Paper 5: Is the future real now?
This paper resembled our first assignment; it asked to write a logic paper, but this time answering the question 'is the future real now?' and allowing more freedom. I thought it was a nice way to complete the loop and incorporate the different skills (e.g. thinking logically and deductively, considering different arguments, etc.) we were asked to develop throughout the course. The paper was interesting to write. I approached this paper like how I approached the other papers: by looking at notes from class, passages from the textbook, the numerous internet sources, and most prominently, sitting in frustration and contemplation. After gathering information from both sides (the future is real now and the future is not real now), I came to an uncomfortable but inevitable---in my mind and with my logic---conclusion that the future is real now. Though it makes sense, I have not come to terms with the consequences of this "fact". By believing that the future is real now, you accept that there is no property of 'no longer happening' or 'being over', that it does not matter which situation you are in, that worries about what happens after death should not be a concern, since it is only a temporal border. Reflecting on today's class, however, I could resort to the reasoning that I am an anti-realist, or a constructive empiricist (i.e. since time is not observable, I cannot definitively say that I believe in one theory over the other). Does this discount most philosophical debates since many concern "nonobservable" things? Or is this logic only applicable to science? Or does this not matter since, like my professor mentioned in class, this debate about realism is not all that interesting or important? I am still unsure about this logic since it is new to me (like all topics in this class), and I am very much confused and extremely subject to being wrong.