Originally posted by Boxing Pythagoras
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With that in mind, what I'm trying to get you to answer is that given that on B-theory all the brain states are equally real, why is it the case that we seem to be aware of the specific moment of time which we perceive. Note that I'm not asking why it is the only moment of time we seem to be aware of, but rather why it is the case that our perception of temporal becoming seem to move from one moment of time to the next in a specific direction of time, rather than jumping randomly back and forth between these moments.
Originally posted by Boxing Pythagoras
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The experience of temporal becoming in the present is something characterized by vividness, immediacy and something which we perceive to be happening outside of us, just as the experience of seeing an elephant is characterized by the same traits.
The memory of temporal becoming, is not something vivid (atleast not as vivid as our experience of temporal becoming in the present), it is not immediate, and we do not perceive our memories to be external to us, i.e our memories do not give us the impression that what we are remembering is currently happening outside of us.
Note that I'm not arguing here that temporal becoming is real, anymore than I'm arguing that the elephant that the man is seeing in front of him is real, since it's possible that the creature in front of him is just an illusion. What I'm arguing is that there is definite difference in quality between the experience of temporal becoming in the present vs the memory of temporal becoming in the past (such as the difference in vividness and immediacy) just as there is a difference between having an experience of actually seeing an elephant in front of you, and trying to imagine the appearance of an elephant in your mind.
With that distinction in mind, it seems to me that your statement in post #787:
Is not only of doubtful accuracy, it is manifestly false, and anyone can know that it is false simply by taking a moment to analyze their own perceptions.
In other words, appealing to our memories of the past as explaining the present experience of temporal becoming fails miserably. We can know that they're different simply by observing their different qualities.
Perhaps more importantly, and something which I haven't yet brought up, it seems to me to be a case of putting the cart before the horse. We do not, nor could we even, have the experience of temporal becoming in the present simply because we have memories of temporal becoming in the past. In contrast, our memories of temporal becoming in the past can possibly be explained by supposing that we actually perceived temporal becoming in the past. IOW, memories do not, and cannot, explain experiences in happening in the moment, but memories can be explained by experiences that happened in the moment to which these memories refer.
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