• Time: The Bergson-Einstein debate
    Thanks foo. As I search the Internet, I find many people with strong misgivings with the concept that oscillations in space determine the nature of hour lives. From what I've seen, quantum scientists are definitely moving in a different direction that will almost certainly supplant Relativity. Ultimately, Relativity becomes superfluous and all notions of space-time will be replaced by quantum information entanglement which fits perfectly within a Bergsonian view of Mind and Matter. The only thing that remains is for science to quit pretending there is no Mind involved with science.
  • A Question about the Particle-Wave Duality in QM
    Therefore it becomes either a "many-many worlds interpetration" where there are many-many ways in which worlds split or "a no-world interpetration", where literally nothing happens.boundless

    These are good points. John Bell considered it extravagant.

    Have you attempted to imagine how many worlds are being created each moment as decisions are being made?
  • On 'control'.
    Since outcomes are always unpredictable, I don't seek or expect control.

    I treat life more like a sailor might treat a voyage, in that I have moderate goals that I navigate towards always ready and willing to change direction as the situation and my skills require. In this manner I learn.
  • Time: The Bergson-Einstein debate
    While watching this video on quantum entanglement and gravity I came across this comment which I have taken the liberty to highlight key points. Basically, time as a moment of a clock in space was assumed by Relativity and never proven, which Einstein himself attested to. You can ignore the video. I am including it to reference the comment.

    https://youtu.be/bKjgNznlkcI

    Comment by:

    Matthew Marsden
    (Auth “A Brief History of Timelessness) 

    To unify any two theories (e.g. Relativity and Quantum), one should be very clear that each and all of the phenomena suggested by both theories Is reasonably confirmed.

    Otherwise, if one or other theory is believed to prove something that it in fact does not, and this not noticed, then one may be endlessly trying to fit two pieces of a puzzle together, thinking the problem is very hard, because one is not realising that one piece may actually be bogus.

    In this talk, Professor Dowker refers to, and incorporates into her explanation, Relativity, and space-“time”. Suggesting that she accepts that “time” is a phenomena that exists, and is merged with space, and that this is proven to a reasonable extent by Relativity. And thus is trying to work out how to merge space-time with the quantum arena.

    However, if we actually check for ourselves, and look at the seminal paper on Relativity, ( translated ) “The electrodynamics of moving bodies”, we find that concerning the theory of time it actually says...
    A.Einstein, (Section § 1. Definition of Simultaneity) quote...

    “If we wish to describe the motion of a material point, we give the values of its co-ordinates as functions of the time. Now we must bear carefully in mind that a mathematical description of this kind has no physical meaning unless we are quite clear as to what we understand by “time
    .” “

    And...

    “If, for instance, I say, “That train arrives here at 7 o'clock,” I mean something like this: “The pointing of the small hand of my watch to 7 and the arrival of the train are simultaneous events.” “


    Here, to avoid accepting, and attempting to explain and incorporate phenomena which may in fact not be proven be Relativity, I think it is important that professor Dowker considers the following.

    Where apparently describing a thing called “time”, “The electrodynamics of moving bodies”, says we describe “the motion of a material point” , “as functions of the “time” “.

    However the paper clearly only actually describes the comparing the motion of a material point ( a train) , with the motion of another material point “a motorised pointer on a numbered dial”.

    In other words, from the outset Special Relativity does not actually show the existence of a past, a future or a thing called time, that must exist and pass for things to be able to exist and move, but instead Relativity only assumes that a thing called time exists, and that a rotating hand in some way proves or indicates this.

    (i.e. just saying "time is that which clocks measure, is nonsense, no matter who says it, unless one can scientifically prove, rather than just assume, there is a "past" and or "future", and an extra thing called time that must exist, extra to the energy in a spring or battery that IS clearly measured by such a motor).

    SR does show us that for easily understood reasons that

    “all moving oscillators are oscillating more slowly than expected”,

    And this fact is of course essentially incorporated in GPS satellite oscillators etc.
    But logically, and scientifically, just observing the rotating tip of a motorised hand and “calling” that motion “time”, is in no way at all scientific proof, as per the scientific method, that there IS a past, or a future, or a thing called time that exists and passes between a past and future.

    And, more importantly, just observing that a moving oscillator is oscillating more slowly than expected, is not scientific proof as per the scientific method, that one’s “guess” that a thing or place called the “past”, and or the “ future” and a thing called “time” must exist. Logically, it is only confirmation bias that would make us assume this.


    In other words, while it is agreed with the professor, that a rapidly moving twin will be “changing more slowly” that a stationary twin, without specific proof it cannot actually be logically and scientifically accepted that this is because of, or proves the existence of a thing called “time”, or that the moving twin is changing more slowly becasue a thing called time is dilated in its passage between a "past and "future", and is thus affecting the twin.

    (imo, the importance and consequences of seeing how SR may in fact in no way prove the existence of a 4th dimension, and realizing tha many professionals assume, without actually checking, that it does , cannot be over estimated. I.e it may lead to the conclusion that matter just exists, moves changes and interacts "now", or "timelessly" so to speak, effectively disolving and solving the so called "problem of time", and all eliminating all discussion of temporal paradoxes etc)

    And, despite the fact that many people cite Relativity as apparently proving that extra to space, matter and motion, a thing called time exists, unless they can actually show where Relativity from the outset proves, rather than just assumes, the existence of a thing called “time”, and where the paper proves there may be a thing or place called “past” and or “future”, rather than just assuming these “things” are obvious, and for some reason exempt from needing proof as per the scientific method, the concept of “time”, and the existence of 4 dimensional space-“time”, should not be considered scientific fact.

    Therefore , if the professor is trying to unify quantum mechanics, with the concept of space”time”, but the time component she has just accepted as proven, but cannot actually cite the proof of, then this “time” component may be a falsehood that does not exist, and need not be included in the unification.

    i.e imo, probably wrongly assuming a thing called “time” does exist, and must be incorporated as in space time, will make professors Dowkers problem seem harder to solve than it may actually be.
  • What is space-time?
    Nice to see the objections to the intentional and artificially designed deterministic construct of space-time. It brings a smile to me. People are still examining for themselves.
  • Evidence of Consciousness Surviving the Body
    scientific constructions of reality become more predictively useful over time.Joshs

    Science is definitely useful. The question at hand is whether its methods and necessary biases preclude it from ever formulating a reasonable theory about life. So far their efforts in this regard and from now my perspective have been an abomination in many dimensions.
  • Evidence of Consciousness Surviving the Body
    called logic.Sam26

    Logic is only limited by imagination.

    objective facts.Sam26

    This is an a debatable concept.

    Try using your own rules (your own clues) to do mathematics,Sam26

    Mathematicians do it all the time. Concepts are created to address new problems.

    It is wise to examine dogma for cracks, because the rigidity of dogma makes it very susceptible to fracture. And, if I described your approach As quite naive, how would you be react?
  • Evidence of Consciousness Surviving the Body
    There are as many rules as one wishes to make, and outside of God I know if no arbiter. As I read @Joshs approach, he is simply open to more "clues". As philosophy is more or less detective work, it seems to me quite reasonable. Much more reasonable than any dogma that unnecessarily constrains inquiry.
  • Evidence of Consciousness Surviving the Body
    Whether or not @Joshs perspective coincides with yours or mine or anyone else, I believe his approach to the question is quite reasonable.
  • A Question about the Particle-Wave Duality in QM
    If you accept that "ultimate reality" is the "Mind"boundless

    Here we must be careful. "Reality" is a fabric in which everything lies in a quantum information state. The Mind is embedded in this fabric and perceives it, as its own creation. What's out there is as real as what's in here, all being a continuum of mind/consciousness or quantum information, however you wish to envision it.

    Do you know if there are some online resources about it? May you please give some links - if there are any?boundless

    I have yet to discover a good source as most sources on the Web are commercially oriented or Communist government inspired, both with a keen interest to suppress any spirituality. It is similar with Yoga. My journey so far had been very long and the path winds through many aspects of life (sports, arts, music, dance, Tai Chi, Yoga, Qigong, history, philosophy, psychology, physics, etc. By looking for patterns, applying then, and understanding who I am, I discover new things that are not found in books but are certainly part of the traditions that were discovered long ago. I can only attest is that with patience and relaxation there is an enormous amount of life to be discovered.
  • Evidence of Consciousness Surviving the Body
    consciousness without body would be like semantics without syntax, thought without the direction of desireJoshs

    Not necessarily. We have a glimpse of this state when we are dreaming, when there is no sense of body and time/duration abruptly changes state of feeling. This is the subject of Hamlet's soliloquy on death and living. The unconscious state that is actually shattered by an impulse to awaken, where duration and space evaporate, but where memory remains to remind of where we were, is another example.
  • Time: The Bergson-Einstein debate
    A little background on Bergson:

    "Bergson inclined to convert to Catholicism, writing in his will on 7 February 1937: My thinking has always brought me nearer to Catholicism, in which I saw the perfect complement to Judaism.[30] Though wishing to convert to Catholicism, as stated in his will, he did not convert in view of the travails inflicted on the Jewish people by the rise of Nazism and anti-Semitism in Europe in the 1930s; he did not want to appear to want to leave the persecuted. On 3 January 1941 Bergson died in occupied Paris from bronchitis.[31] A Roman Catholic priest said prayers at his funeral per his request. Bergson is buried in the Cimetière de Garches, Hauts-de-Seine".

    Bergson chose, and it had nothing to do with survival, instead had everything to do with his Spirit.
  • Is the American Declaration of Independence Based on a Lie ?
    Yes, I agree. Paine later moved to France. That he was a profound writer with his own motivations, does not imply that the cause and the money behind the cause did not have other motives.
  • Time: The Bergson-Einstein debate
    This leaves us with the question of where do the creations really come from. If the past consists of what is determined, in the sense of having real substantial existence, and the future consists of possibilities for creativity at the present, then the decisions as to what exactly is created at the present, from the possibilities which are proper to the future, must come from somewhere else. What exactly is a "decision"?Metaphysician Undercover

    There is no terse response to your questions (I prefer terse and to the point), so I am struggling to understand the precise concept that you are attempting to grasp. This quote from Bergson is not meant to be satisfy your question but possibly to steer it in a Bergsonian direction.

    "Spirit borrows from matter the perceptions on which it feeds and restores them to matter in the form of movements which it has stamped with its own freedom."

    Admittedly, poetic but actually very much to the point.

    A decision, can be considered a choice to move in a specific manner of action. Bergson was fundamentally suggesting that duration is the unfolding of action by the Élan vital/consciousness/mind.
  • A Question about the Particle-Wave Duality in QM
    Planck time is a limit for our "ability" to measure durationboundless

    Real time, the time of life experience, cannot be measured. It is a feeling.

    When we are asleep, we dream. There is no space, but there are images. We feel the duration of these images. It may feel long or it may feel short. There is no way to fix such a feeling to a clock. Similarly when we are awake. Time flows. Sometimes it feels fast and sometimes slow. Regardless whether there are any clocks around, the feeling of time/duration permeates our very existence. Personal time of life, the feeling of duration, cannot be separated, because it is life.

    Duration is a feeling of continuity. Being continuous, it cannot be restated symbolically by clock time that cuts it up. It is a flow. This is the flow one feels in deep meditative Tai Chi which allows one to feel the wave within the wave.
  • Is the American Declaration of Independence Based on a Lie ?
    Historically, one can view the Declaration of Independence as a marketing document (it was meant to be read and posted throughout the colonies) to justify rebellion and the tremendous loss of life (of poor people of course). The hypocrisy of the writers is well established, but no more than most marketing campaigns that are designed to sell a product or service, in this case an idea. Such it is to be human.
  • Time: The Bergson-Einstein debate
    This is Henri Bergson:

    quote-there-is-no-greater-joy-than-that-of-feeling-oneself-a-creator-the-triumph-of-life-is-expressed-by-henri-bergson-16365.jpg

    “Fortunately, some are born with spiritual immune systems that sooner or later give rejection to the illusory worldview grafted upon them from birth through social conditioning.[/b] They begin sensing that something is amiss, and start looking for answers. Inner knowledge and anomalous outer experiences show them a side of reality others are oblivious to, and so begins their journey of awakening. Each step of the journey is made by following the heart instead of following the crowd and by choosing knowledge over the veils of ignorance

    “But, then, I cannot escape the objection that there is no state of mind, however simple, which does not change every moment, since there is no consciousness without memory, and no continuation of a state without the addition, to the present feeling, of the memory of past moments. It is this which constitutes duration. Inner duration is the continuous life of a memory which prolongs the past into the present, the present either containing within it in a distinct form the ceaselessly growing image of the past, or, more profoundly, showing by its continual change of quality the heavier and still heavier load we drag behind us as we grow older. Without this survival of the past into the present there would be no duration, but only instantaneity.”

    To think intuitively is to think in duration. Intelligence starts ordinarily from the immobile, and reconstructs movement as best it can with immobilities in juxtaposition. Intuition starts from movement, posits it, or rather perceives it as reality itself, and sees in immobility only an abstract moment, a snapshot taken by our mind, of a mobility. Intelligence ordinarily concerns itself with things, meaning by that, with the static, and makes of change an accident which is supposedly superadded. For intuition the essential is change: as for the thing, as intelligence understands it, it is a cutting which has been made out of the becoming and set up by our mind as a substitute for the whole. Thought ordinarily pictures to itself the new as a new arrangement of pre-existing elements; nothing is ever lost of it, nothing is ever created. Intuition, bound up to a duration which is growth, perceives in it an uninterrupted continuity of unforeseeable novelty; it sees,it knows that the mind draws from itself more than it has, that spirituality consists in just that, and that reality, impregnated with spirit, is creation.”

    “Creation signifies, above all, emotion, and that not in literature or art alone. We all know the concentration and effort implied in scientific discovery.
  • Time: The Bergson-Einstein debate
    The evolutionary pull of survivalHanover

    And the theory for this phenomenon? Why does dead matter long to survive? For what purpose? With what intent? Why does dead matter create forums to discuss non-existent intent? Why does dead matter enjoy Big Macs and sugar and conversing with other dead matter about themselves? What is the theory? It just happens - and keeps happening forever? It's that the theory? A Miracle?
  • Is boredom an accurate reminder that life has no inherent meaning?
    Boredom is a reminder that life has lots of inherent meanings and that the one we are currently using to frame our experience is not conductive to the development of our happiness.Perplexed

    Agreed.
  • Implications of Intelligent Design
    Surely this implies that our economic model is deficient - or even self-defeating?
    Destined to cataclysmic failures?
    Jonathan AB

    Some experiments don't end well.
  • Hello Fellows
    Then that 'deadness' of the rock is still only an illusion because
    it is still a subset of my living mind.
    Jonathan AB

    The rock is not in your mind. It is a real quantum system wave pattern.
  • Time: The Bergson-Einstein debate
    I always felt that artists are in the closest touch with life.
  • Time: The Bergson-Einstein debate
    I wondered as much.Banno

    Silly pandering which is exactly what your cowardly buddy is doing. You figure he knows all about Bergson because he insulted me? Did he get into your good graces by pandering to you? You figure maybe that is why he made his heroic comments about me?

    Let me say this, his one fleeting comment about Bergson's philosophy was monumentally silly. He opened up the book and read another.
  • Time: The Bergson-Einstein debate
    Read the cited material. That's precisely what they've done. That no one has experienced another's experience is a given. Having a first person experience of a second person is incoherent.Hanover

    Nothing in the article about "a human could observe another person's time slowing relative to his own."

    As you said, it is incoherent.
  • Time: The Bergson-Einstein debate
    This isn't theoretical. It's empirical. Read the cited material.Hanover

    No one has ever observed another person's life slowing. The sense of time is an internal feeling of time passing. Read Thomas Mann or Virginia Woolf. Clocks are measurement instruments to try to determine simultaneity.
  • Time: The Bergson-Einstein debate
    But I love Bergson. And of course you haven't 'read such revision of Bergson as this'. You're entirely uneducated. But enough with you.StreetlightX

    You have nothing more to offer than your revisionism for your own pathetic reasons. Here is P.AY. Gunter's non-revisionist account of the Élan vital, as told by Bergson, not you:

    The élan vital or "vital impetus" is described by Bergson as being engaged in a continual struggle with physical matter. The result of this struggle is twofold: While life is forced to take on many of the characteristics of its material environment, matter is nonetheless shaped into ever more complex and active organisms.

    In page 89 of Creative Evolution, noteworthy title for his major work on the nature of Life and consciousness, Bergson defines the Élan vital as the original impetus of life. There is no problem other than with revisionists. I suspect you do not understand one thing that Bergson since you not understand even the most elementary concept of his works.
  • Time: The Bergson-Einstein debate
    The Elan vital does more to name the problem than to account forStreetlightX

    Oh, the revisionist comes out of the woodwork, and stakes the higher ground by cleansing the narrative for his own pathetic reasons. You want to stay in good graces? I thought you might have some insights. What you offer is nice, nice so you can remain respectable among your buddies.

    What can joke. Never have I read such revision of Bergson as this. Why don't you just offer your own stuff if you don't like Bergson? Bergson had more courage in his pinky than you offer in your entirety. Weak.
  • Time: The Bergson-Einstein debate
    That time slows down as speed increases has been empirically shown to be true.Hanover

    No, what has been shown is that periodicity of movement is affected by matter. Science, by virtue of its incredible bias toward dead matter, just chooses to label clocks as "time". Clocks are not time. Clocks are instruments which, within limits, attempt to measure simultaneous events. Simultaneity is not relative, measurement is relative because of the limits of instrumentation.

    A human would not sense his own time slowing,Hanover

    Of course v they do. They do it all the time and they vocalize these feelings

    but a human could observe another person's time slowing relative to his own.Hanover

    Never heard this happen anywhere by anyone. This is comparable to flying dogs. I'll be v this under the c heading off fabricated evidence?

    So science denies that people can feel time slow, despite the enormous evidence to the contrary, but feel it is perfectly sensible that one human can observe another person's time slowing. This c is exactly how c twisted science had become. It's become the modern version of the traveling troubadours just making up stories for money and amusement. Absolutely amazing.

    .
  • Time: The Bergson-Einstein debate
    And there is evidence of this?Banno

    Our lives. This is what we do every day in our life. Create, learn, experiment, and evolve. That is why people come to forums and why they go to museums, or doodle, or very everything else we do, even dreams. It is all of life. The impetus of life and evolution is us - our Minds.
  • Time: The Bergson-Einstein debate
    Élan vital manifests time as the process of creation. That is why we are here. To create and evolve in the process of learning. This is the real process of evolution not the silly stuff of Darwin.
  • Time: The Bergson-Einstein debate
    What part? The dehumanization of people, which you so beautifully articulated (it took only one simple sentence), or how pathetic, disgraceful, and disgusting it is that hired guns are so willing to carry in the dehumanization for the gigantic prize of tenure. We c are told we are just Moist Robots.

    Bergson biggest sin was defending and promoting the creative force that lies within us all and connects us all. His name for this was the Élan vital. It is this force that makes life magnificent.
  • Time: The Bergson-Einstein debate
    Any teleological approach to evolution ought be discarded as a mater of course. The point of evolution is its lack of purpose.Banno

    This is what buried Bergson. The academic warfare on life and meaning wholely and gleefully supported by commercial industry which prefers the term computer robots as a substitute term for humans. Where have we witnessed this before?

    Hired guns for dehumanization like Russell. We are nothing more pre-determined bots whose only use is as fodder. Pathetic, disgusting, disgraceful.
  • Time: The Bergson-Einstein debate
    This is an excellent outline of Bergson's theory of perception in a holographic universe. The video contrasts Pibram's theory of the hologram inside of the brain with Bergson's theory of the brain as the reconstruction wave for an objective external holographic universe. There are no illusions. Bergson intuited this model two decades before holograms we're discovered. Also, an interesting presentation on the wave-particle interpretation dilemma as well as the Relativity controversy as well as a review of December Broglie's contribution to quantum mechanics.

  • Time: The Bergson-Einstein debate
    And here is what Louis De Broglie, one of the founders of quantum mechanics, who certainly was well aware of Relativity, had to say,

    "it should be recognized that, taken as a whole, the work is powerful: it is impossible to examine it without experiencing, almost in each page, the impression that it makes us perceive a number of questions in a different light, that it places constantly before us windows through which we perceive, in a flash, unsuspected horizons.

    "Personally, from our early youth, we have been stuck by Bergson's very original ideas concerning time, Dustin, and movement. More recently, turning again these celebrated pages and reflecting on the progress achieved by science since the already distant time when we first read them, we have been struck by the analogy between certain new concepts of contemporary physics and certain brilliant intuitions of the philosophy of duration. And we have been still surprised by the fact that most of these intuitions are found already expressed in Time and Free Will, Bergson's first work and also perhaps the most remarkable at least from our point of view: this essay, it's author's doctors thesis, dates from 1889 and consequently antedates by forty years the ideas of Neils Bohr and Werner Heisenberg on the physical interpretation of wave mechanics".

    To characterize Bergson as some spiritual leader seeking disciples for some religious Renaissance is beyond dumbfounding. An absolute disgrace to his works and contributions to knowledge of the human experience. What he was, and forever will be, one of the greatest philosophers in history, and until one actually reads and understands his works, which would take lots of time, it would be best not to depend upon some third parties for some letter of recommendation. Do it yourself.
  • Time: The Bergson-Einstein debate
    Most strikingly, the origin of his criticism of relativistic time came from the first rendition of the twin paradox. WE now know that such time dilation is quite real.Banno

    We know gravities affect clocks. Not at all surprising. We know nothing about human experience and the affect of gravity on it, other than what we feel on Earth. In space, we know humans react in different ways, but none have report time slowing down.

    You keep mixing up clocks with humans, which is comparable to mixing up computers with humans. In any case, my prediction would be if humans are accelerated near the speed of light they would die. I wonder if Einstein would debate me on this?
  • On Meditation
    only spontaneity, freedom - the same spontaneity found in the flow of a river (except of course that we are aware and the river is not :) ).boundless

    Yes. I agree.

    You will find that there is much marketing in many traditions nowadays so there are lots of what write which you will not find in practice. Creating a commercial business of any tradition will necessarily affect the tradition.
  • A Question about the Particle-Wave Duality in QM
    But maybe the centrality of information in these (speculative) theories might be of your interest )boundless

    Yes, there are many paths, so what I look for are central themes. There are always course directions.

    Thanks for the link? I'll check it out?
  • On Meditation
    it strongly suggests me the idea of "surrender". The will is completely calmed, there is no need to "control" everything etc.boundless

    The distinction is very subtle. One doesn't "surrender". One just does (in my case the Tai Chi form). After thousands of times if practice, the "shift" just happens. I don't know anyone personally who has experienced this shift practicing Tai Chi, though many talk about it as a matter of course. The key is patience.

    I agree with what you say.
  • How "free will is an illusion" does not contradict theology
    Every single "story" that denies conscious either hides it somewhere, renames it, or ignores it. Why? Because that is the intent. To eliminate consciousness, to eliminate differences between humanity and matter, to dehumanize. This is nothing new. The exact same tactic had been used many times in history to dehumanize races and ethnic groups.

    If you want to be a Moist Robot, be one.