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Originally Posted by Southtown Both dasraiser's and Bio-Hazard's responses hint to what CraigD and I were saying. It's not as simple as "time existing only in our minds". Bio-Hazard's cool link to the USNO reminds me that atomic clocks count the oscillations of atoms, which we the observers are made of. And dasraiser noted that the world had to exist before s/he could exist.
This is why I say that logic defeats itself here. Because the observer has to first exist physically in order to observe time, or anything else. Any hypotheses disregarding external time should realistically provide an alternative mechanism for (non-physical) consciousness. |
Have you ever heard the "brain in a vat" argument, or read descartes (or other philosophers), or seen the matrix, or had a dream for that matter? Its kinda funny, because you have to use things we have experienced in the existence we are doubting as a metaphor for what might be happening outside of our sense perceptions, but the idea is that everything you experience could just be an illusion caused by your subconsious mind (if you are dreaming right now) or some vr program hooked up with wires to a disembodied brain in a vat or by anything really.
You could wake up to find that the "real" universe really has physics completely different than what existed in the "VR world" that we are currently experiencing. Apply any of your arguments to this situation. Do any of them still address the concern? No.
As for "realistically provide an alternative", the problem here is that what is a "realistic alternative" is not something that you or anyone else is really capable of judging due to a similar argument as I am using regarding the "time is a function of perception issue". Why? Well lets single out the Virtual Reality version and try your reasoning on it. Is that realistic? You might say "No thats not realistic, because noone knows how to interact with the mind that way etc". But then oh yeah... Thats in the world we are experiencing now... In fact ALL of your reasoning and intuition is based on the world you are experiencing now. Therefore it is impossible for you to determine if any alternative explanation is "realistic" or not. How can you tell what is "realistic" if you don't know what is "real"?
Eventually philosophers just realized it doesn't do anything bad to accept that we don't know if everything we experience is "real" (although not all of them were comfortable of wording it that way)... We still can do nothing but accept what we are experiencing until we are given any reason (and option) to do otherwise. In fact since our concept of real is dependent on everything we experience, we might as well define real to mean what we experience regardless of if it is just a VR program or not. We might as well define everything we believe as being dependent on our sense experience. Think of it as recognizing assumptions.
Recognizing that time is dependent on perception follows the same type of reasoning. If something were to alter the order in which we percieve events, it would alter our conception of time.
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Originally Posted by CraigD I recognize this fundamental disagreement, one which I believe is generally termed “materialism vs. phenomenalism”, a disagreement that has resisted resolution for at least 300, probably more like 3000, years. Even the wikipedia article I link to is under dispute by adherents on either side of the disagreement.
My materialistic worldview is not the result of having personally resolved the phenomenalism conundrum, but the conclusion that it’s simply impractical to apply mathematical formalism, a thing that gives me great pleasure, to the outside world – in other words, to do Science – without such a worldview. Please don’t think me disparaging of other worldviews.  I think writer/director John Carpenter put it eloquently this bit of script from his low-budget 1974 movie “Dark Star”. The full script has several more delightful philosophy nuggets from this (IMHO) much overlooked and forgotten film. |
I don't know if I could be classified as either side on this argument. My problem with phenomenalism is pretty much outlined above your quote in this post... if nothing is real that we experience then what would we do hide in a pitch black closet and bob our head up and down saying "iTs... nOt.... rEaL!!! heh.. HA ... hahHAHAHA"? Instead why not just recognize everything as dependent on our sense experience being "real" or not...
But recognizing that dependence is still important IMO. Is time dependent on our perception of events? Well YEAH because every idea we ever have is dependent on our perception. But is this signifigant in any situation other than one where we are being decieved about everything we percieve? Yes.. Lets say you want to just define time as the order in which events occur, No perception involved. Well what if something alters the order in which you percieve events? Your perception of time is all messed up. Everything about the world might be real, but this is still the case.
