I honestly can't see any sense in which the cup is not in the cupboard. — John

Debates with Banno inevitably end up with long discussions about The Real Cup. It's a placeholder for 'reality' itself but when you discuss it in those quotidian terms it kind of demystifies it all in advance.

I am quite happy to be part of the 4%. It always been the case that few are interested in, or understand, philosophical analysis.

I honestly can't see any sense in which the cup is not in the cupboard — John

There is something there, but it is the mind that forms the cup. You must realized that that seemingly solid object is not that at all when peering into it. Ditto for the water it seemingly carries. It is this transformation from a dynamic wave, that exhibits non-locality (quantum effects have now been observed at the molecular level), to something that feels solid and how is it formed that lies at the crux of philosophical question. One has to dig deeply and not be so quick to jump the chasm looking for a quick and easy answer. Observation is active and entangled. It cannot be considered passive in the process.

A hologram presents an analogous representation of the problem. The hologram is simply a set of wave patterns embedded in the glass. It only reveals the image when an active reconstructive light beam with the appropriate frequency is used. Things were changed when light of a particular frequency was used for observation.

THe thread on social construction might be the best place to continue this part of the discussion. — Banno

Thanks a lot, dude. :(

Special Relativity actually concludes the exact opposite. What is happening is the same for both Ann and Beth. Ann will see the object moving to the right, and also be able to calculate that Beth will see it moving to the left. Beth will see it moving to the left, and be able to calculate that Ann sees it moving to the right. — Banno

SP says that for an object in a void there is no true statement about its motion. Period.

Special Relativity actually concludes the exact opposite. What is happening is the same for both Ann and Beth. Ann will see the object moving to the right, and also be able to calculate that Beth will see it moving to the left. Beth will see it moving to the left, and be able to calculate that Ann sees it moving to the right.
— Banno

SP says that for an object in a void there is no true statement about its motion. Period. — Mongrel

Special relativity concludes that Ann and Beth will have different experiences, due to the speed of light, but mathematically the two experiences can be transformed between the two frames of reference. Basically it is a scientific synchronization issue, but what is philosophically interesting is the actual experiences are different.

Similarly, in General Relativity, the person in motion will feel acceleration.

what's interesting is the underlying ambiguity. No need to crowd the void.

I revert to the nature of experience because either implicitly it explicitly (depending upon one's metaphysics) the OP is asking about personal experience and the possibility of memory permanence.

What did you conclude re that? That memories are physical patterns that are somehow preserved after a subject's death?

At this time, my general idea is that memory is imprinted into the fabric of the universe (analogous to a hologram) and had the possibility of persistence. To reveal it would require the mind, via the brain, to reconstruct it.

Evidence of this permanence would be what is called inherited traits, innate skills, special unexplainable abilities, etc.

There is nothing natural in quantum. — Rich

Huh? The microworld is unnatural or something? :o

Seven wonders of the quantum world (Michael Brooks, New Scientist) — jorndoe

SP says that for an object in a void there is no true statement about its motion. Period. — Mongrel

Isn't that Galilean invariance? (SP = special relativity?)
There are a few things, like the equivalence principle and constant light speed, playing roles in relativity.

Natural is science's escape word when it can't explain something.

I wasn't summing up SP. I was explaining the circumstances in which the denial of absolute space impacts truth aptness.

There is nothing natural in quantum. — Rich

Natural is science's escape word when it can't explain something. — Rich

What are you trying to convey? Quantumatics isn't science? :o

I wasn't summing up SP. I was explaining the circumstances in which the denial of absolute space impacts truth aptness. — Mongrel

Right. Speaking of constant motion typically requires two objects, moving relative to one another. Acceleration does not, since one can determine a force, like gravity, while accelerating. The same holds for rotation.

No, Natural Laws and Natural Selection, and It's Natural aren't science.

But there's nothing inside an elevator that tells you If you're actually accelerating or under the influence of gravity. It's not what we were talking about, but it's cool.

There is something there, but it is the mind that forms the cup. You must realized that that seemingly solid object is not that at all when peering into it. Ditto for the water it seemingly carries. It is this transformation from a dynamic wave, that exhibits non-locality (quantum effects have now been observed at the molecular level), to something that feels solid and how is it formed that lies at the crux of philosophical question — Rich

I still don't agre that objects are all in the mind. The mind plays a foundational role in 'constructing' or 'creating' objects. It is this role which is typically forgotten or neglected by scientific realism, and it is also this 'constructive' role that is suggested by the 'observer problem' in quantum mechanics.
'Seemingly solid objects' are actually solid, in that if one is shot by a solid bullet, the encounter will be fatal. But the existence of objects still arises out of the relationship or interplay between subject and object, and experience always consists of both aspects. It's simply that realists believe that you can take the subject out of the picture,and it still continues to exist as if there were someone in it. That is what is at issue.

I still don't agre that objects are all in the mind. — Wayfarer

As I said in my response, the object that exists in some quantum state is real. But until it interacts with the observer ( there had to be an observer of some sort) there is no bullet. It is the interaction that somehow makes this thing that is mostly empty space, into something that feels very solid and deadly to the observer. The mind had to be involved involved in the "discovery". My use of mind is very expansive. I'm not relegating it to some neurons firing off in the brain.

:D

I am also not materialist indeed have always argued against it since first joining forums. BUt I still think you're misunderstanding the 'observer problem'. I've been to three of the Science and Non-duality conferences in California since I started posting on forums, which are devoted to this particular cultural sub-genre. There's something in it, but misunderstandings abound, in my view.

SP says that for an object in a void there is no true statement about its motion. Period. — Mongrel

That ain't right. Both Ann and Beth can make true statements, and the transformations Einstein developed show us that they are describing the very same thing.

And that's the philosophical relevance here - that apparently different or contradictory statements can sometimes be shown to be saying much the same thing, given an appropriate transformation. Davidson offers T-sentences.

Ann and Beth aren't in the void. It's just the object.

Where did we get to?

I suppose that the approach you are taking is fine, so long as it is presented as speculative, and not as a consensus view among physicist. Ta least you have shown some knowledge of physics, a rare thing hereabouts.

So perhaps we could again look at reincarnation. Your view is that memories, along with everything else, might be stored hologramaticaly?

What?

I am inquiring into the philosophical implications (I wouldn't even call it an o observer problem), utilizing a Bergsonian view of life and a holographic model for mind/matter interaction (the mind being expensive in the manner Sheldrake might view it). There are many reasons my philosophical path has lead me in this direction, but suffice to say that for me that chasm that defines quantum (at the molecular level) and what we perceive and field is a huge one and requires a rethinking of classical viewpoints. I just wasn't satisfied by the "now it's quanta, now it's solid" explanation, which is basically every interpretation except Bohm's Implicate Order.

We agree on the underlying ambiguity, so were good.

I suppose that the approach you are taking is fine, so long as it is presented as speculative, and not as a consensus view among physicist. — Banno

To be sure it is highly speculative. There are reasons I chose this model, primary because it keeps everything real. I do not like illusions as an answer for anything. For me, of it is there and then it is real.

So perhaps we could again look at reincarnation. Your view is that memories, along with everything else, might be stored hologramaticaly? — Banno

Yes. I chose this viewpoint because all the pieces seem to fit. Interestingly, I ran across an interview by Sheeran today where he describes his viewpoint which is very similar to mine. Not surprisingly he related that he is also influenced by Bergson.

Debates with Banno inevitably end up with long discussions about The Real Cup. It's a placeholder for 'reality' itself but when you discuss it in those quotidian terms it kind of demystifies it all in advance.

I am quite happy to be part of the 4%. It always been the case that few are interested in, or understand, philosophical analysis. — Wayfarer

I think the cup is a "placeholder" for empirical reality not for reality in itself. Kant, for example, would entirely agree that the (empirical) cup is in the cupboard. But he also might say ( if he were around today) that the agglomeration of particles, or the web of energetic interactions that makes up the cup is 'in' the agglomeration of particles or energetic relations that constitutes the cupboard. All this talk, however arcane it might become, is empirical talk, though.

What could it even mean to ask if the noumenal cup, the cup in itself, is in the cupboard, though? To ask such questions is to push the bounds of coherence. I think the only possible answer to that kind of question would be the advaitic one: 'the cup is both in the cupboard and not in the cupboard, and is neither in the cupboard nor not in the cupboard'.

Humans always come back to trying to answer such questions in terms of something they are familiar with (the empirical). So Rich, for example, wants to say the noumena, reality in itself, is a hologram. This is just as incoherent as saying it is a cup, or a molecule, or energy, or mind. I think questions about noumena have no sense (by definition only the empirical has sense) and thinking about it in terms of the empirical just makes no sense at all.

So, I prefer to think of the noumenal as spirit, because spirit has no familiar sense. (That's why I commented jokingly earlier that the cup is in the cupboard in spirit). Spirit is thus something prior to being, or it is being otherwise than the empirical. But then if you ask the question about whether spirit is real, whether it really exists, you are back into incoherence again, because you are thinking in empirical terms when you ask such questions.

The other side of this is that we are forced to think of things in themselves because we can imagine things being there when no one is experiencing them; in fact we cannot doubt that they are. Empirical objects must be, according to our invariable experience, there when no one experiences them; otherwise our whole sense of a shared world would become incoherent. So, I think that logically the thing in itself is the empirical object as unexperienced and the noumena is 'something else we know not what'.

I am not sure what "4%" you are referring to. Is it philosophers or perhaps analytic philosophers, or do you mean '4% of philosophers'?