Knowledge Of The Future, Based On Individual Feelings

Name Institutional Affiliation Course Title Instructor Date Philosophical Essay Knowledge about the future, also referred to as foreknowledge, is a problem that transcends the boundaries of traditional disciplines, including theology, computer science, mathematics, logic and free will. Arguably, the future is a place where people expect their desires to be accomplished, and from this perspective, the future is yet to be experienced with the present being formed by the influences of the past. Both collective and individual attitudes relating to the future are reflected in scientific practice. An individual’s ability to plan, act and make different choices is apparent in scientific predictions as well as new technologies. However, the science diminishes the limitations placed on one’s prospects in the present in equal magnitudes as is the prospects presented to him or her in the present and in direct proportions to the prospects presented by technological advancement. The more prospects which are related to technology, the more open the future appears. Descartes’ “I think, so I am” certainty in cogito, can be expanded to explain the problem of foreknowledge. This paper seeks to argue that it is possible to know the future, based on individual feelings and understanding of the past and the present. Qualities generally connected to the future are attached instantaneously and discontinuously to the present. In essence, this is an imagined dimension of time, a thing that is never directly present to the people, but rather beyond them. The sense that the future is best understood as an abstraction derived from one’s experience of the present needs to be replaced by the notion that discontinuous present in itself is an impression. In line with this, an individual’s understanding of the future would be based on the misinterpretation of the future. Arguably, the notion of the instant as defined in terms of time is dependent on another kind of experience which in this case is the continuous present. However, unpacking the idea of continuity, the continuous transient of the present needs to be understood in future terms. In other words, it is the future that makes the present pass. The broken present is genuinely real, and can fill in as the establishment for our comprehension of reality and the mysticism of essence. In people’s regula...