Define Physical

Lars Laborious

Yes, I've read their findings, at least the ones on their website, and found them interesting. I'm just a bit skeptical to extraordinary claims that on the one hand are fronted on a website, and on the other hand are supposed to be spared scrutiny. I do think Randi has read their findings to, but you might be right that his test conditions aren't the best for testing consciousness-related matter. Then again, I think it's worth a try.

Royce, I agree with what you said about detecting brain activity. For instance, brain waves that neuroscientists take to represent decision making, might just as well arise after a decision has been made.

Royce

I just reread my last post and I see why you suggest that I may have a closed mind. Absent minded maybe but not really closed; but, I am not convinced either. I just don't know and meant to say so in the previous post. I find it hard to believe that our body acts purposely and in a controlled manner before our brains or minds become conscious of it other than having done something so often that we do it automatically without any conscious thought at all.

Nor do I think our consciousness is entirely independent of our brains or bodies. I do believe that under certain circumstances our consciousness can operate independent of our bodies but normally it is, IMHO, interactively connected. I just don't think that it is an emergent property.

I don't mean to imply or say that any of them are frauds; however, fraud is not unknown in science. From what I read it seemed to me that the data was incomplete and didn't warrant the claims that some people were making.

I know that the brain does many things that we never become conscious of at all and in the case of reaction the brain does not become involved at all until after the fact. Could it be that we set up or prepare our body to do some thing one signal as in a reaction speed test. Providing a short cut from our senses to our motor control without requiring conscious thought. Then our brains receive the feedback and it takes a few fractions of a second for the potential peak to be processed into our conscious awareness?

I'm sure that you have tried to do something that you had never done before or do something very delicate and be aware of other amount or and intensity or concentration that it requires. After a few times it becomes easier and easier until it become automatic.

If thought in the form of will is not what causes our bodies to move in a controlled purposeful manner then what does?

Anyway I stand properly chastised and humbled. I shall try to be more care with my choice of words and be more open minded in the future.
However I am not so chastised or humbled that I am going to thank you for pointing it out to me and the world.

I will however thank you again for the information.

Les Sleeth

The ambiguities of the term (such as Marx's dialectic materialism) wasn't so much my motivation as that there seems to be more to physicalness than just matter.

But it's interesting that after I started trying to define physical, I boiled it down to mass and its effects. Of course mass and matter are virtually (totally?) identical, so I suppose the ambiguities of the term materialism may be the best reason to reject it.

However, a point I made earlier about physicalness was how something like gravity doesn't show up until there is mass. Now one might wonder if there is something present in the makeup of space before mass causes gravity to manifest. In other words, is it space that possesses the gravity potential, and we just can't see it until mass is present?

In that case, wouldn't we have to call space physical even though it is immaterial?

Castlegate

Perhaps it's the other way around, where mass don't show up until there is gravity? Since when does mass get top drawer honors in hierarchy structure?


One might also wonder if space, matter, and gravity are all one in the same.

Les Sleeth

Do you have an example of this?


It's simply the order of how things show up. When have you ever seen gravity without mass? FIRST it is mass, and THEN it is gravity. But if you have an example of a different order it would be interesting to hear that.

Crazy Moron

“Now one might wonder if there is something present in the makeup of space before mass causes gravity to manifest. In other words, is it space that possesses the gravity potential, and we just can't see it until mass is present?”
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And so, physicalness plus the nothingness of space produces gravity: that seems right.

In physicalness and nothingness, we have absolutely everything. You cannot find anything that is not either physical or nothing at all. The definition of physicalness, existence, materialism is altogether complete when you add the idea of nothing to the idea of physicalness.

The next question is: Which concept contains the idea of volume? Is it physicalness or nothingness that contains the idea of volume?

We think of vast infinite space as having the volume, and point particles in space having no volume, but affecting each other. Physics is the study of how point particles affect each other.

But when you think of the concept of nothingness, it occurs to you that it may not contain the concept of volume or space. It may be wrong for us to use the word space, and mean a vast nothing.

Look at a principle of string theory: all points are strings.

A string has value on a number line: it is one dimensional. It has length, while physic’s concept of a point particle is zero dimensional. Classic physics says point particles don’t have volume and space does. But if all points are strings, and a string has a value, it has length, that could mean the nothingness we think of as space does not actually contain any value; because if points have a value, then the opposite concept, nothingness, cannot have any value. String theory says point particles have a value. And math cannot describe a perfect circle with two dimensions, or a perfect sphere with three. It can only describe a perfect circle or sphere with one dimension. A one-dimensional string can be a circle or a sphere, and have a value that can be area or volume.

Going to the idea you expressed: “Is it space that possesses the gravity potential, and we just can't see it until mass is present?”

If matter has volume and space does not, then matter affects the vacuum of space by filling is emptiness. We know that the interaction of volume and vacuum produces a variable attractive force. I would suggest the most basic quality of physicalness is that it has volume.

I have heard of an experiment where a single photon is shot out. It can go either up or down. The next photon always goes up or down the same direction as the first. Photons are present, everywhere. If they were to have volume, affecting the vacuum of the space they inhabit, when another photon is introduced into the immediate area, possibly filling and changing the vacuum state of the up or down choice by filling it with more volume of matter, the next photon is attracted to where there is more matter, in this experiment.

Les Sleeth

Except . . . is space really nothing? Just because it is devoid of matter doesn't mean it is devoid of all existence. We already know about background microwave radiation, but then there's dark energy, possibly the Higgs field, the potential that awaits to manifest as gravity.

So I am not sure that it is right to say the absence of matter equals nothing.


I am not certain I followed all of your arguments, but I can't see why space doesn't have volume. What if you had infinite volume, but no other characteristics? How can you tell it is physical?

My point has been that in every case, everything we slap the label "physical" on is either from the presence of mass or effects/products of mass because until we get mass, there is no way to observe anything physical.

But if you say physicalness is volume, we could have all of that we want, yet no signs it exists. Put some mass in that volume, however, and right away there is something to label physical.

Crazy Moron

That's what I meant, space is full of radiation, which is all made of photons. I mean, space is chocked full of photons. If vacuum is total lack of volume; if point particles, like photons, were to have some tiny amount of volume; that combination of vacuum and volume would affect the amount of vacuum in different parts of space, which might make space seem to go "uphill" or "downhill".

The key idea is, does everything we call matter, even a photon, have some size or volume? It doesn't have mass as we would define mass, but it might have some volume. This idea of volume and vacuum may be the most basic idea in the universe: the idea that causes gravity and all other attractive forces.

The idea of volume would also cause repulsive force. One particle that always has volume hits another particle and knocks it out of the way. The volume of both particles cannot fit in the same place.

Volume may be the most basic quality of anything physical, even if it has no mass.

dubmugga

Ok then...

...does a thought have volume ???

how big is the collective consciousness and has it gotten bigger or has the amount of which we have tapped into it and feedback to it remained the same ???

...ie the volume or turnover of thought is is always balanced at zero or the more we expand our consciousness the bigger the volume the collective consciousness has

I prefer to think whatever is known and observable, the collective consciousness as it were, has always been known and able to be observed, we just don't know it or haven't seen it yet and this applies to all entities of any nature anywhere in any universe...

...on a side note i still don't get how a photon as a particle has no mass

wouldn't it be so much easier if we ascribed mass to light as then it might account for gravity ???

thinking about the basic quality of anything physical i would agree it to be volume as 4dimensions can create a perfect sphere butof course as we all know...

nothing is perfect
in the space where nothing exists
will one find perfection
the perfect nothing

unfortunately in this space there is always room for improvement...

...as you were

Crazy Moron

Conscious thought exists outside the universe looking at it. A thought isn’t physical.

To describe the whole universe, we have to say there is everything that is physical, and nothing.

Taking the pure concepts of physical and nothing, let’s put a zero-dimensional point on zero. Put another zero dimensional point next to it with no distance between them. Both points are still on zero. Both points are still nothing. You can add a thousand points and they will still be on zero, still nothing.

Put a zero-dimensional point a small distance from the point on zero: we have two distinct points, we are progressing down the number line. Put a thousand points that distance apart, and we have progressed noticeably down the number line. String theory says all points are strings. There is a string, or a small distance from zero to the first point. If there wasn’t the string, they would be the same point, and never get off of zero. All points really do have to be strings, in order to be points that are not zero.

On a sheet of paper, on a plane, we would put down a point that looks like a dot. It is point-like. The dot has a diameter. Put another dot next to it so there isn't any distance from the surface of the first dot to the next, and we can make a line, the same as we did with zero dimensional points placed a small distance apart. The dots, small circles are the same as strings. They are described by one dimension: diameter. On a line a string has length. On a plane, a string has area. In 3D space a string has volume.

So all points, which are physical things have volume. If you reduce the volume to zero, or you reduce the length of the string to zero you never get off of zero. It is nothing. If a point is not a string, it is nothing. So we have physical and we have nothing; that is everything in the universe.

Volume is a string in 3D space. If you reduce volume to zero, you have nothing. To have physical you must have volume.

The idea of nothing, or vacuum is a very powerful attractive force. Pure vacuum is the strong force. If you fill vacuum with point particles that have volume, and thus fill the vacuum, you can lessen the vacuum until it is not an attractive force. Slight imbalances in the way vacuum is filled by point particles that have no mass but must have volume in order to be a particle, produce gravity.

If photons are everywhere, maybe there is a static array of massless photon-like particles permeating all of space. They are like the light bulbs on a Las Vegas sign, which are set in place, although set is not the right word because they can change the shape of space. The photons we can see are energy being transferred from one of these particles to another, like lights that light up and go off causing what looks like movement, but is really static lights lighting up and shutting off.

Now we have a universe full of points which are matter but do not have a gravitational attraction. They have volume and affect the vacuum, and shape it.

nameless

'Gravity', 'mass', 'time', 'space'..
I posit that you (nor anyone) have never seen any of these 'concepts' in isolation of the others.

Then you immediately jump to a 'non-sequitor' regarding 'order of appearance'.

Wouldn't the 'evidence' lead to a different hypothesis?

Not that there is some linear 'cause and effect' which the 'evidence' clearly does not support, but that the invariably simultaneous occurrence of all the aforementioned 'concepts' (gravity, mass, etc... ) would indicate to me, at least, that they are all various mutually arising 'aspects' of the same event.
Sorry that I wasn't able to offer an alternative 'order', but I find no evidence of any 'order' to be in order.
The 'evidence' points to 'simultaneity' not 'temporality'.
At least, thats how it looks from 'this' tree!
*__-

nameless

But not very interesting!
*__-

Define Physical

Anything that can be 'perceived', registered by the senses is what is commonly called 'physical', either direct perception or indirectly perceived.

Les Sleeth

Well, I challenge you to demonstrate gravity exists before mass is present. In fact, gravity is believed to happen at the speed of light. Light speed, while fast, is not instantaneous, and therefore I'd say it must occur after mass is shows up.

Les Sleeth

That defines a potential of the senses, it doesn't tell us what physicalness is. Surely you wouldn't suggest that if there were no senses, then physicalness wouldn't exist.

dubmugga

nothing is very interesting, without it you have don't really have a relationship to compare anything and something to...

...physical = 5 senses in 4 dimensions

and Les for all intents and purposes if we couldn't sense anything then it may as well not exist...

...back to the perfect nothing again

Les Sleeth

If all humans were wiped out, would physicalness disappear? The objective of this thread was to define physical, not to define what is meaningful to human existence. Would you say light is defined by what the eyes tell us? Doesn't light have it's own reality as a wavelength, vibrational frequency, etc. apart from our experience?

You have to define physical distinct from what it means to us unless you are going to assert the solipsist's position. Nameless' definition wasn't a definition of physicalness, it was a description of how human consciousness recognizes physicalness.

BlindBeauty

Certaintly 'physical' is coherent with 'existence' in that both have to 'be' in order for truth and validity. To 'exist' is to be 'Finite' or measureable in form, whether its a thought,quark, etc. I don't beleve there is any way for this to not be true: Finite = existence = physical