EEG. What it is and its limitation

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Time is the measurement of motion.

Brant,

I understand time to be a part of reality that we measure.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

Time is the measurement of motion.

Brant,

I understand time to be a part of reality that we measure.

Michael

We use earth's rotation around the sun to make other times relative to that, such as how many days it takes Mars to go around the sun instead of Mar's days or the earth's rotation on its axis or the speed of light. It's all measurement.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

Space-time.

Space does not exist except that things exist and they occupy "space." Take away the things and "space" disappears. But all things--everything--must be taken away. So when Ba'al is saying "space" he is referring to things.

Time is the measurement of motion. There are various types of motion, hence times, but all things move. Again, motion also means things. Space-time is things-things.

--Brant

Not to my way of thinking. There is certainly space between things. Move the things farther apart and there is even more space between them. Space may contain matter if there happens to be a thing occupying that space but if there is no mass present then so called empty space is devoid of matter and is not a thing anymore than a thought is a thing of the mass type.

There are things which have no mass such as thoughts. But of course I may be wrong. Likewise one may talk about an argument which carries "weight" or not. Still I have never made sense out of the idea that space does not exist without matter. Where is this happening?

To contend that the universe is expanding meaning that the galaxies are moving farther and farther apart thereby "creating" space as they go is absurd. It contends that there was no space into which the galaxies move. The implication is that there must be matter and masses infinitely farther out to generate the space between the galaxies we know and the infinitely distant matter.

It was always inconceivable to me that there is such a wall somewhere out there beyond everything. Made of what? Not to mention nothing on the other side!

A is A

Inside space there is always something, no matter how much it (something, not space) is stretched. You can start with gravity. There is the radiation presumably left over from the Big Bang. When you find the edge of the universe let me know. There is really nothing there. However, to find the end or edge of the universe one must find the end of reality in all its respects, including gravity and radiation. People don't understand the miracle of existence. There is no miracle. Something has to exist. Nothing, true space, cannot exist.

--Brant

[tjohnson]

To see how closely related "space" and "time" are think about looking at light from a distant galaxy that's millions of lightyears away. We are looking at outer "space" and looking back in "time". Also, as Brant pointed out, we measure "time" often by observing dynamic spatial relations such as the rotation of the Earth on it's axis or orbit around the sun. Of course these are just intuitive ideas and the formal theory of space-time is not easily visualized.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

It's all measurement.

Brant,

Are you saying that if we don't measure it, it doesn't exist?

(There are those who will interpret your words to mean exactly this, so I am asking to be clear.)

Michael

[galtgulch]

Not to my way of thinking. There is certainly space between things. Move the things farther apart and there is even more space between them. Space may contain matter if there happens to be a thing occupying that space but if there is no mass present then so called empty space is devoid of matter and is not a thing anymore than a thought is a thing of the mass type.

There are things which have no mass such as thoughts. But of course I may be wrong. Likewise one may talk about an argument which carries "weight" or not. Still I have never made sense out of the idea that space does not exist without matter. Where is this happening?

Thoughts are motions of electrons through a semi-permeable membrane in the brain and various chemical reactions in the inter neuron gap. The motions and the reactions havbe energy which converts to mass by way of Einstein's well known equation. Thoughts are matter in motion. The particles in motion are electrons which have non zero rest mass.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Ba'al,

Your prose brings to mind the kind of nonsense which Hegel employed to impress others with the obscurity of his contentions.

"Thoughts are motions of electrons through a semi-permeable membrane in the brain and various chemical reactions in the inter neuron gap."

Please give us a link to the scientific study, peer reviewed which gives any credence to this assertion of yours!

As I mentioned above there is no point in talking with you because we are not trading in the same currency. You are just jumbling words together in a meaningless way. Your objective is not rational clarity but to annoy those of us who try to make sense because you know we are vulnerable to irrationality.

galt

[BaalChatzaf]

Thoughts are physical processes. They are mediated by matter in motion. Do you think they are some kind of magic?

Everything that exists is physical and subject to physical laws.

I have -seen- my thoughts on a PET scan display. It is all physical.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[galtgulch]

Thoughts are physical processes. They are mediated by matter in motion. Do you think they are some kind of magic?

Everything that exists is physical and subject to physical laws.

I have -seen- my thoughts on a PET scan display. It is all physical.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Ba'al,

We are going to have to be content to disagree on this issue.

I wonder if you took Bidinatto's recommendation to read Lee Child's thrillers or better still those of Vince Flynn?

I think you would really find Flynn's series, read chronologically, appealing because of your relish of a strong national defense to be euphemistic. Flynn has a character named Mitch Rapp who works behind the scenes, off the books, for the CIA, as an... wait for it...an assassin! Start with Term Limits.

I still believe that there is a difference between a thought and a stream of electrons or neurotransmitters landing on receptor sites. I do think that thoughts do not exist in a vacuum but only occur in human beings who have a functioning brain. Not everything that goes on in a human brain is dictated or caused by impulses entering the brain mediated by the nervous system from sensory receptors. In the same way not all actions or behaviors are reflexive.

Robert Efron M.D. published an article in a scientific journal* entitled The Conditioned Reflex: A Meaningless Concept which is worth reading about this issue. This article was recommended in The Objectivist Newsletter

*Perspectives in Biology and Medicine: Vol IX, No. 4.Summer 1966 Univ of Chicago Press

galt

Edited December 11, 2007 by galtgulch

[Brant Gaede]

It's all measurement.

Brant,

Are you saying that if we don't measure it, it doesn't exist?

(There are those who will interpret your words to mean exactly this, so I am asking to be clear.)

Michael

The measurement doesn't exist. The thing not measured does.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Brant,

I think we are on the same page. The measurement does exist, but not as thing. It exists as measurement of thing.

(Time being the thing.)

Right?

Michael

[tjohnson]

I still believe that there is a difference between a thought and a stream of electrons or neurotransmitters landing on receptor sites. I do think that thoughts do not exist in a vacuum but only occur in human beings who have a functioning brain. Not everything that goes on in a human brain is dictated or caused by impulses entering the brain mediated by the nervous system from sensory receptors. In the same way not all actions or behaviors are reflexive.

If I imagine a sunny beach on a tropical island it most definitely is some sort of neural activity that could ultimately be described in terms of electrons etc. but that has little to do with my "thought". My car can be reduced to components like the piston going up and down, explosions of air/gas mixture, torque conversion, etc. but that does not matter to me when I'm going to work, I just want it to get me there. The fact that are thoughts are constrained by physics has nothing to do with us learning how to use our thoughts to improve ourselves, as long as the brain is functioning normally physiologically. A person could be insane because of a neurological disorder and so their" thoughts" may be incorrectly formed due to physical constraints but barring that we are free to change our thought patterns by educational means if we so wish.

[Brant Gaede]

Brant,

I think we are on the same page. The measurement does exist, but not as thing. It exists as measurement of thing.

(Time being the thing.)

Right?

The motion of something is the thing. Time is the measurement.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Brant,

I hope your clock measures the same thing that my clock does. It seems to.

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

Brant,

I hope your clock measures the same thing that my clock does. It seems to.

Michael

This will not happen if the clocks are in motion with respect to each other. Time is not absolute. It is a function of motion.

Ba'al Chatzarf

[Brant Gaede]

Thoughts are physical processes. They are mediated by matter in motion. Do you think they are some kind of magic?

Everything that exists is physical and subject to physical laws.

I have -seen- my thoughts on a PET scan display. It is all physical.

If you saw my thoughts on this display could you tell me what I was thinking? Just curious.

--Brant

[BaalChatzaf]

Thoughts are physical processes. They are mediated by matter in motion. Do you think they are some kind of magic?

Everything that exists is physical and subject to physical laws.

I have -seen- my thoughts on a PET scan display. It is all physical.

If you saw my thoughts on this display could you tell me what I was thinking? Just curious.

--Brant

That is the problem right there. I cannot see anyone's thoughts but my own. If I saw a PET scan for someone else, all I would be able to -see- would be the lights on the display. If I were really a good analyst I could probably tell if you were doing a mathematical problem in your head or not (strong patterns in the pre-frontal lobe and temporal lobes) but I could not decode the details. No one can. Thoughts, in detail, are private. The only thing available intersubjectively are the external manifestations: language utterance (spoken or written), facial expression, body posture, even body-stink and sweat gleam. But some of these can be faked (its called acting or lying) so there is no sure fire way to know what someone is really thinking. But this is neither here nor there. Thinking is a physical process. It is the result of neural activity. It has no existence apart from electro-chemical processes in the brain.

To satisfy your curiosity, be assured that no one can know what you are thinking by using any kind of zillion dollar scanner. These machines can detect some of the neural doings of your brain (and mine) but they cannot decode them. There is no way for me to experience your thoughts, nor is there any way for you to experience mine. That would involve invasive procedures that would destroy the processes. Do not mistake the external manifestation of thought for the thought itself. The Word is not the Thing. The Map is not the Territory. The Description is not the thing described. The Symptom is not the Disease. You own your thoughts totally and completely. You cannot fully transmit the emotional non-verbal nuances completely because there is no precise language of emotions. You cannot give your thoughts away. All you can do is suggest and hint to others what you are thinking if you wish to. And you can keep your thoughts hidden if you wish to. Think of the well known "poker face". If you were playing Texas Double Down no machine in the cosmos could give away your hand in detail if it were scanning your brain. No verbal description of your hand is guaranteed to be a true description. That is why you have to show your hand to the others so they can see it too.

Ba'al Chatzaf