structure, and so looks at it from the perspective of eternity.
I think it is like jumping outside of the universe and seeing it as a spatio-temporal totality where space and time are intertwined. It is not timeless because it has the temporal component in its structure, but it is not eternal either, because there is no time outside of it. So it is seen purely from a mathematical point of view, as an abstraction where subjective time has been eliminated as useless in physics. And there is nothing wrong with this, as long as physics does not try to explain subjective time and other subjective phenomena by trying to reduce them to physics. That would be a total misunderstanding of what our reality is about.Fooloso4 wrote: ↑March 16th, 2018, 2:07 pm Whether a timeless universe is eternal or whether the view that the universe is timeless is seeing it from the perspective of eternity cannot be addressed without making clear what one means by eternity. If one means that it always was and always will be, that is to look at eternity from a temporal perspective.
My being or, as Heidegger put it, the being of Dasein, is temporal. My being is not the same as the being of the universe, but they go parallel. If my being ends, the being of the universe is cancelled. But I cannot cancel the universe. The universe is what it is. Therefore my temporal finitude is impossible.
I have no conscious memories of being an infant. People lose memory of later years through brain damage and disease. But we know what it means to say, “I was that infant” (perhaps in a photograph, in stories told by older family members). Even if the Alzheimer’s patient does not remember her past, others may. There is a physical continuity over the stretch of one's life. Even if no one - neither the individual herself or other people - can piece together in memory her entire life - that is, no photos, legal records, other peoples' memories - we know that she must have been born, grew through childhood, etc. (assuming she is now an adult). Even if her DNA has changed, as has apparently happened with the space-station astronaut, Kelly, there was necessarily a continuity to her bodily growth and change. But that is not the case for our "born again" (not in the religious sense) person. No one has previous memories of this new-born person, simply because he, she, or it had not yet been born. There is no continuity from the "previous" body for the baby, once it gets older, or anyone else to trace.Greta wrote: ↑March 15th, 2018, 7:56 pmPerhaps the same could be asked of you as an infant and young child because there is no memory of that time either? The conscious connection between the forgotten (never known?) self of the infant and the conscious adult seems to only come via memories and legal records. I emphasised "conscious" because there was much conditioning going on during those early "blank" years that still unconsciously impacts on our thoughts, feelings and behaviours today.Duckrabbit wrote: ↑March 15th, 2018, 2:45 pm
Who - or, better perhaps, what - is this you that begins a "new" life after your body has died and gone back to the earth, so to speak? There will be no memories of a previous life (which, if it has any sense at all, sounds at least like a tautology). How does this being equal you? In what does this identity consist?
Those who believe in reincarnation (or "recurrence", in Atreyu's case) consider that there is equivalent conditioning from one's previous liv
I am not a believer BTW, just exploring the idea, and also unsure if death is as it seems, having not yet died and undergone the subjective process.Duckrabbit wrote: ↑March 18th, 2018, 6:59 pmSo, let’s say there lives a person, say, for example, Duckrabbit. He gets old (older) and dies. Years hence there is a child in the world (call her Kathy) with different DNA than Duckrabbit had, different habits, interests, and personality, not mention gender and nationality. According to the theory I was responding to in the quotation at the top, it is existentially and logically possible that this young girl is the same person as this old guy who’s been dead for years.Greta wrote: ↑March 15th, 2018, 7:56 pmPerhaps the same could be asked of you as an infant and young child because there is no memory of that time either? The conscious connection between the forgotten (never known?) self of the infant and the conscious adult seems to only come via memories and legal records. I emphasised "conscious" because there was much conditioning going on during those early "blank" years that still unconsciously impacts on our thoughts, feelings and behaviours today.
Those who believe in reincarnation (or "recurrence", in Atreyu's case) consider that there is equivalent conditioning from one's previous ...
Yes, but where did religion get the idea from? Seemingly because that's how things looks based on our evolved senses and unique (in nature) comprehension of time. The impression would be: "x person is here and then they have gone away. Where did they go?". It's a logical question to which "nowhere" is today's most broadly accepted answer amongst the educated, but there is still much that we don't know and perhaps there's another twist to be found?Duckrabbit wrote:Religion has played a strong role in convincing us that the world is made up of individual, mutually distinct, eternal souls. This has proven a very difficult idea to shake, even when it results in ambiguities, logical contradictions, and meaningless statements posing as something else.
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