Time simply does not exist

Quote:

If its existence is entirely determined by its social significance, then given a irreconcilable dispute as to its purpose-- won't it just cease to exist?

I don't follow your logic. If there was dispute about it's purpose, it wouldn't be none of the proposed things, it would be all.
There was actually a similar problem every winter during my childhood. The best slope to ride down with our sleds was also the only road cars could drive to get to the area we lived in. Needless to say this caused problems, the least of which being that when we came down while cars drove up it could get dangerous.
Then they sanded the slope, so that cars could get up even on the snow, and that was it for the sleds. It happened the same every year.
(This was in the early eighties, before it was dangerous for a child to get out of bed without a helmet on.)

This implies that there is a difference between the illness and the perception of it. But is there a difference between an object and the perception of that object?

Language used by humans interpret what we see in our environment. Without human interpretation, objective/subjective doesn't exist.

That's correct; it doesn't have any meaning without humans applying their interpretation to it. Humans create our own reality.

Put simply, would there be objective and subjective issues without humans?

I don't think so.

Everything is a "social agreement" based on language. There is a difference between objective and subjective identification of things which doesn't change with language. A ball in any language is still a ball.

But is there a difference between an object and the perception of that object?

But is there a difference between an object and the perception of that object?

Let me try to clarify. If you see a ball, and later you recall it in your memory, is it the same ball? Is the object you think about the same object you saw, or is it an unrelated mental representation?

We all know that there are many ways to spin this. But if we borrow some concepts from quantum physics, we might get another result. If we think of the ball as a quantum system existing in it's definite state, we can compare all perceptions of it to superpositions of that quantum system.

It reality, the ball can only occupy one point in space at any one time. But in our minds, the ball can do or be anything we can imagine.

In a way, we can say that conscious awareness is superpositioned reality, and it is on this background that we understand reality. We can perceive the transition from one state to another, and because we can remember the transition, we can remember both states simultaneously.
Thinking about these things in these terms have implications to some key concepts, such as 'sense of self'. That in turn changes the relationship between objects we sense and the mental representations of that object.

You might ask what basis we have to compare thoughts to quantum superposition. For now, all I can say is that the comparison fits to a point, and there is a similarity shared by quantum superposition and thought.
Both exist and have an impact on reality, yet both are formless, have no mass, and occupy no space.

All this is part of a bigger idea I've been playing with. It's the subject of the thread 'consciousness, again'. Basically, I want a metaphysical explanation of reality based on quantum physics, rather than classical physics. 'Quantum metaphysics', so to speak. The core assumption is that our senses operate on the quantum scale, which to my estimation is a fairly reasonable assumption.

no it can't , the ball can't become a square

no it can't , the ball can't become a square

But by your very mention of it shows it can become a square.

Human perception can look at objects in many different ways, but we are still limited by our physical/mental limitations, perceptions, and imagination.

How physically? In your mind's eye. That's all inclusive of human perception; it can perceive things that has no value "except to other humans."

Why does it have to?

It's still in the perception of the person "seeing" it.

We're talking about the human mind; it can do almost anything we can imagine. Human reality is a very complex set of neurons that allows humans to imagine things that do not exist in "reality."

Only humans are capable of communicating ideas that do not physically exist.

Have you ever seen the Christian god?

No problem: I just turned my thought of a circle into the thought of a square. And there are no spheres and squares other than as thoughts.

Yes, I'm talking psychology, because that's how we understand the human mind. It allows us to understand the limitations of humans, and what we call our reality.