paul30

How can you tell the validity of a mental construct--that is, its closeness to some external reality.

Well, ultimately, you can't.

Most of us live our lives making great assumptive leaps.

And I meant what I said about "animals remembering the future"--future, future, future.

Math is a mental construct that consists of tautologies.

Sometimes it has application to external reality. But this may just mean that we are perceiving the realms that it applies to.

thestickman

So did you just choose to ignore my response. I didn't fault what you said about animals, maybe you will either falsify my argument or concede the point.

We do make assumptive leaps, read my post. When you say Maths was really created by seeing things like one person + one person = two people. [edit: Maths startes as a external construct, it has since become a meld beteen the two and then more so theorectical. For much of the time though maths was used and intended to explain the world around us. And a darn good job it's done] And before I goto far I really feel it is debatable whether maths is created. This is like your argument that time is a human thing. One person + one person will always = two people [not referring to synergy]. When you say that maths sometimes has external applications because we are percieving the realms it applies to, can you explain this better. What are these realms. What we percieve, by my understanding that derived from the senses, is not to me split into realms.

Perhaps you could respond to this reply.

-tsm

paul30

Dear Stickman,

You say we probably derived math from observations such as one man + one man = two men.

No doubt.

But that observation involves an amazing amount of generalization and assumption.

We may THINK all "men" are close enough alike to be counted, but that's an assumption.

In fact each is a complex pattern and each is quite different. Each person is probably more similar to other persons than to, say, an arachnid; but that's only because we see things at a large level. On the DNA level they are almost indistinguishable.

So our math is not "true" of the things we apply it to; it is only "true" of our perceptions and interpretations.

If it bears a close relation to outside reality, that is more or less luck.

And why should I reply to your point about animals remembering the past?

That isn't what I was talking about.

thestickman

Let's look at what I wrote:

You: We don't know enough about animals to say whether they remember the future.

Me: It's a simple act of observation to see they don't remember the future. If they remembered the future not the past, then if you went to hit an animal you would always miss, because it would know it was about to be hit, it remembers being hit. (see earlier post)

Where did I make a point about animals remembering the past? I replied to your statement.

Not really, we define what a man is so the assumptions we make are things like: 'Without pulling down its pants I can be reasonably sure it has the required anatomy', although I suppose we don't really define men as having a penis and two testicles.

For the last time, we apply it to our perceptions, nothing more. Without getting into a debate about reality science doesn't really matter with whether our perceptions are real or not because we only ever deal with our perceptions. That is why you saying that time isn't really real because we don't know what is beyond our perceptions is irrelevant.

-tsm

paul30

Dear Stickman,

Irrelevant to what?????

I fear you are so convinced that your perceptions represent something beyond themselves that you cannot conceive that that might not be so.

They may, but they may not.

And there are all shades in between--and this is where the real problem lies.

It is not that there is no external reality, and you are merely a figment of my solipsism. It is that the reality of the world is so remote from our mental perceptions of it that we are often wildly wrong about it, or underrepresent it catastrophically.

spacer1

jpbrooks:
I agree (I think). Surely, the question "What is time?" is an absurd question. Everybody knows what time is, even a child. You can have a rough sense of how long an hour is, just as you can have a rough sense of how long a metre or a foot is. One day consists of light and darkness. Every creature on earth knows this.

I think the real question is "What is time after Einstein's (in collusion with reality)'s relativization of it?" How could an experience of time be any different on a mass of a different size (or within the gravitational pull of any other mass than earth)? Would the world seem to move faster or slower? Would our minds adjust and learn to form new concepts at these higher or lower speeds?

I suggest that (assuming we evolved naturally on this planet) our experience of change from the perspective of earth will be the yardstick against which we adjust any further knowledge of the experience of change. (I would analagously suggest that empiricism is the yardstick (or the starting point) from which we adjust all knowledge. We take how the world appears to be as the basis for the contributions from science, taking us to best explanations for how the world "really is". Flat earth vs. ....not (?) is a good example, or that the earth orbits the sun, rather than vice versa.

Apocolips

Time is merely a measurement. Of time! There is a period of time that it takes the earth to rotate. Humanity has broken this period into 24 equal parts and calls them hours. There are 24 seperate time zones. Of course, the time it takes the earth to revolve around the Earth takes one year, or about 365 days.

Time is merely a measurement of time. In our deminsion, time goes by one second at a time. Einstien had a theory that if a man was traveling at the speed of light that time would move faster in slower time, than the astronaut himself, one year at the speed of light would equal 50 years in "slow" or Earth time. So, the danger being that if a 30 year old astronaut had a baby when he left for a year's voyage in "speed" space, he would return 31, and his child being his age or older. Not to mention all the technology the astronaut missed on when he left his time one year ago, or Earth time 30-50 years ago.

Then, if Einstien is right, we are talking about deminsions in time and space. This will never be proven because man will never travel the speed of light, and if he could, where would he go to? Possibly the end of the solar system but not further. Which makes this conversation bullshit in the first place.

SENOR:boohoo: :boohoo: :boohoo: :boohoo:

thestickman

I agree whole heartedly. Everything we know is really built, to an extent, on what we percieve. On the flat earth analogy the earth was never flat, we always percieved a round earth we just interpreted the small arc we see as being flat. Maybe Paul30, you and I are defining perceptions differently.

How so? Do people always have to pull out the 'this argument is meaningless' card? People make it meaningful. I think this conversation is immensly important as are the ideas Einstein theorised.

Lastly, Paul30, neither you nor I can ever prove if our perceptions show us true reality. You seem stuck into thinking that they don't and accuse me of being the reverse. I am merely saying that your argument is irrelevant to the concept of time. We only ever experience our perceptions. We percieve time. To you that doesn't prove time is real. But it is real to us. How are you defining reality? What is external reality? If we only experience our perceptions how can this external reality affect us?

That is basically what I have been saying! You may put it succintly but you can't say it to me as if you have had an amazing revelation. That is basically my point. I just further this by saying that science deals with our perceptions as reality. They assume that when we see the sun there is actually a sun there.

-tsm

DoubleDutchy

Einstein is right on this, as was experimentally verified over and over again. Not whith men travelling at lightspeed however,that would be admittedly impractical. (Btw light speed is not a prerequisite, any speed will do, the nearer you get toward LS, which is unattainable, the clearer the effect manifests itself.) A radiometric clock, that is shot into space , will be running behind as compared to one that stays on earth. The effect has to be taken into account if you calculate your position using GPS, otherwise the result will be at a miss for several dozens of yards.
Strong language rarely makes for a strong argument.
:boohoo:

paul30

A useful analogy may be the Ether.

In the 19th century it was learned that light behaves like a wave.

Since other waves people knew about were always waves in a Medium (like water or air), it was thought that light must be waves in a Medium, too; and this supposed medium was the ether.

But numerous experiments showed there was in fact no ether.

Ditto time.

There is in fact no time.

We measure events, but the measurements are also simply events. "Time" is our way of ordering these events, but is entirely a mental construct.

And as for whether there is any reality "out there," well, I suppose so; but we can never be sure.