[Serious] Is the Past Real?

[arewethereyet]

Does a promise made yesterday become no longer a promise because yesterday is in the past and therefore doesn't exist anymore?

Let's go with 'be a decent human'.

[Neo-Scholastic]

On a personal note, I made a promise to my father that can only be fulfilled after he passes. And while I fully intend to honor that promise am I in truth so obligated?

Would you feel any differently about your promise if the past didn't exist? I'm having trouble wrapping my head around the whole question. If the only thing that is real is the present moment, then yes, past becomes moot, but then so does the future, as well as the present. It's not like we can, in the present, decide to act a certain way in the future because our doing so doesn't appear to imply anything with regard to what happens in the future. Our decisions might be realized, but then they might not. When we get to that future time, the past in which we made a decision is no longer real and so what effect can it have? I think I'm just not understanding this whole conversation. Words like 'real', 'exists', 'past', 'present', and so on are doing a lot of heavy lifting, but it's not clear what they should be doing.

I agree the words do a lot of heavy lifting. Depending on one's stance about time those words could entail mplicit ontological commitments. I had hoped to explore those a little bit.

[Jehanne]

This thread reminds me of the evolution of Psychology Today, which began as a magazine to disseminate the Science of Psychology to the general public to one more focused on self-help and science journalism.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Does a promise made yesterday become no longer a promise because yesterday is in the past and therefore doesn't exist anymore?

Let's go with 'be a decent human'.

But what does that mean? To whom are you being decent when the person either no longer exists or does not and may never come to exist?

[Neo-Scholastic]

This thread reminds me of the evolution of Psychology Today, which began as a magazine to disseminate the Science of Psychology to the general public to one more focused on self-help and science journalism.

No one is making you participate on Serious threads.

[arewethereyet]

Does a promise made yesterday become no longer a promise because yesterday is in the past and therefore doesn't exist anymore?

Let's go with 'be a decent human'.

But what does that mean? To whom are you being decent when the person either no longer exists or does not and may never come to exist?

I respected my father enough to work toward carrying out his final wishes.  If you prefer to think that promises made to those who are gone are no longer valid, that's your choice.

My choice, and the choice of my sister, was to do what he asked.

I am at peace with that.  YMMV

btw - You do you.  I pass no judgement either way.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

If the past is real and I break a promise I made yesterday, I’ll feel badly, people may be upset with my failure, etc.

If the past is non-real and I appear to break what appears to be a promise I appear to have made what appears to be yesterday, I’ll appear to feel badly, people may appear to be upset with what appears to be my failure, etc.

It’s a wash.

Boru

[Jehanne]

This thread reminds me of the evolution of Psychology Today, which began as a magazine to disseminate the Science of Psychology to the general public to one more focused on self-help and science journalism.

No one is making you participate on Serious threads.

In the past, the Mods have made a thread split in these types of situations. But, yes, I think that I will move on from this one. After all, is there anything at all that can be said further?

[Angrboda]

Does a promise made yesterday become no longer a promise because yesterday is in the past and therefore doesn't exist anymore?

Let's go with 'be a decent human'.

But what does that mean? To whom are you being decent when the person either no longer exists or does not and may never come to exist?

I'm reminded of some analogous situations. Winterhold repeatedly has insisted that the west has a debt towards the Islamic world in the middle east on account of how he traces many of their problems to the arbitrary partitioning of the region in the Sykes-Picot agreement at the end of World War I. It seems a bit extreme to lay the lion's share of the blame for recent Muslim nations' behavior at the feet of the western powers for what occurred then. But at the same time, one can't ignore the influence it had on the development of those nations, either. Regardless of where you draw the line in the past and say that no events prior to it are going to be counted as meaningfully relevant, some events that are relevant are going to be excluded, and some events, such as recent Islamic extremism, are going to be apportioned significance in a way which may not accurately model their contribution to the current day. Reparations for blacks as a result of slavery in the U.S. is another example. It seems a bit skewed to hold current generations responsible for the behavior of past generations, yet it's also skewed to ignore how those same current generations have benefited from the unjust acts of their forebears. So if the past, real or not, has any meaning for us, it's still a difficulty determining what relationships between the present and the past should be honored and which relationships should be ignored.

[tackattack]

The relationship between past and present is like anything else, you assign it value based on your belief. If a tree u r touching now in the present is currently useful and actualized. When u go back inside the tree is still real because of the actualized value. Seems the present heavily weighs usefulness and the further back or forward from now we discuss the less actualized it is, but it’s usefulness might not diminish at the same rate.