@saiboimushi,
Rich: Possibly a bit more since past and future are often shared experiences where individual influence a shared vision of the past and future. There is entanglement so it is not strictly an individual musing - though it could be.
NS: Possibly a bit more, yes. But, the common unreliability of witness testimony illustrates just how little agreement that shared memories actually do have.
Prothero: Time is not dependent on human perception.
NS: This begs the question of who perceived this fact, if it be a fact at all? And if it has not been perceived, then it is equivalent to not existing. I take time as very much a relative and subjective affair, much like Albert.
P: There is a changing reality independent of our perceptions of it.
NS: How does one go about proving something like that? Especially, since no one has ever perceived the un-perceived.
P: This change “becoming” is continuous and not dependent on sense perception of humans.
NS: A memory requires a mind to recall it. It does not walk about on its own, and tap you on the shoulder. And, without that essential memory, a present phenomena has no history to tell me, ‘before it was this, and now it is that.’ Ergo, no ‘becoming’ this or that; only now ‘being’ this or that.
P: It is paradoxical and sophism to assume that time came into being because of human perceptions.
NS: That is a characterization of Your impressions, not an argument. Besides, a ‘paradox’ is only the admission that something merely ‘appears’ to contradict, rather than actually does contradict.
P: You are beginning with the sense theory of perception and phenomenology and projecting it onto ontology.
NS: You’ve just defined ‘Empiricism,’ one of the most basic tools of science.
P: Time and space are inseparable aspects of independent reality.
NS: Yet, according to you, none of that has any ‘being.’ In your earlier post, you were describing a reality that never ‘comes’ at all. Now, you grant real ‘Being’ to: “time-space, indivisibility, distinct aspects (i.e. qualities), and to reality itself.” Is this a “paradox” or an actual ‘contradiction’?
P: The planets move, stars explode and worlds come into being independent of any individual’s conceptual musings.
NS: All of that, and yet no one has ever perceived, or even conceived, of it. Amazing!
P: It is process and energy that creates the “illusion of matter”.
NS: And yet, “the illusion of matter” is commonly “processed” into real energy. And, energy has been known to be turned into (“the illusion of”) matter as well.
P: What does it mean “to be”. There is nothing which is static fixed and immutable.
NS: If there were “nothing,” there would be nothing to change. Without a state of Being, however brief, we can never say that its state has altered in any way from that original state.
P: What is matter anyway?
NS: I’m not defending “matter.” I’m defending “Being.” Even if matter is just as much of an illusion as “becoming,” the ‘illusion’ would still have Being, or it would not exist at all. “Being,” is-ness, supercedes, and underlies, all processes, all phenomena, all noumena. If it did not, none of it would ‘be’ at all.
P: Matter and being are at best secondary manifestations of process.
NS: That would be similar to the ‘process’ of making a cake, without there actually ‘being’ any ingredients to make it with.
“How then will I make it,” you ask?
“I have the recipe (process), and that’s all that I require,” I answer. “What need have I of illusory ingredients, when they are secondary at best to my recipe.”
