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New Theories / Perceptual trickery...?
« on: 08/02/2008 14:34:00 »
The impression I had earlier was that you were suggesting that time was nothing other than illusory perception. Now you seem to be saying time is not illusory, but maybe our own perception of it gives us an unreal image of what time is?
I was at pains to stress that time is real, in that we are very much subject to it. It's not so much that our image of what time is that I am getting at, it is more how our perception of time is what amkes sense to us in our existence - and that this perception may on some level, hinder our understanding of the forces that affect that universe.
But that implies that the time we sense as a reference point is as real as the distance we perceive, since the two become interrelated. If our sense of time is false, then automatically our sense of distance becomes compromised. Or am I still misunderstanding how you regard time and our sense of time to be interlinked?
We live in a constantly shifting point in time, we are at the leading edge of time (which is why we can only move backwards in time, and why our movement within space is subject to Einstein's relativity - why our 'clock' runs slower relative to someone notionally(relatively) motionless.) I am suggesting that our perception of the world as particulate matter is due to the way we have evolved to sense time, which is by means of some internal method of breaking time down into 'packets'.
Our sense of constant motion (in the sense of motion appearing to be absolute) is itself illusiory. If I stand next to another person, he and I both appear to be stationary, yet the Earth continues to spin on its axis, and rotate around the Sun, and the Sun rotate around the Milky Way, etc. - so, unless one is still arguing for a geocentric universe (something that most people stopped believing in some time after Copernicus suggested a heliocentric universe, and Galileo was attacked by the church for agreeing with him – although we now have moved even beyond the notion of a heliocentric universe). The reality, our notion of velocity is purely local, and we judge something to be in constant motion if it appears to be in motion relative to most of the other things around us (without regard to the possibility that most of the other things around us may also be in motion relative to something else).
I wouldn't disagree with anything that you say here. In fact this seems to be arguing my point rather than against. If we were aware of time as a constant flow, if we were aware only that we existed within an 'instant' of time, one to the next , and that all else is in relative 'motion' with us within time, surely implies that there is some cue alerting us to that motion - which we would otherwise be unaware of. Indeed, the very fact that we remember, that we have memory, is evidence of an awareness of a previous position within time.
The notion of a particle is a convenience, in that it allows us to set manageable boundaries upon what we are looking at.
Indeed, but perhaps it also sets us boundaries beyond which we cannot see...., unless we can acknowledge such.
On the other hand, if one wishes to look at the local behaviour of a wave, it makes sense to set boundaries upon what you are looking at, simply because it is not possible to view a boundless universe at one time. We have the capability to compute what one or two waves are doing, but to try and look at the totality in one go is simply beyond any feasibility capability.
Indeed, and perhaps this is exactly what I'm getting at. We revert to the 'comfort' of our perception. But perhaps we have to find a way of understanding those waves, without reverting to our notional paradigm, in order to be able to understand many of the forces which enact upon, and many of the reactions within, our universe.
Yes, the recording of time (as the recording of distance, or the recording of any other measurement) will be in fixed intervals, insofar as the limitations of our communications tends to be by using multiples (commonly integer multiples) of the reference values as a way of recording the value we are choosing to record. This is a limitation of language, but not a limitation of our perception of reality.
But, if our understanding of time, if the paradigm with which we view time, is essentially created of that same technique (on a pre-conscious, biological level) and that that notional understanding ascribes our view of the universe (for instance, as particulate), isn't it important to understand that, and thereby judge our questions, and our reading of results, in that knowledge?
I was at pains to stress that time is real, in that we are very much subject to it. It's not so much that our image of what time is that I am getting at, it is more how our perception of time is what amkes sense to us in our existence - and that this perception may on some level, hinder our understanding of the forces that affect that universe.
But that implies that the time we sense as a reference point is as real as the distance we perceive, since the two become interrelated. If our sense of time is false, then automatically our sense of distance becomes compromised. Or am I still misunderstanding how you regard time and our sense of time to be interlinked?
We live in a constantly shifting point in time, we are at the leading edge of time (which is why we can only move backwards in time, and why our movement within space is subject to Einstein's relativity - why our 'clock' runs slower relative to someone notionally(relatively) motionless.) I am suggesting that our perception of the world as particulate matter is due to the way we have evolved to sense time, which is by means of some internal method of breaking time down into 'packets'.
Our sense of constant motion (in the sense of motion appearing to be absolute) is itself illusiory. If I stand next to another person, he and I both appear to be stationary, yet the Earth continues to spin on its axis, and rotate around the Sun, and the Sun rotate around the Milky Way, etc. - so, unless one is still arguing for a geocentric universe (something that most people stopped believing in some time after Copernicus suggested a heliocentric universe, and Galileo was attacked by the church for agreeing with him – although we now have moved even beyond the notion of a heliocentric universe). The reality, our notion of velocity is purely local, and we judge something to be in constant motion if it appears to be in motion relative to most of the other things around us (without regard to the possibility that most of the other things around us may also be in motion relative to something else).
I wouldn't disagree with anything that you say here. In fact this seems to be arguing my point rather than against. If we were aware of time as a constant flow, if we were aware only that we existed within an 'instant' of time, one to the next , and that all else is in relative 'motion' with us within time, surely implies that there is some cue alerting us to that motion - which we would otherwise be unaware of. Indeed, the very fact that we remember, that we have memory, is evidence of an awareness of a previous position within time.
The notion of a particle is a convenience, in that it allows us to set manageable boundaries upon what we are looking at.
Indeed, but perhaps it also sets us boundaries beyond which we cannot see...., unless we can acknowledge such.
On the other hand, if one wishes to look at the local behaviour of a wave, it makes sense to set boundaries upon what you are looking at, simply because it is not possible to view a boundless universe at one time. We have the capability to compute what one or two waves are doing, but to try and look at the totality in one go is simply beyond any feasibility capability.
Indeed, and perhaps this is exactly what I'm getting at. We revert to the 'comfort' of our perception. But perhaps we have to find a way of understanding those waves, without reverting to our notional paradigm, in order to be able to understand many of the forces which enact upon, and many of the reactions within, our universe.
Yes, the recording of time (as the recording of distance, or the recording of any other measurement) will be in fixed intervals, insofar as the limitations of our communications tends to be by using multiples (commonly integer multiples) of the reference values as a way of recording the value we are choosing to record. This is a limitation of language, but not a limitation of our perception of reality.
But, if our understanding of time, if the paradigm with which we view time, is essentially created of that same technique (on a pre-conscious, biological level) and that that notional understanding ascribes our view of the universe (for instance, as particulate), isn't it important to understand that, and thereby judge our questions, and our reading of results, in that knowledge?