Read part 2: Julian Barbour argues that Diekemper's discussion of past and future misses what really matters.
We live in a dynamic world. That is my starting point for thinking about the nature of time. Time, if it exists at all, must be such that it passes, and its passage, though fundamental to our experience, does not depend upon experience. Another way to put this foundational thesis is to say that temporal becoming is an objective feature of reality, independent of the mind.
Why make this thesis one’s starting point? It is because of the pervasiveness of our experience of the passage of time. It is pervasive in a way that common experiences which we know to be illusory are not. For example, it is common for earth-bound humans to experience the earth as flat, yet we know that it is not. It is common for humans to experience a straw placed in a glass of water as bent, even though we know it is not. We are able to see past illusions in these kinds of cases because science has provided an explanation for them.
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