Silhouette, your ideas on memory of the past and memory of the future are interesting to me. But i am curious as to how the future ideas or impressions or experiences would interact with the mind.
I agree about time and memory being dependent on eachother in as much as our perception or understanding of the same. What puzzles me is the present. It does not make sense that there is a present. It seems that everything is either future or past and the joining of the two ideas makes a present. Kind of like a point on a line. There is always a greater and lesser point, and a lesser and greater point of the both. Only in the number zero can i see the present, yet zero is only representative of nothing. There can be no mathematical representation of the present since any length of time would conotate a past experience. Zero would be the only way to represent the present. But can zero represent something, or does it represent the absence of something. If it represents the absence of something then what is the present?
There are some side thoughts that i have about this, concerning the length of time it takes my mind to recieve information and act on that information, if in fact that is whats happening. The small amount of time it would take to actually implement a thought or action would not be in “real time” but would always have a minor delay, which it would seem precludes me from ever acting on the present. But i think this is more of an oddity then anything else. it also only applies to myself, and/or human, and is not a universal thing therefore i do not feel its connection to anything would prove useful.
Rhish, I must admit I’ve never heard such a view of knowledge put forward, though I probably am heavily influeced by British Epistemology with my education from the subject being from a British institution and all!
As for knowledge indicating the absence of belief, I would say it was entirely the opposite! How could you have knowledge in something without believing in it! All of the most common defintions of knowledge that i have come accross, the Justified true belief and Nozick’s tracking, all include “true belief” in their definition without question. I do admit that while the fact that having knowledge that knowledge must be true, having it as a belief is sometimes questioned, it’s not a common objection to the defintion of knowledge. if you don’t believe in it, how on earth can you know it?
I see where you coming from on the belief argument, but what you’re describing is faith, not belief. It’s easy to confuse the two, especially with the way various religious authorities present their religion, but a belief doesn’t have to be without reason, faith necessarily does. I believe I went to the pub tonight, I believe that the sun will rise tomorrow and I also believe that I’m a sex god. One of them happen to be a fantasy (I’m pretty drunk, so it’s almost a dead cert I went to the pub ). Belief is about the amount of legitimacy that one lends to an argument on an entirely personal level, for example I could assert the the creationist argument is really true, but I still wouldn’t believe that it is no matter how hard I argued for it, inside I know it’s not true.
Then again notice my use of know in that last statement, is my argument circular???
I understand what your saying Matt, but i must disagree. I think the words themselves mean two seperate things, which in themselves seperate from one another.
I went ahead and looked up the words just for clarities sake. The word believe means “to accept as true, genuine, or real”, and the word know means "to perceive directly : have direct cognition of ".
These two definitions, to me, describe two completely different things. The definition of believe tells me that the person acknowledges that they do not know, simply because they have had to accept it. If they “knew” it there would be no question of whether or not you would have to accept it.
i have tried to think of the clearest example. I believe the sun will come up tomorrow morning. I believe this because i have whitnessed the sun come up everyday since i can remember. There is no reason to believe otherwise. I acknowledge the laws and rules which would govern the sun coming up or not are independent of my own wants, needs, desires. Therefore i believe it will come up tomorrow. However, it is impossible to know if it will actually come up tomorrow. Tomorrow morning when i wake up, and the sun is shining, i can look out my window, see the sun, and know that it did come up. The result, or proof is the same; i believed it would come up, and the next morning i saw and knew that it did, but believing is not knowing, and knowing removes all belief.
Would there be any reasons for christians to believe, if they knew god was real? Would it even be a question? If god came to earth on daily visits and you could speak with him, would you really need faith or belief? No because you could whitness it with your own sense and “theoretically” know. There are more lines of thought which destroy the question of what we can and can not know. and whether or not we actually know anything. But i hope i have at least demonstrated why it is i see things the way i do.
The reason i think the distinction is so important, and should be clarified, is because of the abuse monotheistic religions have commited with these two ideas.
As far as it being a radical idea, its really not one i can claim as my own. My first understanding of this came from reading Hume, and most recently from my profane desire to read everything ever written by Bertrand Russell. Both of whom i believe are british.
). Belief is about the amount of legitimacy that one lends to an argument on an entirely personal level, for example I could assert the the creationist argument is really true, but I still wouldn’t believe that it is no matter how hard I argued for it, inside I know it’s not true.