Tom wrote:

Quite true -- but I'm not inclined to call all those variously
considered the 'great minds' of Western civilization "fools," as you did.

Not one of them can dispute that

On the contrary, they and many others have examined the question,
finding it far from cut and dried. The history of philosophy is filled
with accounts of thinkers trying, and sometimes failing, to justify the
notions you declare 'self-evident.'

It is self-evident. It is not

Leaving the possibility that it is merely your illusion.

Our private experience is the ground

And that is a point of tremendous contention. Multitudes have disagreed
-- and, by the way, said point fully contradicts your initial point. You
called Bonewitts's claims regarding the past and future erroneous --
your above statement, however, fully justifies his picture of reality or
any subjective picture of reality. One whose personal experience
includes visiting the past is, by your statement, fully entitled to
claim the real existence of the past, a claim you adamantly objected to
in your initial post.

I'm not so much of a relativist as all that, myself. Regarding the
initial question, I would stand more in the range of William James who
noted, regarding various parapsychological phenomena, that we have
evidence of 'something,' but evidence which always stands just a bit shy
of our standards of verification. And as for 'personal experience,' I
would no more study the concept of time in that light than I would study
high energy physics under those assumptions (ever hear of Heisenberg?).

--
Blessed Be,
Gale

original fiction, poetry, reviews http://www.capjewels.com

"Progress which pursues only the next invention, progress which pulls
thought out of the mind and replaces it with idle slogans, is not
progress at all. It is a beckoning mirage in a desert over which stagger
the generations of men." -- Loren Eisley, _The Firmament of Time_