Comments

  • What is real? How do we know what is real?
    ↪karl stone
    Good analytic arguments.

    You'll get a pushback against "you know it is real because you can see it" from the idealists and solipsists, who will claim that it might be an hallucination or other phantasm.

    My response is that I don't much know what it means to say that it's a real screen until you tell me what the alternative is - a cardboard screen or a result of the acid drops or whatever. But I'll point out that you and I can agree that it's a screen and get on with the conversation on that basis. That is, we can agree not to subject the screen to doubt. Hence the independent party bit.

    The point that we find ourselves embedded in the world is a good one - even if you put it in terms of being an "evolved creature".


    So, unfortunately, I'm not seeing a substantive point of disagreement between us. Except the foot pain... I can't feel the pain in your foot.
  • Knowledge is just true information. Isn't it? (Time to let go of the old problematic definition)
    ↪frank
    Cool.

    f(a, (b,c)) is of course malformed, and even if we charitably allowed some sort of well formed interpretation - perhaps f(a,b,c) - it doesn't even address the issue of extensionality.
  • What is real? How do we know what is real?
    ↪karl stone
    Ok.

    I'm not overly thrilled with Descartes. Been a while, other ideas came along. So arguing against him is superfluous. Unnecessary.

    Knowing that you have a pain in your foot is not exactly like knowing there is a screen in front of you becasue you can see it.

    Seem to be a few things being treated as one here.
  • Knowledge is just true information. Isn't it? (Time to let go of the old problematic definition)
    I don't see how the knowledge that Tully wrote X is something about the body. — frank
    It's not not about the body either. Your body wrote the reply, making use of what you knew about Tully, in a way not that dissimilar to how you ride a bike, making use of what you know about peddles and wheels.

    The classical approach is to divide "know how" from "know that", and treat of each with an utterly different account. I want to consider an alternative: that knowing involves doing, including doing speaking and thinking.
  • What is real? How do we know what is real?
    ↪karl stone
    Sure. We agree on much of this.

    Are you comfortable saying you know things that cannot be justified? Saying you know you are in pain looks to be unjustifiable, so is it the sort of thing we can use as the epitome of "know"? Or is it more a fringe use?
  • What is real? How do we know what is real?
    Pain, being prior to thought, cannot be doubted. — karl stone

    Ok. Can it be known?

    Have a look at Sam's answer. it's not just pain that cannot be doubted. Can you coherently doubt that you are reading this, and that it is a reply to your own post? Not if you are going to answer me.

    You're not wrong, but there is more here...
  • Knowledge is just true information. Isn't it? (Time to let go of the old problematic definition)
    ↪frank
    If you like. "relationship" would not be my choice, for the reasons given.

    "Object of thought" is loaded. "Content" might be preferred.

    But also, what is a "thought"? A proposition in one's mind? Is it distinct from a feeling, or an intuition, or a belief?

    These are the problems with the classical approach - might call it the cognitive theory of knowledge, that are addressed by treating knowledge as embodied, as an activity.
  • What is real? How do we know what is real?
    ↪karl stone
    Trouble is, saying you know you have a pain is problematic. How do you justify such a claim? The only justification seem to be that you are in pain - the justification is the very thing being justified.

    Thoughts? Are you happy to claim to know things that are unjustifiable?
  • Knowledge is just true information. Isn't it? (Time to let go of the old problematic definition)
    What's wrong with saying knowledge is a relationship between a knower and a proposition? — frank

    "relationship" has a particular baggage - f(a,b) is a relationship.

    But the proposition isn't related to the knowledge, so much as part of it's content.

    This can be set out again in terms of substitution. if it were a relation, then substitution should be allowed - if f(a,b) and c=b then f(a,c).

    But if you know that Cicero wrote De Officiis, it does not follow that you know that Tully wrote De Officiis, despite Tull=Cicero.

    So knowing is substitutionally opaque. Relations, not so much.
  • What is real? How do we know what is real?
    How do we know what is real? It hurts! — karl stone
    :wink:
  • What is real? How do we know what is real?
    Not so sure about this. First of all, I don't take "If I were Barack Obama . . . " as a genuine reference to a possible world. For me, this is loose talk for "Barack Obama should have. . . " If we insist on pressing this hypothetical, we run up against Kripke: "You can't be Obama; he was born of different parents." And I think this is right. "If I were Obama . . . " etc. reads like a meaningful sentence but that's an illusion. — J

    Yep.
  • What is real? How do we know what is real?
    Is it simply a stipulation? — Michael
    Pretty much. I use that idea.

    Others might picture a logical space in which all possible worlds are listed, and think instead of selecting those worlds that match some criteria from that set.

    It amounts to much the same thing.

    Importantly, logically possible worlds have no relation to the possible worlds of quantum mechanics. They are very different activities. Trying to join them will lead to confusion.
  • What is real? How do we know what is real?
    ↪J
    ,
    ↪frank
    ,
    ↪Michael
    oh, and the continuation of my previous post is that fixing the name - with an original baptism or whatever - is a very different sort of thing to using the name.

    Naming a thing and using a name are very different speech acts.

    So we might say that using a name involves a rigid designation, while setting aside the way in which that rigid designation came about for seperate investigation. Th utility of possible world semantics does not depend on our having an accepted theory of how things are named.
  • What is real? How do we know what is real?
    Right, this is the same question I'm raising about whether something about reference needs to be included in a list of X's properties. — J
    Good stuff. If I've understood, there is an answer to your puzzle.

    In a formal system, there is a difference between the syntax - S4, S5 and so on - and the semantics, the interpretation given to the system. In the syntax the letters don't stand for anything, and the formulae are neither true nor false. To show completeness and coherence we need to give the system an interpretation, also called a model. For modal logic there is an interpretation that works, using possible world semantics.

    Now the predicates "f","g", "h"... are understood as properties of "a","b","c"..., and so we can write f(a), g(a), g(b) int he usual fashion, but this is just stringing letters together until the "a", "b", "c" and so on are given an interpretation.

    Giving an interpretation is assigning "a" to a, "b" to b, and so on, and also assigning f={a,b}, and so on. So we have the name and the predicate in the uninterpreted system, and the corresponding individual and property in the interpreted system.

    Notice the difference between saying that a is f, f(a), which happens within the interpretation, and saying that "a" stand for a, which is giving (stipulating) the interpretation?

    That's why it's not quite right to say that a has the property of "being a". Being a is a part of the interpretation, not of the system of properties.

    It’s like saying: “Is the fact that we call the Eiffel Tower ‘La Tour Eiffel’ a property of the Eiffel Tower itself?” Obviously not — that’s a fact about us, our language, not about the tower as such.
  • What is real? How do we know what is real?
    ↪frank
    Are you familiar with Charmer's argument, mentioned above?

    ↪frank
    Good reply to
    ↪Michael


    ↪Sam26
    So in a way, the question for those of us with a Wittgenstienian bent is, can folk make up a game of metaphysics that can be played in a coherent fashion?

    From our point of view, the ball is in the metaphysician's court, to show that there is a way to play the game that makes sense.
  • What is real? How do we know what is real?
    So, the question isn’t meaningful, it’s misguided. It treats certainty as something that needs to be justified, when in truth, certainty is what makes justification possible in the first place. — Sam26

    Good post. Yep.

    I know of two viable responses. The first is from Austin, and looks at how we use the word "real", noting that we contrast it with something that is not real. It's a real dollar bill, not a counterfeit, or it's real vanilla, not artificial, and so on. This works fine.

    The other comes from David Chalmers, who agrees more or less with the Wittgensteinian argument that we usually don't use "real" in this way, but goes on to ask why we couldn't. He proposes a room in to which we can go, within which we can ask such questions, and discuss the consequences. Now that strikes me as quite a good response - and we could go down that path. I don't think it quite works, but I won't rule it out forthright. It's part of the thinking behind the renewal of metaphysics that spread out from Australia a few decades back.

    A worthy topic. I don't now of any one here who could explicitly defend such a view.
  • What is real? How do we know what is real?
    If the only description of Homer is that he wrote the Odyssey, then this story just establishes that Homer is Kostas. — Ludwig V
    Sort of. We might say Homer is the guy we think wrote the Odyssey. But turns out it was Kostas who wrote it. Now at stake is the difference between thinking of "Homer" as denoting exactly and only "the bloke who the Odyssey", and thinking of it as denoting Homer, that person. That's what this group of thought experiments target. And that in turn is the difference between the descriptive theory of reference and the idea of a rigid designator. If "Homer" and "Kostas" are rigid designators, then we can say that it was Kostas that wrote the Odyssey, and do so without fear of our system of reference collapsing. If we think in terms of the descriptive theory, and so "Homer" refers to "The guy who wrote the Odyssey", then "Homer" refers to Kostas.

    There's the interim possibility, implicit in "the guy we think wrote the Odyssey", that reference is dependent on intent, that "Homer" denotes whomever I intend it to. There are all sorts of troubles with that, not the least being that it begs the question. How is it that what you intend to denote and what I intend to denote by using "Homer" happen to be the very same individual? Which is the very question we were seeking to answer.

    There's the point, too, that we might well see that the descriptivist theory is inadequate and yet not have at hand another theory to replace it. We sometimes have to be comfortable to say "I don't know", and to see that doing so is better than trying to repair a defunct theory.

    Does this work the other way round? I mean if "a" designates an object in all possible worlds in which that object exists, is it also true that that object is designated by "a" in all possible worlds in which "a" exists. Then is there a possible world in which that object exists, but the Roman alphabet was not invented? — Ludwig V
    Sure. It's possible that you were named "Ebenezer" instead of "Ludwig". That would be a fact about you. That we in this world use "Ludwig" does not meant that folk in some other possible world could not refer to you using "Ebenezer". Or 以本尼泽尔, which the AI assures me means "stone of help", which is the meaning of "Ebenezer".

    Similarly, if "a" necessarily designates a, can we conclude that a necessarily has the property of being designated by "a"? — Ludwig V
    Being designated by "a" is not a property of a. So it can't be a necessary property of a.

    It's not a property because that "a" designates a is not a formula within the system, but part of the interpretation, of the model.

    Much of the apparent bumpiness here might be worked out by your looking at the formal system and how it functions. You seem to have. good intuitive grasp of the ideas involved.
  • Knowledge is just true information. Isn't it? (Time to let go of the old problematic definition)
    ↪Jack2848
    Are you familiar with the idea of a family resemblance? How much success would you have if you set out to define your family by listing their attributes? Blonde hair and a hooked nose, maybe, except for cousin Philippa, with their less aquiline features and mousy hair. Or all descended from Grandpa Jerome, except the adopted twins. Supose that for whatever feature you choose, there are exceptions, or you include folk that you would not want included.

    The idea is that we can talk about our family, despite not being able to give a strict and explicit definition that includes all and only those members we want; and this can be generalised to claim that for some terms there is no explicit definition that sets out all and only those things that are to be included. The other example is "game" - without resorting to mere stipulation, can we provide a rule that includes all and only those things that we have described as a "game"? Not all games involve winning, nor competition, nor amusement. And yet despite this we make good use of the word.

    Point being that we do not need to be able to present a definition as a prerequisite for using the word.

    We use the word "knowledge" quite adequately, and widely, and yet when we try to tie it down we end up in these interminable philosophical meanderings.

    So, do we need to provide a definition of knowledge at all? Perhaps it would be better to just map out the different ways we use the word, as you have begun to do.

    One thing we can do is to mark the difference between knowing an believing. We can believe something that is not true. We can't know something that is not true. If you thought you knew something, but it turns out you were mistaken, then you didn't know it at all.
  • What is real? How do we know what is real?
    ↪J
    Kaplan is the go-to for this sort of stuff.

    That "I" designates me is not a property belonging to me. It's a grammatical function of the use of "I". It's a bit of semantics, not a bit of metaphysics.

    It's a bit like the novices who come to the forum with what they take as a profound question - how is it that I am me and not you? They haven't noticed that even if they were me, they could ask the same question.
  • Knowledge is just true information. Isn't it? (Time to let go of the old problematic definition)
    Otherwise it seems that you're just saying that knowing that p is equivalent to knowing how to assert p. Which would be such a cop-out. — Michael
    To sincerely say "I know that P" is to assert that P, while it would be exceeding odd to assert that P while claiming not to know the P.

    That's been the line all along: "Knowing that" is a form of "knowing how".

    Far form being a cop out, it's the central point here. Bits of knowledge fit in with our form of life, and so with what we do. Our knowing that the sun will expand is a part of our broader knowledge of the nature of the sun, built from our looking around and interacting with the world. It's not an isolated factoid.

    Notice that it's not knowing how to just say P that is salient, but how to assert P. That involves knowing how to make use of the speech act of making an assertion, along with all the paraphernalia of truth, justification, reference and so on.

    Which is what is not captured by saying that knowledge is true information.
  • Knowledge is just true information. Isn't it? (Time to let go of the old problematic definition)
    Not really sure how to make use of this information — Michael

    You just did.
  • What is real? How do we know what is real?
    I am arguing that it would not be possible to overturn all the known descriptions at the same time. That is like trying to saw off the branch you are sitting on - success would be catastrophic. — Ludwig V

    Yep. And yet, from the examples given, it seems that even when we saw off the branch, the reference succeeds. And the quest becomes, how can this be?

    ↪J
    Yep.
  • What is real? How do we know what is real?
    ↪J
    ,
    ↪Banno
    ,
    ↪Banno


    q,v.
  • What is real? How do we know what is real?
    Nice summary of Kripke's view. — Richard B
    Thank you.

    It's curious that I don't think Kripke would disagree with what you have to say - and if he did, I'd be disagreeing with him!

    He's not - at least here - proposing a radical skepticism. He does that elsewhere, and in a very different context.

    Adding to that, I don't think he anywhere suggests that we might discover that everything we know about water might be wrong. That would be a long bow to pull, as you point out. Am I mistaken?

    letters — Banno

    In my reply to
    ↪Ludwig
    , I gave an account of the strategy and argument I think he is adopting in setting out these arguments. His target is not knowledge generally, and he is not advocating radical skepticism. He's arguing against a once-common view of reference, and extending that from proper names and individuals to kinds.

    So that's why the odd examples, tigers and such. Let's look at a bit where he sums up what he is doing wioht tigers:

    Now tigers, as I argue in the third lecture, cannot be defined simply in terms of their appearance; it is possible that there should have been a different species with all the external appearances of tigers but which had a different internal structure and therefore was not the species of
    tigers. We may be misled into thinking otherwise by the fact that actually no such 'fool's tigers' exist, so that in practice external appearance is sufficient to identify the species.     — N & N p.156

    Note well "...and there fore was not the species of tigers". The conclusion isn't that there could be a tiger with different internal structure, but that if it had a different internal structure, it would not be a tiger.

    And the conclusion with regard to discovering that some stuff we thought was water had a radically different structure to our water would similarly be, it's not water.

    He's not in the end all that far from your own view.

    His account is dependent on the idea of a chain from name to referent, a chain he says is "causal", but I think that's a stretch, since "causal' covers a multitude of other sins. I've my own thoughts.
  • What is real? How do we know what is real?
    Scribbles are just scribbles unless they refer to something. — Harry Hindu
    We've been over this previously, and it's a bit of a side issue, but I don't agree with your theory that words are all proper names, that all they do is refer.

    Another time.

    For me, things are real if they possess causal power. — Harry Hindu
    I don't find this very useful, since "causal power" is not as clear a concept as "real". Indeed, I doubt that the idea of causation can be made all that clear. But there is a clear use of "real", which I've explained previously - it is used in opposition to some other term, that carries the explanatory weight - it's real, and not a counterfeit, not an illusion, and so on.

    It doesn't help us if we explain one unclear idea by using another idea that is even less clear.
  • What is real? How do we know what is real?
    In the formalisation, there are letters - "a", "b" and so on - that stand for individuals in possible worlds. The standard interpretation is that each rigidly designates that individual in each possible world in which that individual exists. So "a" designates a in world one, and also in world two, and so on. Now in each of these different worlds, a and b can have different properties - f(a) in one world, ~f(a) in another. And that there need be no properties that a has in all possible worlds.

    The question Kripke and others were asking is, to what do these letters match in a natural language? And what are the consequences of that matching?

    And the answer, speaking roughly, is that "a" and "b" are proper names for a and b and so on.

    And the conclusion seems to be that there need be no properties that are had by a thing names, in every possible world in which it exists. Naming and Necessity is at it's core an attempt to fill out the consequences of this idea in a way that is consistent.

    I think of it this way. We know that the formal system is consistent. We can look at a natural language such as English and match the bits of that language to the formal description, and perhaps in doing so learn how to treat modality in a natural language in a consistent fashion.

    So we say that "a" and "b" are like proper names, and since "a" and "b" are rigid designators, we say that proper names are also rigid designators. And so it seems that since no property need be true of "a" in every possible world, no property need be true of a proper name in every possible world

    But then we run into the problem that the then most popular theory of how proper names work is that the name matches a description. And a description is just a bunch of properties. So we have the problem that if proper names are rigid designators, then they are not descriptions.

    There's something very odd about saying that we learn what some thing is, and then discover that what we have learnt about it is false. What is the "it" here? — Ludwig V
    Yep, that's the issue.

    Here's a rough solution. We might well learn how to use the name - what it designates - by using a description. But thereafter, we are not reliant on that description for the name to work. We learn who "Charles Mountbatten-Windsor" is by watching his coronation on TV, perhaps. But if it turned out that they had put an actor in to take his place, perhaps for security reasons, that would be something we learned about Charles Mountbatten-Windsor, despite his not being the chap on the TV.

    It gets more complicated, of course, wich is why Naming and Necessity is a book, and not an essay.

    Try a different example. Homer. I'm sure you know about him, and that there are good grounds for thinking that he never existed. But those stories exist; someone must have written them - or perhaps they are folk tales with no author in the sense that we apply the term. So our expectations when we learn the Homer wrote those epics are disappointed. But not everything that we learnt when we learnt the name is false. — Ludwig V
    There's a few different ways this could pan out. We might supose that there was a bloke names Homer, and indeed he wrote the Odyssey. But possibly, it was Kostas, his acquaintance, who did the writing, and Homer stole the text and took the credit. Now if what we mean by "Homer" is just the person answering the description "the bloke who wrote the Odyssey", when we say "Homer", we'd be referring to Kostas.

    Indeed, if the referent of "Homer" is fixed only by "the bloke who wrote the Odyssey", we could not coherently claim that homer did not write the Odyssey, becasue that would amount to saying that the bloke who wrote the Odyssey did not write the odyssey.

    And what we can conclude is that, contrary to both Russell and Quine, proper names are not just shorthand for descriptions, but work even in the absence of a description. They do function s rigid designators.

    Good posts on your part, by the away. Fine analytic stuff.
  • Knowledge is just true information. Isn't it? (Time to let go of the old problematic definition)
    ...potential energy... — frank

    Potential energy is creative accounting for physicist. They invented it in order not to falsify the principle of the conservation of energy. :wink:

    Suppose I know P, but I never act on it. How am I different from a person who knows P, but can't act on it? — frank
    You're not.

    Perhaps we can assume honesty, and you said that you know, while the person who doesn't know also says that they don't know. But saying you know amounts to acting on your knowledge...

    So that question might not be as simple as it at first seems.
  • Knowledge is just true information. Isn't it? (Time to let go of the old problematic definition)
    ↪Jack2848
    I found that a bit hard to follow, but it looks to be a galant attempt at elucidation and analysis.

    The justified true belief account comes from Socrates in the Theaetetus, and even he wasn't happy with it.

    You're on the right track, I think, in looking to the way we use the word "knowledge". But here's a puzzle for you: must there be one statable phrase that covers all our uses of "knowledge"? Could it be that we use the word in different ways, such that no fixed definition is both accurate and compete?

    Moreover, will we say is the correct uses of "knowledge" are only those that conform to some stated definition?

    At the least, that rules out any novel uses. Do we want to do that?
  • Knowledge is just true information. Isn't it? (Time to let go of the old problematic definition)
    ...the modal, which was the topic of another thread with Banno from which I've not yet recovered. — Hanover
    :grin: Meta is in worse shape, thanks to you.
  • Knowledge is just true information. Isn't it? (Time to let go of the old problematic definition)
    ↪Harry Hindu
    I think I agree, but I'm not sure what the conclusion was.
  • Knowledge is just true information. Isn't it? (Time to let go of the old problematic definition)
    ↪Vera Mont
    Yep.

    Knowledge doesn't need to be about how; that's just one kind - practical knowledge. The input of one's own senses and internal functioning is another kind - direct internal knowledge. The second kind doesn't need further study, since it's already integrated: it's established in the material body as well as in the mind. Sensations are known without reference to language or concept. — Vera Mont
    This is also good. Wittgenstein pointed out that we do not know we have a pain, we just have a pain - and here he is using "know" as justified true belief, and pointing out that it makes little sense to talk of justifying to oneself that one is in pain - since what counts as the evidence is just the pain itself.

    And yet it also makes little sense to say that one is in pain yet doesn't know one is in pain.

    This fits in with knowhow. One is said to know how to ride a bike once one rides a bike. The justification is the act.

    The upshot? Folk sometimes supose that knowhow is an exceptional case of knowing that; that propositional knowledge is central. It's the other way around. Propositional knowledge is s special kind of knowhow.
  • Knowledge is just true information. Isn't it? (Time to let go of the old problematic definition)
    Do you take the assessment of the truth value of a proposition as knowing-how knowledge — Hanover
    Pretty much. Working out what is true and what isn't, is an activity, something we do. We look around, we do the calculation.
    equivalent to juggling balls? — Hanover
    ...not so much...

    Seems evaluating statements requires cognitive grasp of concepts — Hanover
    "cognitive grasp of concepts..." You are said to grasp a concept if you can show that you understand it. You show that you grasp the concept of bike riding by riding a bike, or at least by recognising a bike rider.

    To grasp a concept is being able to act in certain ways.

    ↪Count Timothy von Icarus
    Good to see you doing some analysis.

    We might require of a definition that it explicitly sets out what is and what isn't included in the definends. Sometimes we can do just that. For some definends, all we can do is set out a family resemblance, listing the things that are sometimes included, sometimes not, and understand that there may be exceptions.

    Treating knowledge as strictly Justified True Belief will have as a consequence the contradictions that result in threads such as this.

    Better then to look at the sort of things that are and are not included in knowledge, at how the word is used, rather than just stipulating a definition. Our use of words tends to exceed any such stipulation.

    So sure, Longshanks knew what would happen, and yet couldn't act on that knowledge. It's the abnormality of his not being unable to act in this case that makes it startling and exceptional; and dramatic.

    If you prefer, while knowledge doesn’t logically require the ability to act (as Longshanks shows), it normatively and ordinarily includes that capacity.

    To know something and not be able to act on it is the exception, and a performative contradiction.
  • Knowledge is just true information. Isn't it? (Time to let go of the old problematic definition)
    sweet, passive-aggressive Banno. — T Clark
    No more than
    ...to tell the truth, I don’t really care about what it means to know how to do something. — T Clark

    By ignoring knowhow you are protecting your ideas from critique, rather than willingly exposing them to analysis. As I said, that's a shame.
  • Time is a Byproduct of Consciousness - Consciousness is Universes Fundamental Dimension
    when I literally tried explaining the difference between changes occurring and time passage. — ArtM

    Your explanations might not be as convincing as you suppose.

    Let's go back to that first paragraph:

    Imagine waking up tomorrow, realizing that thirty years of your life vanished, not forgotten, but as if they never existed at all. You jumped from infancy to adulthood in the blink of an eye, with no memories in between. This scenario sounds impossible, yet it’s exactly what occurs in situations like comas, alcohol-induced blackouts, or even during periods of deep, dreamless sleep. Here’s the profound question that emerges: if time is genuinely a fundamental dimension of our universe, why does it cease to exist the moment consciousness fades away? — ArtM

    The hypothesis is that thirty years have passed, while you were unconscious. And that also time ceased to exist while you were unconscious. It's self-contradictory.

    Welcome to philosophy.
  • Time is a Byproduct of Consciousness - Consciousness is Universes Fundamental Dimension
    Really, so if you were the only conscious being in the world, and you woke up after a Thirty years, you would be able to tell that Thirty years have passed? You must be different. — ArtM

    Dude, learn to use a calendar.

    I think you are enthralled with a pretty thought. It's not such a good one on reflection. If you go to sleep and thirty yers pass, then by that very supposition, time passes when you are unconscious.
  • Time is a Byproduct of Consciousness - Consciousness is Universes Fundamental Dimension
    Here’s the profound question that emerges: if time is genuinely a fundamental dimension of our universe, why does it cease to exist the moment consciousness fades away? — ArtM

    Time didn't cease while you slept - it passed. Thirty years of it, demonstrably.
  • Time is a Byproduct of Consciousness - Consciousness is Universes Fundamental Dimension
    I already answered what you're saying several times, even during the hypothesis. — ArtM

    I'm not seeing it. Perhaps it's not as clear as you think.

    Is your claim that time does not pass when you sleep? No, becasue other folk are awake. So if we all go to sleep, no time passes? Why would time stop becasue we were all unconscious? It was there before the world was formed, so far as makes sense.
  • Time is a Byproduct of Consciousness - Consciousness is Universes Fundamental Dimension
    Time seems to pass during sleep only because there are still other conscious beings around observing and measuring it. — ArtM

    The sun sets and rises, the stars turn, the frost settles in - You see the changes when you wake.

    You do not have direct experience of other folk's consciousness. You only infer it. So why can;t you also infer that time passes while you are unconscious?
  • Time is a Byproduct of Consciousness - Consciousness is Universes Fundamental Dimension
    ↪ArtM
    OK. That looks hopelessly confused. Time passes when you sleep. Time passed since the Cretaceous period. But I get the impression that you are inured to such things.

    So I'll say again, that without consciousness, we would not be aware of time passing, is a very different thing to time being brought about by consciousness. You want the latter from the former.

    Time passes when you are asleep. Therefore consciousness is not needed for time to pass.

    How extraordinary, to have to point this out to an adult.
  • Knowledge is just true information. Isn't it? (Time to let go of the old problematic definition)
    Actual knowledge can't be divorced from the whats, hows and whys of the physical world. — Vera Mont
    Yep. Very much so. Knowledge is embedded in what we do, in ways well beyond the place of information.
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