Things That Are Not There

Discussion in 'Science & Society' started by davidelkins, Sep 14, 2016.

  1. TheFrogger Banned Valued Senior Member

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    I believe the falling tree analogy refers to the fact that when away from an area you do not know what is going on. Should I be in a wood and hear a tree fall, when I leave, perhaps the wood will disappear and reappear should I return (as a scrolling does on a computer game.) However the question can be answered with technology: I can take a picture of the wood (and tree) and when I leave I know it still exists because I can see it.

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    Thus the gtree makes a noise when no-one is around to hear it.
     
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  3. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    Thank you, sir. I had not seen that version before.
     
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  5. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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  7. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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  8. river

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    Saw the gorilla , counted 12 .
     
  9. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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  10. TheFrogger Banned Valued Senior Member

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    Wow! I began counting both balls passing but then realised I was only supposed to count the players in white. I lost count then. I saw the Gorilla but did not see it do that!
     
  11. river

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    You are making non-sense here .
     
  12. Dinosaur Rational Skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    From David Elkins Post #10
    Why must the visual phenomenon be absurd in order to qualify as a hallucination?

    If I hallucinate an image of my deceased father or a beautiful women, is it absurd?

    BTW: I do not have any hallucinations that I am aware of or which have been explained to me as hallucinations.

    I do have some fantasies about conversations with celebrities & interesting historical individuals. They occur when I am in bed & unable to sleep. They work better than counting sheep.
     
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  13. ajanta Registered Senior Member

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    15 years ago, I was trying to understand about the time(dimension ) and still now, but I found things that we see are not at present(generally). We see the image of any object at past....because light takes time to go from one object to another. So we(in time) are unable to see the image of an object at present. So thinks WERE really there.
     
    Last edited: Dec 11, 2016
  14. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    When the object appears to be real but when you get there it isn't, such as an upside down ship at sea, or a mirage of an oasis in the desert.
    That would be *imagination*, not hallucination.
    Right, those are the moments of reflection of events or the fantasies created by our imagination.
    The point is that we know that when we imagine, things are not real. But we don't know things aren't real when we are hallucinating..
     
  15. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    Weird question, 'Do you see things that are not there?'.

    Nobody can see things which are not there.

    They are not there, hence there is nothing for light to reflect from, be processed by the eye/brain/sensory system hence be seen.

    If you mean signals within the brain giving your sight consciousness system an impression of something being there that is a whole different story.

    Still definitely not seeing things not there.
     
  16. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    No, I think there is a distinction.

    When I was sick with a fever, I hallucinated my mother sitting beside me on the bed.

    In an hallucination, what one thinks of as external reality is distorted, so that things really are seen (or heard).
    In imagination, I don't think there is quite the explicitness of external reality.


    Granted, it's a fine line.

    Disagree. Seeing is not "light reflecting off objects", seeing is the act of processing visual input.

    See the "brain on a vat" thread for more on fooling the brain's interpretation of senses.

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  17. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    Dooh.

    They are not there, hence there is nothing for light to reflect from, be processed by the eye/brain/sensory system hence be seen.

    Isn't that what I wrote???

    Are you not seeing what IS there?
     
  18. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    If you are hallucinating you are not really thinking.

    It is not a requirement for an hallucination to have a base in any reality, external, internal or any ...ternal.

    Further whatever signals are running around in your brain causing the hallucination may give you a undistorted impression of reality.

    However even a undistorted impression of reality is not seeing things which are not there.

    Object not there :- hence there is nothing for light to reflect from, be processed by the eye/brain/sensory system hence be seen.

    Are there signals getting to the eye/brain/sensory system? Yes.

    Are they valid signals? No.
     
  19. Sarkus Hippomonstrosesquippedalo phobe Valued Senior Member

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    I don't think it's all that fine.
    Imagination is simply conjuring up a mental image you know not to be real.
    An hallucination is an actual image that you think is real. You may know you're hallucinating but you still think the image is real. Do you ever physically recoil in horror from your imagination? No. But you can do from hallucinations.
    Agreed. It just so happens that the nearly all of what we "see" is caused by light reflecting off objects into our eyes, where it is interpreted (hopefully) correctly - but not always.
     
  20. Sarkus Hippomonstrosesquippedalo phobe Valued Senior Member

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    How are you defining "seeing", though? It seems you are limiting it to the process by which light enters the eye and is interpreted by the brain?
    Okay, in which case hallucinations probably wouldn't count.
    What is a "valid signal"?
     
  21. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    All of what we see (ALL) is from light entering the eye, being processed by the eye/brain/sensory system hence being seen.

    Any other source of signal acting on the eye/brain/sensory system is not seeing.

    Correct hallucination signals do not count.

    Valid signals are those which go through the correct pathways.

    Being a valid signal going through the correct pathway does not exempt it from misinterpretation.

    And misinterpretation does not mean hallucination.
     
  22. Sarkus Hippomonstrosesquippedalo phobe Valued Senior Member

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    That might be your definition, but others are not necessarily using the same. To some, what we see is what the brain is telling us we are observing, not what is emitting photons into our eyes. Hence we can see things that aren't there.
    So it seems any disagreement here would be due to semantics.
     
  23. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Definitely true.

    M345 has a specific idea of what constitutes the process of seeing. I'd hazard it is not the most common idea.

    This is a common philosophy issue, goes along with:
    if a tree falls in a forest...
    where does colour happen?
    what is the sound of a single waveform cycle (like a shockwave)?

    These types of questions all pick at the loose threads of the process of sensing - how much is the physical exterior actions and how much of it is in the processing.

    It's generally agreed that a very large fraction of our experience of the world is interpreted.
     

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