Does the Future Exist? - Philosophy Tube

Philosophy meets physics, special relativity, and Doctor Who!

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Suggested Reading:
Thomas Crisp, “Presentism and the Grounding Objection,” in Nous

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[Michael-Hammerschmidt]

Ollie, you are the ontological basis from which cuteness is gauged.

[Yourmindfulness]

I Google what I think will be a dead end question "does the future exist" and I get olly's video with that exact wording. This is why Philosophy tube is important :)

[k.ebartlett]

does anyone else find it weird now-olly(2019-apr) looks like future Olly from this video.

[coffetime]

I know I know its totally of the topic but Abraham Lincoin WAS the King of Mars, atleast in adventure time

[Jane_]

If only she could’ve seen future-Abigail in this video.

[cyoung]

I had always thought of presentism as an eternal "now" that is constantly refreshed and imbued with a "past-ness"

[calebhopkins]

In defense of presentism: as I understand it, relativity only speaks to the way something is observed, not how it actually is. So while two observers may be able to legitimately disagree on what is present, the observation of something doesn't necessarily make its being. It very well could still exist in one present moment, only to be distorted by its observation

[Xidnaf]

Why are only things that exist truthmakes?  Why can't things that did exist or will exist but don't exist be truthmakers?

[Shakespeare]

from a relative point of view, even a Plank time could be made to be extended from the perspective of an outside observer. a single Plank second measured on a Plank clock traveling at nearly the speed of light or near a black hole, when viewed by an observer who was not in those two conditions, could appear to be approaching an infinite length of time for the observer.

and things get even weirder when dealing with quantum time, where future causes (within a few Plank seconds) can affect past effects (again, by just a few plank seconds. actually there's a great video out there about how liquid Helium II demonstrates some of these phenomena)

[herbiepop]

There is no 'present' outside of the consciousness perceiving it. The rest of reality which produces sensations experienced by the consciousness is all in a different time and sequenced by the consciousness. One can't 'see' without receiving light from a previous event, one can't 'feel' without receiving electrical impulses from a previous event. The consciousness itself is smeared in time being a collection of thoughts and sensations from slightly different moments giving the impression of a coherent self.

[FullOfUselessContent]

Hey Ollie, could you perhaps do a video on the notorious Hegel?
Though, perfectly understandable if you haven't studied him, since most of your videos are in generally in the analytic tradition :)

[margothutton]

Okay I love temporal conundrums, special relativity, and accents--a few of my favorite things--and you saying 'simultaneously' in your awesome accent while talking about special relativity as it pertains to time is just about the best thing possible.  Best.  Thing.  Possible.

[wisdomslap]

An average human being kills time 24 hours a day. If we are killing time, does that make is guilty of murder? Wait. Time eventually catches up with all of us, is time killing us in revenge for kill time itself?‎

[willemvandebeek]

Dinosaurs still exist if you look at Earth far enough away (from the Andromeda galaxy or something like that).

[dichotomae]

You know, we have a handy thing in English called verb tenses, which make the words "exist" and "existed" have two completely different meanings. It seems like they're used interchangeably in this video (correct me if I'm wrong) which doesn't make sense. So no, we can't say "the past exists" but we can say "the past existed". We can't say 'the future exists" but we can say "the future will exist." I don't see why presentism makes statements about the past and future false. As long as you say them in the right tense, why can't they be true? I think it must be because the assumption that truth depends on what exists is false. I think it's more accurate to say "truth depends on what existed, exists, or will exist." So the answer to the question, does the future exist? is "No. But it will exist."

[Amy-zbph]

I've noticed this kind of thing a lot during meditation. I try to focus on the moment but it's impossible because the moment is always changing into the next moment, although no one can point to the exact time when one moment becomes the next. Of course, we have nowhere to live but in the moment and yet we can't even really say it is a place where we can live because it's always changing. I thought about a river and how it is constantly flowing so that a different part of the river is going by at any given time. Then, I wondered whether we move through time or whether time moves through us.

[Valosken]

Given that "Present" "Past and "Future" all DEICTIC terms (that is, dependent upon a frame of reference, almost always the speaker - spatial examples being 'here' and 'there') they depend upon our experience alone and not necessarily upon the actual nature of the Universe.
I don't know about the productivity of the question. I don't know whether it can be meaningfully answered. As far as experiential reality goes, then yes, the present is all that exists (also, the verb 'exist' is in the present tense, so it wouldn't make sense to say the past and future 'exist' anyway). The present is all that exists because we cannot experience the past or future - we can only THINK about them (which is clearly enough) - if we started experiencing them, then that would make them the present. I feel like asking whether or not the future and past exist is like asking whether all of one's thoughts are real beyond the mind.

[zeeiremonger]

I'm from 2017 and its all lies. Future Ollie is far more attractive.

[zeroclout]

You should do a video on general semantics.

[kujmous]

Perhaps it is that time is based on consciousness. The past is the collection of each present recorded, and the future is based on trends of the past. Artifacts and evidence of the past only serve as further record of past presents. Conjecture exists only as a likelihood.