Do we know enough to know what it all means?

[Johnysid]

Meaning is a succession of events directed at a particular outcome. Say "now" - when is/was that word? A word is a succession of events. The challenge I set the contributors to this thread is to explain how we can have awareness now. If we dont have it now then when can we have it?

[EDDIE51]

I am awarding this 'question' the Balderdash prize for the most meaningless load of twaddle this year !

[Johnysid]

Award away! But this question just points out that there are some simple issues about things as elementary as space, time, meaning and awareness that we do not understand. Those who simply dismiss the religious amongst us because they do not seem to understand school physics would do well to realise that the problem of the nature of mind and man is much deeper than it appears.

[EDDIE51]

Things as 'elementary' as space,time,meaning and awareness??
Are you the reincarnation of Einstein by chance ?

[maggiebee]

Off to clean out the gerbils.

[Johnysid]

Depends on what you mean by elementary my dear Watson.

[jake-the-peg]

Conciousness, is awareness and is a process.

Process can only exist over a period of time not in an infinestimile.

If you slice time finely enough processes cease

Like a flame if you slice the time finely enough it ceases to be but viewed over a period of time it appears to be an entity that you can speak of.

[Johnysid]

Nicely put JTP. Which brings us back to the question: how do we view events over a period of time - how are we aware ie: how do we hear a whole word distributed in time and not just less than a phoneme?

[jake-the-peg]

I'm not an expert on such matters but I believe individual areas in our brains become associated with certain particular concepts. These are triggered by connections to other areas representing other concepts.

Links between these can grow by triggering simultaneously - forming associations.

These can get very complex especially as they are mediated through language which is a similar network of associations forming an abstraction layer.

Outside stimulous affects causes different firing and this sequence of activity is what we experience as "awareness".

Like I say I'm no expert and the above does make it sound very mechanistic but there are doubtlessly chaotic patterms and some have even suggested quantum effects involved

[Maydup]

"Now" is the time to do something useful and rewarding. Not yesterday or tomorrow, clean out the gerbil, visit a gallery, learn to read music, write your memoirs or bake bread, just do something other than this - NOW johnysid.

[Johnysid]

Yes, I don't know the answer either. Tis weird out there and we need to know more to know what it all means.

That we ourselves are inexplicable is a chastening thought. I think that believing in men in the sky with white beards throwing lightening bolts around is hilarious but I will hedge my bets on whether our past is still existent or our consciousness is navigating the multiverse. (Though not with Barclays). Either of these would be profoundly spiritual concepts although also physical.

[Johnysid]

Maidup.. I used to have a hamster that ran round on a wheel all day....

[jomifl]

As I said Johnysid, now is an illusion, it never really existed.

[jake-the-peg]

I don't think its so much "us" that are inexplicable, there's an awful lot of work and progress made on this.

I think the real barrier is a true understanding of the nature of time

I suspect that if you ask most physicists that would be the top of the list and a lot of things would become clearer with that

[Johnysid]

JTP, yes I agree. Dimensional time cannot be the whole picture, there must also be some sort of quantum time because two co-occurring alternatives divide the world line. That said, any QM time would be highly correlated with dimensional time. Did you see Lindner et al's double slit experiment in the time domain? http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0503165

[Khandro]

"No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man."
Heraclitus of Ephesus. 540-480BC.

[jomifl]

A wave is still the same wave even though its material constituents have changed completely.

[Khandro]

^^But isn't in the same location.

[jomifl]

A wave can remain in the same location. Standing waves in currents of water will remain in the same place relative to the shore/bank as long as the conditions which produced them continue to exist. Wave clouds generated by wind blowing over mountains will also remain in the same place ( think some of the clouds in Dali's paintings may be wave clouds as he lived in a part of spain where they are very common). There are many more examples, these are the more obvious ones.

[jomifl]

Whether or not a wave is stationary is anyway not relevant. The essence of a wave is its structure. A human could be seen as a very complex wave with matter and energy flowing through it.

[naomi24]

Does it matter? Sorry, I'll get my coat. :o)