Tuesday, 3 May 2016

Is the flow of time illusory?

I've just read the following article:
There is no death, only a series of eternal ‘nows’

How do we know that presentism (only the present or now exists) isn't correct? Wheeler's delayed choice experiment doesn't show that we can influence the past. It seems to me to suggest that our observations define the past -- that is make a particular past concrete.


If the past (and future) exist just as much as the present, then this doesn't just mean my grandparents exist, but also my self of one second ago! It all seems kinda implausible.


And I'm not sure any sense can be made of the notion that the flow of time is an illusion. I experience change, both in the world around me and in my own mental states. It seems to me that "time flows" by definition (consciousness I suspect somehow creates the flow of time). And it is clear we will actually die, and indeed cease to exist, should the brain create consciousness.


Not that I do believe the brain creates consciousness. There are difficulties in supposing it does as I explain in a blog entry on my other blog:


Neither Modern Materialism nor Science as currently conceived can explain Consciousness

Neither Modern Materialism nor Science as currently conceived can explain Consciousness - See more at: http://ian-wardell.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/neither-modern-materialism-nor-science.html#sthash.4GdagbQR.dpuf

Neither Modern Materialism nor Science as currently conceived can explain Consciousness - See more at: http://ian-wardell.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/neither-modern-materialism-nor-science.html#sthash.4GdagbQR.dpuf

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