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Politics : Should God be replaced? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TigerPaw who wrote (1712)	10/16/2000 3:07:37 PM
From: Solon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 28931

The only way we can imagine that earth without consciousness is with consciousness. We are still within the perceptive realm of consciousness. Because everything we see or imagine must exist in present time in consciousness we can only say that time seems to exist in our imaginary scheme of a world without consciousness. Adding the scheme of imagination does not remove us from the locked room or bolster the argument. It only seems attractive to the intellect. Imagination, as an attribute of consciousness, could not disprove that time exists only as a vehicle of conscious perception. I admit, the idea seems funny, but consider this: Scientists are very serious about the examination (with their imaginations) of ideas of alternate universes, additional dimensions, etc. These ideas are strange and wonderful and come from rare imaginations; But are they any more evidentiary that anything I, or anyone, might conjecture about consciousness or time? I kick out these ideas because I love to hear from the imaginations of those people, such as yourself, that come to this thread and say things that provoke, startle, and enlighten.

To: TigerPaw who wrote (1712)	10/16/2000 3:15:14 PM
From: cosmicforce	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 28931

Imagine if you will, a world without conscious creatures, a world like Earth a few million years ago. Did time exist in that world? I say of course it did! Consciousness is affected by the arrow of time, but has no control over it. This is only obvious if you give an absolutely binary definition of "conscious". This can be rephrased as "If something relatively conscious is there to "see" it, then it is "observed". The degree of observation is related to the intensity of the consciousness. I thought of an interesting variant of the familiar saw "If a tree fell in a forest and no one was around, would it make any noise?" except I'm saying, "If a tree fell and nothing was there to experience it would the experiencial reality of the fall exist?" That is a much more difficult philosophical question to answer. Where is the former information state of said "upright tree" stored when the "falling tree" process occurs, yet it is unobserved by anything. This requires the observer (carrier of the information) to be in the system. If we had "a tree" in a "system" of gravity, forest, sound producing mechanism and falling" but no "observer", I would argue that the relative reality of said tree falling is very debatable in a non-trivial way. See my other post to Solon for a complete exploration of this: Message 14590919