Of course if it were a thought experiment, it would be a virtual “experience” anyway.My "what if" question was an invitation to examine how we detect that a thing is "physical". A rock has physical existence because we can see and touch it. A thing is said to have physical existence if we have a sensate relationship with it. A thing is not virtual even if we cannot see it but can touch it. Why would a stubbing a toe on a rock be a virtual experience if we can see the stubbing but cannot feel it?
What if you stumped your toe on a rock and don’t feel a thing?That is a serious life threatening disease.
Congenital insensitivity to pain
Congenital insensitivity to pain (CIP), also known as congenital analgesia, is one or more rare conditions in which a person cannot feel (and has never felt) physical pain.[1] The conditions described here are separate from the HSAN group of disorders, which have more specific signs and cause. Because feeling physical pain is vital for survival, CIP is an extremely dangerous condition.[1] It is common for people with the condition to die in childhood due to injuries or illnesses going unnoticed.[1][2] Burn injuries are among the more common injuries.[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congenital_insensitivity_to_pain
That is a serious life threatening disease.You are digressing but thanks for the info. I did not know this.
You are either incapable or unwilling to follow my argument which cannot be dismissed by CIP.
There are folks who are born blind. They are humans with only four senses. Now, I know there are also people without the sense of touch. The nature of their respective realities are as valid as that of our own within the field of sight, touch, taste, hearing and smell. Note that there are healthy specimens of other species that detect their environment differently without our perceptual faculties. They live in their worlds just as we do in our own.
What, then, is a physical thing? Does it have subjective qualities or is it an absolute object that can exist outside the field of perception?
You are either incapable or unwilling to follow my argument which cannot be dismissed by CIP.actually that's you. The original statement was "anything you might stump a toe on". A perfectly understandable statement about what is real. It actually doesn't matter if you feel it or not, the statement has the same meaning. Being blind does not make light go away. The reality of light is still there, exactly as it was before eyes even evolved. It's not a "respective reality". We all live in the same world, we just perceive it differently.
What, then, is a physical thing? Does it have subjective qualities or is it an absolute object that can exist outside the field of perception?Physical things are molecular patterns of varying densities and are absolute objects. As you indicated yourself conscious awareness and recognition of these patterns depend on sensory abilities and stored memories in the brain.
When any of our senses are impaired that person has an impaired ability to experience the full extend of that existence. However, sometimes another sense can take over from an impaired sense and create work-arounds that allows the brain to make a best guess of what it erceives.
A blind person can get a picture of his surroundings by clicking or whistling much as other animals do with sonar. Some people may be color blind but can taste colors and experience the relative difference in colors by a diffrent recognition in the brain .
If we look at the range and abilities of biological organisms able to experiece their environment, it is filled with strange evolved adaptive cognitive abilities, from semi-stationary plants (heliotropism) to single celled organisms motile organisms (physical/chemical responses), to advanced sensory experiences (electro/chemical responses).
If is of use, natural selection will discover it and that organism will have a survival advantage. That is how the incredible variety of living things and their mode of living can be found everywhere on earth, from 750F black smokers, to the enormous icepacks at the poles, to deep crust organism living a mile deep in the earth. They can exist because the can use conditions in their immediate environment for energy.
Being blind does not make light go away.It does too, if you were born blind, or are a worm.
I once asked a visually handicapped guy if he was living in a state of darkness. He said: “I don’t know what is darkness. I was born blind. I don’t know what is light.”
The reality of light is still there, exactly as it was before eyes even evolved.Supposition. This kind of argument has a biblical cadence that invites ridicule in atheist circles.
It’s not a “respective reality”. We all live in the same world, we just perceive it differently.If “we” perceive it differently? Who are “we”? Perception, in absolute terms, is not a point of view that can be shared, or debated upon, by a group of perceivers. Perception is either yours or that of the housefly. You, alone, live in your world.
This kind of argument has a biblical cadence that invites ridicule in atheist circles.I gave one of the basic premises of the scientific method and you call it biblical.
Lausten: The reality of light is still there, exactly as it was before eyes even evolved. Sree: Supposition.You may call it supposition and I think you would not be that far off. One of the principles of science is that an object's existence is not dependent on our ability to perceive it. However, we cannot claim that an object exists unless we do perceive that it interacts with its surroundings. Time is not seen to interact with anything.
One of the principles of science is that an object’s existence is not dependent on our ability to perceive it.I dispute this.
Science is based on the premise of an observer making observations of the observed: the object
However, we cannot claim that an object exists unless we do perceive that it interacts with its surroundings.All scientific claims are based on observations of the observer. If it can be perceived, it exists. The nature of the object is dependent on the observer.
Time is not seen to interact with anything.As you said, time is an artifact of the memory. I wish you would investigate this with me and find out how time is created by the memory. Don’t be scared. Exploration of the unknown is literally mind-blowing. But this is eminently more worthwhile than risking your life going to the moon.
I dispute this.Science is based on the premise of an observer making observations of the observed: the object – Sree
The best interpretation of that, the most generous, is that you are talking about empirical evidence. But even if we were sightless creatures, not perceiving light through our eyes, light would still have all of the exact same properties it has now. It would be a lot more difficult, but somehow, we would start from first principles, we would sense light by it’s warmth, we would have light detectors that gave us sound that would fluctuate and we would define color based on that. We wouldn’t have a distinction between visible and non-visible light, maybe we would call all it “rays”. Doesn’t matter. It just wouldn’t change what light is.
If you want to refute something so fundamental, give some references, find a website on the basics of science. Somewhere around 4th grade level should do it.
If you want to refute something so fundamental, give some references, find a website on the basics of science. Somewhere around 4th grade level should do it.No references. No authority. No hand-holding. To investigate the nature of the building blocks of reality, even fundamentals have to be discarded. We need to step into the void before the mind was formed. This is real meditation.
One of the principles of science is that an object’s existence is not dependent on our ability to perceive it.
I dispute this, because I "know" that I am the center and the whole of the universe ! ! !
One of the principles of science is that an object’s existence is not dependent on our ability to perceive it.How can the above be a scientific principle? Is it possible to have science without the scientist, the curious investigator? If an object's existence is not dependent on the ability of the scientist to study its nature and qualities, how on earth can scientific knowledge be acquired?
The only object’s existence that is not dependent on our ability to perceive it is God. Is this a principle of science? Can I dispute it now?
If an object’s existence is not dependent on the ability of the scientist to study its nature and qualities, how on earth can scientific knowledge be acquired?Science is discovery. Discovery requires that the discovered be present before the discoverer. We do not create.
What is Time … ?
Time is an illusion,
there is no time,
there is no such a thing as time,
time is a human
psychological construction
which arises out of our need
to make sense of
the changing universe around us.
Buddha says, The truth is that when you see a dancer,
there is no dancer but only a dance.
When you see a river, there is no river but only rivering.
When you see a tree, there is no tree but only a treeing.
When you see love, there is nobody who is a lover
but only loving.
Life is a process.
. The ordinary idea of time is that it is like a river that is flowing by your side. That which has passed is the past; that which is passing is the present; that which is going to pass is the future. It is if time is a flux, a movement, and you are standing still and time goes on moving.
. But it is not true that you are standing still. Once you were a child, now you are young, now you are old, now you are dead. You are not standing still; you are continuously changing. Because of this fact there have been philosophers who propounded a second theory, that time is static, it is always the same; what changes is you. You are the flux from childhood to youth, from youth to old age, from old age to beyond. Because you cannot conceive your own changing process, it is so subtle and so quick, you project it on time.
. Nobody knows what time is, where time is. Nobody has ever seen it, nobody has ever touched it. Nobody has ever come to grips with time and its existence.
. Then three hundred years ago science became interested in what time is, because philosophy had not given any satisfactory answer. Science came to a point where it needed an answer about time. Without it, its many hypotheses remain simply hypotheses. It was a gap that had to be filled.
. Albert Einstein proposed something which has been temporarily accepted. In science, nothing is accepted permanently – because one never knows, tomorrow somebody else may bring a better hypothesis. So science is always hypothetical. That is the beauty of science and that is the ugliness of religion. Because religion goes on insisting that whatever is written in the Holy Scriptures is true and true forever, no change is possible. How can there be any change when the holy scriptures of all the religions are written by God?
. Science has a more significant attitude. Everything is, at the moment, hypothetically right. Nobody can say anything about what will happen the next moment. That is the meaning of relativity: when we say something is true, it simply means that relatively it is true. In comparison to other hypotheses, this hypothesis is relatively true. But tomorrow somebody may introduce some new hypotheses, and in comparison to them it may no longer be true. Something new may become true – but that too will remain only hypothetically true. Science is very honest.
. Albert Einstein stated something very great about time, that it is only a dimension of space. We have always known that space has three dimensions; Einstein added the fourth dimension to space, and it fits very well with his physics and it fits very well with all that has been discovered, taking it as a hypothetical truth. So many things, so many discoveries, so many inventions and they all prove reflectively the truth of the hypothesis.
. If time is only a dimension of space – and you never ask whether space is moving or static, nobody ever asks. Space is always there, the same. It is the same sky, it is the same space; things in it may change but space remains unchanging. And if time is also a dimension of space that means it does not change at all.
. You are saying that you felt in a moment as if time had stopped. Those moments are great, tremendously great, when you experience that time has stopped. In fact, time is always in a state of being the same. It is not a flux; it is not a river – the old idea.
. Time is always present – never past, never future. Things go on passing, disappearing, new things go on coming, but time itself is only a dimension of space, absolutely static. So when time stops for you, it is not time that stops; what stops is your mind.
. Your mind is in a constant flux – so many thoughts, so many ideas, so many imaginations and dreams and projections, and they have all stopped. Because your mind stops, suddenly you realize time has stopped.
. But in fact the stopping of the mind only reveals to you the reality of time. It is never moving, it is unmoving. It is just here, it is just now. It has never changed, and it will never change. Everything in it changes, but time itself remains absolutely unchanged.
Time & Space
---------------.
We live on the gravity-planet Earth
Earth has its own gravity-time and gravity-space
Other planets have their own gravity time and gravity-space
Without gravity - no time, no space.
Without gravity there is only infinite and eternal Cosmic Vacuum
(which doesn’t have time and space). This situation was explained
by Einstein / Minkowski as an absolute spacetime – SRT)
Thanks to the Cosmic Vacuum the gravity-time and gravity-space
and the time of existence can exist.
--------------------strong text
Not 0.88? . . . . . .
How can change happen without time forcing the change?
Do you believe in Evolution?
Is it independent of the human mind?
I seem to have lost this one, but then it has been an outrageous hectic and distracting summer for me.
Science is humanity’s best effort at studying the physical reality we are embedded within. So no, it is not possible to have science without humans to conduct the Science.
Are you saying physical reality, that is atoms and stars and planets and biology, don’t exist if humans aren’t there to witness it??
You have this precisely backwards, time does not come before change, change creates time as a byproduct of the spatial physics. The chronology of physical and all other measurable events involving change and duration of change is what humans have symbolized as Time.
Change creates time, the accounting of the duration of every event, from the BB (the beginning of universal time), to the duration of the evolutionary processes leading to “now”, the present. The future itself has no time., i.e, the universe does not use time as a causal agency. The existence of this universe is creating time as we speak. The accounting for all individual spatial events have a unique chronology, a secondary “time-line”, within the greater universal “spacetime” .