Thursday, April 26, 2012

The Past: personal view

A thought just came to me that the past cannot effect me because it isn't even presently efficacious enough to literally come back to me. Past certainly necessitate what happens later but the past is not present within the events that it necessitates. Rather it is our memory of the past that is presently efficacious to our emotions, thoughts, opinions, and reasons. It isn't the past that disturbs us but rather our memories of them. This is not to say that past is not real but rather when we often think about our past we do not always make a distinction between our memories and the past. With the past we do not have control over, it is beyond our reach. But with memories we might have control over how it effects us but not entirely it's existence. We can fool ourselves into thinking that we can deliberately and easily eliminate our memories but our memories will stick with us unless our brain is damaged. While our memories are there it does not follow that they must always effect us unless one of us has post-traumatic disorder (sorry, can't control that either). What we can do is learn to manage our own feelings associated with the memories by letting go of the feelings by accepting and understanding our memories which changes the emotions. This allows the mind to focus on the present activities rather than the past.

Sunday, April 22, 2012

Possible Objections to my views on Space-Time and Quantity

These are possible objections I anticipated against my own views:

First Objection: The distinction between dimensional quantity and individuated quantity is not strong enough since the individuals being counted posses dimensional quantity even though they are also individuated as separate beings. One can count a class of squares, triangles, spheres, and other dimensional objects. The distinction between Dimensional Quantity and Individuated Quantity should lie on the method of quantification rather than intrinsic properties of quantity alone. Individuated quantity is based on the counting of individual objects whereas the dimensional quantity is the measurement of dimensional sizes.

Second Objection: The distinction between dimensional quantity and individuated quantity does not take into account of other quantities such as probability (or randomness), motion, and change. The view also seems to suggest that everything can be reduced to quantity but this is absurd since there are things such as "quality" and "substances".

Third Objection: Your argument did not solve the question as to whether how individuated quantity is possible. You posited that dimensional quantity can posses abstract points intrinsic in the dimensions of space-time to explain how individual things can occupy space-time rather than being spread out like a peanut butter. But by doing this you only go back to the same problem because you are positing abstract points which themselves are individuated quantity. Therefore you haven't really answered the question.