I have this theory...

[Pow R. Toc H.]

My theory is this:

The only things that exists are our minds. The world we experience is just the product of every individuals thought process. Time doesnt exist. It is just a tool invented by our minds so we dont experience everything at once.

Is there a name for my theory?

[seraphim]

It could come under a philosophical area known I think as 'Subjective idealism'. It would depend on what you mean by mind. If by mind you refer purely to conciousness then it would.

The idea of it being that the external word is nothing but a collection of experiences processed by our concious. Like a collection of data processed by a computer to form an image

This theory begins to pose some interesting questions as it means that the worl ends when you die (when your thought process stops).

It raises more questions if all that exists are your thoughts then are the thoughts of others merely constructed by your own mind or are they the result of other thought processes (other individuals).

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

POW:


Is there a name for my theory?

Yes, I think it's 'bollocks'. :)

[With all due respect...]

[More Fire for the People]

Sounds like the philosophies of Heidegger, Hegel, and Berkeley all mashed into an un-holy idealism.

[bloody_capitalist_sham]

There was a wierd BBC report a few weeks ago about this kinda idea.

Except it said that the internet, was able to unleash our minds. Our minds manifest in the form of avatars like in revleft, only our mind comes through on the internet.

I kinda didnt understand it, it sounded like crap, just thought it add it here though.

if anyone is interested, i believe its in the sci-tech part of the BBC website.

[welshred]

Hmmm, reminds me of the Matrix.

[Knight of Cydonia]

weird theory <_<

[which doctor]

Lay off the bong...

[Knight of Cydonia]

say PRTH,with that theory of your, so you saying that we are not exist?or our life (doing this and that) are just a dreams?

[cb9's_unity]

Wait so in this theory do i exist? Or am i just something that your mind created. And if i do really exist then what plain of existance do we live on.

When i was really young (like 5 or 6) i kinda created a concept or concepts very similar to this. I thought that the way i saw things like shapes and other objects could be completly different from someone elses and that we could never know what something really looked like. i don&#39;t really know how to describe the next part but i thought that everyone would live forever but in there realities other people would die and history would move on.

Oh well theres no scietific evidence to prove anything like this (i guess if your theory was true the mind wouldn&#39;t you allow you to see it) and it wouldn&#39;t really affect anything anyhow.

[rouchambeau]

Subjective/spiritual idealism, more or less.

[Chocobo]

Ummm, no. Time exists. Have you ever heard of physics? Perhaps the organizational terms for time don&#39;t, but time exists.

As said above, this is bollocks.

[Enragé]

idealism, solipsism.

[Hit The North]

Originally posted by Rosa [email protected] 11, 2007 08:11 pm
POW:


Is there a name for my theory?

Yes, I think it&#39;s &#39;bollocks&#39;. :)

[With all due respect...]
Damn you, Rosa.

You beat me to it.

[Pow R. Toc H.]

Yeah I know its bullshit. I was just curious what you would call it. I dont actually accept this theory. I was just stoned and contemplating. Ya Dig?

[Hit The North]

Originally posted by Pow R. Toc [email protected] 13, 2007 06:03 pm
Yeah I know its bullshit. I was just curious what you would call it. I dont actually accept this theory. I was just stoned and contemplating. Ya Dig?
And what were you listening to?

[Pow R. Toc H.]

Pink Floyd.

But what does that have to do with anything?

[Hit The North]

Originally posted by Pow R. Toc [email protected] 13, 2007 06:10 pm
Pink Floyd.

But what does that have to do with anything?
Thought so.

You really need to keep off the progressive rock :D

[Black Dagger]

Hahah, this thread is gold, spark on Pow R. Toc H&#33; Please keep us informed of the developments :D

[Sir_No_Sir]

Originally posted by [email protected] 11, 2007 11:30 pm
Ummm, no. Time exists. Have you ever heard of physics? Perhaps the organizational terms for time don&#39;t, but time exists.

As said above, this is bollocks.
Exactly, so how exactly do you define time?Can you touch it? See it? What is the present, how do you measure that?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

SNS:


Exactly, so how exactly do you define time?Can you touch it? See it? What is the present, how do you measure that?

Define &#39;define&#39;....

[which doctor]

Oh dear, Rosa&#39;s gone all pomo.

[Kia]

As someone said earlier it sounds likes Bishop Berkeley and a combination of David Humes ideas. Its not bollocks at all..it may seem like nonsense but from a philosophy point of view it&#39;s extremely important.
(I&#39;ll attempt to do a summary of how bishop berkeley idea&#39;s worked) He thought that an object can only be precieved...it cant be identified as being real. One cannot proove that the object is real at all. Berekels solution to this problem was God.
David Hume basically elaborated on this concept also. Using the idea of causation he said that we can only infer that an object exists but have no definative proof that it does at all. We rely on our preception of things to be the truth. I&#39;d sugest reading "Treatise on Human Nature".

The Whole philosphical argument of Mind and Body is also associated with this too. Descarte reasoned that he only knew that his mind was real ( I think therfore I am) and that everything else could be a lie. His justifcation that everything else wasn&#39;t a lie was God also.



Use Wikipedia and other better sources and Look them all up..its rather interesting.





(sorry for the short summary but this stuff is rather long and complicated and im not down to write a bloody essay on it all)

[gilhyle]

Bishop Berkeley&#39;s theory of Vision is one of the most perfect works of philosophy ever written ....jsut thought I&#39;d mention that in passing.

Isnt this a form of solipsism that was recently discussed on a separate thread ?

So when you were playing with this theory, while listening to Pink Floyd....were you frightened of dying, why should you have been ?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

FOB:


Oh dear, Rosa&#39;s gone all pomo.

Eh?

How d&#39;ya figure that?

As I have said many times, and am happy to repeat: I reject all philosophical theories (not just 99% of them), especially brainless ones like POMO -- not as false, but as too confused to make it that far.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Kia:


As someone said earlier it sounds likes Bishop Berkeley and a combination of David Humes ideas. Its not bollocks at all..it may seem like nonsense but from a philosophy point of view it&#39;s extremely important.

It sounds no more like the ideas of those two than a belch sounds like Mozart.

From a traditional philosophical point of view, it might look important, but only to those who are naive enough to swallow such nonsense -- or to those who do not mind capitulating to the systematic misuse of language -- or even to those who after 2500 years of this sort of stuff, have not noticed that we are no nearer the &#39;solution&#39; than was Anaximenes.

Time to reject this bogus form of &#39;knowledge&#39;, or look forward to another 2500 years of going nowhere slowly.

[Guerrilla22]

Originally posted by [email protected] 11, 2007 07:26 pm
There was a wierd BBC report a few weeks ago about this kinda idea.

Except it said that the internet, was able to unleash our minds. Our minds manifest in the form of avatars like in revleft, only our mind comes through on the internet.

I kinda didnt understand it, it sounded like crap, just thought it add it here though.

if anyone is interested, i believe its in the sci-tech part of the BBC website.
Yeah, I saw a news report about this also. It apparently is some new movement, or at least a shallow ploy to sell books and videos.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

It was also part of the hype for A Scanner Darkly

[joser03]

The world and everything in it is quite real. If life is just a product of our thoughts, then pain and hate could simply be thought away... which is far from the truth. And furthermore, how would we explain the past, history. For example, dinosaurs. No one was alive to interpret and to even have thoughts about prehistoric life, so if there was no one there, how could it have existed. Okay, I&#39;m losing myself in these thoughts.

[Pow R. Toc H.]

Can you prove history happened? How do you know its not just some long fable produced by some super-intelligent life form that our minds cannot interpret?

[joser03]

Originally posted by Pow R. Toc [email protected] 02, 2007 07:26 pm
Can you prove history happened? How do you know its not just some long fable produced by some super-intelligent life form that our minds cannot interpret?
The past should always be questioned. All historical leaders have manipulated history to create an image on how others will view them in the future. So yes, questioning the past is a must. What you believe to the truth of the past is up to the individual; which facts you choose to believe or disregard, what religion you belong to, what part of the world you are from, etc. But to say that history [the past] never happened and that it is an illusion created by super-intelligent lifeforms is nonsense for numerous reasons. One being that there is no greater power than the mind of a human, at least, here on Earth. Like I said, the past is what you believe. I do not believe in a higher being. We are the ultimate, which is really not saying much. We&#39;re destroying ourselves.

[Pow R. Toc H.]

I think you are mistaken, friend. There are infinite possiblities of what could be responsible for existence. Some more believable than others, but nonetheless possible. I think your to wound up in the material universe. Step back and take an Idealist perspective.

[seraphim]

Originally posted by Rosa [email protected] 13, 2007 11:21 pm
FOB:


Oh dear, Rosa&#39;s gone all pomo.

Eh?

How d&#39;ya figure that?

As I have said many times, and am happy to repeat: I reject all philosophical theories (not just 99% of them), especially brainless ones like POMO -- not as false, but as too confused to make it that far.
Including those of Kant, Feuerbach and............... oh yeah Marx?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Seraphim:


Including those of Kant, Feuerbach and............... oh yeah Marx?

Kant certainly.

But Marx was not a philosopher, so why you put him in there I cannot fathom.

Feuerbach is in the 1% I think is of some use.

Only he did not go far enough.

Relifgion may be the projection of alienated humanity&#39;s self-image, but so is Philosophy (it is just more abstract than Theology): it amounts to the fetishisation of social forms of communication, and inverts them so that they are then confused with real relations between things, or those things themselves (to adapt Marx&#39;s own critique of the fetishisation of commodities)

So, it is a projection onto reality of ruling-class thinkers&#39; own views of alienated class relations, in an inverted form, and hidden behind &#39;appearances&#39;.

Hence, if reality has a rational structure (available to thought alone) then class power can find a &#39;rational&#39; justification in things like: divine authority, the natural metaphysical order of things, or in our atomised &#39;biological nature&#39; (depending on the Mode of Production in which this stuff is dreamt up).

As you can see, I aim to push Feuerbach&#39;s critique furhter than he did, totally underming the profession to which he belonged.

More details here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%20016-12.htm

[BurnTheOliveTree]

It sounds no more like the ideas of those two than a belch sounds like Mozart.

It definitely sounds like Berkely. This was his central thesis, was it not, that matter as we perceive it is an abstraction produced by the mind? :o

-Alex

[seraphim]

Originally posted by Rosa [email protected] 03, 2007 10:50 am
Seraphim:


Including those of Kant, Feuerbach and............... oh yeah Marx?

Kant certainly.

But Marx was not a philosopher, so why you put him in there I cannot fathom.

Feuerbach is in the 1% I think is of some use.

Only he did not go far enough.


Marx though not considered a Philosopher, has many philophical ideas especially in his early works most of which were based on Feurbachian and Kantisien principles.

I agree that Feuerbach clearly did not go far enough as his works were extended by Marx wether intentionally or not. Also as a reaction against Hegelianism whihc as I sure we both agree is........ (what&#39;s the word you use so descriptively) Bollocks.

I just got a little confused as you said you reject all phillosophies not just 99% in your previous post and yet then put Feuerbach into the 1% you deem useful. Which seems a little contadictory. (I&#39;m not being funny a just need a little clarification.)

I also agree that most if not all Philosophy is as you say a &#39;fetishisation of the social forms of communication&#39;, and that most philosophy is plain bollocks (again that word which can convey so much). However I personally feel that some phillosphers are worth reading even if you don&#39;t agree with what they say.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Seraphim:


Marx though not considered a Philosopher, has many philosophical ideas especially in his early works most of which were based on Feuerbachian and Kantian principles.

That&#39;s like saying &#39;Although Marx was not a millionaire, he had some money in his pocket&#39;.

So what?

Marx began his communist career by rejecting much that he found in Hegel, criticising Philosophy in general (as theoretical &#39;masturbation&#39;, to use his words), moving even further away as he matured.

Of course, he, like me, picked and chose, finding things in Aristotle and Feuerbach he wanted to use, as do I ( except he &#39;coquetted&#39; with Hegelian jargon, as he put it in Capital -- I merely wish to trash nearly everything Hegel ever said); but that no more makes him a philosopher than it makes you Wal-Mart if you shop there.

He is called a &#39;philosopher&#39; (wrongly) by Marxists because of the prestige accorded to that profession by the ruling-class (for the reasons I outlined above), and in doing so, such Marxists have inadvertently recruited him to the other side.

But this also allows dialecticians to dream up their own a priori theses, and impose them on reality, just as traditional philosophers have always done; calling Marx a &#39;philosopher&#39; lets them get away with this.

Why they do that is another story (and covered in detail at my site).

However, he argued thus (which is how I would put it too):

"
For philosophers, one of the most difficult tasks is to descend from the world of thought to the actual world. Language is the immediate actuality of thought. Just as philosophers have given thought an independent existence, so they had to make language into an independent realm. This is the secret of philosophical language, in which thoughts in the form of words have their own content....

"...We have shown that exclusive, systematic occupation with these thoughts on the part of ideologists and philosophers, and hence the systematisation of these thoughts, is a consequence of division of labour, and that, in particular, German philosophy is a consequence of German petty-bourgeois conditions. The philosophers would only have to dissolve their language into the ordinary language, from which it is abstracted, to recognise it as the distorted language of the actual world, and to realise that neither thoughts nor language in themselves form a realm of their own, that they are only manifestations of actual life." [Marx and Engels (1970), The German Ideology p.118. Bold emphases added.]

So, if he is a &#39;philosopher&#39;, he is one like me: an anti-philosopher, arguing for a return to ordinary material language.


I just got a little confused as you said you reject all philosophies not just 99% in your previous post and yet then put Feuerbach into the 1% you deem useful. Which seems a little contradictory? (I&#39;m not being funny a just need a little clarification.)

Apologies if I confused you: I reject all (100%) of traditional philosophy (the attempt to derive a priori theses from words/thought alone, and then project these onto reality as a sort of superscience).

However, where Philosophers themselves have made a contribution to logic, or to the nature of their own errors, or to an anthropological understanding of our knowledge of the world, to science, or to the history and nature of our struggles (i.e., about 1% of the total, as an off the top of my head estimate), I am quite happy to learn from them.

In such cases, they are not trying to derive fundamental theses about the nature of reality from thought alone, but undermine such pretensions.


However I personally feel that some philosophers are worth reading even if you don&#39;t agree with what they say.

Well, yes, as a sort or woolly and prolix kind of science fiction or fantasy -- if you are into that sort of thing.

I had to read this guff for my degree, and that is the only reason I can see why anyone would want to do so. But that&#39;s just me.

Personally, I&#39;d now rather watch my toenails grow.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Burn:


It definitely sounds like Berkely. This was his central thesis, was it not, that matter as we perceive it is an abstraction produced by the mind?

Once more, this stuff is too facile to connect it with the much more sophisticated ideas you find in Berkeley.

You might as well argue that since burps and the music of Mozart move air molecules, they are almost alike.

I think my original point still stands, therefore.

[seraphim]

Originally posted by Rosa [email protected] 03, 2007 01:22 pm


But this also allows dialecticians to dream up their own a priori theses, and impose them on reality, just as traditional philosophers have always done;.
Again something else we agree on a priori is a bullshit concept which allows phillosophers and &#39;thinkers&#39; in general to say..... I have no proof of the concept I thought up but I&#39;m right because IT IS SO Which carries as much weight with me as &#39;God said let there be light&#39;. Oh did he well I guess that&#39;s just it then&#33;

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Seraphim, your reference to the book of Genesis is spot on, for that illustrates a very early form of ruling class theory: that the world is made out of, or is controlled by, language.

In later generations that allowed philosophers to derive fundamental truths about reality from language alone, since it was by then a well-established form of thought, that only those blessed with plenty of leisure time could indulge in.

They just adapted it to the new class relations around in their day (first of all in Ancient Greece).

For 2400 years philosophers have been doing the same sort of thing, just changing the content as each mode of production rose and fell.

It is indeed one of the ruling ideas, and it dominates all our thinking,

You can see comrades here do the same week in week out, inventing &#39;theories&#39; about fundamental aspects of reality (that it&#39;s all illusion, that everything is &#39;determined&#39;, that time is this or it is that, etc.) all from a brief consideration of a few words&#33;

And they do it no matter how many times I point this out to them -- it seems so natural to them to do it.

Indeed, one or two give me a hard time for bringing it to their attention, so keen are they to cling on to this easy way of finding &#39;knowledge&#39;.

[tintin]

The initially theory follows a similar thread of thought that can be taken further. This thought may seen rather abstract or even absurd, however if for a moment one places all preconceived notions of reality aside and examines the fundamentals of how we perceive our reality, then one can see the abstract becomes plausible.

Let me start out by stating a simple assumption. This being that the closest that one can come to knowing something is to experience it. If one does not have the actual experience then the knowledge is merely faith bound. Take the simple example of an Eskimo. Unless one travels to the artic circle and has the experience of meeting an Eskimo, one can only have faith that he or she exists. This faith is of course the faith in the accounts of explorers, photographs, anthropological studies and so on. These faiths are rarely questioned, as is the nature of faith, and are taken as truths.

If one applies this simple example to oneself, tangible reality becomes questionable. Everything that one &#39;knows&#39; are products of the senses. We believe in the world around us because we can see and touch it, we can hear, smell and taste it. Our senses validate the existence of everything that is beyond the mind. This notion goes without saying and is generally unquestioned, however it is flawed. The flaw of course lies in that every external stimulus is merely an electro-chemical impulse that is interpreted by the brain or ultimately within the conscious mind. Here lies the connection to the Eskimo. If all our senses/experiences are interpreted within our mind, then what certainty can one have that there is anything beyond the mind? One does not experience the &#39;outside world&#39; outside of ourselves, but rather within our mind. This concept can be better understood by looking at hallucinations, which are ultimately states of reality without tangible coordinates.

The crux of the theory is that all our experience, our entire reality is bound to the conscious mind and therefore all knowledge of an external reality is simply faith. One can believe in a reality beyond the mind, but one cannot prove it, for after all, all the proof will in the end be experienced within the mind. This theory is not a product of Pink Floyd but rather of simple reason, and it does open up the door to a number of interesting possibilities. For example, how can one be sure of the existence of other consciousness? How can one be certain that one is not alone, the one and only consciousness that encapsulates all reality? If all reality is experience within the mind and there is potentially nothing beyond the mind, then does that make you God?

How can you know for certain that what you are reading now is not your own mind creating reality within itself, an infinite technicoloured collage of consciousness so to speak?

Take this notion and apply it to anything. Does death exist?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

TinTin, given what you say, you are going to face problems with the meanining of any and all of the words you use to play around with such ideas.

In which case, practically all your sentences will become indeterminate at best, meaningless at worst.

In other words, you cannot say in language what you think would like to be able to say.

[colorlessman]

Originally posted by Pow R. Toc [email protected] 11, 2007 05:38 pm
My theory is this:

The only things that exists are our minds. The world we experience is just the product of every individuals thought process. Time doesnt exist. It is just a tool invented by our minds so we dont experience everything at once.

Is there a name for my theory?
It makes sense, expect does the mind exist and how do we know the mind exists? What is the mind? Is the mind just the brain? Is there prove that the mind exists?

[luxemburg89]

Time doesnt exist

That much is true - time is a man made concept - it does not really exist, we just think it does.

And for more info on your theory check out Decartes - he said much the same thing. &#39;&#39;I think therefore I am&#39;&#39; which I&#39;m sure you&#39;ve heard - he said basically the only person you know is real is yourself because you are thinking about whether you are real or not, everyones elses body/words/movements could be a fabrication but you must be real to have the thoughts - I&#39;m not saying I agree - just thats what the theory is.

Hope this helps.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

L89:


time is a man made concept - it does not really exist, we just think it does.

Who was the first person to make this up, and how did he/she manage to con the rest of us into agreeing with this idea?

[tintin]

Rosa, where do you experience conciousness and everything that it entails, what do you feel the concequences of these answers are?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

TinTin:


where do you experience conciousness and everything that it entails, what do you feel the concequences of these answers are?

I do not know what you mean by &#39;consciousness&#39;, and like others who use this word, I suspect you do not either.

So, I cannot answer your question (not because it is too difficult), but because it makes no sense.

[luxemburg89]

Who was the first person to make this up, and how did he/she manage to con the rest of us into agreeing with this idea?


I should hope that isn&#39;t a malicious comment. Look I&#39;m not saying that we were conned or anything and i acknowledge that time is a useful concept, BUT it is a man-made concept, time only exists because we all say it does - because we give it a name - you cannot prove time itself exists. I hope you understand a bit better - if not i&#39;ll try and think of a better way to explain.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

L89:


I should hope that isn&#39;t a malicious comment.

Not at all; it&#39;s that we are often told that we fool ourselves into thinking this, that or the other (for example, that we can trust our senses, or believe our eyes, or believe in time), when those saying this give no thought to how it is at all possible that we all now manage to agree with one another over such thinjgs and still make the same &#39;mistakes&#39;.

So, it is pertinent to ask, therefore, of one who advances your sort of claim: who was the first human being who persuaded us all to belive in such thngs (if that is known)?

Now, this could be taken as a theoretical question, not merely an unanswerable empirical one.

In that case: how is it possible for there to have been a first human (or group of human beings) who made this (same) mistake -- what did people do before this fall from epistemological grace?? How did he/she/hey pass the bad news on to the rest -- after all, you have to trust your senses if you are listening to someone telling you that you must not trust your senses&#33;

So, who first of all talked us into believing in time when that belief is (perhaps) an illusion? How could this initiation have been pulled off? What exactly did he/she/they persuade the rest into naming -- your word -- when time is not visible?

For example, did this (these) temporal prophet(s) begin by telling people to trust their memories? But, what did humanity do before then: not trust their memories, but then rely on their memories to help them recall that they did not trust their memories???

I am just having trouble figuring out how this idea of yours would or could work.

But, if time is an illusion, would not such a temporal prophet not have to rely on those he/she had indoctrinated to remember this bad advice the next day, even though that would be to rely on a figment of his/her imagination?

And how precisely do we all manage to make the same mistake? In other areas, few people agree with everything anyone else believes (you only have to look at these pages to see that&#33;) -- so how is it that we all believe exactly the same things when this is a possible illusion?

How would anyone go about spreading such bad news, and then get everyone to accept it?

Just naming something won&#39;t work. Try it yourself. Name, say, your imaginary friend (or, just imagine you have one) "Blair", and see how many people will accept your claim that "Blair" exists. You will find, I think, no one will take your word.

So, how as the original trick pulled off?

Of course, if there was no such first person/gropu on earth who believed in &#39;time&#39;, and talked the rest into accepting this idea, where did it come from?

The water?

Outer space?

Once again, why then do we all accept this erroneous view of &#39;time&#39; -- something you now say does/might not exist?


Look I&#39;m not saying that we were conned or anything and i acknowledge that time is a useful concept,

But what precisely is this &#39;useful concept&#39; (which is, after all, quite bogus -- or which might be)? And why and how is it so &#39;useful&#39;?

And how were you talked into believing in it, like the rest of us?

More to the point: where does this &#39;useful concept&#39; fall short of an ideal (trustable concept, if there are any such) so that you are now capable of seeing through it all for us?

After all, we need to be told where the fault lies, so that we can begin to repair the damage (or, even to agree that it is not repairable).

And in your attempt to inform us of the above, you had better not use any tensed verbs (for they rely on our concept of time).

Good luck constructing sentences with no verbs in them&#33;&#33;


you cannot prove time itself exists

From this, it is clear that you seem to think that time is a sort of object (like, say, Big Foot), that might or might not exist, to which the word "time" attaches as a proper name.

Are you sure you understand this word?

And what would it be to suggest that time does not exist?

What precisely are you denying, and of what?

Unless you can say, your denial is an empty one. In other words, you would need a very clear view of the thing you now say might not exist just in order to tell us how and why it dose not. But, then, what the hell would you have knowledge of?

And, what would it be for time to exist?

You need to say, or we would have no idea what you would count as a succesful answer to your challenge that we should prove it exists.

But time &#39;exists&#39; in what? Time?

Well, eveything else seems to &#39;exist&#39; in time. But, what could time possibly exist in?

Once more, you will need to say so that we can follow precisely what it is you are effecting to deny. In that case, what do we all think time exists in so that you can bring us the good news that it might not do that?

What do you think it exists in --, or what do you think the rest of us think it exists in so that you can help us wriggle free?


if not i&#39;ll try and think of a better way to explain.

But, what is this??

Is this a reference to what you are going to do -- in the future, a concept that itself only makes sense if we refer to time, which does not/might not exist???

But how can we believe you if what you say you will do in the future is correct?

If you actually tell us this in the future that time might not exist, how are we to take this bad news?

Should we refuse to believe you or your rather confused actions (since, in both cases, what you propose to do undermines what you propose to say)?

[Reuben]

Originally posted by Pow R. Toc [email protected] 13, 2007 05:03 pm
Yeah I know its bullshit. I was just curious what you would call it. I dont actually accept this theory. I was just stoned and contemplating. Ya Dig?
without wanteing to be purritanical this forum is not really the place for stoned contemplation.

[luxemburg89]

Time is a concept. It is a method of distinguishing between past, present and future. It exists because we have given a name to the passing of moments. Moments do pass and as such we have called the passing, the involvement in and the coming of moments &#39;time&#39;. I don&#39;t think I&#39;m being clear so I&#39;ll drop the argument, I&#39;m not sure how i can really put into words what I mean but it just isn&#39;t coming out right - sorry guys.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

L89:

You are not alone, so don&#39;t be too hard on yourself&#33;

Some of the best minds in history have grappled with this and got nowhere.

The problem is that they (and possibly you) have not considered the many different ways we use the language of time.

Once you do that, you will see that there is no such thing as &#39;time&#39; (not because it does not exist, but because &#39;thing&#39; language just does not fit), but many different ways or talking about this entire topic.

The above is based on the ideas of Ludwig Wittgenstein:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein

http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/inves...s/section1.html (http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/investigations/section1.html)

http://users.rcn.com/rathbone/lw1-10c.htm

More details on his criticism of traditional ways of viewing time here:

http://www.roangelo.net/logwitt/logwitt4.html

[luxemburg89]

yeah thanks comrade, i&#39;ve read wittgenstein - he&#39;s one of my favourites - and was a leftist (to what extent is questionable but heyhe&#39;ll do).

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

L89, you are right -- Wittgenstein was on the left.

You can find the evidence here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/Wittgenstein.htm

[Rage Against Right]

This is a poem i wrote before i got into much philosophy and it deals with the time issue which you were discussing of whether it exists or not.
Anyone wishing to point out holes, strong points or contradiction in my poem would be appreciated.

Time
What is time?
People say time is measurable, how does one measure forever?
Humans have constructed time, they made it definitive
They made it understandable, they put a reality on it
They took away its real-life

Now look at time, it is trapped
In boxes on your wrist, wall, tower
Is this all that is left of time?
Time is now labelled it can not escape
It ticks on to the end
Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock…

When will it stop, how will it stop, does it stop?
Is our time running out?
Have humans put an expiry date on reality?
They have performed acts of God
They have made something infinite, definitive
Time is an illusion

Time doesn’t exist
Everything is infinite
Nothing begins, and
Nothing ends
Everything is,
Forever

Bray 6th November 2006

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Excellent poem RAR -- can&#39;t say the same for the background philosophy, though&#33;