I'm still having trouble with this. If all humans and other species were wiped out - all except frogs - would dead flies cease to exist? If the river dried up, would the river bed vanish immediately? It's very counter-intuitive, isn't it. I suppose if you accept the existence of other minds and points of view, you're not a solipsist. But I'm still looking for that independent reason to actually accept what you're saying as true (whatever 'true' means in your world).
agrote,
Beyond intuition, the "reason" is Occam's Reazor coupled with evidence from QM. You really need to look at the latter (and the scientific view of "time" as a "psychological construct") in order to fully understand this.
Francis,
Allons enfants de la patri-i -e......!
fresco wrote:agrote,
Beyond intuition, the "reason" is Occam's Reazor coupled with evidence from QM. You really need to look at the latter (and the scientific view of "time" as a "psychological construct") in order to fully understand this.
I'm never sure about Occam's Razor, especially not with questions about the nature of reality and truth... it seems to
presuppose the view that "what's true is what works", rather than support it.
But you're right, I need to be looking at QM at this point.
Excerpt from "Quantum Metaphysics" (Victor J. Stenger, Paper presented at the Conference on New Spiritualities, Westminster College, Oxford, England, March 1995):
Quote:Although the atomic theory of matter was well developed by the late nineteenth century, it had not yet been convincingly verified at that time. Many chemists, and a few physicists like Lodge, still held open the possibility that matter might be continuous. The mathematics of fields had been successfully applied to solids and fluids, which appear continuous and wavy on the everyday scale. These scientists suggested that continuity, not atomism, constituted the prime unifying principle for describing the universe of both matter, light, and perhaps spirit.
This comforting notion was shattered as the twentieth century got underway. First, the aether was found not to exist. Second, the atomic theory was confirmed. Third, light was found to be a component of matter, composed of particles we now call photons. And so, discreteness, rather than continuity, became the unifying principle of physics, with the universe composed solely of particulate matter. Quantum mechanics was developed to describe material phenomena in all their various, discrete forms.
However, the situation was not quite so tidy as this short and simplified review may imply. The phenomena that originally led people to postulate its wave nature of light did not go away. Those observations were correct. Furthermore, other forms of matter were shown to also exhibit wave properties. Electrons were found to diffract through small openings in exactly the same way as light.
The fact that particles sometimes behaved as waves and waves as particles was called the wave-particle duality. Although matter was sufficient to encompass all known physical phenomena, the apparent two-fold nature of matter gave die hard dualists some comfort. Some associated waves with mind. But waves and particles were not two separate elementary substances but characteristics of the same substance.
Whether a physical entity was a wave or a particle seemed to depend on what you measured. Measure its position, and you concluded that the entity is a material body. Measure its wavelength, and you concluded that the entity is some type of continuous field. Furthermore, you can imagine deciding which quantity to measure at the last instant, long after the entity had been emitted from its source, which might be a distant galaxy.
Some have inferred from this puzzle that the very nature of the universe is not objective, but depends on the consciousness of the observer. This latest wrinkle on ancient idealism implies that the universe only exists within some cosmic, quantum field of mind, with the human mind part of that field and existing throughout all space and time.
Link To Entire Essay
Wandeljw, this last paragraph, i.e.,:
"This latest wrinkle on ancient idealism implies that the universe only exists within some cosmic, quantum field of mind, with the human mind part of that field and existing throughout all space and time."
Sounds, on the surface, at least, like the Hindu model of the Cosmos as Brahma (a form of nonsupernatural god). Brahma, as I understand it is a Universal Mind comprised of countless particular minds like ours, referred to as Atmans.
Particles, waves: depends on one's perspective. Perhaps we should call the basic content of matter WAVICLES.
a wavicle implies it is a wave-like particle! I think they should be called partaves, which implies they are particle-like waves!
O.K.
And welcome, averner. Pleased to have another A2Ker with Buddhist sensibilities aboard.
Quote:The separation between the observer and the observed is always more-or-less arbitrary, although we customarily ignore that fact. An example by Bohr may clarify:
We customarily think of the outside world as separate from ourselves, and the boundary between the two is the surface of our skin. However, think of a blind person who gets around with the assistance of a cane. In time that person will probably treat the cane as part of his or her body, and will think of the outside world as beginning just at the tip of the cane. Now imagine the blind man's sense of touch extending out of the tip of the cane and into the roadway itself. Imagine it extending further, down the block, into the countryside, to the whole world. There is no point where the blind man ends and the world begins. Similarly, we can not say which is the system and which is us observing it.
This is the heart of the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics.
David M. Harrison, Dept. of Physics, University of Toronto.
It seems to me that I can both (equally arbitrarily) consider my skin as a separator and connector vis-a-vis the "rest" of the world. It's a matter of perspectives. Nevertheless, I prefer to think that neither is actually the case, that there is "ultimately" no ME "in contrast to" ALL ELSE, no inside vs. outside, no here vs. there. There is just Reality which knows no such borders. Everything is IN A SENSE one and IN A SENSE an infinite network of interconnected and interacting facets of the ONE.
all i needed to know about metaphysics i learned on mtv
occam's quantum razor: for that nonlocalized shave!
also try new occams's stiptic pencils: when your shaving cream's wavefunction collapses, occam's quantum stiptics!
but living colour put out a multidiscipline dissertation bridging nlp, chomsky, and metaphysics titled:
we must never take these words too seriously: words are very important but if we take them too seriously we destroy everything
sadly no one paid it any attention except shrodinger's cat. but i never metaphysics that i didn't like.
Re: all i needed to know about metaphysics i learned on mtv
tinygiraffe wrote:occam's quantum razor: for that nonlocalized shave!
also try new occams's stiptic pencils: when your shaving cream's wavefunction collapses, occam's quantum stiptics!
but living colour put out a multidiscipline dissertation bridging nlp, chomsky, and metaphysics titled:
we must never take these words too seriously: words are very important but if we take them too seriously we destroy everything
sadly no one paid it any attention except shrodinger's cat. but i never metaphysics that i didn't like.
Are you a computer virus?
that's a great question for a philosophy and debate forum.
but from a technical standpoint, i'd have to replicate?
tinygiraffe wrote:that's a great question for a philosophy and debate forum.
but from a technical standpoint, i'd have to replicate?
Eh? I can't tell you how to be a computer virus. You should know.
no that's a worm
right, "i was going to be a computer virus but i couldn't find a port."
reminds me of an old joke about the medical profession...
I was going to be a drug addict, but I couldn't find my arms.
Funny, I have a friend who is a sex addict. He explained to me that it was either than or drug addiction.
