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  • Originally posted by Boxing Pythagoras View Post
    Are you talking about this one?

    I'm also asking you to explain why it seems that we are aware of that specific moment as if it was "the present", as opposed to any of the other moments spread along the timeline of our lives, when in reality, all brain states along that line are equally real.


    If so, I omitted it because it seems to be a restatement of the same question. We are aware of that specific moment as if it was "the present," as opposed to any of the other moments spread along the timeline of our lives, because our brain state at that moment is restricted to perception at that moment. We would not expect a brain state to perceive a moment in which it does not exist as being "the present." Each brain state previous to that one similarly perceived itself to be in "the present," as will each subsequent brain state. So, again, I'm really not sure why you are confused, here. You seem to be saying, "I grant that each brain state perceives itself to be in the present at the particular moment it occupies, but I do not see why we perceive ourselves to be in the present at the particular moment we occupy." However, since you've also granted (for the sake of argument) that consciousness is a product of the brain state, there does not seem to be any justification in attempting to separate the perception of our brain states from our perception. The two are synonymous.
    Yes, I granted for the sake of the argument that consciousness is a product of the brain state, but that does not mean that I can't hint at the intellectual bankruptcy when it comes to combining such a view with B-theory. My contention, as you surely remember, was that Naturalism + B-theory seem to be incompatible since that view (N+B) cannot account for the experience of temporal becoming.

    With that in mind, what I'm trying to get you to answer is that given that on B-theory all the brain states are equally real, why is it the case that we seem to be aware of the specific moment of time which we perceive. Note that I'm not asking why it is the only moment of time we seem to be aware of, but rather why it is the case that our perception of temporal becoming seem to move from one moment of time to the next in a specific direction of time, rather than jumping randomly back and forth between these moments.

    Originally posted by Boxing Pythagoras View Post
    Again, how would you differentiate between the two? On both the A-Theory and the B-Theory, a brain state which is perceiving an elephant at a particular moment is actually having the experience of perceiving the elephant. So, let's say that a person remembers having seen an elephant five minutes ago. Based on that data alone, how would you differentiate between his having actually seen the elephant five minutes ago, and the illusion that he saw the elephant five minutes ago due to that memory?
    Me bringing up the perceiving an actual elephant vs imagining an elephant was as an analogy to the difference between experiencing temporal becoming in the present, vs remembering having experienced temporal becoming in the past. So when you ask me to differentiate between actually having seen the elephant five minutes ago, and the illusion that he saw the elephant five minutes ago due to that memory, you're kind of missing the point. A more apt illustration would be a man presently observing an elephant (which would correspond to our present experience of temporal becoming), and then subsequently remembering having seen that elephant five minutes ago (which would correspond to our memory of having experienced temporal becoming in the past).

    The experience of temporal becoming in the present is something characterized by vividness, immediacy and something which we perceive to be happening outside of us, just as the experience of seeing an elephant is characterized by the same traits.

    The memory of temporal becoming, is not something vivid (atleast not as vivid as our experience of temporal becoming in the present), it is not immediate, and we do not perceive our memories to be external to us, i.e our memories do not give us the impression that what we are remembering is currently happening outside of us.

    Note that I'm not arguing here that temporal becoming is real, anymore than I'm arguing that the elephant that the man is seeing in front of him is real, since it's possible that the creature in front of him is just an illusion. What I'm arguing is that there is definite difference in quality between the experience of temporal becoming in the present vs the memory of temporal becoming in the past (such as the difference in vividness and immediacy) just as there is a difference between having an experience of actually seeing an elephant in front of you, and trying to imagine the appearance of an elephant in your mind.

    With that distinction in mind, it seems to me that your statement in post #787:

    Source: Boxing Pythagoras


    The perception of having moved from one moment to the next is the experience of moving from one moment to the next.

    http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/sh...l=1#post181855

    © Copyright Original Source



    Is not only of doubtful accuracy, it is manifestly false, and anyone can know that it is false simply by taking a moment to analyze their own perceptions.

    In other words, appealing to our memories of the past as explaining the present experience of temporal becoming fails miserably. We can know that they're different simply by observing their different qualities.

    Perhaps more importantly, and something which I haven't yet brought up, it seems to me to be a case of putting the cart before the horse. We do not, nor could we even, have the experience of temporal becoming in the present simply because we have memories of temporal becoming in the past. In contrast, our memories of temporal becoming in the past can possibly be explained by supposing that we actually perceived temporal becoming in the past. IOW, memories do not, and cannot, explain experiences in happening in the moment, but memories can be explained by experiences that happened in the moment to which these memories refer.

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