>>> "Dace" <edace at flinthills.com> 04/03/00 01:53PM >>>
-----Original Message-----
From: Charles Brown
>
>>>> "Dace" <edace at flinthills.com> 04/02/00 04:13PM >>>
>
>Information retrieval is not the meaning of the word, "memory." When we
>remember something, we are bringing the past into the present.
>
>_________
>
>CB: This sounds like not only time travel, but time removal. You must be
speaking metaphorically.
>
I mean that we bring past perceptions and thoughts into the present.
_________
CB: What we bring forward is like a photograph, a record of a past event, a trace reflection, an imitation of the perception or thought. _________
Matter is the existence of the present. Mind is the existence of the past.
_______
CB: And the present is all that exists (for now :>)). There is nothing in the world but matter.
Mind exists in the present too, as perception. It is, in part, in memory, the imitation of the past in the present.
_________
This does not mean there are two existences. Of course, there is only one existence: Time. Consciousness, which joins body and mind-- present and past-- is the microcosm to time's macrocosm. This is Bergsonian metaphysics. The substance of reality is time.
_________
CB:
There is one existence: matter. "There is nothing in the world but matter in motion, and matter in motion cannot move otherwise than in space and time." - Lenin
_________
There's nothing odd about time travel.
_______
CB: Yes there is.
________
What would be odd is time stillness.
_________
CB: You are punning on "time travel". "Time travel" usually means leaping to another time out of sequence, not the fact that time marches on.
_______
In other words, reality is motion, not stasis.
_______
CB: Yes, there is nothing in the world but matter in motion.
________
Up until Kant, modern metaphysics was essentially Plato-- the ultimate reality is set, from above, by God. Kant's demolition of Plato cleared the way for the emergence of a genuine metaphysics, based on flux rather than constancy. Kind of like the clearing away of static (state) socialism to make room for a dynamic socialism to bubble up from below.
________
CB: Yes, although there were Greek dialecticians such as whatshisname who never stepped in the same river twice. And there were materialists, atheists, during the Enlightenment before Kant, in England and France. Kant is an agnostic, shamefaced materialist, dualist. He equivocates on the issue of God.
Hegel is the real modern dialectician more than Kant, although Kant did make a dialectical discovery with respect to the fact that the Solar System has a history.
The main motion with respect to socialism is that it is the revolutionary change from capitalism. That is much more important to focus on now, before considering developments within socialism, because actually existing socialism stagnated mostly because of the world historic wars that continuing existing capitalism visited upon it. If you want better socialism next time, concentrate on getting rid of capitalism more thoroughly, especially in Western Europe and the U.S. where you are.
Workers of the West, it's our turn.
CB