trendal said:

I am not implying any such thing

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I ask again: which "present moment" do you choose?

It's pretty basic physics that things do not occur simultaneously in our universe...so who's present do you choose? My present? The present as experienced by a nerve cell in my brain? What about the present as experienced by some being on Alpha Centauri?

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Are you sure? When do we exist, Trendal? When does the totality of existance exist? When does every aspect of the universe exist simultaneously?

Clearly our experience of reality does not occur in the past, or in the future, unless you will feel it necessary to suggest otherwise.

Now, then how could we exist if there was no present moment?

Ahh, but you didn't assert that, you asserted that the present moment is an illusion.

Thus, you are not stating that we do not exist, you are stating that our existance is an illusion.

We experience life as the present moment, Trendal. From a scientific standpoint, you are asserting a Buddhist conception, that existance is an illusion.

So, now that this has been brought forth, do you think that our experience of life, our existance, is an illusion?


I personally believe that our experience of reality is reality. It is an aspect of reality, reality's processes has brought forth awareness and the subsequent experience of reality. Now, you refer to how interactions within reality do not occur simultaneously, but you are wrong. Perhaps certain aspects do not occur simultanesously with another specific aspect in relation to it (say, for example, I do not blink my eyes as the specific point along the timeline as you do, even though, to the unblinked eyes, it appears as though we do), yet, in this moment, all aspects of reality are interacting with each other, all linked through such interaction, and all occurs within the present moment.

The sense of time that you are operating with is encompassed by the present. This facet of the mesh network may not perform its operation at the same specific point in the timeline as this specific point, but are not all things occuring within one moment as a whole?

trendal said:

We'll have to agree to disagree then, because to me time is a dimension and like any other dimension it exists both before and after "now". Where is the past you ask? Well, it's in the past! It happened a second, minute, hour, or year ago and that's where it is.

If you cannot see time as a dimension...then our discussion should end here, because I do.

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trendal said:

I think it is frozen at a particular point in space-time.

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trendal said:

We exist now, and we existed in the past. We will exist in the future, or at least we hope so

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Yes, but isn't the "past" simply our own mental conception? For example, an illusion?

Personally, I see movement, I see interaction within aspects of reality, and I see how we can construct a time-line from this interaction, but isn't it all occurring within this moment?

Let me ask you this: What is the duration of a moment? Is each point in time a moment? How do you define a point in time? What is the duration of a point in time? When does the past end and the present begin? Or, if you don't believe in the present moment, when does the past end and the future begin?

Things change and the time-line is our resulting conception of the differences we observe as things change. This doesn't negate the existence of the present moment. All aspects of reality exist simultaneously, within the present moment, even as their states of being fluctuate as the aspects interact.

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What are you asking here? When do all the when's exist? I doubt what you are asking makes any sense, because to ask "when" does all of space-time exist places a distinctly temporal definition on whatever exists outside this universe. I don't think you can do that.

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Well, clearly it exists, so obviously it must all exist sometime. The question is when. When does existence exist? How could that question not make sense?

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I should have defined what I meant by present moment. I mean a shared "present", at least shared by those in the same room. "Present moment" is something we use in communication regularly to indicate our shared experience of "now", and I believe that shared experience is as illusion - an illusion that only becomes apparent on vast distances (and thus long light travel times).

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The natural fact that two systems of aspects of reality, such as human beings, obviously do not exist in the same exact location as the same thing, so clearly they are at different points in the time-line, which is simply the measurement of the constant state of change that reality exists as.

Yet humans can still share an experience within the present moment, and it isn't an illusion. We all exist within the present moment - specific location within the mesh network of reality irregardless.

trendal said:

Asking what the duration of a "point" in time doesn't make any sense because a point is, by definition, the smallest of possible measurements.

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The past ends right now and the future begins right now

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Because you are applying time, which is part of this universe, to something outside this universe. I don't think you can do that.

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fireworks_god said:

What is the duration of a moment? Is each point in time a moment? How do you define a point in time? What is the duration of a point in time? When does the past end and the present begin?

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PhanTomCat said:

In motion, I picture a geometric 2D plane (representing a planar slice of a moment) getting pelted by different sized water droplets,
causing 3 dimensional hollow half spheres radiating from the impact points (cause-epicenters) as "effect-ripples" (on only one side of the plane - time moving forward)....
Now start stacking new planes (on the "rain" side of the previous effected plane) with more droplet impacts,
which have now also been directly effected by the previous plane's growing effect-spheres....
Now add about a billion more new planes and droplet impacts, and reflection ripples all interacting with all of the previous;  drops, spheres,
and effected drops and spheres, now smooooooooosh them all together like a deck of playing cards, and you have a moment in time....
.
We will just say that a billion-ga-zillion playing cards equates to a moment, (just for the sake of having numbers )....
I am pretty sure that it wouldn't take more than a few moments for the possibilities to start pushing the boundaries of infinity....
.
_{From here (edited a little): This Thread (Butterfly Effect)}

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Trendal, this above explanation of causality and it's infinite effect,
I can only see it going in one direction for there to be a rational (yet chaotic) cause and effect....
How can you reason being effected by future events as we -
are currently choosing our actions in the slightly lagged perception of   NOW,
which is the flowing "effect" based on ALL past "causes"....?

When there is a flow of time the future is the illusion that doesn't appear to exist because it is absent of any "causes" or "effects"....
The NOW slices stacking up are here as an flowing origin of reality, it just has no size....
You can't prove that tomorrow is there, you can only provide evidence for the past....


I described all of this (as I see it) in a 3D way that one can visualize it.... 
But, time is really beyond 3 Dimensions, but includes at least all three spacial dimensions within it.... 
It really is more like an infinite "volume" moving as an infinite planar slice - thru another infinite volume, without actually effecting it.... 
It doesn't make any sense because I am trying to express it in 3 Dimensional visual terms....   

In essence, we ARE time machines....  Set with a pretty strict speed limit....   
Ahhh, never mind....    I prolly~ aren't making any sense anyways.....!?         


>^;;^<

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trendal said:
A moment is however long you want it to be, but perhaps you mean what is the smallest possible moment. It may be that this universe is "digital" in nature, or it may be smooth - there is no possible smallest moment.

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Exactly.  Reality cannot be separated into more than one event, for that would imply that something exists that is separate from reality.  This can never happen because something is reality by the sheer fact that it exists.

spud said:

Time is the necessary condition for objective succession and thus empirical experience.

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