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daytripper23 said:
I don't disagree, but I don't understand what you could possibly mean by the present moment.

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seylm said:
By the present moment I mean the present, now, what we are currently experiencing. Has it ever not been now? How can the present not be absolute? It's always here. Any opinions are welcome by the way I'm writing a paper on presentism and could use some counterarguments .

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seylm said:
No, I haven't read much philosophy. This is first philosophy course I've ever taken. I'll check them out.

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xFrockx said:
However, if we take now to be an exact moment in time, the moment at which things turn into the past, or any other such definition for the moment we commonly think of as the present, and we only acknoledge the existence of that,

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"Ideas of what happened in the past or what will happen in the future can exist in the present"

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xFrockx said:

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"Ideas of what happened in the past or what will happen in the future can exist in the present"

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How does an idea exist such that it can "be" in the present? Think about it now. If you have a thought, how long does it stay around? Is it any more than the "sound" of you thinking it? Just how thin is the present? Does it have a thickness to hold stuff? How many ideas can fit in there? A few? A lot? None? What?
.

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seylm said:
By the present moment I mean the present, now, what we are currently experiencing.

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seylm said:
Has it ever not been now?

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seylm said:
How can the present not be absolute?

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seylm said:
It's always here.

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Your "now" is always here for you, yes.

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seylm said:
If you disagree please tell me why. 

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xFrockx said:
"Nothing Exists Outside the Present Moment "

Nothing does not exist. Case closed.

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xFrockx said:
When is now? Is now now, or is when you answer this post now?

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Other people think that now is only a word for a "rolling present" but that requires that the present have some length or duration in which change can take place, so the now wouldn't really be a now at all, more of a blur. Some people, nonetheless, endorse the blur.

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xFrockx said:

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"Ideas of what happened in the past or what will happen in the future can exist in the present"

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How does an idea exist such that it can "be" in the present? Think about it now. If you have a thought, how long does it stay around? Is it any more than the "sound" of you thinking it? Just how thin is the present? Does it have a thickness to hold stuff? How many ideas can fit in there? A few? A lot? None? What?

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While more modern calculus has solved the mathematical aspects of the paradox,[3] Zeno's paradoxes remain a problem for philosophers.[4][5][6]

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Aint that the truth. 

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jivJaN said:
I don't disagree with it.

And I cannot understand why this has to be blurry or so undefined.
I don't even see why we need to define it.
And no , you cannot constantly live in the present , unless you are a baby , or someone mentally challenged.

The brain doesn't work that way , period.
No matter what these gurus say.
They may be mentally explaining thoughtless moments as experiences of the present moment , and surely we experience such moments every day without even noticing.
And thats really what the whole mystery is about and why we continuously discuss topics like this even though its futile.

You can't notice it.
To notice it , is to still acknowledge your own identity that is noticing it. Only the noumenon can be timeless.
It sounds mystical , but it really isn't.

The only  way to be present.. is to actually BE the present.
You cannot be IN the now.
You can only BE the now.

Don't believe me ?
Ask the mushroom

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how do you know you can't constantly live in the present? wait for the video i'll post. i'll make a thread for it soon. though it's just another guy telling you about it. still, how do you know better? did the shrooms tell you? (: .. j/k


edit: http://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/13467027


no idea if he's for real ... but the chances aren't that bad, eh? better than just saying "nope, that's not how the brain works". have some faith, dude!

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moi said:

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jivJaN said:
I don't disagree with it.

And I cannot understand why this has to be blurry or so undefined.
I don't even see why we need to define it.
And no , you cannot constantly live in the present , unless you are a baby , or someone mentally challenged.

The brain doesn't work that way , period.
No matter what these gurus say.
They may be mentally explaining thoughtless moments as experiences of the present moment , and surely we experience such moments every day without even noticing.
And thats really what the whole mystery is about and why we continuously discuss topics like this even though its futile.

You can't notice it.
To notice it , is to still acknowledge your own identity that is noticing it. Only the noumenon can be timeless.
It sounds mystical , but it really isn't.

The only  way to be present.. is to actually BE the present.
You cannot be IN the now.
You can only BE the now.

Don't believe me ?
Ask the mushroom

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how do you know you can't constantly live in the present? wait for the video i'll post. i'll make a thread for it soon. though it's just another guy telling you about it. still, how do you know better? did the shrooms tell you? (: .. j/k


edit: http://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/13467027


no idea if he's for real ... but the chances aren't that bad, eh? better than just saying "nope, that's not how the brain works". have some faith, dude!

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OK

Watch that video one more time and pay close attention to what he says at the 2 minute mark

" aaand .. after that ! ( <--- GOTTA LOVE THIS ONE ) .. you know .. i went out and sought out books on the topic....."

the rat race continues

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jivJaN said:

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moi said:

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jivJaN said:
I don't disagree with it.

And I cannot understand why this has to be blurry or so undefined.
I don't even see why we need to define it.
And no , you cannot constantly live in the present , unless you are a baby , or someone mentally challenged.

The brain doesn't work that way , period.
No matter what these gurus say.
They may be mentally explaining thoughtless moments as experiences of the present moment , and surely we experience such moments every day without even noticing.
And thats really what the whole mystery is about and why we continuously discuss topics like this even though its futile.

You can't notice it.
To notice it , is to still acknowledge your own identity that is noticing it. Only the noumenon can be timeless.
It sounds mystical , but it really isn't.

The only  way to be present.. is to actually BE the present.
You cannot be IN the now.
You can only BE the now.

Don't believe me ?
Ask the mushroom

---

how do you know you can't constantly live in the present? wait for the video i'll post. i'll make a thread for it soon. though it's just another guy telling you about it. still, how do you know better? did the shrooms tell you? (: .. j/k


edit: http://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/13467027


no idea if he's for real ... but the chances aren't that bad, eh? better than just saying "nope, that's not how the brain works". have some faith, dude!

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OK

Watch that video one more time and pay close attention to what he says at the 2 minute mark

" aaand .. after that ! ( <--- GOTTA LOVE THIS ONE ) .. you know .. i went out and sought out books on the topic....."

the rat race continues

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DieCommie said:
Ha, just got done looking at the wiki of zeno's paradox and found this in the beginning:

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While more modern calculus has solved the mathematical aspects of the paradox,[3] Zeno's paradoxes remain a problem for philosophers.[4][5][6]

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Aint that the truth. 

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Now is now, obviously.

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This is a false paradox created by supposing two moments in time and relyingn upon the ambiguity of language to create artificial confusion.  Now is the present.  This is so regardless of when the present is, and there is no conrflict due to the fact that the present is always at another point relative to prior determinations.

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seylm said:
If you disagree please tell me why. 

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if you had 4 days without your ego and it would come back after that... you would NOT read books about this shit, if you had never heard of stuff like this happening?


COME FUCKING ON. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?



like i said. it took him a year to remain in that state.

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calm down.

1. your first question tells me much about you.

"4 days without your ego and it would come back after that "


YOUR ?
IT ?
COME BACK ?


2. No. Im not kidding at all , although i did find humor in our interaction.

3. "it took him a year to remain in that state"

ok buddy.
don't take this the wrong way.. but anything i say to you right now , can only have negative effects on your 'spiritual progress' if you would like to call it that.

you're not ready to understand that there is no progress , because you need to progress towards that understanding.
may i repeat myself ? - It's how the brain works.
We'll talk about this again in a year or so..

Captain hindsight says you should have backed away and came back in a year.
Now i get to plant my seeds

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so you are saying this guy is lying about what happened to him?

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why not tell your story?

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don't you see ?
observe your own words ..
your own thoughts.

STORY ?
they all have a story.. about how they got a peak outside of the story.
and thats all still a story.

which story would you like to hear ?
i have many.

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xFrockx said:

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Now is now, obviously.

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This is a tautology. This tells us nothing. You can't use a tautology as an argument in your favor, because the words in a tautology are meaningless. I could say "Glackbats are Glackbats" but it wouldn't help me any in an argument. You can't define a word with the word itself because you think "we all know what we're talking about" That is an assumption.

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This is a false paradox created by supposing two moments in time and relyingn upon the ambiguity of language to create artificial confusion.  Now is the present.  This is so regardless of when the present is, and there is no conrflict due to the fact that the present is always at another point relative to prior determinations.

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So, let me ask you, is the present a container? Does it hold anything? How much fits into now before it becomes "then"? Is this idea that there is time actually correct, or is it just useful shorthand?

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If we define it in any other manner, then there is no problem resulting from the impercision of our definitions.  We all know what we're talking about here, the discussion of time intervals simply begs a percision that is unnecessary and arbitrary and therefore unhelpful."

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There is no problem with the imprecision, but it is still imprecision. We can't, like people who have forgot our limitations, rely on hubris to make these imprecise judgments about time into epistemological realities.

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"Tautologies aren't meaningless.  I didn't invent that unhelpful language, I answered a direct question from a poster who asked whether now was now.  I said that it was.

1=1  This is not a meaningless statement any more than anyother equality or mathmatical equation is meaningless- they all reduce to this fact."

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"Obviously time exists, as rudimentary experiments readily prove. The words I type increase in number, shit happens, whatever- all demonstrate the existance of time "

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"Regardless of the intent, to the extent I've seen they meerly demonstrate artifacts of language and incorect presumptions about the nature of reality- i.e. the fact, surprising to some, that a set may have an infinite number of terms (such as the number of half-again divisions in the race 'paradox') yet have a finite value (the length of the race track) "

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xFrockx said:

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"Tautologies aren't meaningless.  I didn't invent that unhelpful language, I answered a direct question from a poster who asked whether now was now.  I said that it was.

1=1  This is not a meaningless statement any more than anyother equality or mathmatical equation is meaningless- they all reduce to this fact."

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Stawmanning me a bit. Read what I said. I didn't say "meaningless" (although I could have and still argued that viciously) I said they "tell us nothing" and don't pass as an argument.

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"Obviously time exists, as rudimentary experiments readily prove. The words I type increase in number, shit happens, whatever- all demonstrate the existance of time "

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Whenever someone uses the word obviously, my ears perk up, because I don't find very much in this word to be obvious. Experiements do not prove, they give evidence, and as we well know, theory often greatly affects the interpretation of experiments, and we often find that our past explanations were based on misinterpretations that still worked out mathematically, like Copernican astronomy.

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"Regardless of the intent, to the extent I've seen they meerly demonstrate artifacts of language and incorect presumptions about the nature of reality- i.e. the fact, surprising to some, that a set may have an infinite number of terms (such as the number of half-again divisions in the race 'paradox') yet have a finite value (the length of the race track) "

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You have to look at who his teacher was, Parmenides. His shctick was that everything was one, and he soapboxed that shit all the time. Zeno was like his sidekick, and he basically wrote a book full of Paradoxes confirming the work of Parmenides. Most have been lost to history, but basically anyone who could think in the same terms as Parmenides could easily come up with 10 or so themselves, since these paradoxes are blaring once you get down to thinking of everything as one.

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"well, you said it was composed of words which were meaningless and that it told us nothing, so regardless, this is what I disagree with.
>"This is a tautology. This tells us nothing. You can't use a tautology as an argument in your favor, because the words in a tautology are meaningless."

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"We forever find additional terms to be added to our models, and new phenomena emerging from unusual interactions of the same old forces, but I'm not sure any of this shows experimental evidence being inaccurate.

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How can you say experiments don't prove, in any case?  That seems fundamentally incorrect.  If B does not occur, and then we do A and B does occur, we've just proven A causes B to occur with a particular and calculable confidence.  What could be more basic?

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The discussion of interpretation seems out of place- all things are interpreted, and this doesn't prohibit conclusions of the type made previously anymore than the fact that your eye may need to be used in a certain situation means the conclusions drawn thereupon are unreliable because they were indirect- mediated only through the eye.  Such is true in all things, always, and does not effect the relationship between A and B discussed previously."

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DieCommie said:
I doubt those boorish philistines understood it anyway

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circastes said:
What's also important to realise is that there's nowhere to go, nothing to achieve... just be here now. If you think that's boring, you're in the wrong mindstate.

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xFrockx said:

Ok, so I agree "now is now" but what does that tell us about what/when now is?

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"We forever find additional terms to be added to our models, and new phenomena emerging from unusual interactions of the same old forces, but I'm not sure any of this shows experimental evidence being inaccurate.

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Stop using straw men. I never said experimental evidence is inaccurate, i said it doesn't prove anything.

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How can you say experiments don't prove, in any case?  That seems fundamentally incorrect.  If B does not occur, and then we do A and B does occur, we've just proven A causes B to occur with a particular and calculable confidence.  What could be more basic?

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Don't you know anything about the scientific method? When does it say "theory is proven"? There is always room for doubt and retesting in science, that is what makes it science and not religion.

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The discussion of interpretation seems out of place- all things are interpreted, and this doesn't prohibit conclusions of the type made previously anymore than the fact that your eye may need to be used in a certain situation means the conclusions drawn thereupon are unreliable because they were indirect- mediated only through the eye.  Such is true in all things, always, and does not effect the relationship between A and B discussed previously."

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Are you denying that we can interpret things wrongly and that be affected by misinterpretation? It might not affect the relationship between A and B, but we don't know if our conclusions about the nature of A and B are correct, or if we have found all possible variables affecting that relationship.

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"Its not a particularly illuminating answer, but then I don't think it was a particularly meaningfuly or intelligent question.  To suggest its even in question whether now is now seemed a bit silly to me."

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In all fairness, you were the one who answered it.

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"That when it is observed that A occurs that then B occurs thereafter, proves B is caused by A."

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"Please demonstrate that positive scientific theory showed made erroneous models, predictions, of the described systems.  I have conceeded earlier that there is stuff we don't know and that knew phenomena are discovered and observed, but it is far different to say we had positive evidence for particular things that were determined incorrect.  It is the later which is what experimental evidence provides, not the former, which everyone would agree can surprise us."

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xFrockx said:
Its getting dark in here.

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Poid said:
The "present moment" is relative (as opposed to absolute); there is no one present moment.

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DieCommie said:
If typing 'This is the present moment' is sufficient to pointing out the present moment, pointing out a past moment shouldn't be much harder.

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