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From: mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: Now and Then
Message-ID: <1032@dciem.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 7-Aug-84 12:13:15 EDT
Article-I.D.: dciem.1032
Posted: Tue Aug  7 12:13:15 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 7-Aug-84 14:19:37 EDT
References: <3113@decwrl.UUCP>
Organization: D.C.I.E.M., Toronto, Canada
Lines: 24

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  . . . If my
predictions of the future were ideally accurate, then I could transcend
the the direction of time. My recollections of the past are also not
accurate, although they are much more accurate than my predictions of the
future. Thus, my experience is a sample of reality. My free will determines
****************
How do you know that your recollections of the past are more accurate
than your predictions of the future?  There seems to be no way other
than concensus to make that assertion (photographs and written things
may also count, but like other people's memories, they could be faked
or wrong).  What you have is the "now", in which is embedded some
notion of a "past" you have experienced, which feels subjectively
quite different from the "future" you guess at.  This subjective
difference is with us all our lives, but it really doesn't have any
bearing on an absolutist position in regard to cause and effect.
If you are a relativist, then the possibility of perception is all-important,
but if not, then you have to look to the mathematics, and be very
careful not to let subjective impressions creep in unannounced.
-- 

Martin Taylor
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