QUOTE (andre @ Aug 04 2007, 06:47 AM)
false. If a tree falls in a forest, there will be a consciousness to realise it.
Following the theory that the world exists simply because there are people to observe it, and living things that live in it, it will exist. (operative word being forest. In a forest there will be a consciousness) One plausable place where a consciousness wont exist would probably be in a wormhole, but thats getting into quantum physics and all that.
dude, if i fire a gun, in a forest, several times - all the birds and all the animals, will run away.
say whilst they are all away a tree falls (so basically there is nothing conscious to experience the sound of the tree falling) then according to your ideas, because there was nothing there to experience the sound, it never happened.
You can't say that something is only real if one person or loads of people see it. You say that if one person sees something and another doesnt, then the person who sees it is hallucinating - it maybe that the one who doesnt see is not observing properly! It's like when one person hears a sound, and another doesnt. Also, a group of people can be high on weed, or be having hallucinations from LSD - this is a group of people all seeing things - it does not follow that because a group of people realise a certain experience, that those things are in fact REAL.
also if you say that there is no consciousness when it comes to wormholes, then how the f*** do we know they exist? lol
My point here is simply to show that reality is not an observer relative notion. Things are happening, whether there is someone there to see them happen or not. I leave my laptop on all night to download stuff - in the morning the download is finished! There was no need for anything to consciously observe this to make sure it happened! It just did!
Similarly, the very early events in the universe took place - before Humans are said to have evolved. What consciousness was there to observe those events and make them real? (maybe God - but thats a WHOLE other debate lol).
QUOTE (mibukyo @ Sep 10 2007, 02:15 AM)QUOTE (samthebear @ Jul 31 2007, 03:47 AM)its hard to know what is reality - sometimes i feel as though i am not me. like i dont know who i am - even though my brain tells me i know who i am, where i am, what i'm doing, etc i get a heavy sinking feeling (alike fear) in my heart that just tells me i'm not who i am. so then what can i say reality is? the closest definition i can probably stick on the word 'reality' would be this:
Reality, is not defined by being awake. rather it is defined by one's self awareness and one's surroundings.
i can be self-aware in a dream and be acutely aware of my surroundings in a dream, so does that make it reality? according to my own definition yes. but reality only to yourself and no one else.
just wondering....is it possible to lose yourself.....its true that you may know who you are and what you doing but i think it comes more with the feeling of being alone. ummm...to put it simply: that we dont have the feeling that we belong even though we have friends and family, theres always this feeling that never sits right so to speak.
The nature of reality......well....i think reality is our surroundings and it cannot be summed up by dreams or hopes. Reality is something that can be seen and felt not something dreamt of or hoped for. But reality can also resemble our life i guess. for example...to people who play online rpg's for countless hours on end....their reality is that particular game where they can 'live'. Even though it may not be seen as a reality for the majority of people, just one person is to believe in something makes it a reality for that person....just like a imaginary friend.
totally agree with you about feeling alone! sometimes there is a feeling of disconnection when in a group - most people feel this, but are able to ignore it. Sometimes it gets that hard that we really do feel totally socially isolated! And some of us (who think WAY too much lol) feel like our own thoughts and our own minds are the only thing thats real. But there is hope! Just take this slightly complex idea:
When we think about things, in our heads, there is usually this little voice or there is some form of way the mind communicates words. Basically, we think in words and in a certain language lol. For most of us here, that language is most probably English. In order to learn a language, we have to learn it from the external world - from teachers, and our parents. For this learning process to be possible, and for the words to mean anything at all, there must be a public social understanding. Meaning, my understanding of the word red, comes from the general understanding of the word red. SO, it follows that other minds, and other people must also exist, and have minds too ^^ - if they didn't then it would not be possible for me to have a meaningful conversation, because I would not be equipped with the correct language skills to communicate. There is no such thing as a "private" language, that only we understand ourselves (unless of course you make one up hehe). But even a made up language is derived from sounds that we make when we talk in usual languages.
i think i "lost myself" at some point, but i am back on track now! hehe.
about the reality thing lol - i reckon its like i said before:
emotions, desires and thoughts are all definitely real - even when we hallucinate, that perception exists (albeit in the hallucinatee's mind). When I say real, i mean that they do in fact exist! It's like a dream, when i feel pain in a dream, that feeling is real (even if its only in that moment, it exists in that moment). If i experience heart-break, that feeling exists and i feel it my heart straining, even tho no-one else can see it.
QUOTE (fourier @ Sep 10 2007, 02:39 AM)I agreed with Hobbes, everything is simply energy and particles (or just strings, if that turns out to be true) interacting and they happen to form these patterns that we've named. Things like stars, planets, elements, heat, you name it. I agreed with that, until I thought about consciousness. There's a couple possibilities for it. I could be the only conscious being in the universe, which really is centered around me. I have absolutely no way to know that this is wrong. Other people say that they have a consciousness, but that could just be the result of weird electrochemical(?) reactions in the brain. It could be that consciousness is really something special, and that life is in fact something more than just a really, really, really complicated chemical reaction. Once again, I can't disprove this, because if it really is just a "spirit" thing, there might not be an afterlife, and I'll just disappear into a void. There is also the possibility that consciousness is just an illusion created by the brain. This would be hard to understand, but seeing as how the brain is really complicated, and humans are far from understanding everything about the laws of the universe, it's still quite possible.
I dunno man, but it keeps me up at night. Wait, no, that's the homework...
I wonder if people who had a heart attack or something, and were basically dead for a few minutes before being revived by those shock paddles, still experience consciousness. If they don't, I'd think life was a pretty special thing, and I'd take it a lot more seriously and treat it with more respect. If they do, then it's just another chemical reaction, and there really isn't anything special about us...
the brain is indeed a fascinating and complex structure. You may or may not already know some of this stuff, but there is the idea of emergent consciousness because of the complexity of the processes in the brain. Basically, the brain is so complex, that consciousness just sort of happens lol. Its like how water molecules on their own just dont do anything, and have like no properties, but when together they have the fluidity that we observe every time we turn the tap on! This is a nice idea, but there are others too! There is the idea of a soul - the religious idea that there is a physical body and a spiritual essence (soul or mind as it is sometimes called). In this idea, the body dies and the soul moves onto to live an eternal afterlife (i like this idea hehe). There is also the idea that the brain is just one machine, a biological machine that has loads of chemical reactions that gives the appearance of something more. (I dont like this idea - it makes things seem very bleak and physical!) Being someone who thinks that the spiritiual side of life is very much existent and alive, i feel that the mind is something quite separate from the body, and when someone goes into cardiac arrest, and they are revived, I think they lack consciousness (i.e. they are unconscious because the brain is not functioning correctly) but I feel that their soul still remains, giving the body a chance to revive and start working again. It's like how when people have those "out-of-bed" experiences when they are being revived. Some claim that they see themselves lying on the bed whilst the doctors try and revive them! So, basically, there are two ways to interpret that - 1. its the chemicals in the brain being released as the brain shuts down causing hallucinations or 2. it is the soul, waiting outside the body, to see if the body will be revived. If the body doesnt get revived, then the soul moves on!
hehe
(sorry if i repeated some of the stuff you said fourier >.<)