The Illusion of Time (The nature of a \'Creator\')

by dhw, Sunday, September 12, 2010, 14:42 (4972 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

Last night I drafted a reply to Balance_Maintained's post of 11 September at 11.52. This morning I woke to find that in the (non-existent) time in between, there had been twenty more posts! I wonder if/when ... in the course of this (non-existent) time ... you guys sleep. But of course US (non-existent) time is different from UK (non-existent) time, and in any case you guys may be an illusion. -That time is "our construct" (David) is clear, but so is language, and some of our language is used to denote things that we believe really exist (e.g. me). Romansh points out that "we only have the "now", whatever that is, and our perception of that is likely illusory." Balance-Maintained says that "past, present and future can only exist now, in the form of memory, prediction, and current state," and "much of reality is limited to what your senses can detect." Put all this together, and you have the argument that reality (whatever that is) exists only as we perceive it. In the context of this discussion, our present perceptions of "reality" immediately become our memories of our perceptions of reality. All this is clear, although I would strongly advise Balance_Maintained that when Romansh's intelligent brick comes flying towards his head, he should duck rather than tell himself it's an illusory perception. But what I do not understand is how it is possible for our present to turn into our past, for memory to exist without a past, and for prediction to take place without a future, if there is not an onward flow from one to the other. Balance_Maintained began this discussion with the claim that "we are rediscovering that time may not exist". If it does not exist, what name would you give to that onward flow?