On Wed, Nov 28, 2018 at 12:31 PM Dan Asimov <dasimov@earthlink.net> wrote:
----- ... there is a sense of “now” that runs unidirectionally into the future ... -----
This phenomenon has fascinated me for a while now. Consider the experience that everyone has of the flow of time, specifically "the moving now" Now it's now, but now it's a little later and now it's later yet. Pedestrian, yet no one knows how to model what happening so that physics, mathematics, and our own experience don't seem to contradict each other.
Like, take the spacetime view of physics, where it all exists at once. But wait — how does that jibe with our experience of our lives as a succession of instants ordered like the real numbers?
Just as you write below:
Another possibility is that our lives are being lived from start to finish, unchangingly. The parts we have already lived as well as the parts we have yet to live, just like the present moment, all entirely as equals. This just leaves unexplained how we can then experience a moment as separate from other moments.
I don't see what the problem is. Plug in t, get the experience at t. -- Mike Stay - metaweta@gmail.com http://math.ucr.edu/~mike https://reperiendi.wordpress.com