Can a single object exist?
- Thread starter Olga
- Start date
TITLE: Can an individual object exist?
Objects obviously "exist" in human perception or the brain's representation of the outer environment. And such discernments are essential to practical life and the endeavors of most disciplines.
One might have a scientific realism stance about quantum field theory, or whatever. which might shake-up one's conception of there being legit objects. But ultimately the former's value boils down to its usefulness rather than a futile quest to prove that it has supreme ontological validity.
How _X_ exists independent of the phenomenal affairs of consciousness and the abstract descriptions or symbolic constructs of intellect isn't obtainable. To turn off the mind and return to the nature of non-mental existence just yields blankness or absence of everything. Even if there was some revelation present, there's no longer a memory system to preserve it and no cognitive faculties to identify and understand it. But those would simply convert it to our usual experiences or representations of existence, anyway.
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Objects obviously "exist" in human perception or the brain's representation of the outer environment. And such discernments are essential to practical life and the endeavors of most disciplines.
One might have a scientific realism stance about quantum field theory, or whatever. which might shake-up one's conception of there being legit objects. But ultimately the former's value boils down to its usefulness rather than a futile quest to prove that it has supreme ontological validity.
How _X_ exists independent of the phenomenal affairs of consciousness and the abstract descriptions or symbolic constructs of intellect isn't obtainable. To turn off the mind and return to the nature of non-mental existence just yields blankness or absence of everything. Even if there was some revelation present, there's no longer a memory system to preserve it and no cognitive faculties to identify and understand it. But those would simply convert it to our usual experiences or representations of existence, anyway.
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DaveC426913
Valued Senior Member
Move relative to what?
An object floating in space cannot cause itself to move without some sort of propulsion. That requires expulsion of some fraction of its mass. The object can spread itself out across space if it did this.
Can a bottle of pop that has exploded and spewed its contents across the stars be considered to have moved? Only if you redefine it from "a bottle of pop" to "a pop bottle (empty)".
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- Robert Geroch: "There is no dynamics within space-time itself: nothing ever moves therein; nothing happens; nothing changes. [...] In particular, one does not think of particles as 'moving through' space-time, or as 'following along' their world-lines. Rather, particles are just 'in' space-time, once and for all, and the world-line represents, all at once the complete life history of the particle." --General Relativity from A to B
Again, objects obviously move and change in terms of the world as experienced. But whether one personally regards that as the case in the mind-independent version depends on the philosophy of time option that one prefers. Here's a section of an IEP entry that explains the three views of presentism, eternalism, and the growing block universe. Since it's in English, it will have to be translated: https://iep.utm.edu/time/#SH14a
Quick summary:
Presentism: Or "nowism" as it sometimes called -- is the view that only "now" exists, not the past and future. So in that context, a thing exists "out there" as we perceive it, and it is always changing. Its current state is immediately destroyed by the next state replacing it.
Eternalism: Often correlated to the concept of a four dimensional block universe -- is the rival view that contends that all states of the cosmos (or an object) co-exist. The appearance of time flowing (or the world being constantly replaced, as in the above) is a product of cognition rather than a mind-independent occurrence.
Possibilism: Usually called the "growing block universe" -- is a middle view that the past exists, but not the future. A present moment is always being added to the so-called block, resulting in the past increasing in size.
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Объект может быть безмассовым. При каких условиях он может двигаться, не будучи относителен чему-либо?
Статья не открывается.
Презентизм. Каким образом можно измениться во времени, не изменяя своё положение в пространстве? Что именно изменяется в таком случае?
Этернализм. Тогда сам разум должен быть независим и относителен всему остальному миру.
Поссибилизм. Где находится прошлое? Мне очень нужно туда вернуться.
DaveC426913
Valued Senior Member
Define movement that isn't relative to something.
I suppose it could spin. That's not technically motion though.
Если только это движение относительно самого себя. Время ноль, скорость бесконечная.
DaveC426913
Valued Senior Member
Something cannot move relative to itself - unless it's like my example of an exploding pop bottle. but the centre of mass will remain motionless.
This is meaningless.
Давайте безмассовый объект рассмотрим.
Что именно бессмысленно: ноль времени, или бесконечная скорость, или то и другое?
DaveC426913
Valued Senior Member
Both.
Почему? Что в этом невозможного?
DaveC426913
Valued Senior Member
It isn't even clear what you mean by "zero time" or "infinite speed". They're just pairs of words strung together without sufficient thought to develop them into ideas.
A forum is not the place to have a one-sentence-at-a-time discussion. We could eat up pages going back and forth. I'm not interested in "What's impossible with this?" questions.
Что тут сложного для понимания? Время и скорость всегда неразрывно связаны. Я просто хочу вернуться к основам, понять, при каких условиях время обращается в ноль, исчезает.
DaveC426913
Valued Senior Member
Don't know what you mean by this; it is too vague. Time might not have existed before the Big Bang perhaps, but that's meta-physics - wild speculation.
Perhaps you are referring to massless particles whose path through space time is a null geodesic. That is not the same as "zero time". It is important to be precise. Photons do not have a rest frame, so it is meaningless to talk about passage of time for a photon.
And, notably, photons do not travel at "infinite speed", so that makes little sense.
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Я не имела ввиду фотон. У фотона есть определённая скорость, и нетрудно догадаться почему она такая. Это тема другого разговора. Я сейчас о самом пространстве-времени. При каких условиях оно может возникнуть. Вы же не считаете его пустотой?
If you need metaphors, then presentism is like watching a movie. Only the current scene on the screen seems to have a brief existence. Whereas those that preceded it and those yet to come do not appear to exist.
And eternalism is very crudely akin to what the movie really is when not projected on the screen for an audience to observe. All the different frames constituting the motion or changes co-exist together on the film reel.
And the "growing block universe" is figuratively similar to a reel of film that is not yet completed. An additional frame (image) that represents "now" is continuously and incrementally added to the long strip.
Actually, a flip book is usually the more applicable metaphor instead of a film strip (due to its stacked or block-like nature). But one has to travel through Bellefont first to get to Spearville.
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Olga:
Speed is the distance travelled divided by time taken. That is how speed is defined. So, yes, they are inextricably linked, by definition.
Вы меня понимаете. Я просто хочу показать, что ноль времени - это не обязательно ноль движения. Если зайти с обратной стороны, то при замедлении скорости время тоже может появляться вместе с материей.