The wall separating Germany
Posts tagged mind
A philosophy of time
Nov 15th
Time, in common language the description of the 4th dimension, is something required for our daily lives. We must hold a basic understanding of time, in order to use future or past tense when composing sentences. As with most things, this is not actively recognized, as it is not necessary for our every day use.
Nonetheless, time is used, not only as a measurement between what happened, the now, and what will happen, but also for transitions. For instance, every living thing is first born, then grows up, and is bound to at some point, die. This is a way of using our perception of time to describe how the state of something may change.
What we use to help recall the past is memory. In my previous post I gave a brief explanation on memory and how it might not be a reliable tool. However, to actually understand that there is a past, we need memory to tell us what has happened. Without memory, we would not know of the past, and thus it would make it difficult to perceive time.
Without a past, the future would be questioned, too. For without experience, although experience could be said to exist without memory, More >
Memory
Nov 15th
To begin with, recent studies show that memory can be manipulated, consciously and unconsciously. This not only adds a question mark to the certainty of witnesses, but to every day life as well.
Of course, there is undoubtedly no question concerning the main parts of the memory, more likely the details. But in order to discuss time, which I will do after this, a brief debate about memory is in order.
In theoretical philosophy, uncertain memory is quite a valuable piece of information. For whereas philosophy questions existence, but cannot question one’s own existence, if your memories would be imaginary, it would allow for some serious toying with your mind.
However, to stay in touch with reality, it is highly doubtful that memory would be made up in any larger sense. With the invention of writing and similar physical memories, it is quite obvious that what you remember is largely related to the rest of the sense-data we perceive as the physical world.
It is thus rather a question of however the rest of the world exists, than whether your memories about it are true. However, we should be doubtful concerning the details of our memories. Over time, memories fade and quite often change. More >
