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How do nonexistent things matter?

#1
Magical Realist Offline
DO they matter? Well yes. Past events don't exist, yet they still greatly matter. Future events don't exist, and yet they too greatly matter. How is this possible? How can what exists be so intimately tied with what doesn't exist? What does it mean to matter anyway? And is this an argument for eternalism?
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#2
Syne Offline
Past and future are not, themselves, strong arguments for eternalism. For all we can demonstrate, the past and future only exist in the mind (as memory and possibility, respectively), where, by the way, the passage of time is viewed as illusion according to eternalism. So from a completely empirical perspective, eternalism is contradictory, in that it affirms time as illusion but disavows past and future as equally dependent on the mind. But past and future matter because the mind is the only thing that can assign significance, i.e. decide things matter. Without the mind, things just are, as brute facts, without any judgment or opinion of magnitude.

What exists is intimately tied to what doesn't because what doesn't is actually all there is. And I'm probably going to have to let that statement just hang there, because explaining it would likely sound like (and often literally is) a Zen Koan. Suffice it to say, the "spark of life", "mind", etc. finds it's basic existence in that which could not possibly be contingent on anything else...and it doesn't even have to be identified as god.

Things matter because they are deemed to have some importance to the mind via life, whether due to direct questions of survival or more indirect question about purpose, reason, morality, etc..
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#3
RainbowUnicorn Offline
(Sep 15, 2018 04:12 AM)Magical Realist Wrote: DO they matter? Well yes. Past events don't exist, yet they still greatly matter. Future events don't exist, and yet they too greatly matter. How is this possible? How can what exists be so intimately tied with what doesn't exist? What does it mean to matter anyway? And is this an argument for eternalism?

excellent question.
i was wondering something along these lines when someone mentioned something about being real.
realness as it exists is made up of many things. genrically it seem that most of the tings that make realness are infact past events and events that are yet to happen... as you say.
so... how does this reality effect our modern understanding of things ?


is this an age of movement or new awarenes on our door step ?


is "now-ism" as a construct of industrialism of the 18th and 19th century now becoming something new ?
is our "now" becoming the past and the present combined ?
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#4
C C Offline
(Sep 15, 2018 04:12 AM)Magical Realist Wrote: DO they matter? Well yes. Past events don't exist, yet they still greatly matter. Future events don't exist, and yet they too greatly matter. How is this possible? How can what exists be so intimately tied with what doesn't exist? What does it mean to matter anyway? And is this an argument for eternalism?


"Old data" would apparently be representative of that extinct manner of be-ing or states, as sported in presentism. The appearance of the sun -- what's happening with the sun, the radiation / effect of the sun -- is over 8 minutes old. The appearance of it concerns a state of the sun which no longer exists if a "present moment" which forbids slash annihilates all other intervals was indeed universal and also applied to inferred slash metempirical be-ing (i.e., to more than just the manifested or phenomenal type of be-ing as limitedly expressed by human consciousness).

A person's very cognition of "change" occurring depends upon differences designated as "past" (stored in memory for comparisons). As well further differences designated as "future" (expectations, calculated imagination) so that a complete pattern of thought / understanding can unfold over those which acknowledges just that kind of apprehension: That change has occurred.

Things which do no exist or configurations of the environment which do not exist (at least in the "temporal solipsism" demand of only existing "right here and immediately" with direct influence) would feature in causes, whys, explanations, goals, plans, predictions, etc. IOW, they're important to reason / reflective thought (intelligence). And also to whatever animal precursor / foundation of the former (emotions about _X_, habit / conditioning, instinct, etc).

Whereas experience devoid of memory, emotional stances about _X_, interpretative and regulated thought (reasoning) truly would be cognitively confined to a static present or New Agey "live in the moment", even if the phenomenal content was actually changing (mutable).

But the spurious nature of the intimate "now" should be pointed-out.

Consciousness never catches up with the activity generating it -- is always trailing in terms of milliseconds, microseconds or nanoseconds. The experience of its "now" (what's shown, felt, and thought) is always about the past (old data). Whereas brain processing is in the future relative to that, already dealing with producing the next subjective, specious "now". The non-exhibited / non-felt latter is ironically what would be participating in an objective or non-represented or conscious-independent now (if there really was such a special, global-unison interval). Whereas our familiar experience of the specious now would then be like a kind of "hysteresis" lagging around after the operations which produced it have been superceded by those (again) involved in conjuring the next round.

~
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#5
Syne Offline
(Sep 15, 2018 09:04 AM)C C Wrote: "Old data" would apparently be representative of that extinct manner of be-ing or states, as sported in presentism. The appearance of the sun -- what's happening with the sun, the radiation / effect of the sun -- is over 8 minutes old. The appearance of it concerns a state of the sun which no longer exists if a "present moment" which forbids slash annihilates all other intervals was indeed universal and also applied to inferred slash metempirical be-ing (i.e., to more than just the manifested or phenomenal type of be-ing as limitedly expressed by human consciousness).
You're not presently observing the sun's "old data"; you're presently observing the photons emitted by the sun as current data newly entering your senses.
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#6
C C Offline
(Sep 15, 2018 07:16 PM)Syne Wrote:
(Sep 15, 2018 09:04 AM)C C Wrote: "Old data" would apparently be representative of that extinct manner of be-ing or states, as sported in presentism. The appearance of the sun -- what's happening with the sun, the radiation / effect of the sun -- is over 8 minutes old. The appearance of it concerns a state of the sun which no longer exists if a "present moment" which forbids slash annihilates all other intervals was indeed universal and also applied to inferred slash metempirical be-ing (i.e., to more than just the manifested or phenomenal type of be-ing as limitedly expressed by human consciousness).
You're not presently observing the sun's "old data"; you're presently observing the photons emitted by the sun as current data newly entering your senses.


Yeah, if I was reading a ten-year old newspaper for the first time, it could receive a universal ascription of being recent news because its "new" to my senses.

~
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#7
Magical Realist Offline
It comforts me to know that all the time I spend being lost in abstract thoughts and memories is not such a waste afterall. That that is a necessary part of the meaningfulness of being alive and being present in the world.
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#8
Leigha Offline
(Sep 15, 2018 08:12 PM)Magical Realist Wrote: It comforts me to know that all the time I spend being lost in abstract thoughts and memories is not such a waste afterall. That that is a necessary part of the meaningfulness of being alive and being present in the world.

They most certainly do.
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