Where does reality reside ?

[nutronjon]

Back to what really excites me. I googled the Second law of thermodynamics and get there must be a few molecules before this law goes into operation. So then I goolged the Molecules of DNA, and see that the position a molecule takes matters, and geometry of the RNA is different from the geometry of DNA.

 

Second law of thermodynamics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Microscopic systems

Thermodynamics is a theory of macroscopic systems at equilibrium and therefore the second law applies only to macroscopic systems with well-defined temperatures. On scales of a few atoms, the second law does not apply; for example, in a system of two molecules, it is possible for the slower-moving ("cold") molecule to transfer energy to the faster-moving ("hot") molecule. Such tiny systems are outside the domain of classical thermodynamics, but they can be investigated in quantum thermodynamics by using statistical mechanics. For any isolated system with a mass of more than a few picograms, the second law is true to within a few parts in a million.

 

RNA - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[1]An important structural feature of RNA that distinguishes it from DNA is the presence of a hydroxyl group at the 2' position of the ribose sugar. The presence of this functional group causes the helix to adopt the A-form geometry rather than the B-form most commonly observed in DNA.[3] This results in a very deep and narrow major groove and a shallow and wide minor groove.[4] A second consequence of the presence of the 2'-hydroxyl group is that in conformationally flexible regions of an RNA molecule (that is, not involved in formation of a double helix), it can chemically attack the adjacent phosphodiester bond to cleave the backbone.[5]

 

The principle of "twoness" of "otherness", was called Dyad by the Greek philosophers of the five centuries before Christ. They were suspicious of it because it seemed to revolt from unity, distancing inself from the divine Monad. They referred to the Dyad as "audacity" for its boldness in implying a separation from the original whileness and "anguish" due to its invitable yearning to return to unity. It was also called "distress", "falling short", "the lie", and "illusion" since they believed the Monad alone was all. Today, we employ this negative aspect in the derogatory phrase "two-faced" and "speaking with a forked tongue."

 

The principle of the Dyad is polarity.... The paradox of the Dyad is that while it appears to separate the ;unity, its opposite poles remember their source and attract each other in an attempt to merge and return to that state of unity. quoted from A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe

 

Now think of the meaning of God and Satan, and Jesus saying to conqure death you only have to die. Can we do this with the past consciousness, instead of our present one? This agains is getting from biology, but I am not sure the question, "What is life" is different from the question "Does

God exist"? Darn out of time:mad: bye:kiss: I have to fly :eek:

[freeztar]

This agains is getting from biology, but I am not sure the question, "What is life" is different from the question "Does

God exist"?

 

Those are two fundamentally different questions. For a discussion of "Does God exist?", there is already a thread discussing this in the theology forum.

 

The original question of this thread was not a theistic one, so let's try to keep it that way.

[modest]

I have always preferred the very simple question "If a tree falls in the woods, and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?"... my answerer now is a resounding no! Not only is there no sound, there is no tree, and no forest, earth or any thing at all.

 

This is not a new answer to that question. It goes by the name subjective idealism or phenomenalism. A prominent architect was George Berkeley who said the famous quote: "To be is to be perceived".

 

As a philosophy I believe it is an extremism of Kant's views of space and time which could be interpreted (I think incorrectly) as being dependent on the mind.

 

I think it's wrong and I'll explain why.

 

If there is an observer there is the observed, if there is no observer there is nothing being observed.

 

You repeated this several times as if you were making a good point. This doesn't demonstrate what you think it does and I would, in fact, agree with it. You say "if there is no observer there is nothing being observed" 'Nothing being observed' is different than 'nothing'. The situation clearly is that nothing is being observed. To say there is nothing is not meaningful unless it can be tested or shown true. We know the property of nothing cannot be tested for or measured so we are only left with evidence.

 

Is there evidence of nothing? The answer would appear to be no. Unobserved radioactive isotopes do decay. If something dies and is buried unobserved for a thousand years and we dig it up, we can use carbon dating to determine how much time it spent in the ground. Phenomenalism would tell us it spent no time in the ground because it wasn't being watched. So, evidence doesn't support nothing-while-unobserved; Only no-observation-while-unobserved.

 

Reality and existence are the end products of observation.

 

You claim reality is created by observation. Yet we find evidence that earth was here before human life. Human eyes are clearly not the instigators of the planet earth when the latter predates people.

 

If existence is the end product of observation then life must necessarily come before all other materialistic existence. A common loophole to this is that God is the ultimate observer. He observes the tree falling in the forest which is why the tree exists when there aren't any people around. This was Berkeley's position but there is absolutely no evidence for it. I would propose that God the creator is the only logical outcome of the philosophy. If nothing exists without consciousness then consciousness must come before all other things.

 

What you have here is a religion Thunderbird. It is something for which you can't test or obtain supporting evidence. Any prediction of the philosophy (like the radio carbon dating) fails. Can you make any correct predictions using this philosophy/theology?

 

-modest

[modest]

Jesus saying to conqure death you only have to die.

 

It was actually a British fella named Tim Rice that said this.

 

-modest

[Thunderbird]

You claim reality is created by observation. Yet we find evidence that earth was here before human life.

How do you know?

 

 

 

You will ether have an ahaa moment by looking at the sentence structure above or you will continue being chased by your own tail. Again this about removing the observer.

 

Like I have said I have posed this question to many and all just move the observer around in the equations or turn them off and on in time. .

[Thunderbird]

To be continued on a new thread. :(

[Thunderbird]

Continued from; “What Is Life”

 

 

"If a tree falls in the woods, and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?"

 

Every intelligent person that I have posed this question to comes up with the same explanation about sound waves would still being generated.. so on, and so on.

I seemed to be either daft, or had at some time in the past, a moment of clarity about the nature of consciousness and reality, cause my answerer now is a resounding no! Not only is there no sound, there is no tree, and no forest, earth or any thing at all. I am not attempting to be fugitive, metaphorical, philosophical or even controversial. I saying this as literal truth. This is a logical fact of reality.

 

Without an observer. there is no reality whatsoever period.

To me this doesn't even have anything to do with physics its just to me...well... obvious.

 

 

Where does reality reside ?

[LaurieAG]

"If a tree falls in the woods, and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?"

 

Hi Thunderbird,

 

I think it's about being able to perceive things through other selfs, not just your own self. Would an animal in the vicinity 'hear' the noise or would it just get crushed by a silent, and to your own self, nonexistent tree? Could the waves generated by the tree falling echo around the woods or the surrounding countryside be heard by another animal/human that was not where the tree fell?

 

If you've been around a bit you will come across situations where you hear a noise in the distance, do you think that it doesn't exist or do you think that something a long way away caused the sound waves that you and other animals hear as noise? It's all up to yourself.

 

There's actually a movie that describes a world where reality is put together before you arrive there called 'the ............ man' (I'm not certain what the middle bit is but they look a bit like pacmen when they deconstruct their constructed reality). The plot basically is about a plane that falls through a hole in time and everybody who isn't asleep dissapears apart from artificial heart valves and hips etc. They go back through the 'hole' and arrive before their real time and see the reality being set up.

[Thunderbird]

Hi Thunderbird,

 

I think it's about being able to perceive things through other selfs, not just your own self. Would an animal in the vicinity 'hear' the noise or would it just get crushed by a silent, and to your own self, nonexistent tree? Could the waves generated by the tree falling echo around the woods or the surrounding countryside be heard by another animal/human that was not where the tree fell?

 

.

Hi, LaurieAG

 

This thread is a thought experiment about where would reality reside without an observer.

 

I find it fasinating when the experments aim is to subtract the observer from the world that no one can seem to do it.

 

 

Yes an animal would hear it. It is the "one" an observer. This is the other phenomonon of the experiment. The "one" is an observer, so why does everyone think it has to a human observer. The question is not about any specific observer, or degrees of awarness it is about the subtraction of observation in reality.

[Thunderbird]

The "Nothing Exists Without an Observer" argument is a philosophical cop-out to the n'th degree.

 

It's akin to a tree falling in a forest not making a sound.

 

Let's consider:

 

Stellar evolution led to the formation of the Sun, which is not a first-generation star. Stellar nucleosynthesis tells us that, as well as the abundance of elements in our solar system which tells us that a much mightier star than the sun must have existed before the sun. Then, the debris around the sun fell together to form the planets, of which our rock is one. And a lot of events on this rock eventually led up to the appearance of Life, and only very late in this chain of events, humans came to the fore.

 

So the argument says that nothing was there until the first human looked up and observed it.

 

Sure - nothing was there in the human experience. But everything, surely, was there before, because without millions of random events happening over billions of years, humans wouldn't be there to philosophise about it.

 

It's a cop-out, a non-issue, and pretty much off-topic, I guess.

 

 

 

So the argument says that nothing was there until the first human looked up and observed it.

 

 

That's anthropomorphizing the issue, and not even the issue. The point is to remove the observer. What I am attempting to point out, besides the fact that reality resides solely in an observer, is that no one can remove there own observations from the equation, which is the point of the equation. fascinating!

[modest]

You claim reality is created by observation. Yet we find evidence that earth was here before human life.

You will ether have an ahaa moment by looking at the sentence structure above or you will continue being chased by your own tail. Again this about removing the observer.

 

You are waiting for everyone to have an ah-ha moment? I don’t think you intend to support your claim.

 

Radioactive isotopes decay at a predicted rate when unobserved therefore they exist for the predicted amount of unobserved time. My position is supported. As far as where you are going wrong - you are equating:

 

something unobserved = nothing

 

which makes the mistake of giving the property that belongs to the observation to the thing being observed. For example: if I observe a volcano quietly, that doesn’t mean the volcano is quiet. If I listen to a volcano intently, that doesn’t mean the volcano is listening or intent. There are properties that belong to observation and properties that belong to ontological objects. If I watch a volcano intermittently it does not follow that the volcano I watch displays itself intermittently. The property of intermittency belongs to the observation - not the observed. So it does not follow in any logical or rational sense that if my observation is naught then a thing (like a volcano) is naught.

 

It is only a child’s word game that demands otherwise. If you have a 4-year-old that thinks things don’t exist unless seen, then do this. Put a potato in the microwave and turn it on. Watch it cook for a few seconds then take the child out of the room and otherwise occupy him/her for a few minutes. Return to the microwave and ask the child how long the potato cooked. The child will say, “A few seconds”. Cook another potato for a few seconds and show the child how the first potato is fully cooked while the second is not. The child should then understand that the potato existed to be cooked even when it wasn’t being watched. The kid will have an ah-ha moment.

 

-modest

[Thunderbird]

You are waiting for everyone to have an ah-ha moment? I don’t think you intend to support your claim.

 

Radioactive isotopes decay at a predicted rate when unobserved therefore they exist for the predicted amount of unobserved time. My position is supported. As far as where you are going wrong - you are equating:

 

something unobserved = nothing

 

which makes the mistake of giving the property that belongs to the observation to the thing being observed. For example: if I observe a volcano quietly, that doesn’t mean the volcano is quiet. If I listen to a volcano intently, that doesn’t mean the volcano is listening or intent. There are properties that belong to observation and properties that belong to ontological objects. If I watch a volcano intermittently it does not follow that the volcano I watch displays itself intermittently. The property of intermittency belongs to the observation - not the observed. So it does not follow in any logical or rational sense that if my observation is naught then a thing (like a volcano) is naught.

 

It is only a child’s word game that demands otherwise. If you have a 4-year-old that thinks things don’t exist unless seen, then do this. Put a potato in the microwave and turn it on. Watch it cook for a few seconds then take the child out of the room and otherwise occupy him/her for a few minutes. Return to the microwave and ask the child how long the potato cooked. The child will say, “A few seconds”. Cook another potato for a few seconds and show the child how the first potato is fully cooked while the second is not. The child should then understand that the potato existed to be cooked even when it wasn’t being watched. The kid will have an ah-ha moment.

 

-modest

No observer, no volcano. This is not about the intermittence of an observer, or the attention spans of children, it is about where reality resides. Reality has no context without a point or reference. Take the observer out of the equation reality's sum is nil .

[modest]

No observer, no volcano. This is not about the intermittence of an observer, or the attention spans of children, it is about where reality resides. Reality has no context without a point or reference. Take the observer out of the equation reality sum is nil .

 

Yes, thunderbird. This is about the intermittent observer and NOT the intermittent volcano. Because the property belongs to the observer. You want to give reality as a property to observation but you have done nothing and said nothing to show that is the case. You haven't tied to two together.

 

When a child named Sally closes her eyes she may think the room goes dark but this is because she doesn't understand there are two systems. Her perception is one system and her room is another. Dark is her perception when her eyes are closed. It is up to you to demonstrate how the system of the room gets the same property as her perception. You haven't done it and you seem unwilling to do it.

 

I will say once again that radioactive particles decay when we remove the observer. Potatoes cook when we remove the observer. Dinosaurs turn into fossils over 65 million years of unobserved underground existence. These systems do not depend on observation and you know it. You are unwilling to try and demonstrate what you're saying because you know it can't be done.

 

-modest

[Thunderbird]

When a child named Sally closes her eyes she may think the room goes dark but this is because she doesn't understand there are two systems. Her perception is one system and her room is another.

 

-modest

"Room" is not a system without the observer to say it is a room, "Room" is a concept of observation.

 

It's a duality, yes, but its a contexual duality, as or all dualities.

 

Again its not about the intermittence of the observer.

[nutronjon]

Those are two fundamentally different questions. For a discussion of "Does God exist?", there is already a thread discussing this in the theology forum.

 

The original question of this thread was not a theistic one, so let's try to keep it that way.

 

My two post to this thread, were suppose to be in the what is life thread. I have no idea how they got in this thread. It really misses up everything for the post to come up in the wrong thread.

[Thunderbird]

I will say once again that radioactive particles decay when we remove the observer. Potatoes cook when we remove the observer. Dinosaurs turn into fossils over 65 million years of unobserved underground existence. These systems do not depend on observation and you know it. You are unwilling to try and demonstrate what you're saying because you know it can't be done.

 

-modest

Prove this without making any observations and I will yield the point.

[modest]

"Room" is not a system without the observer to say it is a room, "Room" is a concept of observation.

 

You fail to acknowledge the possibility that it can be both :lol:

 

Please do something - anything - to try and demonstrate your claim here. It is frustrating when you just keep repeating it without any examples or logical arguments or anything to support your position.

 

Why is a room only a concept of observation?

 

-modest