Of course, there are changes in your brain, body, and rest of the world when your subject of experience seems static and you are waiting. Your mind experiences the byproduct of your brain activity though which this byproduct is a physical state and it is static. You are in fact not your brain otherwise you couldn't have a moment of silence. But even if we accept that the experience is an emergent property of the brain activity then we are faced with other problems such as the one that I discussed in depth in this thread. Needless to say that I have an argument against emergence that you can find it in here.Dimebag wrote: ↑Sun Jan 17, 2021 12:22 amSurely the knowledge of waiting IS evidence of change.bahman wrote: ↑Sat Jan 16, 2021 11:30 pmWhat do you want as an example? And when you are waiting time changes regardless if another subject of your experience changes or not.Terrapin Station wrote: ↑Sat Jan 16, 2021 11:24 pm
No, it's experientially different; thus an experiential change. Or in other words, this isn't an example of time occurring but there being no changes.
If you're saying that there's no experiential difference, no experiential change, then there's no way to tell if time occurs or not--no way to tell a millisecond from 2 days. And thus it's no evidence of time occurring, and again it's not an example of what I asked for.
(Of course, what I asked for an example of is impossible, because the notion of it is completely incoherent, which is the point.)
But, you are referring to some chosen target of change. But meanwhile, as your chosen target of change remains static, other changes are happening all around you, and indeed, inside you the whole time. Neurons firing, neurotransmitters being released, breathe going in and out, the heart beating, the blood circulating.
Life IS change. It relies ON change, as it is a dynamic process. So unless you pause time, there will be change, at least in your immediate vicinity.
This is not to mention all of the micro-jiggles of particles of non organic material, air particles bumping into each other, cosmic rays passing through you, and all other matter in the vicinity, light rays striking the surface of your skin, UV rays, breaking through the top layers of your skin and striking the DNA in your cells, altering their patterns. The continual dying and renewing of cells in your body, and expressions of genes from DNA.
Then there is the movement of our planet as it rotates about its axis, and its movement relative to the sun as it orbits, and our solar system’s motion around the galaxy, then our galaxies relative motion to other galaxies.
There is SO much change to speak of, happening every second, 99.999% of which we are not aware of at any moment, which doesn’t rely on our observation to happen.
Imagine we observe a planet through a telescope, say, mars one day. Then a week later, we observe it again. Now, it’s position in the sky relative to the background of constellations has changed. It seemingly jumped from one point to another point, with no smooth transition, skipping large swathes of space in between. Now obviously, the planet Mars had to pass through all points in between its initial observed point, and the new point. The planet mars has a particular velocity which seems not to change, and so, we can infer its position between both observation points at any time, based on some equation for planetary motion.
So, even though we didn’t observe it pass through all those transitionary points in space, we know it must have. Thus, there must be change without at least OUR observation of it.
Now, you claim, there must be A mind to allow any change. Since it cannot be OUR mind which oversees all change of the universe, it must be some universal mind, which exists outside of time, and space, as it observes all points at all times. Is there a difference between a universe without a grand observing and overseeing mind, and one with one?
You would claim such a universe would be incapable of changing.
This is all because, you can’t imagine how a particle could travel from point a to point b, without this universal mind allowing it to happen. You say, for anything to move, it must disappear at point a, and reappear at point b. What if, and I know this sounds like crazy talk, but, what if a particle, which seems to be a pattern of information, could travel between those two points. Such particles possess all the necessary forces to allow this to happen, such as momentum, energy, spin etc. Physics has described all those properties which allow all the changes to occur.
Is it inconceivable, that these changes could take place, based on these described rules, without the need for an overseeing mind to give the OK for such changes to happen?
If we can describe the system without the need for such an overseeing mind, why then come along and demand that such a mind is necessary, when physics sees no need for one? This would be far more parsimonious.
I am still not convinced that such a mind is necessary.
Now we haven’t gone down the path of quantum uncertainty yet, and how you might be able to insert such a mind there, or find some reason why a mind is necessary. There is of course the interpretation of quantum mechanics that DOES describe the need for the subjective observation in order to allow quantum uncertainty of the wave function to collapse and for the system to be pinned down to a particular state, namely the Copenhagen interpretation.
I don’t know enough about either quantum mechanics, or that particular interpretation, nor other interpretations, to pass judgement on whether such a mind might slide into that realm. But, it would seem to be that, if there Were such a universal mind overseeing ALL points in the universe, there would be NO uncertainty and thus, no weird quantum effects. So, maybe the fact that we do observe such quantum weirdness such as superpostion, uncertainty, etc, would be evidence of ABSENCE of a universal mind, otherwise, there would be NO uncertainty, all particles position, momentum, etc would be known, and thus, we would have a purely mechanistic description of subatomic physics.
I am still thinking about the uncertainty principle.