There is a change therefore there is a mind

Is the mind the same as the body? What is consciousness? Can machines have it?

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bahman
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Re: There is a change therefore there is a mind

Post by bahman »

Terrapin Station wrote: Sat Jan 16, 2021 10:26 pm
bahman wrote: Sat Jan 16, 2021 10:25 pm
Terrapin Station wrote: Sat Jan 16, 2021 10:17 pm
If nothing is changing while you're waiting, how would you know any time is passing?
If nothing changes then there will be no experience so something changes when the object doesn't change. Waiting is the passage of time.
If something changes (otherwise there is no experience, and we're talking about an experience), then this is NOT an example of time with no changes happening.

Again, the task was to give evidence of time occurring where there is no change
And I asked you, haven't you ever waited?
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Re: There is a change therefore there is a mind

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bahman wrote: Sat Jan 16, 2021 10:30 pm
Terrapin Station wrote: Sat Jan 16, 2021 10:26 pm
bahman wrote: Sat Jan 16, 2021 10:25 pm
If nothing changes then there will be no experience so something changes when the object doesn't change. Waiting is the passage of time.
If something changes (otherwise there is no experience, and we're talking about an experience), then this is NOT an example of time with no changes happening.

Again, the task was to give evidence of time occurring where there is no change
And I asked you, haven't you ever waited?
Obviously. The notion that waiting involves time occurring while nothing changes is completely incoherent, however. (As we're demonstrating.)
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bahman
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Re: There is a change therefore there is a mind

Post by bahman »

Terrapin Station wrote: Sat Jan 16, 2021 10:31 pm
bahman wrote: Sat Jan 16, 2021 10:30 pm
Terrapin Station wrote: Sat Jan 16, 2021 10:26 pm
If something changes (otherwise there is no experience, and we're talking about an experience), then this is NOT an example of time with no changes happening.

Again, the task was to give evidence of time occurring where there is no change
And I asked you, haven't you ever waited?
Obviously. The notion that waiting involves time occurring while nothing changes is completely incoherent, however. (As we're demonstrating.)
We experience waiting when everything but time is static. We are most of the time waiting for change to happen too.
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Terrapin Station
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Re: There is a change therefore there is a mind

Post by Terrapin Station »

bahman wrote: Sat Jan 16, 2021 10:37 pm
Terrapin Station wrote: Sat Jan 16, 2021 10:31 pm
bahman wrote: Sat Jan 16, 2021 10:30 pm
And I asked you, haven't you ever waited?
Obviously. The notion that waiting involves time occurring while nothing changes is completely incoherent, however. (As we're demonstrating.)
We experience waiting when everything but time is static. We are most of the time waiting for change to happen too.
Since we're repeating this, we're not going to ignore this question the second time around:

If nothing is changing while you're waiting, how would you know any time is passing?
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bahman
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Re: There is a change therefore there is a mind

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Terrapin Station wrote: Sat Jan 16, 2021 10:44 pm
bahman wrote: Sat Jan 16, 2021 10:37 pm
Terrapin Station wrote: Sat Jan 16, 2021 10:31 pm
Obviously. The notion that waiting involves time occurring while nothing changes is completely incoherent, however. (As we're demonstrating.)
We experience waiting when everything but time is static. We are most of the time waiting for change to happen too.
Since we're repeating this, we're not going to ignore this question the second time around:

If nothing is changing while you're waiting, how would you know any time is passing?
You experience waiting. That is the passage of time.
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Terrapin Station
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Re: There is a change therefore there is a mind

Post by Terrapin Station »

bahman wrote: Sat Jan 16, 2021 10:45 pm
Terrapin Station wrote: Sat Jan 16, 2021 10:44 pm
bahman wrote: Sat Jan 16, 2021 10:37 pm
We experience waiting when everything but time is static. We are most of the time waiting for change to happen too.
Since we're repeating this, we're not going to ignore this question the second time around:

If nothing is changing while you're waiting, how would you know any time is passing?
You experience waiting. That is the passage of time.
You don't experience anything changing though, right? (Otherwise we're not giving an example of what we're supposed to be giving an example of.) So there would be no distinction between the experience of a millisecond versus the experience of five minutes, right? So how would you know that any time is passing?

I'm actually buying that you don't see why this is so incoherent, but it's bizarre that you can't see this.
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bahman
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Re: There is a change therefore there is a mind

Post by bahman »

Terrapin Station wrote: Sat Jan 16, 2021 10:48 pm
bahman wrote: Sat Jan 16, 2021 10:45 pm
Terrapin Station wrote: Sat Jan 16, 2021 10:44 pm

Since we're repeating this, we're not going to ignore this question the second time around:

If nothing is changing while you're waiting, how would you know any time is passing?
You experience waiting. That is the passage of time.
You don't experience anything changing though, right? (Otherwise we're not giving an example of what we're supposed to be giving an example of.) So there would be no distinction between the experience of a millisecond versus the experience of five minutes, right? So how would you know that any time is passing?

I'm actually buying that you don't see why this is so incoherent, but it's bizarre that you can't see this.
Of course, you cannot experience a change in time because every moment of time looks similar. You experience duration though, the duration being the time you have waited, which is evidently different when you wait 1 second or 2 second, etc.
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Re: There is a change therefore there is a mind

Post by Terrapin Station »

bahman wrote: Sat Jan 16, 2021 10:58 pm
Terrapin Station wrote: Sat Jan 16, 2021 10:48 pm
bahman wrote: Sat Jan 16, 2021 10:45 pm
You experience waiting. That is the passage of time.
You don't experience anything changing though, right? (Otherwise we're not giving an example of what we're supposed to be giving an example of.) So there would be no distinction between the experience of a millisecond versus the experience of five minutes, right? So how would you know that any time is passing?

I'm actually buying that you don't see why this is so incoherent, but it's bizarre that you can't see this.
Of course, you cannot experience a change in time because every moment of time looks similar. You experience duration though, the duration being the time you have waited, which is evidently different when you wait 1 second or 2 second, etc.
If waiting 1 second is different than waiting 2 seconds, then that's a change, isn't it? They're experientially different.

Otherwise it's the same (not a change)--in other words the two are identical, and you can't tell if it's 1 second or 2 seconds.
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bahman
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Re: There is a change therefore there is a mind

Post by bahman »

Terrapin Station wrote: Sat Jan 16, 2021 11:03 pm
bahman wrote: Sat Jan 16, 2021 10:58 pm
Terrapin Station wrote: Sat Jan 16, 2021 10:48 pm

You don't experience anything changing though, right? (Otherwise we're not giving an example of what we're supposed to be giving an example of.) So there would be no distinction between the experience of a millisecond versus the experience of five minutes, right? So how would you know that any time is passing?

I'm actually buying that you don't see why this is so incoherent, but it's bizarre that you can't see this.
Of course, you cannot experience a change in time because every moment of time looks similar. You experience duration though, the duration being the time you have waited, which is evidently different when you wait 1 second or 2 second, etc.
If waiting 1 second is different than waiting 2 seconds, then that's a change, isn't it? They're experientially different.

Otherwise it's the same (not a change)--in other words the two are identical, and you can't tell if it's 1 second or 2 seconds.
Yes, time changes. It changes at a constant rate. That is why waiting 1 second is different than 2 seconds.
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Re: There is a change therefore there is a mind

Post by Terrapin Station »

bahman wrote: Sat Jan 16, 2021 11:08 pm
Terrapin Station wrote: Sat Jan 16, 2021 11:03 pm
bahman wrote: Sat Jan 16, 2021 10:58 pm
Of course, you cannot experience a change in time because every moment of time looks similar. You experience duration though, the duration being the time you have waited, which is evidently different when you wait 1 second or 2 second, etc.
If waiting 1 second is different than waiting 2 seconds, then that's a change, isn't it? They're experientially different.

Otherwise it's the same (not a change)--in other words the two are identical, and you can't tell if it's 1 second or 2 seconds.
Yes, time changes. It changes at a constant rate. That is why waiting 1 second is different than 2 seconds.
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.)
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bahman
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Re: There is a change therefore there is a mind

Post by bahman »

Terrapin Station wrote: Sat Jan 16, 2021 11:24 pm
bahman wrote: Sat Jan 16, 2021 11:08 pm
Terrapin Station wrote: Sat Jan 16, 2021 11:03 pm
If waiting 1 second is different than waiting 2 seconds, then that's a change, isn't it? They're experientially different.

Otherwise it's the same (not a change)--in other words the two are identical, and you can't tell if it's 1 second or 2 seconds.
Yes, time changes. It changes at a constant rate. That is why waiting 1 second is different than 2 seconds.
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.)
What do you want as an example? And when you are waiting time changes regardless if another subject of your experience changes or not.
Dimebag
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Re: There is a change therefore there is a mind

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Terrapin Station wrote: Sat Jan 16, 2021 3:40 pm
Dimebag wrote: Sat Jan 16, 2021 11:09 am I am not saying that. What I was saying is, particles don’t have individual identities, so, to say that particle A must disappear to make room for particle B, which is just the same particle at time t2 and location l+1 just doesn’t make sense. But we do give them identities when we discuss them. But, none of this has anything to do with minds and their necessity for any change to occur in a physical system.
The part I bolded, "particles don't have individual identities," is what I don't understand saying, though. When I asked about that, you only talked about US--about our labeling, our identifying, etc. them.

Maybe we're meaning something different by "identity." What it refers to to say that something has identity is that (a) it exists, (b) it's "itself," (c) it's not something else (other than itself), etc. Is that the sense of identity that you're referring to when you say that particles don't have individual identities. I'm figuring that you have some odd ontology of particles in mind where they don't really exist, or where they're some sort of ambiguous collective, or whatever, and I'm wondering exactly what you believe there and why you'd believe it.
I appreciate the care you are taking to understand me here, that’s not always the case. So what I am getting at here in regards to the identity of particles, is some kind of identifier which might in theory, distinguish two identical particles, such that, if you didn’t know their histories, you couldn’t distinguish between say, particle a or particle b, if you had prior knowledge and had designated two such particles previously.

What I am saying is, the only way to know if a particular particle is in fact the same particle you thought it was prior to the time you now observe it, is to know the histories of that system of particles, and to trace their trajectories back to the initial observation where you made the designation of particle identity of a, b etc.
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Re: There is a change therefore there is a mind

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Terrapin Station wrote: Sat Jan 16, 2021 9:24 pm
bahman wrote: Sat Jan 16, 2021 9:19 pm I gave the evidence. I experience the time when I am waiting for change to happen.
Okay, so detail how you experience time (with no change occurring). What exactly are you experiencing? Thoughts? Something else?
bahman, you have said (elsewhere as well as in the post here) that you experience time without change when you are waiting. But there is change while you are waiting. The heart pumps blood even while you sit very still. You have yet to provide an example of time without change.
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bahman
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Re: There is a change therefore there is a mind

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commonsense wrote: Sun Jan 17, 2021 12:09 am
Terrapin Station wrote: Sat Jan 16, 2021 9:24 pm
bahman wrote: Sat Jan 16, 2021 9:19 pm I gave the evidence. I experience the time when I am waiting for change to happen.
Okay, so detail how you experience time (with no change occurring). What exactly are you experiencing? Thoughts? Something else?
bahman, you have said (elsewhere as well as in the post here) that you experience time without change when you are waiting. But there is change while you are waiting. The heart pumps blood even while you sit very still. You have yet to provide an example of time without change.
I should have said that I experience waiting while I am not experiencing any change.
Dimebag
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Re: There is a change therefore there is a mind

Post by Dimebag »

bahman wrote: Sat Jan 16, 2021 11:30 pm
Terrapin Station wrote: Sat Jan 16, 2021 11:24 pm
bahman wrote: Sat Jan 16, 2021 11:08 pm
Yes, time changes. It changes at a constant rate. That is why waiting 1 second is different than 2 seconds.
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.)
What do you want as an example? And when you are waiting time changes regardless if another subject of your experience changes or not.
Surely the knowledge of waiting IS evidence of change.

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.
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