Does the present actually exist?

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mackdaddy

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I was thinking about a sort of philosophical idea the other day.
does the present actually exist? The present is only a single instant in the stream of time, and by the time it comes it is in the past, and before it comes it's in the future.

Just wanted to hear your thoughts on this!

edit: now that I think about it the future doesn't really EXIST as much as it is an idea of what is to come, so my insight is that only the past existed, and the present and future are just reference points in the soon to be existed. If that made any sense at all. Haha!
 
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Oooh ooh so my final conclusion is that Time doesn't exist, it simply existed.
 
mackdaddy said:
I was thinking about a sort of philosophical idea the other day.
does the present actually exist? The present is only a single instant in the stream of time, and by the time it comes it is in the past, and before it comes it's in the future.

Just wanted to hear your thoughts on this!

edit: now that I think about it the future doesn't really EXIST as much as it is an idea of what is to come, so my insight is that only the past existed, and the present and future are just reference points in the soon to be existed. If that made any sense at all. Haha!
Click to expand...

The nature of time has been contemplated by many people in many fields, primarily physics. If one subscribes to Cause & Effect as being real, and the concept of Entropy (that all closed, ordered systems tend towards disorder), then time is real and has a direction.

Alternatively, some have posited that our perception of time is merely a figment of our imaginations and that all points in time exist simultaneously.

Numerous sci-fi authors have explored the possibilities as well. Some have merely used "time travel" as a plot device, but others have explored both the direction of time's arrow and the concept of static time (all points in time exist simultaneously). You might like to read author Ted Chiang’s novella, Story of Your Life.

Enjoy your can of worms, lol.
 


Do a search on "You Live in the Past".

If you find a thumbnail of a man with a beard and glasses
. . and a 7-minute video, click on it.

I find it entertaining and enlightening.
 
Denis said:
If we try and imagine "nothing" existing, we can't: try it. Darn it, we're
always left with a handful of darkness, or a chunk of space, or a tiny wee
atom thay simply refuses to disappear.
Click to expand...

I tried countless times, while I was nine and ten years old. Those thought experiments always ended in terror/panic.

More recently, I have wondered whether time is a function, and -- if so -- of what. :D

It is very difficult for me to adquately describe the sensations, but over the past 15 years I increasingly experience sensations that information is somehow being "projected into" my perception (that's an awful description), and that my thoughts are not actually "inside" of "me". Hard to explain, but enjoyable these thoughts are (versus contemplating what it would be like if absolutely nothing -- inside or outside what we call the Universe -- existed).

Kinda, spooky, too. When it happens, I often feel like time IS an illusion; that time is not necessary to "receive" or "access" thoughts.

Again, I feel that I fail, when trying to describe these trance-like moments. Very weird.

Maybe this is yet more evidence that I am completely insane, lol...
 
[video=youtube;356faqb9JnU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=356faqb9JnU[/video]
 
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