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8 Great Philosophical Questions


Anomalocaris

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On 6/6/2016 at 11:45 AM, StarMountainKid said:

I was trying to compare our sense of Something as opposed to Not-Something, which may not be absolute Nothing, but could be considered a Nothing compared to our complete lack of comprehension of it.

If you are standing in a unfamiliar room, without turning around to see what is behind you, you cannot describe what is behind you. What is behind you is for your vision a non-existence. If you are not aware of something, it becomes a nothing to your senses.

 

If I'm standing in that unfamiliar room the objects behind me exist whether or not I can "see" them. There are many good examples where blind people echo-locate. As well, if a blind person (who does not echo-locate) is placed in the unfamiliar room, the room itself still exists; the two square feet of floor they are standing on, the smell of what's in the room, the temperature of the room, the sounds within the room.

Edited by Likely Guy
I forgot an "n" if you need to know.
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21 minutes ago, Likely Guy said:

If I'm standing in that unfamiliar room the objects behind me exist whether or not I can "see" them. There are many good examples where blind people echo-locate. As well, if a blind person (who does not echo-locate) is placed in the unfamiliar room, the room itself still exists; the two square feet of floor they are standing on, the smell of what's in the room, the temperature of the room, the sounds within the room.

What I'm trying to demonstrate is that for seeing alone, what is beyond your area of vision is an analogous to Nothing. Maybe this is too difficult for me to explain. I got the idea from some physicist or cosmologist writing about trying to experience non-existence years ago in some paper he wrote about before the big bang, before space and time existed. I don't remember now who it was. It's not really that difficult to understand.

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23 minutes ago, StarMountainKid said:

What I'm trying to demonstrate is that for seeing alone, what is beyond your area of vision is an analogous to Nothing. Maybe this is too difficult for me to explain. I got the idea from some physicist or cosmologist writing about trying to experience non-existence years ago in some paper he wrote about before the big bang, before space and time existed. I don't remember now who it was. It's not really that difficult to understand.

I understand better what you're trying to describe now, thank you.

I just think that whomever was making it, provided a lousy analogy. "If" my sense of smell is stripped, a rotting corpse smells the same as a rose (i.e. "nothing"). Does the corpse or the rose cease to exist, or are they the same thing or, are they still separate?

Edited by Likely Guy
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1 minute ago, Likely Guy said:

I understand better what you're trying to describe, thank you.

I just think that whomever was making it, provided a lousy analogy. "If" my sense of smell is stripped a rotting corpse smells the same as a rose. Does the corpse or the rose cease to exist?

I wasn't inferring what we cannot see or smell ceases to exist. Though to you the rotting corpse doesn't smell at all, the rotting corpse is still there and its odor still exists.

I a way, the future is nothing and passes into the past, which is nothing also. Where is the future, where is the past? If you think about it, it's maybe another analogy for non-existence.

 

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8 minutes ago, StarMountainKid said:

I wasn't inferring what we cannot see or smell ceases to exist. Though to you the rotting corpse doesn't smell at all, the rotting corpse is still there and its odor still exists.

I a way, the future is nothing and passes into the past, which is nothing also. Where is the future, where is the past? If you think about it, it's maybe another analogy for non-existence.

 

Well, when we look at a constellation 12 billion light years away, that was 12 billion years ago. The present in these situations are the past. The only thing not guaranteed (you're right) is the future, the past is very much present though.

Edited by Likely Guy
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1 minute ago, Likely Guy said:

Well, when we look at a constellation 12 billion light years away, that was 12 billion years ago. The present is the past. The only thing not guaranteed (you're right) is the future, the past is very much present though.

I wasn't commenting on the effects of the finite speed of light. :) I was saying our past is non-existent. Where is your yesterday?

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Philosophically or figuratively? I've many photo albums, remembrances from friends, artifacts from my childhood, the mail that I picked up yesterday that will prove yesterday and all those other days existed.

Going back to yesterday, what celestial body exists 24 hours + pass the speed of light? If I can see it, it exists, therefore yesterday happened.

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1 minute ago, Likely Guy said:

Philosophically or figuratively? I've many photo albums, remembrances from friends, artifacts from my childhood, the mail that I picked up yesterday that will prove yesterday and all those other days existed.

Going back to yesterday, what celestial body exists 24 hours + pass the speed of light? If I can see it, it exists, therefore yesterday happened.

Yes, yesterday happened, I'm not arguing that. I'm saying that yesterday no longer exists in our now. If yesterday existed, we could go visit it, relive it in real time. Bump the present moment out of the way and yesterday would be our present moment. We can't do that. Yesterday is gone into oblivion. It no longer exists, it is a nothing. Only our memories and memento's of yesterday exist in the present moment.

 

 

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13 minutes ago, StarMountainKid said:

Yes, yesterday happened, I'm not arguing that. I'm saying that yesterday no longer exists in our now. If yesterday existed, we could go visit it, relive it in real time. Bump the present moment out of the way and yesterday would be our present moment. We can't do that. Yesterday is gone into oblivion. It no longer exists, it is a nothing. Only our memories and memento's of yesterday exist in the present moment.

 

 

Yes, yesterday and now don't exist at the same moment. That is self evident. We can visit yesterday today however, you said as much. With virtual reality we can record your today and replay it back to you ad infinitum. Your today's would be yesterdays, your tomorrow's, two day's ago.

Groundhog day and you would never know it.

Edited by Likely Guy
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1 minute ago, Likely Guy said:

Yes, yesterday and now don't exist at the same moment. That is self evident. We can visit yesterday today however, you said as much. With virtual reality we can record your today and replay it back to you ad infinitum. Your today's would be yesterdays, your tomorrow's, two day's ago.

This misses the point I'm trying to make. The actual reality of the past no longer exists.

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3 minutes ago, StarMountainKid said:

This misses the point I'm trying to make. The actual reality of the past no longer exists.

If that's the case the "person in the unfamiliar room" scenario, makes no sense to me.

Isn't experience the reality?

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1 minute ago, Likely Guy said:

If that's the case the "person in the unfamiliar room" scenario, makes no sense to me.

Isn't experience the reality?

Well, can you leave the present and enter yesterday? I think not. This is because there is no yesterday to enter. Yesterday no longer exists. Only the present moment exists for us.

I don't understand why the "person in the unfamiliar room" scenario therefore makes no sense.

 

 

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12 minutes ago, StarMountainKid said:

Well, can you leave the present and enter yesterday? I think not. This is because there is no yesterday to enter. Yesterday no longer exists. Only the present moment exists for us.

I don't understand why the "person in the unfamiliar room" scenario therefore makes no sense.

 

Well, the bolded part there, if that's what you meant, you should have said it a while ago, and we could have agreed, somewhat. :D That said, that doesn't mean that past moments never existed for us because we can't revisit them.

But still, celestial bodies 24+ light hours away still exist and there you have it today, 'yesterday' in a glance.

Edited by Likely Guy
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3 minutes ago, Likely Guy said:

Well, the bolded part there, if that's what you meant, you should have said it a while ago, and we could have agreed, somewhat. :D

But still, celestial bodies 24+ light hours still exist and there you have it, 'yesterday'.

I thought I had inferred that, sorry if I hadn't made it clear. We have the light from yesterday, but for the origin of that light, that light was emitted yesterday that no longer exists for us or for the origin.

When we receive that light 24 light hours after it was emitted, if we could instantly travel to its origin, we would realize that the origin emitted that light 24 hours ago. We would not revisit that moment of emittance, which was the origin's yesterday, and that origin's yesterday is not accessible to us.  

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Yes, for us "now" yesterday no longer exists figuratively. That in no way disproves what has happened.

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1 minute ago, Likely Guy said:

Yes, for us "now" yesterday no longer exists figuratively. That in no way disproves what has happened.

I agree. I would say, for us "now", yesterday no longer exists in reality.. Reality exists only "now".

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8 hours ago, Liquid Gardens said:

Isn't 'non-existence is possible only subjectively', assuming you mean total non-existence, a contradiction?  Doesn't 'subjectively' require a 'subject' which is a 'something' which contradicts 'non-existence'?

I'm not clear on why 'nothing cannot exist' unless it's just the phrasing;  does, 'there could have been nothing' have the same issue?

I'm referring in that post back to a previous post where I answered a question from SMK asking whether non-existence could be possible. Imo, the kind of subjective non-existence I explained (where "I" cease to exist, and "I" am therefore non-existent) means the answer should be yes. I acknowledge I qualified that yes, but it is "yes" nonetheless.

However, I consider the situation regarding the "nothing" in the context of the question asked in the OP article to be somewhat different. That "nothing" is absolute - it is nothing to the exclusion of an otherwise all-inclusive "something". Non-existence can be subjectively limited, but nothing (in the context provided) cannot - it is the non-existence of anything/everything.

I hope that answers your questions.

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Great question that I have "secret" answers to :P.  The greatest question I have come across that I can not resolve (sometimes I think I do then I change my mind again) is simply,

"Why am I not you?"

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