Poll: Is Anything Possible?
- Thread starter Shankity Stick
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While you could change the definition of a circle you don't change what it is intrinsically. An inch, meter, and foot are all arbitrarily chosen (the meter being quite accurate for what they were shooting for). Nothing says a foot has to be this long. Unfortunately, language is getting in the way to what I want to explain. A circle is always a circle even if you change its name or definition. It is always an equal distance from a point on a 2-dimensional plane. If you call it a square, change the definition, whatever. It will still be what it is intrinsically. "A rose by any other name will still smell just as sweet"(William Shakespeare) to put it elegantly. You can change the name but the concept still exists.Vitor Goncalves said:
Anything is possible...ok!
This thread does not exist and has never happened and never will happen... have I won?
ok ok, less smartass answer. I am omniscient.
This thread does not exist and has never happened and never will happen... have I won?
ok ok, less smartass answer. I am omniscient.
The inability to disprove something does not make it fact. As much as I dislike this fad, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is a good example of this. It's possible, but highly unlikely. Pontification about it is largely pointless.
Note: I am not knocking religious study. I am just pointing out that the query the OP is asking us really has no reason for me to care about it. Is just about anything possible, at least on a remote level? Maybe. So What?
As for Pastafarians, while I appreciate the original joke, it's become far too overblown now. You guys are practically as zealous as the people you oppose, and I'm not talking about your "belief" in The Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Note: I am not knocking religious study. I am just pointing out that the query the OP is asking us really has no reason for me to care about it. Is just about anything possible, at least on a remote level? Maybe. So What?
As for Pastafarians, while I appreciate the original joke, it's become far too overblown now. You guys are practically as zealous as the people you oppose, and I'm not talking about your "belief" in The Flying Spaghetti Monster.
But as Einstein showed, space and time are not absolute. Only the speed of light is. Before Einstein came, we collectively believed that time is absolute and Einstein made a mockery of it.Vitor Goncalves said:
But since all speeds are relative to eachother, who can say what the objective reality is? I measure something, someone else moving at .4c measures something else, who would arbitate as to which one of us is wrong or right?
No-one, because as long as we made our measurements stringently, we are both right.
You speak of time and space as objective absolutes.
Time and space as measured by you, or as measured by the person who doesn't move at 107 000 km/h in relation to the sun.
And because of this, how can we say a foot is 12 inches and never ever anything else?
Completely disproving isn't necessary. Just like you can't truly prove something, except in math. But we can reach reasonable conclusions based on study and observation. You know, science and all that. If you're looking to wax philosophically about alternate realities and brains in jars, feel free to continue, but that's not really what science concerns itself with. At least, not until it starts to affect the observable world. It's all about making sense of what we've got in front of us. Don't sweat the crazy hypotheticals too much.
Also, the responsibility is on the prover, not the disprover.
Also, the responsibility is on the prover, not the disprover.
Actually language did get in the way. A circle can define both the Circumference (all points in a plane, which by definition is 2-dimensional, at same distance the same from the centre) or the entire disk within the circunference. So a circle can indead contain corners, just not in its limit. The circunference on the other side can't if we keep the same no changing definition policy. On a side note, the prevalent definition in english for circle is the first, but its not the prevalent definition in other languages I know (french, spanish and portuguese), as it is the geometrical place defined by points in a plane of at same or inferior distance from a point denominated center. And the curved line delimiting it its always a circumference. So somebody already changed the definition, many centuries ago I believe.crudus said:
So logic is not a method of thought, but a method to achieve a method of thought? Curious...Canid117 said:
Would you in similar vein argue that the concept of number 0 does not exist as anything but electrical and chimecal signals in my brain? Or the concept of number 1, something being singular and clearly definably different from those around it?
Or the concept that a rock is a not river, but inherently observably different?
I am not talking of the observation, I am talking of the basis for the observation: the concept of things being what they are, and not what they are not.
It wouldn't prevent anyone else from understanding the concept. It would have no effect on the concept itself. Just as Einsteins special theory of relativity: when it was proposed, not many people could understand the concept of time and space being invariably tied, but that did not make the concept disappear or somehow mutate.
And yet the concept of zero would exist. The symbol, the numerical representation, is not the concept but a representation of the concept. Just as a circle drawn on a paper is not actually a circle (miniscule angles at the very least on atomic level), but a representation of the concept of circle.
And yet that in and off itself is made by using the concept of logic, wheater one is aware of it or not.
What perception, or what conclusion drawn from a perception, is logic dependand upon?
Not all concepts are tied to observations. Logic is the inherent quality of something being justifiable by reason. This quality is an intrinsic property and is not dependand upon there being an observer.
So you too claim that logic stops working as soon as no thinking life-forms are present? And that thus the concept of logic disappears as soon as there is no life?
I strongly contest this.
Because if this were the case, logic should not work in the orbit of Mars, because there are no thinking individuals there. Yet we know logic works, because we've sent probes there, probes whos' programming depend upon 1+1 equalling two.
If logic does not mysteriously disappear between Earth and Mars, why should it disappear between Milky Way and Andromeda? Between our universe, and whatever hypothetical universe might be around it?
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seriously?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Okay sorry. Then tell me, how did we ever land probes on Mars, if logic does not work everywhere, and the concept is purely and ultimately tied to a thinking mind?
I must thank you though, that was the funniest thing I've read in a week!
Well, yes and no. It's tough to say what's possible in the natural universe, seeing as there's probably a good slab of natural laws that hasn't been entirely nailed down yet.
Withing fixed logical systems, some things are never going to happen. For example: 2+2=42 is never going to happen.
Withing fixed logical systems, some things are never going to happen. For example: 2+2=42 is never going to happen.
So matter/energy, by interacting with matter/energy, causes itself to be? Or is your theory of existence somehow more romanticized? Observation is simply detection. Everything in the universe is, however slightly, detected by everything else. That's simply part of the quantum mechanics of our universe, it has no bearing on what caused this universe, or any universe, to be. Perhaps it indicates something innate about how existence works, but there's nothing to prove that.BehattedWanderer said:
About your dog in the mirror analogy, I think it's a bit flawed. I mean, the reflection doesn't really represent the reality. There is no matter, there, just light. It's a simulacrum brought on by the complex way mirrors interact with light, just as our observations are representations of our surroundings brought on by our complex nervous system. Course, you could be meaning it in a even more esoteric and romanticized manner. I dunno.
My point was simply that the "I" with which we are all so dreadfully familiar is the only thing we can be certain of actually existing. Because we exist, whether or not we are brains in jars, we can be certain that something exists. Because something exists, we can also be certain that nothingness does not exist, because existence and non-existence cannot coexist. Nonexistence being an imaginable circumstance, we can suppose that not everything is possible, nonexistence being a possibility. Unless something can negate the time at which existence existed, seeing as time and cause and effect are just universal things, not tied to such esoteric ideas.
I think what he means is that logic is something that only exists in our brains, unlike quantum physics. But even then he's wrong as we, and thus our minds, can influence the universe. Not on a massive scale like quantum physics, but still. Indeed, without logic existing in our minds there would probably be no probes on Mars.SakSak said:
