| | #542 (permalink) | ||||||
| Questioning | Re: What is time? Quote:
The reason I've brought up relative simultaneity was to make people (some who were not familiar with that concept), to think about it from the ontological perspective, and realize that there are many ways to view relativity. To realize that one of the most common views - Minkowski's static spacetime - can't be objectively defended as valid ontological interpretation. Seems like a good way to make people think of that issue is to make them imagine what does the world look like around them before they see it, according to relativity. That forces you to think because it is not a straightforward issue. Unfortunately that often gets interpreted as if I'm trying to point out a logical flaw in relativity. If you look at post #408 where I brought up relativistic simultaneity, you can see how I just comment on how it caused people to interpret relativity in terms of static spacetime, and how it is not really necessary to interpret things that way. i.e. when I refer to the possibility of understanding reality in terms of absolute simultaneity, I am not advancing any new theory. I am just talking about a different way to plot/understand the exact same information. And the point of all that was to relax some assumptions people almost always make in their mind regarding the relationship between ontological reality and the way they understand reality. To make people look at their worldviews in terms of defined entities, whose ontological existence is unknown (including spacetime). So that it would be easier to comprehend that there always exists many different ways to model/communicate the same raw data. And to prepare them better to understand what DD's analysis is about. To understand it can be valid even when it doesn't operate with the components that people believe reality is made of. (And like I said before, even though DD's analysis does not explicitly give you any answers as to what is reality really like, it does show that many aspects that are usually thought of part of how the universe "just is", are in fact consequences of defining any sort of raw data in a specific way, implying strongly that we are talking about completely imaginary constructs. How much these constructs correspond to actual reality is unknown) Quote:
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I've talked with realists who strongly oppose my view, but when pushed agree that it may be possible that many valid models can always explain the raw data. But they still believe that hidden underneath is reality that really does consist of "fundamental parts", i.e. that one's worldview could perfectly co-incide with the way reality ontologically exists. (As oppose to just being one of all the possible "perfectly aligned representations" of the reality) Even so, the problem remains that there's no way to tell. To me, such a belief is much like believing there exists particles that do not interact with any things we can observe. I.e. that there are universes that could never be detected. Rather moot belief if you ask me. Furthermore, what makes that belief rather unreasonable from my perspective (albeit not impossible) is that it seems quite clear, that in order to predict anything, we have to conceive some features of reality as "same object" through time; i.e. to classify some data in terms of "objects" seems to be part of the model construction process. When people discuss "ontologically fundamental entities", I just always wonder "well who defined those things as "entities" before we did?" That applies to our views on time (and space). I think understanding DD's analysis would be easier for a constructivist. For example, note the exchange between Modest & DD about "past" and "future". I would like to re-iterate that DD is referring to that "undefined data" all the time. I should clarify this for the benefit of Modest too; Quote:
When you (modest) say there exists things in the past that you do not know, you are referring to things filled in by your worldview, but not things that exist in the raw data. Whatever you learn about past when you are sitting in a history lecture, is new raw data that is learned exactly there; while sitting in the history lesson. That you are capable of interpreting that data in the form of "account of something that happened in the past", is because you have that worldview which places the data as something referring to your past. That is very important distinction when you want to analyze epistemological constructs objectively. -Anssi | ||||||
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| | #543 (permalink) | ||
| Explaining | Re: What is time? Quote:
In my opinion, constructivist ideas have not penetrated nearly as deep into the physical sciences as they have in the social sciences. Perhaps there is a good reason for this. Last edited by Overdog; 07-30-2008 at 12:26 PM. Reason: Clarification;spelling | ||
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| | #544 (permalink) | |
| Explaining | Re: What is time? Doesn't ontology sort of imply that consciousness has something to do with reality? Metaphysics seems like a lukewarm way to give meaning to the observed universe. ---------------- From a drop of water a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other. Sherlock Holmes | |
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| | #545 (permalink) | |||
| Explaining | Re: What is time? Quote:
I think you may be confusing Ontology with Constructivism...an epistemological point of view. Quote:
Constructivism Last edited by Overdog; 07-30-2008 at 12:49 PM. Reason: add link; fix link | |||
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| | #546 (permalink) | ||
| Questioning | Re: What is time? Quote:
For example, the "hard problem of consciousness" is partially caused by the assumption that reality is ontologically a set of tiny fundamental entities just like we conceive it; that leads one to wonder how can a huge collection of those tiny fundamental entities together have one subjective experience; why don't the smaller pieces have a subjective experience by themselves? Or what is it with a certain "colony of things" that causes it to have one collective subjective experience? Why doesn't an ant colony, or the New York traffic system have a subjective experience, or does it? Here's an old post with some commentary about that particular conundrum; Subjective experience If I'm allowed to expand on that little bit, though now I'm forced to speak entirely through my personal worldview; If you wonder what could then be the requirements that a "process" must meet for it to be "subjective experience" (since obviously we define "processes" ourselves, like the NY Traffic System, and we can do that in a completely free and overlapping fashion), it is interesting to note that our subjective experience seems to be entirely composed of an interpretation of the sensory data; interpretation according to a self-built model of reality. A rock falling down a hill is hardly conceiving its situation through a model of reality; it has hardly defined a "rock" and "hill" from some data. (Nor has the NY Traffic System )Not only that; the model always includes an identified "self"; data is always interpreted in terms of something happening to one's "self"... ...except maybe when we are infants, in which case we could never have any memories of what happened to ourself at that time, since the data was never interpreted as such... Which is just a specific explanation for infant amnesia. Okay, hopefully some of that had something to do with what you were asking... ...because it most definitely had very little to do with the topic of this thread ![]() -Anssi | ||
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| | #550 (permalink) | |||
| Explaining | Re: What is time? It is a concept of duration, but... Quote:
These are the two main sides of the debate, as I see it... Quote:
I do not go as far as to claim that time does not have objective reality, merely that I don't know and don't know how I could know. Last edited by Overdog; 07-30-2008 at 04:39 PM. Reason: Clarification | |||
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