We have current raw experiences. I feel warm. My back is sore. — andrewk

I would describe this as a persistent experience. I have felt warm, consistently, for a while, and conclude inductively that I will continue to do so in the near future. So I say "I feel warm". Likewise with the back ache, it has been persistent in the recent past, and I infer that it will continue, I conclude "my back is sore".

I believe that this is how we use inductive reasoning to produce conclusions about what "is". We have notice in the past that the sky has been blue. This is persistent, and so we have good reason to believe that the sky will continue to be blue in the future. We conclude "the sky is blue". All the objects which exist around us, we have noticed a certain continuity of their existences in the recent past, so we assume that they will continue to exist into the near future, therefore we say there "is" a chair over there, and there "is" a table over there, etc. The "is", appears to refer to the present, but it really refers to what we have noticed in the past, and we conclude by induction, will continue into the future.

One's interpretation of one's raw experiences as emanating from a tree may be mistaken. One can also have an illusory memory of a raw experience of a visual pattern or roughness against one's fingers. But one's current experience of the pattern or the roughness cannot be mistaken. — andrewk

So I think you're somewhat wrong to say "one's current experience ... cannot be mistaken". First, I don't think there really is such a thing as one's current experience, it's a subjective division of time to say what is "current". So this assumption, of a current experience, is itself mistaken. As described above, that which is current, "what is", is itself an interpretation of what has been, and utilizing a very basic form of induction, we claim it will continue to be. But we know that induction is not beyond doubt, so the interpretations which we call "current experience", may well be mistaken.

That's an interesting approach. I don't share it, but it's fascinating to me because it's like the inverse of Presentism. Presentism says that the only thing that exists is the Present. Whereas your approach seems to say that the Present does not exist and is an illusion arising from (beliefs in?) the Past and (expectations for?) the Future.

Except, I still believe that the present is very real. It must be real because there is a very real difference between future and past. This difference, between future and past necessitates a real present. If there were no difference between future and past, there would be no need to assume a real present. We live on that boundary, between future and past, and look both ways. What that boundary is, is just as elusive as what life is.

Huh — Metaphysician Undercover

In other words, what I'm referring to is the awareness that you'd not say is in the past.

Right, I wouldn't say that awareness is exclusively in the past, because I am also aware of some things which will occur in the future.

But if we just consider sense awareness here, I realize that everything which I am sensing is necessarily in the past by the time that I am aware of it, because sensing is an activity which takes time.

This is why I must conclude that my awareness is in the future as well as in the past, because if I was only aware of what I've sensed, I would not be able react quickly to get out of the way when something is coming at me. All my actions, my "doing things", indicate to me that my awareness is just as much in the future as it is in the past. My awareness of my sensations is an awareness of what has been, in the past, but my activities of moving my body are an awareness of what will be, in the future.

So you'd say that awareness isn't in the past because you'd say it's in the past and the future?

My awareness of my sensations is an awareness of what has been, in the past, but my activities of moving my body are an awareness of what will be, in the future. — Metaphysician Undercover

It seems more accurate to say that your activities of moving your body are responses to a prediction of what would be in the future, given your awareness of your sensations and some assumptions about what they entail. The future is not yet actual, so you cannot (strictly speaking) be aware of it yet.

So you'd say that awareness isn't in the past because you'd say it's in the past and the future? — Terrapin Station

Right, I am aware of the past as well as the future. But I don't think my awareness can be in the present, because the present is an infinitesimally short period of time which divides future from past, which is so short that nothing can exist within it. Surely I am not aware of anything which occurs in a only Planck time length which would divide future from past. So I put these two things together, the fact that I am aware of both the past and future, and the fact that the present is too short of a period of time for me to be aware of anything, to produce the assumption that my awareness must be in the past and the future.

It seems more accurate to say that your activities of moving your body are responses to a prediction of what would be in the future, given your awareness of your sensations and some assumptions about what they entail. — aletheist

No, I don't think that's the case at all. I definitely would not characterize it like that. When I am moving around doing things, typing on the keyboard, getting something to eat, etc., I am not responding to predictions about what would be in the future, my mind is actually in the future. My mind knows what I will type before it is typed, and it is not the case that it is responding to predictions about what could be, it is actively creating what will be in the future. My mind has the capacity to actually produce what will be, in the future. This is not a case of responding to predictions, it is a case of my mind being in the future, and ensuring that when that future comes to pass, for my senses, things will be, as my mind wants them to be.

The future is not yet actual, so you cannot (strictly speaking) be aware of it yet. — aletheist

I don't see how you can draw this conclusion. All the things which I have experienced, all the things which I have sensed, are in the past. I am fully aware of these things even though they are all in the past. What principle do you use to deny that I can be aware of things in the future? What principle allows you to say that being in the past is actual, but being in the future is not actual?

My mind knows what I will type before it is typed ... — Metaphysician Undercover

Your mind only knows what you (presently) intend to type. Something can (and sometimes does) interrupt you before you actually type it. When we debated whether final causes can be in the future, you took the position that this intention is the final cause of the outcome, and on that basis insisted that it must always be temporally prior to the outcome. Have you changed your mind about that?

My mind has the capacity to actually produce what will be, in the future. — Metaphysician Undercover

Your mind has the capacity to imagine what would be produced in the future, if certain conditions come about; and only some of these are within your control. Unless you are omniscient and/or omnipotent, you cannot guarantee in the present what will be in the future.

What principle do you use to deny that I can be aware of things in the future? What principle allows you to say that being in the past is actual, but being in the future is not actual? — Metaphysician Undercover

Because nothing is actual until it occurs. Modally speaking, the future is always possible, never actual. Claiming that the future is already actual amounts to determinism.

Your mind only knows what you (presently) intend to type. Something can (and sometimes does) interrupt you before you actually type it. When we debated whether final causes can be in the future, you took the position that this intention is the final cause of the outcome, and on that basis insisted that it must always be temporally prior to the outcome. Have you changed your mind about that? — aletheist

The final cause is temporally prior to the outcome in the same way that the future is temporally prior to the past. If you consider time itself, the time which will be in the past is always in the future before it is in the past. So for example, January 8th is in the future before it is in the past. So I haven't changed my mind, I just understand time in a different way from you. We can consider material things which exist in time, and those in the past are prior to those in the future, but if we take time itself, as an immaterial object, then any part of time itself, is always future time before it is past time. I understand that the future is always becoming the past, as time passes.

Your mind has the capacity to imagine what would be produced in the future, if certain conditions come about; and only some of these are within your control. Unless you are omniscient and/or omnipotent, you cannot guarantee in the present what will be in the future. — aletheist

Of course I cannot "guarantee" what will be, in the future, in any absolute sense, that's the point of the thread, we can always be mistaken. I might think that I am typing "mistaken", but actually type "mistakwn", or something like that. The capacity for my mind to produce what will be, physically, in the future, is very limited, because of the limitations of my body. But this does not mean that the capacity is not there.

Claiming that the future is already actual amounts to determinism. — aletheist

No, determinism is the claim that the actuality of the past determines absolutely what will happen in the future. I can claim that the future is actual, but it doesn't consist of material things, it is immaterial, without implying determinism. That is the advantage of dualism, we can appeal to two distinct actualities, material and immaterial.

Yep. Self-awareness is narrative and hence propositional and deductive. It is essentially backward looking retroduction. If I just pushed that button, I must have made that decision.

So humans have an extra level of socially constructucted rationalising habit, based on language, that we use to structure experience - force it into rationalistic patterns that can account for everything in retroductive fashion. And also of course, a habit which we also use to control the body and its responses by setting up the novel states of constraint to which it must respond. So we can tell ourselves not to push that button until the light also turns green, or whatever other narrative constraint we might have reason to construct.

And then there is the biology of consciousness itself. The brain is an inductive predictive engine. It is always forward modelling to predict the future - predict the constraints on behaviour that will be coming from the direction of the lived environment.

So in terms of temporarility, the biological brain is pointed inductively at the future. It doesn't dwell on the past. It can't even dwell on the past. Animals don't reminisce. And the present only exists as the sum of a history. It forms the constraints that are the basis for future predicting. What has happened is done, but it in turn leaves open new possibility - the possibility into which the animal miind can creatively insert itself as an imagined player.

And then humans developed their new level of semiosis that allowed them to step outside of this natural flow and reconsider it in reasoned fashion. Through the structure of narrative, we can talk our way backwards in time to create a reasonable story about the past. That then gives us - or rather our cultures - the opportunity to build a quite different kind of psychology on top of the neural one. We can learn to think of our selves as "free willed, autonomous selves" ... who then can creatively insert themselves into the rather more abstract workings of a social community as an imagined player.

So the habit of retroductive explanation gives us the ability to now construct our own internal states of constraint. We can regulate our behaviour in a way that animals just can't. We can construct this thing of a personal identity, a collection of meaningful memories, a series of persistent purposes ... all done in our own name, but actually just reflecting our social construction.

Awareness is entropic induction. Self-awareness is negentropic retroduction. One looks continually to the future and runs down whatever is the easiest path. The other learns to act from "the past" and instead starts to devote itself to larger projects - the negentropic needs of the society which wants to shape "selves" as its tightly-regulated component parts.

Right, I am aware of the past as well as the future. — Metaphysician Undercover

So on your view, you don't exist at present, and you can exist in the future?

(If that's really your view, I'm tempted to not say anything in response to it, and to just let it sit as comedy material, as it would surely be one of the most incredibly stupid and/or insane stances I've ever heard)

So on your view, you don't exist at present, and you can exist in the future? — Terrapin Station

Correct. I don't see how the present can be anything more than a point in time, which divides the future from the past, and therefore I think it's impossible that anything could exist at the present, a point in time. That I exist at the present is an illusion, I really exist partially in the past, and partially in the future. That is why I dispute you claim that we cannot be mistaken concerning our present experience, "present experience" itself is an illusion. Unless you are using "present" in a different way, I don't see how you can avoid this.

Would you mean "a point in time" in a mathematical sense, so basically something "zero dimensional"?

Isn't that what "the present" represents, a zero dimensional point in time which separates past time from future time? What else did you have in mind?

Here's another way to look at it. There's a principle called the relativity of simultaneity which is commonly cited against presentism. It indicates that events which are simultaneous from one frame of reference are not simultaneous from another frame of reference. Therefore if we produce a baseline of events which corresponds with "the present", some events would be present from one frame of reference but not from another. So, since my hands and feet are often moving in different directions relative to other parts of my body, I don't see how there could be one single "present", which is proper to my entire self. Therefore I don't think it is proper to say that my self has a present experience.

Isn't that what "the present" represents, a zero dimensional point in time which separates past time from future time? — Metaphysician Undercover

Why in the world would you take it to represent that? First off, the whole idea of a real zero-dimensional point is completely absurd. It's a useful concept in the language game that is mathematics, but there's no reason to take the game to correlate to reality in this respect.

I answered what the present is when you asked me the first time. The present is the changes/motion that are occurring. The past is the changes/motion that have occurred but that are no longer occurring. The future is the changes/motion that will occur, but that haven't occurred yet.

And yes, this is relative to situatedness. That's not a point against it. It's a fact about what the world is like.

I answered what the present is when you asked me the first time. The present is the changes/motion that are occurring. — Terrapin Station

Well I don't agree with this at all. All changes or motions require a period of time to occur in. That time may be in the past, in which case the change is in the past, that time may be in the future, in which case the change is in the future. If that change or motion is currently occurring, as you say for the present, then part of the change is in the past and part of it is in the future.

So I think you are just trying to set up a vague notion of the present, according to which, changes are occurring, but you cannot differentiate which part of the change is in the past and which part of the change is in the future. If you cannot differentiate between which part of the change is in the past, from which part of the change is in the future, then you cannot be mistaken with respect to that judgement, simply because you refuse to make that judgement. This denial, I assert is itself a mistake.

The issue is pinpointing a "present" if everything is in a continuous state of motion and change. One cannot. It is analagous to the quantum problem of attempting to measure simultaneously position and momentum. All motion is lost when measuring position which is impossible since everything is in a constant state of motion. Thus we must give up the notion of Present in order to acceed to the constant motion. What we have is an accumulated past (all that has happened) morphing into some future. The instance of Present cannot exist within constant evolution. It is helpful to view memory or experiences as a holographic field with new experiences being impressed within it.

It is arguably a category mistake to exploit problems of fundamental physics or worse even metaphysics in order to dismiss notions such as the present. Fundamental physics is typically as irrrelevant in descriptions of biology and the philosophy of perception as perception and natural kinds are irrelevant in fundamental physics. One thing that sets experiences apart from descriptions is that experiences are indexical, they occur in the here and now. You can be wrong about your descriptions of your experiences, as descriptions are representational, but your experiences can be neither right nor wrong, since they're facts, not representations of facts.

There cannot be a moment, a present, an instantaneous, within constant motion. Such a notion creates paradoxes, the most famous ones being set forth by Zeno. What you can have is a fleeting , vague notion of a present that vanishes as quickly as it may be conceived.

:-} What did I just write?

All changes or motions require a period of time to occur in. — Metaphysician Undercover

They don't require a period of time--they are what time is in the first place. Time isn't something separate from changes/motion.

If that change or motion is currently occurring, as you say for the present, then part of the change is in the past and part of it is in the future.

That's stated as if you don't comprehend the most rudimentary aspects of how to use the language you're communicating in. If it's currently occurring there's no part in the past. The parts in the past are the changes that occurred. Again, the idea of a mathematical point is nonsense in terms of external existents.

but you cannot differentiate which part of the change is in the past and which part of the change is in the future. — Metaphysician Undercover

If you don't simply ignore what I wrote, I already did this twice.

What we have is an accumulated past (all that has happened) morphing into some future — Rich

The "morphing" is the present.

There cannot be a moment, a present, an instantaneous, within constant motion. Such a notion creates paradoxes, the most famous ones being set forth by Zeno. — Rich

That you'd see this as suggesting that there's no present rather than saying "per this way of systematically thinking about things, it suggests there's no present, therefore we must have royally fucked up somehow with this approach to systematic thinking" is ridiculous. That's the worst sort of theory worship.

It is arguably a category mistake to exploit problems of fundamental physics or worse even metaphysics in order to dismiss notions such as the present. — jkop

There is no category mistake here. The claim has ben made that we cannot be mistaken concerning our present experiences. But if fundamental physics demonstrates to us that "the present" is just an illusion, then "present experience" is itself a mistaken concept.

If it's currently occurring there's no part in the past — Terrapin Station

I am currently pouring myself a coffee. The starting of the pouring is in the past, and the end of the pouring is in the future. That's stated as if you don't comprehend the most rudimentary aspects of how to use the language you're communicating in.

Sorry to have to inform you Terrapin, but unless you can demonstrate a currently occurring event which has no part in the past, and no part in the future, your assertions amount to nonsense.

Sorry to have to inform you Terrapin, but unless you can demonstrate a currently occurring event which has no part in the past, and no part in the future, — Metaphysician Undercover

How would this not just amount to playing the game of whether you can respond to any suggestion by saying that part of any present change or motion is in the past?

In any event, for any x, if you say that currently x is occurring, then x isn't in the past, whatever x is, or you're equivocating. That is, at least as you have a first grade competence in English.

It's a matter of fact that any presently occurring change is part in the past and part in the future and that's why it's so easy for me to say this about any example you supply. And when you deny this, it's just that "you don't comprehend the most rudimentary aspects of how to use the language you're communicating in".

It's a matter of fact that any presently occurring change is part in the past and part in the future — Metaphysician Undercover

Oy vey. Yeah, well if you say that complete nonsense is a fact it must be. Great argument.

I'm waiting for your example of a currently occurring event which is not partly in the past and not partly in the future. Until you provide that example, it's quite clear who is speaking nonsense. Great argument!

I'm waiting for your example of a currently occurring event which is not partly in the past and not partly in the future. Until you provide that example, it's quite clear who is speaking nonsense. Great argument! — Metaphysician Undercover

This wasn't a rhetorical question:

How would this not just amount to playing the game of whether you can respond to any suggestion by saying that part of any present change or motion is in the past? — Terrapin Station