Post by John Watts on Dec 18, 2014 17:55:27 GMT
“ If a tree falls and no one is around to hear it does it make a sound “
This popular philosophical theme was mentioned lightly as a Christmas challenge
and I have been foolish enough to tie myself in knots persuing it.darkly However having spent so much time on it, this is a pruned down version I feel able to release.
Can anything unperceived be said to exist you may ask
Yes of course any Thing is --, because it is a thing – that is to say it is not nothing.
OK Puting it another way. Can anything exist before it is perceived
Yes again of course, anything we perceive must exist in our time frame for us to perceive it; Our time frame has dimensions into the future and into the past only. The present is just an interface between the two.
Well could it not be created by the act of our observing at this interface
Awareness starts into the future from then certainly; but not existance because the world is not observed to change materially at that time. When it was first perceived that ice floating on water had to be lighter than cold water; clearly it always had been. When Australia was found there could be no doubt it existed before then. I think it is true to say that each perception can be shown to have prior existence.
Quantum mechanics implies that reality occurs at the moment of observation though .
That is a good point. It may apply in the micro world, where we are blind to spatial and real identity except through noting interactions to stimuli. But in the macro world we do not have that restriction Incidentally I believe we all have similar if not identical perceptions as you no doubt agree. This must be because we are all observing something outside ourselves not something conjured from within peculiar to our particular genetic make up.
Otherwise you are necessarily denying there is a real world out there happily independent of us and that we are living a kind of dream or watching a film show, in some supreme beings mind.
So why not
God to the rescue ! That's something else. I can argue convincingly that he does not exist if you wish to change subject. It seems to me that I am trying to disprove something bizarre to me and I think the majority of thinking people. This aspect of it makes my task difficult Perhaps you can advance objective reasons for your premis against, as I have tried to do for what I call the real world. If you can not you are left with subjective judgements steming from your genetic make-up rather like the Theists do. The weight of jurisprudence and scientific method insists that such evidence can not be accepted. I would argue that my real world is real because by close study of it, it has led us from caves to sky scrapers, and horses to space ships, in a few millennia.
But we can agree on something. If nothing is real until perceived, our reality or world view becomes the sum of our perceptions; similarly - If all is real, perceived or not, our reality or world view becomes the sum of our perceptions.
There is exact equivalence in that respect, which makes our argument approach the relevance of- how many angels can dance on a pin head.
J W 16 12 14