Can our imagination concieve of something that doesn't exist?

Discussion in 'General Philosophy' started by wynn, Apr 30, 2011.

  1. YoYoPapaya Trump/Norris - 2012 Registered Senior Member

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    this
     
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  3. wellwisher Banned Banned

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    Who about cartoon characters such as talking rabbits?
     
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  5. Emil Valued Senior Member

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    Yes it can. It is difficult but possible.
    You don't like science fiction?
    And also I agree with Dywyddyr and Sarkus.
     
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  7. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    (Leaving aside that you are proposing a negative -)

    Were perfect circles ever intended to have an existence outside of mathematical abstractions; do perfect circles have an existential reference frame outside of mathematical abstractions?
    No; it has always been clear that they aren't meant to exist "out there".

    Sure, perfect circles (and some other mathematical phenomena) can be said not to exist in reality; but we also conceive of them with the specific proviso that their existential reference frame are mathematical abstractions.
    There (generally) is no expectation for them to be "real", to be "out there".

    (Similar can be said about science-fiction, where we operate within the convention of fictionality (Fiktionalitätskonvention).)

    This example also highlights that phenomena tend to come with a qualifier as to their existential reference frame - whether they are to be thought of as "imaginary" or "real" or which their specific reference frame might be.
     
  8. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    The two are related, so it is only reasonable to address both.


    If I knew in advance what those criteria are, I would not post the thread, obviously.
    :shrug:
     
  9. Sarkus Hippomonstrosesquippedalo phobe Valued Senior Member

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    In what way am I proposing a negative?

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    So you accept that they do not exist yet we can conceive them, and so fit within the request made in your OP?

    We make no such specific proviso... it is merely that we have come to understand that they do not exist in reality.
    (Similar can be said about science-fiction, where we operate within the
    Again - in all of your replies to this you are negating examples without laying down criteria for what you are after... so we shoot in the dark.

    What are you after, Signal?
    Are you after examples of things we can conceive but that don't actually exist... or is there some other criteria?
    You are clearly negating examples, so you MUST have a criteria in mind.
     
  10. Sarkus Hippomonstrosesquippedalo phobe Valued Senior Member

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    The two are related in that they both deal with things being conceived... but "existence" is different to "prior conception".
    Your OP suggests the former, your following posts are clearly aimed at the latter.
    If you wish people to deal with the latter, I suggest you amend your OP and preferably the title, otherwise respondees will be open to frustration as they shoot blind.

    If you do not know the criteria, why are you shooting down the responses as if they do not adhere to certain criteria.

    You might as well have opened a thread "Provide me with an example of a number"... and then as the responses came in you respond with "no... that's not what I'm after".... "no, nor that".... "or that... as it's clearly using a number that's already been previously used, although I didn't mention that at the start".


    The simple answer to this thread and OP is simply "YES"... unless you move the goalposts.
     
  11. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    You said - "the perfect circle does not exist in reality". Technically, that is asserting a negative, and generally, we do maintain that a negative cannot be proven.


    I suppose this will depend on a person's specific knowledge base.

    (Note that highschool students in the US are used to use a term like "algebra", while in some other countries, they aren't - even though they might be better at it.)


    You are free to be more proactive. If you find the topic interesting, and think you are better able to formulate it more clearly, then please do so by starting a new thread.

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  12. Pandaemoni Valued Senior Member

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    That is not necessarily true. The Greeks did believe that perfect circles existed in nature...in the heavens. They believed in the Aristotelian model that the heavens were prefect and that heavenly bodies moved in perfect circles and that the Sun, stars and planets were affixed to perfect spheres.

    In concept they would have seen the creation of a perfect circle on Earth as an engineering challenge, not a philosophical one. They did not believe in atoms, by and large, and thought matter was simply continuous on any scale one sought to examine it. Since their reality was continuous and not "lumpy" perfect curves were possible.

    There are many things of which we can conceive that don't have an analog in nature (and many things in nature, like quantum mechanics, that we cannot directly conceive), for example: bodily immortality, time travel, telepathy, ghosts, Cthulhu, musica universalis, indigo children, trinitarianism, either string theory *or* loop quantum gravity (or both), the Ginnungagap and we conceived of vacuums so long before we ever saw one that for a while it was deemed "heresy" to say they existed. Newton conceived of the idea that the Moon was literally falling (in precisely the same way as an apple he'd seen fall), despite its seeming to be counterintuitive and contrary to what others would naturally tend to describe. Storage and the notion of digital information existed prior to 1971, but so far as I know, James Russell invented the concept of using a laser and microscopic bubbles trapped in plastic to store information on CDs. Robert Thompson invented the pneumatic tire simply because it occurred to him that a flexible air filled tube wrapped around a wheel would cushion carriages from jolts and shocks as they rode along. His original leather tire was not as good as modern ones because it was not as durable, but the use of trapped air as a shock absorber seems to have been a new one.

    Of course you may not find reasons why none of these count, but that's makes this a game of "no true Scotsman." The truth is that everything may have antecedents...but there is no way to prove or disprove that. Did the inventor of the wheel see something rotate in nature? Or did he conceive of the idea all on his own? Did the inventor of the first fish hook see an accidentally snagged fish? If so how did he know to bait it and wait for fish to come? We'll never know the development of those things (unless time travel becomes a reality). How did anyone conceive of the bow and arrow, or the atlatl? No one knows, but they don't seem to have strong analogs in nature (though surely both tools were improved upon over time).

    In the end most ideas may be based on prior items...but it is always prior items PLUS something new that has never existed before. It may have taken a whole host of people and thousands of years to invent radar or the iPod, but many people needed to contribute new and novel additions in any event, because if each person added nothing new, then how did something new ever emerge? A thousand people each contributing something new can lead to something groundbreaking, even if each individual addition is relatively minor.

    I would grant that it is hard to take oneself out of one's element, and we are creatures of senses and memory, so it is hard to detach from that. I think, that mathematics is the most detached (or one might say "liberated") that we tend to get. Mathematics is so separate from nature, and we are so grounded in the physical world that a legitimate debate exists over whether we invent math or whether we merely "discover" it...which is part of the question of whether math exists independently of humans and, more broadly, nature. To say "oh, but mathematics doesn't count because but such conceptions were never meant to exist in the real universe" is to say "their conceptions (often) do not follow from anything that exists in nature" in my book. In which case, though who conceive of them are conceiving of something which does not exist in nature. The conception itself can in that case be novel and unconnected to our everyday lives.
     
  13. EmptyForceOfChi Banned Banned

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    Manipulation is not creation, alchemy and working with already existing substances isn't a creation of new, weather you do it mentally in your imagination or physically.
    To prove this I will ask you/s to visualize a new colour that doesn't exist before you see it without manipulating already existing spectrum or tone.

    peace.
     
  14. EmptyForceOfChi Banned Banned

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    Challenge¬

    Describe to me your new colour or show me it after you have "Created" it in your 'so called' mind.
     
  15. SciWriter Valued Senior Member

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    OK, I have one, and it's not in the rainbow.
     
  16. EmptyForceOfChi Banned Banned

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    Then proceed. (Who said has to be in the Rainbow)

    peace
     
  17. SciWriter Valued Senior Member

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    I mixed it myself.
     
  18. EmptyForceOfChi Banned Banned

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    I refer you to [Post #31].
     
  19. SciWriter Valued Senior Member

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    …And the flower colors were not like any that I had ever seen before, colors of different intensities and hues that were not thought to exist in nature. I saw true-blue roses, legendary no more. I had chanced upon a land of strange rainbows of elfin-hued flowers: red delphiniums, black tulips, orange fuchsias, white marigolds, bronze grass, yellow violets… but those are not my color.

    My color is brown—a close variant of it that has never been mixed or seen.
     
  20. EmptyForceOfChi Banned Banned

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    And you created this "colour" from 'nothing' nor manipuating any already existing colours?
     
  21. SciWriter Valued Senior Member

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    Yes, and I painted my mind with it.
     
  22. EmptyForceOfChi Banned Banned

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    Then describe to me this colour without refering to another existing hue.
     
  23. Pandaemoni Valued Senior Member

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    Which is to say that if I discover oil for the first time, and turn it into the first plastic ever made, I have created nothing new? When Michaelangelo carved David, he didn't create anything, but merely discovered a form that was already there and chipped away the extraneous bits? No perfume has ever been created, since they have all been made up of pre-existing chemicals?

    If so, then this is merely a debate over semantics. You simply define "create" in a way that makes the word mean something different than its more traditional meaning.

    In that respect, though, I do agree that matter cannot easily be created, and that anything made of matter (with very few exceptions) was made of pre-existing matter organized in a different way. In that sense, "creation" is a specifically controlled and intentional localized decrease in entropy within a substance or group of substances. Creation in that sense requires the application of information to those substances, and substance + information is different than substance alone.
     

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