| | Stephen,
Sorry for the belated response.
I have my RoR preferences page set up to catch and retrieve only the last 99 forum posts, and I must've been away from RoR for long enough where your question was rotated off of the latest 99 posts. In other words, I never saw it.
Under the principle that late is better than never -- and that the future comes into existence (from 100% potentiality: a version of non-existence):
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Do you think that all relations are abstract? Do you think that all relations require consciousness in order for the relations to hold?
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No. The relations are there and are the facts or the aspects of reality regardless of our conscious awareness. This is what makes our definitions "factual" (rather than mere, heuristic tools used only in order to compartmentalize knowledge).
Think of a unicorn. A unicorn doesn't "really" exist (except in your mind), yet we can have true definitions of unicorns. We can even evaluate something for its "unicorn-status." A horse without a horn, is ne'er a unicorn -- one might say. And those with a horn in the right spot, are.
Our ability to think and to talk about unicorns does not make them "real" -- even though we can be 100% accurate about them. We understand the necessary relation of a unicorn with its horn, even though the unicorn is only a mental existent -- not a real entity.
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I have held for a long time that the membership relation of concepts and sets is only an abstract relation, not a concrete relation. But I hold that there are also relations that are concrete. There are concrete relations that are perceived and concrete relations that are discerned by abstract thought. Perceived relations would include some relations of proximity, containment, and similarity. Some other similarities, such as that between a water circuit and an electrical circuit, are accessible only by abstraction.
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I take a different view. Even if the relation of something to something else can only be known on an abstract level of thought -- as long as it refers to things real -- I take that relation to really exist (in a real, metaphysical sense of "existence"). The relation holds because it has reality and is more than merely abstract -- even though the only way that humans can epistemologically discover this metaphysical relation -- is through abstract means.
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The fact that the temporal relation that is the future must be known through abstraction (except for the sense of the future-front of experience), does not mean that the relation itself is not a concrete one existing independently of consciousness.
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This is sort of like what I just said. I agree with its structural logic. Relations which can be known only abstractly don't have to be only abstract (they can be concrete relations independent of consciousness). But, for another reason, I disagree with the conclusion that the future is real.
I "see" the future as having 0% actuality (0% ontological status) -- even if it is always tied to the past. Think of the lottery. If you buy a ticket, and win, then your future winnings were inescapably related to your past purchase of the ticket. Your winning never existed though, until it finally existed. It wasn't real until it happened. On this note I end with the playful quip:
Show me the money.
:-)
Ed
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