[Serious] Is the Past Real?

[Anomalocaris]

Would music be possible if the past didn't exist? Something about playing a set of notes requires that it be embedded in the past in order to carry a melody. Not sure if my point makes sense but here are two ways to illustrate it:

1. If the past wasn't real, then playing a note in isolation in the present moment would be indistinguishable from having played it after a sequence of notes. Both examples would be the equivalent of pressing the reset button. And yet, this isn't the case. A note will sound either harmonious or discordant depending on what preceded it. The past transforms it.

2. The notes cannot be simply held simultaneously in memory in the present moment, the way a photograph might hold referents that no longer exist, because if a sequence of notes were to exist simultaneously they would become a chord rather than a sequence.

In other words, the notes of a melody cannot exist at the same time, neither in the world nor in memory, without changing the song. It needs to extend into the past in a real and inteconnected way.

Past not being real is not equal to past not being perceivable in the present as real.

[Jehanne]

Does anyone care to mention the B-theory of time?

[LinuxGal]

There are things in my past I wish weren't real.

The cringe factor is an important element of natural selection....

[Neo-Scholastic]

And presumably what one considers real has bearing on one's value system. Not even remotely suggesting that I have any answers. Nevertheless, it seems to me that the ontological status of the past and/or future somehow matters.

But does it matter to whether or not you believe there is a moral obligation to keep a promise?  Such that an answer to those questions has an effect?  Even if we assumed that only the present is real, and that we live our lives, practically, entirely in a present moment - do you presently believe that there is a moral obligation to keep our word?

Break your word now, break your word later, ultimately, the date of when you break your word is immaterial to whether or not that's a bad thing.

Yes, I do believe there are good reasons to behave ethically in the here and now. And all those reasons must be deontological. Or so it seems to me. Even in an etch-a-sketch universe there seem to be absolutes, like a grainy metallic quantum texture and its rigid adherence to the Principle of Non-Contradiction - the path of a single nylon cursor tracing on the ephemeral fabric of existence. It seems implausible that any form of presentism could support a moral theory based on future consequences. As for eternalism (whether Calvinistic or Einstienian), it has its own moral problems since chosen consequences are fated so-to-speak.

[The Grand Nudger]

It’d be pretty hard to sell the idea that they -must- be deontological, imo. Though that is the way we codify them in societies.

[rado84]

[Serious] Is the Past Real?

[Seriously] Last night you had a date and then sex with the love of your life. Last night is in the past. You remember it, she remembers it - that makes it real. Anything is real for as long as there's someone left to remember it.

[LinuxGal]

It seems implausible that any form of presentism could support a moral theory based on future consequences. As for eternalism (whether Calvinistic or Einstienian), it has its own moral problems since chosen consequences are fated so-to-speak.

Since there seems to be a debate whether presentism or eternalism is the case, would cruelty be wrong in a presentialist universe and acceptable in an eternalist universe, or vice versa, particularly when the inhabitants of each universe do not know the fundamental structure of their own reality?

[Jehanne]

[Serious] Is the Past Real?

[Seriously] Last night you had a date and then sex with the love of your life. Last night is in the past. You remember it, she remembers it - that makes it real. Anything is real for as long as there's someone left to remember it.

@polymath257 gave a Kudos to this post but not to mine mentioning the B-theory of time?  What gives??

[Mystical]

I'm of the opinion that what we do is recorded in a timeline for forever and If we had a time machine we could go back and see it. Which means my love for my husband will never die. It will always exist and if there is a ghostly afterlife maybe I can go back and bask in that love forever.

[Anomalocaris]

the answer to the original question seems to be the past being real is by far the most parsimonious explanation for why we remember the past. it is not possible to “know” the past is real. but if the past is not real and that actually should create an perceptible impact on us, then we would know the past or not real. since we don’t know the past is real or now, and parsimony says real is likely, there is no reason whatsoever every to assume it is not real.