It is often assumed that the only reason the past persists as "having happened" is because of memories. That without memories there would be no sign of the past. But doesn't it persist in itself, as a state of "having been"?
There is something that memories are about. They are brain generated traces of events that really happened to us, and these events exist forever in a mode of no longer happening.
The past also endures in other things beside memories, as traces or vestiges of changes made in the universe including those in our own brains. If the past didn't persist in some sense, we would not be able to remember it. We remember largely by being reminded of something in the past by the present. It is part of factity that the past once occurred, only as the present, and yet lies concealed under the present situation.
Does the past exist objectively and independently of us? I believe it does. Indeed, isn't the whole ability to be an objectively existent thing part of now being in the past, as something in-itself and complete?
“The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory.”
― Henri Bergson
There is something that memories are about. They are brain generated traces of events that really happened to us, and these events exist forever in a mode of no longer happening.
The past also endures in other things beside memories, as traces or vestiges of changes made in the universe including those in our own brains. If the past didn't persist in some sense, we would not be able to remember it. We remember largely by being reminded of something in the past by the present. It is part of factity that the past once occurred, only as the present, and yet lies concealed under the present situation.
Does the past exist objectively and independently of us? I believe it does. Indeed, isn't the whole ability to be an objectively existent thing part of now being in the past, as something in-itself and complete?
“The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory.”
― Henri Bergson