Philosophy Now Forum

Scott Mayers wrote: One way I can try to convince you of how the Cartesian space with time as a fourth dimension is to ask you how you define anything in the spaces at the moment where no time exists?

There's no such thing as a moment when no time exists if time and information are regarded as all that exist.

Scott Mayers wrote: If time is the only real factor or dimension, then you cannot interpret any two different things as belonging to distinctly separate places.

Correct. The notion of place has no meaning in a fractal dimension so all the quantum weirdness simply disappears. All questions of locality and non-locality default to observer constructs and simultaneity is relative all the way down to the Planck scale. This essentially means that our intuitions of simultaneity are a myth.

Scott Mayers wrote: And since time is all you understand, this implies that all distinct points in space including anything that could occupy them are one and the same.

I don't think you're getting this, Scott. The spaces are all in your own head.

Scott Mayers wrote:Also, since only you can perceive time from your experience while existing in it, you are asserting by implication that you are a solipsist. Correct?

Not correct, although I've had a similar accusation levelled against me elsewhere. I'm not suggesting that the observer is all that exists but merely stating that the observer's own narrative of the world is the only thing he can make meaningful statements about. I regard this as a bald statement of the bloody obvious.

Scott Mayers wrote:I follow. I see though that you are being literal by the strict definition of our human defaulted bias to describe anything "existing" as anything involving time.

Exactly. Nothing can exist outside of time in a non-Newtonian world. This allows for a very significant unification of concepts because it means that reality, the universe and existence are all different ways of expressing the same thing. Metaphysics is an exploration into the nature of Being and understanding the tense of this verb is critical to the understanding of the universe. In a process philosophy we say the the universe is IN A STATE OF BEING.

Scott Mayers wrote:Just because the language we use lacks a given word in our vocabulary to specify something that IS but lacks time, though, it doesn't mean that such a thing as realities without time lacks truth with respect to reality or totality.

Your syntax has betrayed you because I have no idea what this means. It sounds like bollocks but I won't commit fully to this opinion until after you explain more clearly what you're banging on about.

Scott Mayers wrote:To attempt to defeat your apparent solipsist stance, ask yourself if you could actually predetermine that time exists without at least some change or difference that you could define without spacial, or even mental, distinction between at least two different relatively static realities? Your conscious state of existence would shut off if everything remains perfectly constant. For example, try this experiment: stare blankly at one single point of your screen without any other changes in your visual range. [You'd have to include removing the blinking cursor by the way] If you remain steady, your brain will try to shut off the input by going 'black'. This isn't actually the best way to determine this since our eyes constantly move. But it can give you an example.

Time without a change of state is meaningless so time and change are one and the same thing. We already know that there is no state of absolute rest in the universe because there is no fixed referential frame against which to measure such a state, so even in our spatial hologram every physical entity in the universe is always moving relative to every other. We also know from Einstein's mass/energy equivalence principle that changes of state in all physical entities take place at the speed of light on the Planck scale. Therefore the universe is "moving" through time at the speed of light, as moderated by the cosmic metronome of gravity.

Scott Mayers wrote: Another argument against your apparent stance is to question why you don't already know the future as it unfolds?

You've completely misunderstood me Scott. It is Newton's world which specifies for only a single future, not mine. In a process universe the future is utterly unknowable because reality simply makes itself. Newton says that the events of tomorrow have been pre-determined because the universe acts in accordance with a suite of laws. I say the exact opposite. I say that the events of tomorrow are utterly unknowable beyond a finite order of probability because every single unit of matter and energy in the universe will be involved in determining it. This is simple chaotic determinism, popularly known as the butterfly effect.

This has led to all manner of absurd claims about the behaviour of sub-atomic particles because in Newton's world the future is completely and linearly determined. This ridiculous idea simply doesn't work on the sub-atomic scale because the dynamic behaviour of sub-atomic particles is non-linear, or chaotic. This is quantum gravity. The orbits of planets cannot be precisely predicted because every cosmological object in the universe affects the motion of every other. This effect is negligible on the galactic scale but in science negligible is not synonymous with irrelevant. On the sub-atomic scale the perturbations in motion caused by the asymmetry between gravity and time are amplified a gazillionfold. Thus the precise motions of subatomic particles are quite literally unknowable but this doesn't mean the bloody things move around at random, any more than the gas molecules in a box move around randomly in Brownian motion. The mechanism which governs the motions of sub-atomic particles within the atom is precisely the same mechanism which governs the motions of stars, planets and galaxies. GRAVITY. The quantum theory is a fucking mess and it can all be sheeted home to a single false assumption made by Hermann Minkowski. Trying to project a fractal time dimension onto a Cartesian space is mathematically impossible, as Henri Poincare discovered in his work on the three-body problem. Poincare knew bloody well that the 4D manifold was crap but unfortunately he was born before his time. However, although fractal dimensions hadn't been invented yet he laid the mathematical groundwork for their development and fractal geometry is now used in every science except physics. Of all the sciences physics is the only one which persists with its Newtonian modelling and of all the sciences physics is the one that doesn't make a lick of sense. What a fucking remarkable coincidence!!! Do I stand accused of making a bizarre leap in logic when I conclude from these facts that we live in a non-Newtonian world?? i don't think so.

Leo,

I tried to show you that not even 'time' has any meaning than the 'space' you define as meaningless without interpreting time based upon the experiences that matter to us ("Matter" was defined as that which literally matters to us originally.) I could accept one arguing that both time and spaces are equally no more real than your position. This is because you set an a priori belief in 'time' but cannot describe it meaningfully to what actually 'matters' to our mind.

Now, we also understand what 'matters' based on what is not matter-worthy. If space was a pure construct of the kind of matter we initially thought existed, we couldn't distinguish between any two things we define as 'matter'. Thus, matter is as dependent upon the distinct space it occupies including the differences in distances between these matters. But we later defined "matter" as that which at least is something that "occupies space". While we may not appear to interpret the substance of the space without respect to matter, since matter is defined necessarily to occupy it, then space is a prior truth.

Religions originally intellectually thought as you do here. They defined the literal air as "spirit" which simply meant "the indirectly experienced phenomena of spaces that appear to have essential use but cannot be witnessed directly via our senses." Things like smoke, clouds, and smells, were also considered forms of "spirit" in kind. But while they could not make sense of the latter discovery that air also has matter, "spirit" was understood to be more primal as the things they DO sense seem to only be locally contained in it. "Spirit" was thought to transcend meaning without existence as you interpret space to be without time because the language confines us to describe something outside of what we can determine is. The term, "existence" is literally, "ex-" (outside of) what we understand "-is" (as in matter). This begs that time IS this concept. But even this definition hints how we actually interpret what matters (what '-is') is necessary to define the transcendent sense of 'time'. Time is NOT a thing but is defined as a relationship between things.

As to GR's interpretation that space itself is not 'fixed', this is dependent upon the thought experiment of the elevator. There it assumes that since we cannot make a distinction between gravity or acceleration, they are one and the same. And since one is moving while the other is not, he concluded that space itself actually has no real fixed position or background 'address'. Yet this transcendent idea is not appropriate. If we actually accelerate through space, as opposed to mere gravity, we actually COULD determine the difference if we measure how each maintains existence in the long term. For things actually accelerating, while their apparent age seems to be stalled relative to an inertial frame within normal gravity, the one moving through space will actually be deteriorated by the increased cosmic radiation they get exposed to. Such a measure may not be determined in short periods of time but if one could wait a long period and then measure the differences in loss of the material or deterioration of one to the other, the one exposed to acceleration would likely be affected differently than if it was only exposed to gravity. This is the error of Einstein's General theory.

It is also not time itself that actually alters in an accelerated frame. The very matter that things moving in the same frame also slow because they are translating through a real background which limits the speed to which even matter on an atomic level can operate. Each electron that was moving around atoms in relatively circular ways on Earth actually translate through space slower in the frame because the paths that an electron actually make move through the background space at the maximum speed derived from Earth. Thus clocks even made of matter slow down too. If inertial or accelerating frames act independent of the background spaces, then time too should not have any need to 'obey' any consistent behavior. We'd see that time dilation in moving or accelerating frames to have no predictable nature if time and matter in it wasn't dependent upon some background.

Einstein likely initiated his idea that space had no 'fixed' meaning based on a false interpretation of the experiments used to supposedly defeat them. The Michelson/Morley experiment was this experiment. However, the experiment ignores that the source of the light being used to measure this results are defined (created) by the very matter within frame of Earth moving through any potential aether. I actually reconstructed how this experiment was done on paper using the math and a fixed speed of light. This experiment could not possibly interpret whether space had an aetherial background or not. It is based on how the apparatus being created and operated within the frame of Earth which got overlooked. I can give you better examples in my own thought experiments to show how this is irrational. I won't do this here since this thread wasn't intended to digress in this direction. But if pressed, I can (and have) done this elsewhere and can try with you again.

My point is that space IS fixed to real addresses that have substantial meaning. Thus you can't use this argument to displace meaning of space. Note too that you also misinterpret how SR and GR are in sync. SR deals with constant velocities where GR with acceleration. GR is still interdependent on SR or both fail. Spacial relativity and time dilation were inferred through SR first. And it is this that you defend as justification to dismiss space as having meaning while also dismissing SR.

Scott Mayers wrote:
I tried to show you that not even 'time' has any meaning than the 'space' you define as meaningless without interpreting time based upon the experiences that matter to us

And you dare accuse me of solipsism?? If both time and space are observer constructs, as Kant maintained, then no dimension remains outside of the human mind within which reality can manifest itself.

Scott Mayers wrote: Thus, matter is as dependent upon the distinct space it occupies including the differences in distances between these matters. But we later defined "matter" as that which at least is something that "occupies space". While we may not appear to interpret the substance of the space without respect to matter, since matter is defined necessarily to occupy it, then space is a prior truth.

Refuting what I say by saying what I refute does not constitute an argument. Furthermore your above statement contradicts the facts at the sub-atomic scale. It is quite impossible to model the behaviour of sub-atomic particles unless they are treated mathematically as spatially dimensionless. Some physicists interpret this to mean that space is an emergent property of the behaviour of matter but this interpretation fails the test of both Occam economy and human reason if taken literally. Emergent properties of anything at all are entirely human constructs with no ontological status of their own. e.g. the "chairness" of a chair is the property of the observer of the chair, not a property of the matter and energy which encode for it, as the Newtonian reductionists would have it.

Scott Mayers wrote:Time is NOT a thing but is defined as a relationship between things.

I agree with this but would point out that all such relationships are physical which defines time itself as physical. In any event that time is physical has been unambiguously proven many times whereas the same could not be said for space. In fact Michelson and Morley proved the opposite.

Scott Mayers wrote:As to GR's interpretation that space itself is not 'fixed', this is dependent upon the thought experiment of the elevator. There it assumes that since we cannot make a distinction between gravity or acceleration, they are one and the same. And since one is moving while the other is not, he concluded that space itself actually has no real fixed position or background 'address'.

Bollocks. I've noticed elsewhere that your grasp of relativity is not the best but what you say here is plain wrong. When you say that one object is moving whereas the other is not you are automatically assuming a background address. Both objects simply move relative to each other. To say that a spacecraft is accelerating away from the earth at 1G is physically exactly the same statement as saying that the earth is accelerating away from the spacecraft at 1G.

I'll assume you simply had a brain fart when you decided to raise the subject of cosmic radiation in a conversation about GR.

Scott Mayers wrote:It is also not time itself that actually alters in an accelerated frame. The very matter that things moving in the same frame also slow because they are translating through a real background which limits the speed to which even matter on an atomic level can operate.

Exactly so. Gravity slows down time and therefore slows down EVERYTHING, including the speed of light, but there exists no referential frame in which this can be measured.

Scott Mayers wrote: My point is that space IS fixed to real addresses that have substantial meaning. Thus you can't use this argument to displace meaning of space. Note too that you also misinterpret how SR and GR are in sync. SR deals with constant velocities where GR with acceleration. GR is still interdependent on SR or both fail. Spacial relativity and time dilation were inferred through SR first. And it is this that you defend as justification to dismiss space as having meaning while also dismissing SR.

GR falsifies SR because SR is regarded as a special case of GR in the "flat" space. However from GR we must also conclude that there is no such thing as a "flat" space.

Hi Leo.

You made a statement I'm not quite getting:

"Bollocks. I've noticed elsewhere that your grasp of relativity is not the best but what you say here is plain wrong. When you say that one object is moving whereas the other is not you are automatically assuming a background address. Both objects simply move relative to each other. To say that a spacecraft is accelerating away from the earth at 1G is physically exactly the same statement as saying that the earth is accelerating away from the spacecraft at 1G."

Both objects do move relative to each other I agree with, but wouldn't the mass of the object be a factor. Using the earth and that spaceship as examples, since the earth is presumably much more massive than the spaceship, than presumably the earth has more pull than that spaceship so the spaceship would be accelerating much more readily than the earth in space, even without an address to go by. That's the way I see it.

PhilX

Philosophy Explorer wrote:than presumably the earth has more pull than that spaceship so the spaceship would be accelerating much more readily than the earth in space,

According to whom? You have placed your observer outside the system being observed which renders all considerations of the relativistic motions of the earth and spaceship meaningless. In relativity meaningful statements about motion can only be made about two objects moving relative to each other. Placing your observer outside either of them is a forbidden referential frame because the observer is also moving and thus can only make separate statements about the motion of each body relative to himself. As a maths geek you've probably heard of the three-body problem, which is more often referred to nowadays as the n-body problem. Check it out and you'll see what I mean.

Obvious Leo wrote:

Philosophy Explorer wrote:than presumably the earth has more pull than that spaceship so the spaceship would be accelerating much more readily than the earth in space,

According to whom? You have placed your observer outside the system being observed which renders all considerations of the relativistic motions of the earth and spaceship meaningless. In relativity meaningful statements about motion can only be made about two objects moving relative to each other. Placing your observer outside either of them is a forbidden referential frame because the observer is also moving and thus can only make separate statements about the motion of each body relative to himself. As a maths geek you've probably heard of the three-body problem, which is more often referred to nowadays as the n-body problem. Check it out and you'll see what I mean.

Frankly Leo, I don't see an observer making a difference here. When you ask according to whom, my answer is scientists. I've been taught/read that when one object has more mass than the other, the more massive object has a greater force or pull so the object with smaller mass will move more readily than the more massive object (or accelerating more quickly). Also, to note, you can place an observer outside a system in a thought experiment, but in reality you can't because the observer along with the objects exist inside of space (or the universe if you like) which is the system.

PhilX

Not so, Phil. It's true that gravity is often described as a "force" as a matter of semantic convenience but GR blows this way of thinking right out of the water. Gravity is universally regarded as a fundamental property of the universe from which all our other so-called "forces" are derived.

The flawed spacetime narrative obscures this underlying story somewhat but it becomes a lot clearer when we understand that gravity and time are simply two different expressions of the same thing. Once again I urge you to check out the three-body problem of gravitational motion and you'll see what I mean.

Obvious Leo wrote:

Scott Mayers wrote:
I tried to show you that not even 'time' has any meaning than the 'space' you define as meaningless without interpreting time based upon the experiences that matter to us

And you dare accuse me of solipsism?? If both time and space are observer constructs, as Kant maintained, then no dimension remains outside of the human mind within which reality can manifest itself.

I try to carefully word myself here. This statement is a conditional one:
Equivalent expression in precise but less conventional by normal conversation:
IF (you believe that 'space' has no meaning), THEN (you MUST accept that 'time' too has no meaning)

This contradicts your view because I attempted to show you how non-sensible you can even interpret 'time' without recognizing contextual meaning to 'space'. All you technically do is pre-assign 'time' as a first-order dimension. But to make sense of it existing, you'd require assigning it using spacial ideas too. As a different analogy, you seem to believe that 'verbs' are all that is real where 'nouns' are not. Humanity has taken on this type of thinking from the start. We presume the first noises spoken are likely commands (verbs). "And in the beginning was the Word" People in ancient times thought that since actions have an apparent dominant role to move others, static ideas, like those things we "name" (nouns) are unimportant. That is why the Bible had Adam name the things since they thought that the particular words being used to define things are merely arbitrary and relatively transcendent to their 'real' nature.

I'm not in disagreement to this thinking as one productive perspective. Yet we have now evolved to use words in "sentences" which define both nouns and verbs to convey closed ideas. Verbal-only statements are not closed (infinite) as they merely act in participation with those you directly communicate with. When neither of the people, objects, or events are in present location of people communicating, they devise symbols (words) to merely remind them of the actual things. The actual meaning of the words actually represent real things AND actions. In this way, time cannot exist independently without the static background of space to represent a closed meaning. You may also redefine these beginning with time but you'd still have to derive space upon it and accept that as real.

Obvious Leo wrote:

Scott Mayers wrote: Thus, matter is as dependent upon the distinct space it occupies including the differences in distances between these matters. But we later defined "matter" as that which at least is something that "occupies space". While we may not appear to interpret the substance of the space without respect to matter, since matter is defined necessarily to occupy it, then space is a prior truth.

Refuting what I say by saying what I refute does not constitute an argument. Furthermore your above statement contradicts the facts at the sub-atomic scale. It is quite impossible to model the behaviour of sub-atomic particles unless they are treated mathematically as spatially dimensionless. Some physicists interpret this to mean that space is an emergent property of the behaviour of matter but this interpretation fails the test of both Occam economy and human reason if taken literally. Emergent properties of anything at all are entirely human constructs with no ontological status of their own. e.g. the "chairness" of a chair is the property of the observer of the chair, not a property of the matter and energy which encode for it, as the Newtonian reductionists would have it.

You've used the bolded statement a few times. All I can guess is that you are interpreting how I reflect your view as you hold it correctly. But you apparently do not recognize the meaning of the details that go beyond merely demonstrating that I understand you. I first reflect to be sure I understand you in my words to which you agree. But then you don't seem to be interpreting the extended logic to which I am presenting as to why your position is insufficient, contrary, or contradictory. I am saying that your perspective of believing that time is real AND space not so is conflicting because each is required to equally define the other. To say that the three dimensions of space are not real but the way it is expressed in time IS, is no different than declaring that the roar of a lion IS somehow real but the lion itself is not! This is why I referred to how the ancients also took opposing perspectives. Some reversed this by asserting that the lion is real while its roars are not with equal trouble. What is important to notice is that both are real. The sound of a lion roaring is and EVENT to which we can create a name (noun) for: "roaring". And the lion can be defined by its static definition too by naming it (another noun); Likewise, you can opt to name a lion's function through time as "those occasions where I see orange blurs that roar and get bigger in my eyesight that tend to bite me." (verbal description) The "roar" is "that sound I hear during this occasion just before it bites" (another verbal description). Note how each can be described using the same forms. Yet it is hard to describe these distinctly without both nouns(space words) and verbs(time words).

On the chair thing, think of it this way: the actual chair is as much a human creation and so could also be considered unreal as the word we created to describe it. This is why people have made the error that a humanoid-like entity (God) created us. They can't seem to recognize that our words and the objects they represent can both reference reality, both reference non-reality, or both be real and non-real, or maybe neither, ...all depending upon how we use our language by perspective.

Your preference to evade what you refer to as "Newtonian reduction[ism]" makes it appear that you prefer non-closed or incomplete sentences over closed ones. Yet this too suggests that you should then embrace mathematical Calculus too since it defines things using a type of closure for incomplete (infinite) things. Calculus-wise, an incomplete sentence like, "Go", would simply become "[You] go." In this way, the former sentence is incomplete while the latter is complete when we imply the subject, "you".

Obvious Leo wrote: Bollocks. I've noticed elsewhere that your grasp of relativity is not the best but what you say here is plain wrong. When you say that one object is moving whereas the other is not you are automatically assuming a background address. Both objects simply move relative to each other. To say that a spacecraft is accelerating away from the earth at 1G is physically exactly the same statement as saying that the earth is accelerating away from the spacecraft at 1G.

I'll assume you simply had a brain fart when you decided to raise the subject of cosmic radiation in a conversation about GR.

Scott Mayers wrote:It is also not time itself that actually alters in an accelerated frame. The very matter that things moving in the same frame also slow because they are translating through a real background which limits the speed to which even matter on an atomic level can operate.

Exactly so. Gravity slows down time and therefore slows down EVERYTHING, including the speed of light, but there exists no referential frame in which this can be measured.

No, I had no brain fart. I may not have explained it in terms you could interpret fairly though. I'm understanding you though and while I get your interpretation and agree that this is GR's position, I am saying that the distinction between acceleration towards the center of our planet only acts locally through a real background by the spin of the Earth and/or its movement through its orbit, etc.. What you miss is that if upon our present 'speed' through space, if we then accelerate in a given direction away from it, we CAN measure a real difference if we wait to compare how one thing on Earth will live as opposed to one traveling great distances away from it.

While a person in a spacecraft may 'appear' to freeze in time as they accelerate, their actual increase in speeds through the background of space will likely cause irreparable damage that could be used to prove one's actual difference in frames. This is because if you move through a cloud of cosmic particles that are small enough to go through the ship, the rate at which you pass through them in accelerated speeds will have more occasion to strike you as opposed to being on Earth.

Without bringing in diagrams, let me illustrate it like this:

On Earth, we might think of Cosmic rays occurring at a common rate, let us say is five per second. [Just an arbitrary example rate. I don't know what the actual rate is.] Let's illustrate it below with the Earth on the left and five spread out dots coming from space that represents a second of 'c' [So the constant 'c' becomes a distance "cs" or lightsecond with five impacts of cosmic material:

)............................................. [One second]

Now to a person in a spacecraft accelerating in this same direction as the incoming rays, since the time that one would cover 'cs' is less and so it might appear like this from our relatively fixed position looking at this from the same vantage point:

)..............................................[One Second]

Note how in the same second with respect to our perspective, since the craft would actually travel further than 'cs', the actual quantity of cosmic rays hitting the craft moving in the direction away from the earth in the same time would be seven hits as opposed to five. In the next second this occurrence of cosmic ray hits would increase each second. It is these rays that create a better opportunity to damage here that would prove the difference AND that a fixed space actually exists. It is absurd to state that the present points of rays would 'opt' to slow down for the sake of the traveler as Einstein is suggesting about light. The error that Einstein makes is that the source of the light inside the spaceship is NOT the same source as those from without.

Notice too that the above illustration represents a time, not the distance "cs". It's just easier to draw it with the scale of time rather than distance to fit on this page. This logically PROVES that Einstein's interpretation is wrong. A person in the spacecraft would 'slow down' and to him or her, the cosmic radiation would actually appear to be accelerating even quicker than this illustration. That is, the seven rays would appear to be hitting the traveler from their perspective in less than a second. Or that the amount of rays hitting him would be more than seven in his second!

Note that the above suggests that if you took such an acceleration in an elevator, if you had a means to measure the cosmic radiation (maybe even a Geiger counter?) that you could determine whether you were accelerating in an elevator or accelerating due to gravity simply by measuring the radiation. It would increase exponentially if you were accelerating in a vector straight line but remain constant if it was just due to gravity!

Scott Mayers wrote:IF (you believe that 'space' has no meaning), THEN (you MUST accept that 'time' too has no meaning)

Why must I accept this? Everybody in physics agrees that time and space are mutually exclusive and cannot both be physically real. All I'm saying is that they've nailed their colours to the wrong mast by insisting that the passage of time is illusory. Time is physically real because it has physical properties and space is not physically real because it doesn't. What could be simpler than that?

Scott Mayers wrote: As a different analogy, you seem to believe that 'verbs' are all that is real where 'nouns' are not.

It's an odd way of putting it but yes. I see the world in terms of an ever-moving present, an eternal sequence of events occurring in time which we observe as objects moving in space. The objects (nouns) are like the shadows on the wall of Plato's Cave, mere ephemeral glimpses of a vanished past.
The Persian philosopher/mathematicians said it best.

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

From “The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam”

Scott Mayers wrote:the particular words being used to define things are merely arbitrary and relatively transcendent to their 'real' nature.

A straightforward Kantian position and surely completely uncontroversial. We name the objects of our cognition by inter-subjective consensus and not because the objects themselves mandate it. The dogginess of the dog is not intrinsic to the dog but to the observer of the dog who defines the behaviour of the matter and energy which encode for the dog in this way.

Scott Mayers wrote:The actual meaning of the words actually represent real things AND actions.

Bullshit. "Unicorn" is a real word with a real meaning but it doesn't relate to a real object in the physical world.

Scott Mayers wrote:You may also redefine these beginning with time but you'd still have to derive space upon it and accept that as real.

You haven't explained why the space needs to be physically real instead of as merely the property of the observer and the burden of explanation for this lies with you. Neuroscience is able to quite adequately explain how the brain structures in the lobes of the hippocampus encode for our 3 dimensional space. No doubt if they put their minds to it they could figure out how our minds can conjure unicorns into existence as well but that ain't going to make them physically real.

Scott Mayers wrote: I am saying that your perspective of believing that time is real AND space not so is conflicting because each is required to equally define the other.

In the consciousness certainly but in the physically real world not so. The problem of physics has always been about the observer and the a priori assumption of physics has always been that the observer is observer i the real world. Since the speed of light is finite this is transparently untrue. The observer is observing a hologram.

Scott Mayers wrote:While a person in a spacecraft may 'appear' to freeze in time as they accelerate, their actual increase in speeds through the background of space will likely cause irreparable damage that could be used to prove one's actual difference in frames. This is because if you move through a cloud of cosmic particles that are small enough to go through the ship, the rate at which you pass through them in accelerated speeds will have more occasion to strike you as opposed to being on Earth.

I'm not disputing any of this or what follows but why do you need the background? Surely the same argument holds if the motion is only in the time dimension? You've clearly given this a lot of thought but if you take Occam's chainsaw to what you're saying you should be able to see the entire picture unfold. Replace your spatial distances with time intervals and you can't help but see it.

Obvious Leo wrote:

Scott Mayers wrote:IF (you believe that 'space' has no meaning), THEN (you MUST accept that 'time' too has no meaning)

Why must I accept this? Everybody in physics agrees that time and space are mutually exclusive and cannot both be physically real. All I'm saying is that they've nailed their colours to the wrong mast by insisting that the passage of time is illusory. Time is physically real because it has physical properties and space is not physically real because it doesn't. What could be simpler than that?

While 'everybody' in physics may agree to whether time and space are mutually exclusive, I don't. But I also think that you're outside on this anyways. As far as anything I've learned, space and time are considered one at least mathematically since Einstein. [Space-time] But as for mathematical models, scientists may not assert certainty on this. I already know that a space and time combination is both a model and true from my own theory. But you couldn't begin to understand without the digression into logic and forms.

Obvious Leo wrote:

Scott Mayers wrote: As a different analogy, you seem to believe that 'verbs' are all that is real where 'nouns' are not.

It's an odd way of putting it but yes. I see the world in terms of an ever-moving present, an eternal sequence of events occurring in time which we observe as objects moving in space. The objects (nouns) are like the shadows on the wall of Plato's Cave, mere ephemeral glimpses of a vanished past.
The Persian philosopher/mathematicians said it best.

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

From “The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam”

Plato's cave analogy refers to any unknowns be they noun-like or verb-like. The point of that was to demonstrate that we could reasonably deduce some hidden truth indirectly at least to some degree. This was his means of supporting his extended discussion on 'Forms' universally knowing the particulars (contingent reality)[See Plato's Republic]. A modern use of this is from science educators who illustrate the idea of a fourth (or more) dimension via an analogy of paper two or one dimensions.

Obvious Leo wrote:

Scott Mayers wrote:the particular words being used to define things are merely arbitrary and relatively transcendent to their 'real' nature.

A straightforward Kantian position and surely completely uncontroversial. We name the objects of our cognition by inter-subjective consensus and not because the objects themselves mandate it. The dogginess of the dog is not intrinsic to the dog but to the observer of the dog who defines the behaviour of the matter and energy which encode for the dog in this way.

I hadn't really delved into Kant so cannot confirm or deny your interpretation. As to what you imply is his, though, again you are mistaking how the symbols (words) only act as pointers to the reality, similar to your own words..."mistaking the map for the territory". This is NOT what forms(formulas) are about. We may use the Arabic symbol, "2", to stand for a count or set of equal events, but this does not imply that anyone thinks that the symbol IS the definition. It means that the denoted realities are equivalently defined by the meaning of the definition as symbolized by the word only.

For instance, I can point to a group of three people and beg another to associate the word phrase, "group of people". I do this so that I hope that in such future conversation with someone that I don't require the actual group of people to be present in order to communicate what I mean. I can point to a different set or number of people, say five, and repeat the phrase, "group of people". These both exist as truths even though the actual people could later go there own ways dispersing the group. Then, I could define "group of people" as "any gathering of two or more people being referred to."

Obvious Leo wrote:

Scott Mayers wrote:The actual meaning of the words actually represent real things AND actions.

Bullshit. "Unicorn" is a real word with a real meaning but it doesn't relate to a real object in the physical world.

The idealism as I interpret and use it does not imply whether any defined meaning maps onto a reality; rather, any reality fits at least some map which coincides with its meaning one-to-one. The map models the reality as a symbol but the map is only a devise to redirect one's attention to the reality. A "unicorn" is often already presumed to be a symbol representing, "a mythical or non-real animal described as a horse-like animal with a spiral single horn." As such, this doesn't map onto a real animal, only the defined mythical one. There's no rule that says an idea cannot also be defined by other ideas, as a "unicorn" does.

Obvious Leo wrote:

Scott Mayers wrote:You may also redefine these beginning with time but you'd still have to derive space upon it and accept that as real.

You haven't explained why the space needs to be physically real instead of as merely the property of the observer and the burden of explanation for this lies with you. Neuroscience is able to quite adequately explain how the brain structures in the lobes of the hippocampus encode for our 3 dimensional space. No doubt if they put their minds to it they could figure out how our minds can conjure unicorns into existence as well but that ain't going to make them physically real.

Scott Mayers wrote: I am saying that your perspective of believing that time is real AND space not so is conflicting because each is required to equally define the other.

In the consciousness certainly but in the physically real world not so. The problem of physics has always been about the observer and the a priori assumption of physics has always been that the observer is observer i the real world. Since the speed of light is finite this is transparently untrue. The observer is observing a hologram.

I can only respond by saying that if you accept your senses as real, while you may not directly 'know' the objects out there, you infer them based upon the consistency you demand upon those sensations. You only question your senses if they behave inconsistently. But until then, this doesn't assure you that your senses are any more real -- you just default to assume such consistency unless its challenged. I already know that my senses consistently suggest a world out there because if it was merely all just a function of my some 'mind', I'd be able to access any part of my world upon will. Since I've experienced that I cannot, then this assures me that the sensations I experience represent actual objects out there. So even if my senses might not be accurate, they too act as symbols to refer to the reality outside of me, even without concerning myself with whether my interpretations of the particular objects are appropriately correct or not. I still 'know' they are real.

Hologram or not, my experience via my senses and thoughts are real, even if the brain misappropriates how I'm experiencing them. Even a hologram, like a hallucination, act as sufficient evidence of something 'causing' them. They may only be products of my brain, but that's not disproof of them as being real. It would only mean that my brain is in error of misrepresenting itself to me consciously. It is as if my girlfriend asks me where I was and I responded, "Outside with that group of people in the yard" but when she looks out the window, no one is there." [See the Pink Elephant? ]

Obvious Leo wrote:

Scott Mayers wrote:While a person in a spacecraft may 'appear' to freeze in time as they accelerate, their actual increase in speeds through the background of space will likely cause irreparable damage that could be used to prove one's actual difference in frames. This is because if you move through a cloud of cosmic particles that are small enough to go through the ship, the rate at which you pass through them in accelerated speeds will have more occasion to strike you as opposed to being on Earth.

I'm not disputing any of this or what follows but why do you need the background? Surely the same argument holds if the motion is only in the time dimension? You've clearly given this a lot of thought but if you take Occam's chainsaw to what you're saying you should be able to see the entire picture unfold. Replace your spatial distances with time intervals and you can't help but see it.

The background is absolutely essential like memory is needed to hold variables in computers. The general app programmer doesn't have to worry about where the memory addresses are located as the operating system does this for you. You just give declare a variable to exist and then give it a unique name. To a programmer, they don't have to directly point to exactly where the address for that variable is. But it would be an error if they assumed that no actual hardware memory exists that holds the variable. Even if one has no education in the architecture of the computer, they must infer that such memory locations exist as very real while not knowing what or where it may actually exist in the computer.