Is TIME actually real? Is MOTION actually real?

In summary, time is a measurement system used to put events into a logical order. It is a way of quantifying the sequences of events that occur in the present. However, we can only perceive events in the present, which raises the question of whether time is a real concept or if it only exists in the human mind. This also raises questions about the existence of motion, as our perception of events is always in the present, but they have already occurred. Therefore, our understanding of time and motion may be limited by our human perspective, and may not accurately reflect reality.
  • #1
NoVA101
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This seems like a strange question, but I don't know how to actually get out of it. If you don't actually THINK about this, you might just have a typical, incorrect kneejerk reaction. So it seems.

First do Time...

If you remember what you did yesterday, or last year, or 5 seconds ago -- when do you remember it? Now. You can ONLY remember the past right NOW. Tell me how to get out of that.

If you worry about what you're going to do tomorrow, or you plan your vacation next month, when are you thinking about the future? Now. You can only think about the future right NOW.

If you say, "I'm going to drop this ball, and it will actually fall." And then you do this 100 times or 1 million times and it always happens, any scientist will say that you are performing a repeatable scientific experiment. Really? When do you think about dropping the ball? Now. When are you dropping the ball? Now. When do you remember that you had dropped the ball? Now. When do you say, "I dropped this ball 50 times and it always fell"? You say this NOW. You can't get out of this!

I don't think you can EVER get out of the FACT that you are always existing in the NOW, and everything else is just a thought process -- a strictly human function -- existing nowhere other than in the squishy neurons in your brain, which is trapped in the infinite NOW, and therefore any Before Now or After Now is just a human function, not anything that is actually a part of Reality. In Reality, there is ONLY EVER NOW, and there are these other things in your brain that have ridiculously tiny, ridiculously inaccurate slices of stuff, called memories or thoughts or projections or something, not really what is happening right now, here, in Reality.

Now do Motion...

If you throw a ball straight up in the air at 5 miles per hour, how fast does it hit your hand when it comes back down? Right, 5 mph. OK, now tell me, when it reached the top, what speed was it going? 0 mph? OK, now tell me, how long did it stay at that speed? How long was it traveling at a speed of 4 mph? 3? 3.000001? The answer usually given is an "infinitesimally" small period of time. Isn't that just a cop-out? Isn't that a scientists way of saying, "I dunno."

So yes I took Calculus oh so many years ago. And we talked about "as the time change approaches zero" or whatever. This is a cop-out! So are cool mathematical formulas and charts and curves.

What actually happens in Reality, in the real world, not on a piece of paper in some math formula, and not in your limited human brain matter? Tell me! How long does the ball stay at a speed of 0.00? I mean, in Reality! Not in some theoretical formula. Really. How long?

Scientists seem to just give up and say, "Well, it is at an infinite number of speeds for infinitesimally small time periods." Right. Why don't you say God created the Earth 5,000 years ago. That is about the same level of scientific thought! Does the answer actually make sense? Does it actually correspond to Reality? Or are those just some words that seem to "work" but don't actually make sense. (Exactly -- the Zero thing or the Bible thing, you can't tell!)

So the question is, Is Time real? Or does it ONLY exist in the human mind? (and maybe the minds of a couple other earth-bound critters). How could YOU know, aren't you trapped in a mind, which is actually forever in the infinite now?? If time doesn't really exist, then motion doesn't really exist either! What is going on?

Oh, and if you don't like the implications of this, then that is just another flaw of the human mind, a logical fallacy, called Appeal to Consequences. So if you say, "I can see my fingers moving" -- again, that is the brain matter, stuck in the NOW, being adjusted in some way so what is HERE, NOW always appears to be different. Is it? In Reality?
 
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  • #2
I take it your the kind of guy who likes to live in the present. :biggrin:

Time is a measurement system used to put events into a logical order.

Even if we only exist in the present, events still do not happen all at once. An event in the past is not just in our mind as you seem to be asserting. One event could cause a present event, thus it must have actually happened. Time is a way to quantifying these logical sequences of events.
 
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  • #3
Note: Moved from General Physics to Philosophy.
-MIH
 
  • #4
"Even if we only exist in the present" -- when, exactly, are you NOT in the present? Therefore how do you know, exactly, that something else is not in the present?

"An event in the past is not just in our mind" -- how do you know? Do you see the result of the event? When do you see it? Now. Do you remember the event? When do you remember it? Now.

"thus it must have actually happened" -- but you only know this because of what you THINK you are perceiving, right NOW. Always Now. Only Now. There is no way out, there is nothing you know, ever, except what is, right HERE, right NOW.
 
  • #5
Of course from your reference frame, you are in the present :)
An event from the past is also left as clues in other objects... like when you look at your hand on a wild party and find a wedding ring...
And yes, welcome to the ummh.. now
By the way the universe began in 1970. Anyone who says they are over 38 is lying about their age.
 
  • #6
We NEVER observe anything in the present. We can only see that which occurred in the past.
 
  • #7
Ivan Seeking said:
We NEVER observe anything in the present. We can only see that which occurred in the past.

Very true. Speed of light limit.
 
  • #8
As to time (and space!), you're noticing the fact that observers only have 'direct' access to the here and now. There is a subtle problem that the notions of 'here' and 'now' are rather imprecisely defined, but this hasn't led to any scientific problems that I know of.

I should point out that even if you go all the way to extreme solipsism where everything is just our minds imagination, the notion of time is still needed to describe what we're imagining.

I hate using the word 'real' in these contexts, because it's notorious for being ill-defined. We cannot discuss a concept unless all agree on the concept being discussed!



Your views on motion read more like someone not understanding their mathematics classes than someone doing philosophy.
 
  • #9
You do make a point...thing is that time exists, as G01 said, as a measurement system...the measured "distance" between one frame and another. The concept in its depth is much more arbitrary...so we don't really know. Time could really just be an illusion, much like many other concepts.
 
  • #10
I agree that "real" is an undefined word. Time and motion are function of consciousness, ie they are classical concepts. They are as "real" as anything else you consider real. If time is not real then space is not either, that's what Einstein believed and that's what i believe too. Take a photon for example - if it was emitted 5 billion years ago from Alpha Centauri and reached the Earth now, what time passed from its frame of reference? And what distance did it travel?
Have a look at Bell's theorem and what it says about space and distance - Nature is non-local(i.e. there is no spatial separateness of objects in nature and we are all one wholeness). As Einstein said on the optical illusion of separateness:


"A human being is a part of the whole called by us "the universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest - a kind of optical illusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us,restricting us to our personal desires and affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening the circle of understanding and compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."


Even String Theory in all of it's 5 versions point to Space and Time being not fundamental:

"This is a hint that perhaps spacetime geometry is not something fundamental in string theory, but something that emerges in the theory at large distance scales or weak coupling. This is an idea with enormous philosophical implications.".

http://www.superstringtheory.com/blackh/blackh4.html

This says that all 5 versions point to the Holographic Principle, that the Universe is probably a giant hologram. It is my belief that the source of this hologram will be found to be consciousness.

I'd say that the only thing we can dub "real" is consciousness(i don't mean consciousness as in the theory that electrical impulses in the brain are generating the notion of reality - I mean consciousness as that which is fundamental, transcendental and "foreign" to the human body and which allows elementary particles to be aware of themselves and see themselves). When you accept that consciousness is real and separate from the body, then the concepts of time, space and motion are not fundamental but a consequence of consciousness. As Einstein loved to say -

"Reality is an illusion, albeit a persistent one"

Couple that with the 1st law of thermodynamics and the zero-point energy universe and the picture will start to get clearer.

I agree with Roger Penrose that the future Theory of Everything will have to account for consciousness. If not, it will be a theory of almost everything. I believe at the end of our quest for answers we will be finding - us.

You don't have to be a solipsist to be inline with the findings of modern physics - IMO our collective consciousness is much more than that of a certain individual and I find solipsism somewhat frightening and ugly.
 
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  • #11
Hurkyl said:
Your views on motion read more like someone not understanding their mathematics classes than someone doing philosophy.
I agree. In this conversation I think the words "actually real" are more of a problem then "time" and "motion". This is a useless discussion until the OP defines "actually real".
 
  • #12
DaleSpam said:
I agree. In this conversation I think the words "actually real" are more of a problem then "time" and "motion". This is a useless discussion until the OP defines "actually real".

Good question!

If a person "hears voices in their head" they are said to be delusional. They are said to be "mentally ill". They are said to be perceiving things that are not "actually real". And I think most of us "sane" people agree to all this.

But, there actually is something going on in their head, right? THAT -- whatever it is -- actually does exists. THAT is really real. It could be some random firing of some neurons or whatever, but there is something that is "real" that is causing this condition in this person.

But this thing that is real (misfiring neurons, in a human mind) causes that same human mind to "believe" that something is occurring in reality, that is actually not occurring in reality. This is the definition of Delusional -- a belief in something that isn't real.

So the mental concepts of Time and Motion are the same thing.

A "properly functioning" or "healthy" or "sane" human mind is always and without exception doing all of its perceiving or processing or remembering or thinking or planning or projecting -- all mental activities, right Here, right Now. But within that same brain is a "belief" that there is a "past" and a "future". But that brain is operating right HERE. And it is operating right NOW. And it always is.

So the mental activity in a brain in the Here and Now causes a belief in that same brain in a Past and a Future, neither of which is Here nor is it Now. Well actually that isn't even true! The memories or mental activities are also right Here and right Now, where else could they be? So those "thoughts" or mental activities or beliefs ARE real, but that still doesn't mean that they correspond to reality, any more than the voices that a "mentally ill" person hears actually correspond to reality. What's the difference?

So why are those mental concepts of Time and Motion, that do not correspond to Reality, "believed" to be true and are believed to be more "real" than some different concepts occurring in the brain of a person whose brain is causing them to believe they are hearing voices? They are both the same thing, concepts in the mind, that may or may not correspond to Reality.

"But look, it's obvious, I can see motion, and I am not mentally ill, therefore motion must be real."

Don't you see the trap you are in! You are trapped in a brain, that is filled with a mountain of memories and thoughts and projections and perceptions, and from this flows "beliefs", and you (that exact same brain) believe them. Where did the notion, "I'm going to move my hand now to prove that motion exists" come from? That same mind! Where did the memory of where you hand was, and the perception of where you hand currently is, come from? That same mind! Where is the belief that your hand will be somewhere else in the "future" -- that same mind! You are trapped in a mind, and that stuff, those beliefs, occurring in that mind do NOT necessarily correspond to reality. "But I know they do!" Same mind. "But I can ask other people and they say they know Time exists!" Still stuck in your mind. And presumably those other creatures out there you apparently perceive with that same mind you are always trapped in, are in an identical trap, with the same beliefs, all of which don't necessarily correspond to Reality.
 
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  • #13
So then, is your definition of "actually real" something like "a thing is actually real if a sane person believes it is actually real"? If not, could you please try to be more explicit?

If it is too difficult at this time to formulate a definition then try focusing your thoughts using one of the following:
1) make a list of things and categorize them as "actually real" or "not actually real", then look for commonalities
2) think of a test procedure that you could use to determine the "actually real"-ness of someting
 
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  • #14
DaleSpam said:
So then, is your definition of "actually real" something like "a thing is actually real if a sane person believes it is actually real"? If not, could you please try to be more explicit?

If it is too difficult at this time to formulate a definition then try focusing your thoughts using one of the following:
1) make a list of things and categorize them as "actually real" or "not actually real", then look for commonalities
2) think of a test procedure that you could use to determine the "actually real"-ness of someting

First tell me how you are no longer trapped inside of a human brain.

You use words such as...

Formulate = in your brain.
Definition = in that same brain.
Focusing = in that brain.
Thoughts = in that brain.
Using = in that brain.
Make a list = in that brain.
Look = in that brain.
Think = in that brain.
"YOU" = in that brain.
Determine = in that brain.

How does a mentally ill person "know" something is "real"? Because it is in their brain.

How do you Formulate or Define or Focus, etc, etc, etc? In your brain.

Where is that whole concept of "you". In that same brain.

Where did your notion that a test can prove reality come from? That same brain.
 
  • #15
Instead of defining "real" perhaps it will help to consider no matter what you or I or anyone thinks is real,
it will hold no more significance when attributed to Now than when attributed to the past or future.

Now does not exist in any more attainable or definable sense than the past or the future.
All events, including those that are the synaptic events we call sensory perception, are chronologically prior to cognition or awareness. Even being aware that you are aware has this same chronology.
So if time is to be expressed as something other than awareness, it is the order and rate of events of which you become aware. Time is then a condition of the physical events we call the universe, independent of anyone's awareness. The order and rate of such events are subjective and relative, both are conditions of awareness.
Because all conscious recognition of events agree on the order and rate of events under specific conditions and agree that the order and rate differ by these conditions, time is the order and rate of events.
As the firing of a synapse and all the EVENTS that comprise the awareness of a single event hold to the same conditions of order and rate of the event being observed, there is no NOW. There is only our reference to events of the past that we agree would have been NOW had we the ability to cease all events in the universe at that point and still be conscious to recognize it. But of course, the conscious awareness of that point requires the events of our brain to continue in the order and rate necessary to be aware.
So the NOW that you assume is the point of awareness is always in the past.
The quantity of time that the ball is neither moving up nor down is also a qualification of time that assumes there is a now. Just as there is no now, there is no "time" that the ball is not moving wrt you. If you threw the ball and I threw you at the same time, you would travel with the ball and claim it never moved. I think you would agree that such an observation does not prove the lack of motion of the ball indicates a continuous now just because you didn't observe any motion. Now consider any variation of this motion of you and the ball and you will see that other than your preference to say it stopped, there is no way to measure, prove or even consider it as stopping unless you stop time as well, and that as mentioned above aborts the whole idea.
 
  • #16
NoVA101 said:
First tell me how you are no longer trapped inside of a human brain.

You use words such as...

Formulate = in your brain.
Definition = in that same brain.
Focusing = in that brain.
Thoughts = in that brain.
Using = in that brain.
Make a list = in that brain.
Look = in that brain.
Think = in that brain.
"YOU" = in that brain.
Determine = in that brain.

How does a mentally ill person "know" something is "real"? Because it is in their brain.

How do you Formulate or Define or Focus, etc, etc, etc? In your brain.

Where is that whole concept of "you". In that same brain.

Where did your notion that a test can prove reality come from? That same brain.
I completely agree that I am trapped in my own brain.

So then is your definition of "actually real" that "nothing is actually real"? Or maybe "we cannot know what is actually real"?
 
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  • #17
DaleSpam said:
So then is your definition of "actually real" that "nothing is actually real"?

You asked -- How can I come up with a test and prove what Reality is?

I asked -- Even if you came up with a way to test Reality, wouldn't the "you" doing the testing still be forever trapped in a human mind/brain thing? If so, then isn't that brain thing creating memories it calls the past? And more mental events it calls the future? Won't it be doing just this, Here, Now, when conducting the Reality tests it created to test Reality?

It seems like this very bunch of thoughts could be seen as a meaningless mental exercise. But then again, it actually seems to be the most fundamental underlying assumption in ALL that we believe to be true, to be Reality, and if not understood, then perhaps we are all living a life of Delusion.HEY! I see you edited your question after I had already quoted it! So yes, your new question is THE question -- how can we, a limited human brain/mind thing -- ever actually know what is Reality??

(I am trying to start a discussion here to see if I am out of my mind! :) But I do actually have an answer that I have been studying...)

 
  • #18
NoVA101 said:

HEY! I see you edited your question after I had already quoted it! So yes, your new question is THE question -- how can we, a limited human brain/mind thing -- ever actually know what is Reality??
Sorry about that.

Well, since your definition of "actually real" is that "we cannot know what is actually real" then, by definition we cannot know if time or motion are "actually real".

That is certainly a safe definition, and it makes the conclusion perfectly clear and unambiguous. Of course, it renders the discussion rather uninteresting.
 
  • #19
There has got be a fundamental reality to this collective experience we call life. If nothing is real, what would account for the explicit order in this perceived "world"? I believe it is consciousness. Although totally unknown i'd say it is the essence of everything, everything in the known universe. I recommend "DMT - the spirit molecule" by Dr. Rick Strassman, where patients treated with DMT(also called the religious drug) reported OBE's(out of body experience). I had seen hundreds of similar accounts on the net, but at the time none of them seemed credible. Now my viewpoint has changed. In fact, i'd say that all fields of physics point into that direction - from QM, through Relativity to Cosmology with its mind-boggling metric expansion of space.
 
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  • #20
NoVA101 said:
I asked -- Even if you came up with a way to test Reality, wouldn't the "you" doing the testing still be forever trapped in a human mind/brain thing? If so, then isn't that brain thing creating memories it calls the past? And more mental events it calls the future? Won't it be doing just this, Here, Now, when conducting the Reality tests it created to test Reality?

If there is no time or motion then how are these thoughts created?
 
  • #21
TheStatutoryApe said:
If there is no time or motion then how are these thoughts created?


Are you asking where the mental picture is created?
 
  • #22
WaveJumper said:
Are you asking where the mental picture is created?

I mean if there is neither time nor motion then there is nothing new and nothing can be created.
 
  • #23
NoVA101 said:
First do Time...
Right, we're stuck in now. However, my conscious experience (which we call subjective reality), my now, suggests to me that I'm part of some contiguous something that encompasses all the objects of my experience. Our collective recorded experience (which we call objective reality, ie., what we deem actually real) suggests this also.

Of course that encompassing something could be like The Matrix. But unless and until some Morpheus unplugs me and I take the red pill (or I'm, say, schizophrenic and I know that I'm schizophrenic, etc.), then I behave as if what seems to me to be reality actually is reality.

Saying that we're stuck in now implies that the present has a different status or significance, that it refers to something different, than the past and future refer to. The ordinary usage of the word now associates it with our most recent past records and nearest future projections.

No matter how one models objective reality, the word now refers to something different than the words past and future. Exactly what these different terms refer to depends on the model.

Anyway, I agree with you that, regarding the ordinary language use of the word now, we can't get out of it -- at least not alive.

Is what we call objective reality actually real? Compared to what?

NoVA101 said:
Now do motion...
We can model time as an index of reality. Like a movie, a set of pictures, of reality. Time is the movie, not the objects depicted in the various frames of the movie. A time refers to one frame of the movie. We can order the frames by laying out the film from start to finish, left to right, and numbering each frame with a successive integer, left to right, starting with 1.

An interesting feature of our movie is that all the pictures are unique. They're all different, and these differences, no matter how small, are referred to as motion.

I'm not sure I understand your problem with timing how long something is moving at a certain velocity. Infinitessimals and infinities don't have any physical referents in nature except wrt mathematics. Planck's constant would seem to set a lower limit for observable differences between any two pictures of any movie of reality. To get Planck scale resolution your film would have to be moving at very close to the speed of light past the aperture (or some solid state analog of that process). You'd need a lot of film, or a lot of memory, to get even a second's worth of action, and if you played the movie at a normal frame rate, then you'd be watching it for a really long time. :smile:

I'm not sure what the fps limits are regarding high speed photography, but I would guess that you can probably actually see a pretty good approximation of exactly how long a tossed ball is motionless wrt the ground using current technology.

To summarize regarding your questions about the actual reality of time and motion, the answer is yes, time and motion are actually real -- because of how we use the terms, time and motion and actually and real.
 
  • #24
Ivan Seeking said:
We NEVER observe anything in the present. We can only see that which occurred in the past.

Crazy Tosser said:
Very true. Speed of light limit.


Yes, and Yes.

But it is actually even deeper than that. (People really don't think about these things? Strange!)

What you are saying is, for our sense of sight, we are "seeing" light from stuff that has occurred sometime in the past -- the amount of time it took the light to reach us.

But it goes much deeper than that! First that light has to hit your eyeball, which does its thing (whatever that is) and turns those photons into electrical signals. Those electrical signals travel down your Central Nervous System somehow, and then end up somewhere in your brain. In your brain there is then probably sort of shuffling around or processing done, and then there is some other thing that happens to cause "you" to finally "perceive" those brain functions, which resulted from those electrical signals, which resulted from the eyeball, which resulted from whatever was emitting those photons. Somehow. So even more "time" goes by from when the light hits part of you (the eyeball) until the time you say, "I see".

And when you stub your big toe? Some amount of time goes by until those signals get all the way to the brain, same with taste, etc. The ear is probably really slow, with its big clumsy mechanical gizmos translating motion into electrical signals.

So yes, from the standard vantage point it appears as if the human brain is always perceiving things that have happened in the past.

But here is an interesting question... what if you cut the Nerve from the eye to the brain? Do you still "see"? If you cut the nerve from the ear to the brain... do you still "hear"? Hearing is occurring, isn't it? Well, the mechanics are happening, the electrical signals are being transmitted to a nerve, but then they end. So the brain doesn't get the signal, but the ear still hears. Do YOU hear? Aren't you an animal that has a bunch of parts, including ears? So, aren't YOU hearing? Even if your brain doesn't get the signal?? But if you say that "YOU" are a human and a human is an amalgam of parts, and the ear is hearing, then YOU are doing the hearing! If you don't agree with that then you must think "YOU" are some function of a brain. If you are a brain, then where in the brain? Which part? What if one part is missing, or damaged, or undeveloped? Are you non-human? A lesser human? What is a human?? What are "you"??

So really what you are doing is constantly becoming aware of sensory input. I guess that is called Perception. And this whole long process of getting sensory input into the brain takes "time" -- you could say. But what part of the brain is actually AWARE of that sensory input? Isn't it just some other part of the brain? But then the rest of the brain does its thing, including putting a time-stamp on it, and saying to itself, "This occurred after that" or whatever, and creating a "memory" (whatever that is, more brain function) of that sensory data. All of which is many, Many, MANY steps removed from the actual thing that actually "occurred" -- the sensory perception, which by the way is many times removed from the actual THING. Say you "see" a rock. There is a massive amount of difference between that ACTUAL rock, the reality of the rock, and that stuff that is happening in the moosh that is your brain.

People really don't think about this stuff all day? Weird! :)
 
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  • #25
What does any of that have to do with the "actually real"-ness of time or motion?

Btw, I noticed that you still have not defined "actually real", you have just made an epistemological statement that nobody can know whether or not something is "actually real".
 
  • #26
NoVA101 said:

People really don't think about this stuff all day? Weird! :)

sure, when I was in high school. It's not a very productive approach to understanding reality, though. It's good to be aware that your perceptions are hazy as long as you don't take it to the point of throwing your hands up and saying nothing is real.

We may not "know" the rock as well as "reality" does, but we know it and we can distinguish it from a tree. We know enough about it to make consistent use of it. We still have access to reality.
 
  • #27
Pythagorean said:
We may not "know" the rock as well as "reality" does, but we know it and we can distinguish it from a tree. We know enough about it to make consistent use of it. We still have access to reality.

Good point. I think all of what we perceive is real, and everything that we can imagine and think about is real too.
"Real" to me simply means something which exists in one form or another.

The only two ways to look at it that I can see, is to either say nothing is real, or everything is real.
If we define real as everything that the brain sees, ie the 5 senses and its own memories and imagination, that pretty much sums up 'everything' /to us/

If we define real from the opposite direction, where everything which is NOT in the brain is real, and the brain is just an observer of these things, then you stumble into lots of problems like the hard problem and similar.

All of reality will to an observer always be perceived in first person.
We can never enter third person, even through technology and science, although these methods to provide a third person view, but it still goes through our first person view always.
What this means is that we are given information ABOUT the third person view, but through our first person view.
That's in essence what I believe, we are constantly receiving information about the third person/reality, but we can only process that information from the first person view (subjective),

While if you go deeper, you can say third person is actually a product of first person, and they are in fact the same, because you can never really verify where this third person information is coming from.
And I do believe this is where it ends.
I see no solution to separating third person completely from first person, nor do I see a way to completely merge them, and maybe this is how we must live, maybe as conscious beings we must accept this and live our lives as usual.
Or maybe there is some solution.
 
  • #28
Pythagorean said:
We may not "know" the rock as well as "reality" does, but we know it and we can distinguish it from a tree. We know enough about it to make consistent use of it. We still have access to reality.
Exactly. That some external reality exists and that reality is governed by some "laws of nature" is axiomatic to all of science. Solipsism, which is where this thread started, is antithetical to science.
 
  • #29
Chrisc said:
Instead of defining "real" perhaps it will help to consider no matter what you or I or anyone thinks is real, it will hold no more significance when attributed to Now than when attributed to the past or future.

Now does not exist in any more attainable or definable sense than the past or the future.
I think I have to disagree with this. We use the word now to refer to what's attainable, to what's real -- in an operationally definable sense.

The events of, say, 1957 don't exist ... now -- even though there are rememberances, and pictures, and movies, and other material remnants (such as 1957 Chevys) of those events.

Now refers to our immediate sensory experience -- and of course there's a delay in that due to finite speed of light and data processing, etc.

Or, maybe I just don't understand what you're getting at.

(By the way, Hi Chris and I do intend to get back to the thread focusing on your paper, but I had to rest from it for a while as I was getting sort of numb from thinking about it and digesting the stuff I was looking up in my attempt to understand it.)

Chrisc said:
All events, including those that are the synaptic events we call sensory perception, are chronologically prior to cognition or awareness. Even being aware that you are aware has this same chronology.
OK ...

Chrisc said:
So if time is to be expressed as something other than awareness, it is the order and rate of events of which you become aware.
Ok, we assume that there's an intrinsic order and rate regarding the objects of our awareness that isn't just a function of the way we process sensory data.

Chrisc said:
Time is then a condition of the physical events we call the universe, independent of anyone's awareness.
I'd rather say that there are universal parameters that limit the rate and amount, and determine the order, of change in spatial configurations (on any scale), and that this has something to do with the speed of light and Planck's constant and the isotropic expansion of the universe, etc.

Time refers to our indexes of physical events. Insofar as we can objectify those, then we can talk, unambiguously, about objective reality

Chrisc said:
As the firing of a synapse and all the EVENTS that comprise the awareness of a single event hold to the same conditions of order and rate of the event being observed, there is no NOW.
There is a NOW for each of us. Insofar as we can objectify our individual time indexes via conventions and operational definitions, then we can communicate those NOW's unambiguously. In a larger, more or less idealized, picture of objective reality, we can then define and communicate some idea of what at least some aspects of the entire universe are ... NOW.

Chrisc said:
There is only our reference to events of the past that we agree would have been NOW had we the ability to cease all events in the universe at that point and still be conscious to recognize it. ...
... So the NOW that you assume is the point of awareness is always in the past.
Ok, but agreeing on that, and the values involved in the delays, puts us on the same page, so to speak.

Chrisc said:
The quantity of time that the ball is neither moving up nor down is also a qualification of time that assumes there is a now.
We use the word now in ordinary language. The questions are, what does it mean in that context, and is there a way to objectify that so that it can be included in a physical theory. The answer is yes. We do have some idea of the state of the observable universe wrt any local clock reading.

Chrisc said:
Just as there is no now, there is no "time" that the ball is not moving wrt you.
Ok, there isn't any interval during which the tossed ball isn't moving wrt you. But this doesn't mean that we can't agree on a physical meaning for now. In fact, I think we've already done that.

Chrisc said:
If you threw the ball and I threw you at the same time, you would travel with the ball and claim it never moved.
Only if the ball was the only thing I was looking at.

Chrisc said:
I think you would agree that such an observation does not prove the lack of motion of the ball indicates a continuous now just because you didn't observe any motion. Now consider any variation of this motion of you and the ball and you will see that other than your preference to say it stopped, there is no way to measure, prove or even consider it as stopping unless you stop time as well, and that as mentioned above aborts the whole idea.
Now only refers to individual 'instants' of time in idealized models. Wrt the physical meaning of now we're always dealing with intervals defined by sets of a number of perceptual 'snapshots' of the world.

Are our perceptual 'movies' of the world truly a continuous data stream, or discretized at some level? Discretized, I would guess. At least insofar as a fundamental quantum of action is a real property of nature.
 
  • #30
D H said:
Exactly. That some external reality exists and that reality is governed by some "laws of nature" is axiomatic to all of science. Solipsism, which is where this thread started, is antithetical to science.



So you guys think you're scientists, right? Then answer this: do constellations actually exist? And I don't mean do they have magic special powers to predict your love life. I mean, are they really there? Or are they just something that is only perceived by humans? Do they exist in Reality?

I think it is accurate to say that constellations only exist in the human mind. They aren't "real", the don't exist in Reality. It is far more accurate to say that there is a very random distribution of stars thorough the universe, and from an extremely limited perspective of both Time and Space, human beings get themselves to believe there is an actual arrangement to these stars that has some "meaning" to the humans.

But you do understand that if you flew around in the Enterprise you wouldn't see constellations, right? As you move around what you had thought was a constellation you would see that it does NOT have that shape you thought it had. Or, if you lived to be 1,000,000 years old, then you would look at the stars every 50,000 years or whatever and notice that they had moved. It is only because you are limited in your perspective, as a human, living a short life, stuck on one planet, that you don't notice the randomness of the distribution of the stars, and therefore you totally and completely make up "meaning" to their perceived shape.

You could say that humans are too small, and live a life that is too fast to notice that constellations don't exist. Constellations don't exist in Reality.

So how about a hunk of Granite. Do you think it is solid? Knock a piece of granite against your head... it sure is solid! Right?

But as a scientist you know it isn't. Only from an extremely limited, human perspective, does it appear to be solid. Granite most certainly is not.

Whip out your favorite scanning tunneling electron microscope and look around at your hunk of granite and please show me the solid part. Go ahead. Can't find it, can ya? Because granite is not a solid, it only appears that way to you, bound by an incredibly limited human perspective. You will see vibrating, bouncing, swirling molecules, atoms, electrons, nuclei, etc. (Go even deeper into an atom, and again -- where is that solid part?)

You could say humans are too big and too slow to notice that granite is not a solid.

So how long is the coastline of Virginia? Here's one method to determine it: whip out your favorite road atlas, take a string and carefully wrap it all along the coastline, straighten the string out, measure it, and use the legend on the map to determine the length of the coastline. Great!

Now take a massive wall-sized map of Virginia and do the same thing. Uh oh. Even though the legend has been scaled, the coastline will now be longer. Why?

Now goto Google maps, and zoom all the way into the top of the coastline of Virginia, and scroll down screen after screen measuring with your string. Compare to the legend. Oh no! The coastline is longer still!

Now go stand on the coast of Virginia, whip out your string, get on your hands and knees and carefully wrap your string along the "coastline" to measure it. Good luck with that!

Be sure you wrap around each little nook and cranny of every rock. Oh, and of every grain of sand. Wait! Be sure to whip out your friend Mr. Scanning Tunneling Electron Microscope and wrap your string around ever molecule and every atom of that grain of sand! Hang on! It almost seems like the coastline will be something like an infinite length, right? Because you can keep on getting smaller and smaller, right?

But wait, there's more! Where is that coastline? If you're on the beach, aren't there waves flowing in and out? Where do you "draw the line"? Where do you measure? Its arbitrary, isn't it? Oh, and isn't the tide moving in and out, albeit more slowly? Right! So where do you draw the line? And isn't there erosion occurring, even slower still? So where is that line? And aren't the plates moving? Maybe that part of Virginia is sinking or rising ever so slowly, right?

So wait... how long is the coastline of Virgina?

Do you see the problem yet?

You as a human are totally and completely arbitrarily choosing some incredibly limited perspective, in both time and space, in which to choose to call something a "coastline". You are assigning meaning to a random assortment of matter.

The coastline of Virginia does not exist. Well, it exists as much as a constellation exists -- only in the human mind. In Reality, there is no such thing as a coastline, there is no such thing as a constellation, there is no such thing as a solid.

If you don't agree with that, nothing in the universe actually cares. Stars just are. Water just is. Land just is. Molecules just are. All the "meaning" to all of them is between your ears. That is the ONLY place there is meaning.

And as a scientist you might finally discover that you are wedded to your beliefs in these made-up meanings, just the same as any religious person is wedded to their beliefs. None of which makes them true. None of which makes them correspond to Reality.

if you take science "seriously" -- if you take it all the way, if you don't give up and make stuff up and assign meaning to things that just are, you end up at the realization that there is no such thing as "meaning".

This is where all rational thought leads. This is where all scientific thought leads. The most scientific person is the one who finally, totally, actually realizes there is no such thing as "meaning". That is to say, all rational, scientific thought necessarily leads to Nihilism.

This is where all rational thought leads, if you let it. But you don't. You say to yourself that stuff obviously has meaning. That stuff obviously exists. That granite obviously is solid. It isn't. And you even know this! Yet you still can't help yourself, and you still assign meaning to stuff.

Then it gets even harder than that. When you understand that all scientific thought necessarily leads to the understanding that there is no meaning to anything, then that means that scientific thought has no meaning either. Yes, that is a paradox. If you believe in scientific thought, and you think it is meaningful, and you pursue it where it leads, it destroys itself.

By the way, all of the above is the EASY stuff!

If you look at a big pile of dirt, and you notice three chunks appear to be in a line, do you call that a constellation?

What? What a strange question!

But if you look at three stars in a row in the sky, you call that Orion's Belt. Same thing. No really. EXACTLY THE SAME THING. There is no meaning to those three things. The three stars. Or the three chunks of dirt.

If one of the stars blows up, what does that mean? Well, nothing, of course. It just happens.

If one of the chunks of dirt falls down the big pile of dirt, what does that mean? It means nothing, of course. It just happens.

When you exhale and a bunch of your skin cell come flying out your mouth, does that make you less human? Strange question! Of course not! And the skin cells that are falling off your arms right now and landing on the floor, what does that mean?

And when you inhale skin cells from the person over there on the other side of the room, answer this question for yourself: where do you end and where does the other person begin?

When a person dies in the woods, and a whole bunch of animals and insects and bacteria eat the carcass, and those critters move all around the planet and they get eaten and those critters move around the planet, and get into the soil in your country and a farmer grows some grain and you eat a loaf of bread, you are eating molecules of dead people. So answer for yourself again where you end and another person begins?

You can go on and on with these exercises, but if you are a scientist, and if you are rational, and you tie them all together, they always lead to the same place.

There is no line you can draw and call it a coastline -- that is an arbitrary thing in a human mind. There is no meaning to an arrangement of stars, that is a belief in a human mind. Constellations don't exist in Reality. Only from a ridiculously limited perspective would you think granite is a solid. As a scientist you know it is not. In Reality. When stars collide, or dirt falls down a hill, there is no meaning. There is no line between human and non-human, just like there is no such thing as a coastline. Where do you draw the line? The only way to draw a line is totally and completely arbitrarily, in a human mind. In reality, there is no line between YOU and everything else. Only from a ridiculously limited perspective would you think this. Only if you made stuff up would you think 3 chunks of dirt had meaning. Only if you made stuff up would you believe one chunk of dirt rolling down a hill and smashing into another chunk of dirt had meaning. Would you call one chunk immoral for destroying the other chunk? Only if you made stuff up would you think there is an actual line between human and non human and believe that one human smashing into and destroying another human had some "meaning" or something. Only if you make stuff up, just like a religious person does.

 
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  • #31
NoVA101 said:
I mean, are they really there? Or are they just something that is only perceived by humans? Do they exist in Reality?
You still haven't defined your terms. What do you mean by "actually real", "really", and "in Reality"?

Let me try to help you here. So far, unless I have misunderstood, you have made the following categorizations:

Real:
neurons firing
light
electrical signals
central nervous system
brain
stars
water
land
molecules

Not real:
time
motion
hearing voices in your head
perception
beliefs
delusion
constellations
meaning
solids
coastlines

I certainly would not have categorized things this way, so what is it about these things that leads you to put them in these groups? What is your definition of "reality"? None of your posts say anything until you define this core concept.
 
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  • #32
And also, nobody is arguing that mental models humans creates in their heads are not simplified or not abstract.
I'm not sure what you mean, but coastlines are everywhere.
A coastline is an abstract concept, it doesn't matter how flawed or simplistic the view is, the fact is that it is a byproduct of the human processing, which is guess what, creating models of reality. These models do not represent a specific coastline, or a specific anything, they are ways for people to categorize the same things under language, both for communication purposes AND personal grasp.

And by the way, about solids..
I'd just like to quote wikipedia..
A solid object is in the states of matter characterized by resistance to deformation and changes of volume. In other words, it has high values both of Young's modulus and of shear modulus; this contrasts e.g. with a liquid, which has a low shear modulus.
The atoms or molecules that compose the solid are packed closely together.

That's pretty simple isn't it?
A solid is not defined by how it looks from at a microscopic level, it is defined by how it behaves as a whole, on the macroscopic level..
So then arguing that nothing is solid because it's all atoms and molecules becomes not true, and you're already jumping over a big subject in philosophy: emergence.
Not only that but you're jumping over almost every core subject, including consciousness, emergence and subjective/objective.

Like Dale said, you need to define 'reality' at the least to begin to solve these problems.
 
  • #33
DaleSpam said:
You still haven't defined your terms. What do you mean by "actually real", "really", and "in Reality"?

Let me try to help you here. So far, unless I have misunderstood, you have made the following categorizations:

Real:
neurons firing
light
electrical signals
central nervous system
brain
stars
water
land
molecules

Not real:
time
motion
hearing voices in your head
perception
beliefs
delusion
constellations
meaning
solids
coastlines

I certainly would not have categorized things this way, so what is it about these things that leads you to put them in these groups? What is your definition of "reality"? None of your posts say anything until you define this core concept.




Wow. Fascinating.

The whole point of the exercise, the reason it becomes long-winded and rambling is to try to get you to realize something. And your very question and analysis IS the problem.

This is all so very very simple:

REALITY JUST IS.

That is really all that you can say. That's it.

You keep on asking me for a definition. That is a result of the problem.

You have categorized stuff into a neat chart. That is a result of the problem.

Here's an example to illustrate the problem, at the simplest level. If you can get this, then everything else is just a more complicated version of this:

Imagine you are walking along and you see two rocks laying on the ground.

Where is "two"?

What is "two"?

Two is a concept. This is something that is in your mind. IT IS ONLY IN YOUR MIND. It is a way for your mind to process that data coming into it via your perceptions, your senses.

In Reality, the rocks just are.

Are there really "two" rocks? Are there "two" rocks, in Reality?

NO!

Rocks just are. A human mind adds this concept of "two". That is what human minds do all day, take perceptions and add layer upon layer upon layer of concepts.

That's it.

Fin.

Unless you say to yourself -- Well, I am a human which means I am trapped in a Mind which overlays concepts on top of reality, and there is no way out, right?

WRONG.

It is possible for you, a human, to perceive reality directly, non-conceptually.

THIS WILL NOT MAKE SENSE TO YOUR CONCEPTUAL MIND.

That doesn't mean it isn't possible.

This other way to perceive reality without concepts means you perceive reality directly. This then changes everything.

Your entire notion of reality changes.

I can hear your conceptual mind say, "Ya, but that doesn't make any sense!"

Right! Of course it won't. That is because you continue to "believe" you are trapped in a conceptual mind, and you also continue to believe that what your conceptual mind perceives is actually reality, rather than realizing that your conceptual mind is adding to reality.

 
  • #34
All you have done in this entire post is to add "rocks" to the "real" category and "two" to the "not real" category.

This is not a question of the merit of your idea, but of the content of your idea. You are using the english word "real" to express some idea that you have. But the way that you are using it is non-standard. So the rest of us are unable to evaluate the merit of your idea because fundamentally you have not yet communicated it.

NoVA101 said:
You have categorized stuff into a neat chart. That is a result of the problem.
No, the categorization is entirely yours, I only organized it. You came up with the categorization by applying some definition that you are either unable or unwilling to share. We cannot have a successful communication until you do.

Sorry, but until you clearly define your core concept there is no point in responding further. I have done all I can do from my end to help this conversation, the next step is up to you.

PS:
the reason it becomes long-winded and rambling is to try to get you to realize something
This is counter-productive. If you want to get someone to realize something you should say it in the most succinct manner possible.
 
  • #35
NoVA101 said:
Two is a concept. This is something that is in your mind. IT IS ONLY IN YOUR MIND. It is a way for your mind to process that data coming into it via your perceptions, your senses.

In Reality, the rocks just are.

Are there really "two" rocks? Are there "two" rocks, in Reality?

NO!

Rocks just are. A human mind adds this concept of "two". That is what human minds do all day, take perceptions and add layer upon layer upon layer of concepts.
I agree with you so far. (This is only a comment about the text I quoted. I haven't read all the previous posts in this thread).

NoVA101 said:
It is possible for you, a human, to perceive reality directly, non-conceptually.
How? By not thinking? Why would we want to do that?
 
<h2>1. Is time a human construct or a fundamental aspect of the universe?</h2><p>There is ongoing debate among scientists about the nature of time. Some argue that time is a human construct, while others believe it is a fundamental aspect of the universe. The theory of relativity suggests that time is relative and can be affected by factors such as gravity and velocity, suggesting that it is a fundamental aspect of the universe.</p><h2>2. Can time and motion exist independently of each other?</h2><p>Time and motion are closely related concepts and cannot exist independently of each other. Time is often described as the measure of motion or change, and without motion, there would be no way to measure time. Similarly, motion requires time to occur, as it is the progression of an object through space over a period of time.</p><h2>3. Is time travel possible?</h2><p>Currently, there is no scientific evidence to support the possibility of time travel. The laws of physics, specifically the theory of relativity, suggest that time travel would require faster-than-light travel, which is currently not possible. Some theories, such as wormholes, suggest that time travel may be possible in the future, but it remains a topic of speculation and research.</p><h2>4. Is motion an illusion?</h2><p>Motion is not an illusion, but rather a perception of our brains based on the information received from our senses. The theory of relativity suggests that motion is relative and can be perceived differently by different observers. However, this does not mean that motion is not real. Objects in motion have energy and momentum, and their movement can be measured and observed.</p><h2>5. How does the concept of time and motion relate to the concept of space?</h2><p>The concept of time and motion are closely related to the concept of space. The theory of relativity suggests that space and time are intertwined and form a four-dimensional space-time continuum. This means that an object's position in space and time are interconnected, and changes in one can affect the other. Additionally, the concept of motion is closely tied to the concept of space, as motion is the change in an object's position in space over time.</p>

1. Is time a human construct or a fundamental aspect of the universe?

There is ongoing debate among scientists about the nature of time. Some argue that time is a human construct, while others believe it is a fundamental aspect of the universe. The theory of relativity suggests that time is relative and can be affected by factors such as gravity and velocity, suggesting that it is a fundamental aspect of the universe.

2. Can time and motion exist independently of each other?

Time and motion are closely related concepts and cannot exist independently of each other. Time is often described as the measure of motion or change, and without motion, there would be no way to measure time. Similarly, motion requires time to occur, as it is the progression of an object through space over a period of time.

3. Is time travel possible?

Currently, there is no scientific evidence to support the possibility of time travel. The laws of physics, specifically the theory of relativity, suggest that time travel would require faster-than-light travel, which is currently not possible. Some theories, such as wormholes, suggest that time travel may be possible in the future, but it remains a topic of speculation and research.

4. Is motion an illusion?

Motion is not an illusion, but rather a perception of our brains based on the information received from our senses. The theory of relativity suggests that motion is relative and can be perceived differently by different observers. However, this does not mean that motion is not real. Objects in motion have energy and momentum, and their movement can be measured and observed.

5. How does the concept of time and motion relate to the concept of space?

The concept of time and motion are closely related to the concept of space. The theory of relativity suggests that space and time are intertwined and form a four-dimensional space-time continuum. This means that an object's position in space and time are interconnected, and changes in one can affect the other. Additionally, the concept of motion is closely tied to the concept of space, as motion is the change in an object's position in space over time.

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