In the third dimension, we perceive time to be a straight line, beginning to end. In the fourth dimension, we would see ourself as an infant to one side, and deceased at the far opposite side. (Not a great way of explaining it I know I’m bad with words) So is it reasonable to think that everyone now and in the future are all already dead and the life we believe we are living is just a perception or a memory?
Perhaps it is (a perception or a memory). Perhaps we are dream character’s in God’s dream. Time may be only perception.
That is a good point. It’s a pretty scary thing to think about really. Kinda reminds me of that “what if everyone but me is not real”…there’s no way to prove otherwise. Neat stuff.
Damn it! He’s figured it out. Looks like were going to start disappearing now, one by one.
This idea was posed in Vonnegut’s book Slaughterhouse 5. The main character is abducted by aliens along with a porn star, to be kept in the alien zoo. These aliens perceive time in this manner, where they see all of their lives at once. As I stated in another thread, my #1 favorite book of all time. If you have a chance, and like satire and sci-fi, you cannot lose.
poof (Skeptic disappears)
Simple logic?
I think that all we are is consciousness - of ourselves - of all we experience around us - so consciousness is all there is.
There doesn’t seem to be any consciousness of the physical prior to the Big Bang.
Therefore the Big Bang was the creation of consciousness of the physical.
Make sense?
Then perhaps all matter is alive with a consciousness.
Trees don’t move, but we know they are alive. What about a rock?
Murex - I am conscious of the observed fact that trees move, they grow, they reproduce, they are alive - I am also conscious of the observed fact that rocks don’t seem to grow, reproduce or move. I am further conscious of the fact that both are made up of moving, vibrating atoms. I don’t understand your apparent linkage of consciousness to “being alive”
Trees don’t move in our short perception of time, but if you were able to watch a tree in fast forward, it would look as alive as any animal.
Growing, interacting with surroundings, stretching, reaching, and even battling other trees and plant life for necessary resources (light, water, nutrients). Same with rocks, magma, and minerals over an even longer period of time.
We are just more complex and move much faster. The earth is a living system in itself.
Delbolt, I like the way you are thinking. Can you give reason to believe such things? To me it sounds as if you are offering a notion or a desire for this to be this way. I would love to believe that consciousness will exist after the death of my body, but is there reason to believe this? What can you offer as far as explanation? (btw, welcome to ILP!)
Skeptic - I don’t want to re-post it here - it’s kind of long - if you go to my profile, go to all my posts, then to my last post to DaTa that will, I hope, answer your questions. In general I can say I share my reality. Thanks for the welcome!
All this rests on the idea that time is just another dimension. In relativity it is treated as such, but this could just be an approximation. The 2nd law of thermodynamics gives time a different ‘flavour’ to the 3 space dimensions. Mathematically, to our current understanding of physics, there is no concept of ‘now’ yet we experience a sense of ‘now’ continously. This would have to be totally imaginary if our current understanding of time, as the 4th dimension, were wholey true.
Rocks change too.
Again, this is a great thought, and is something that we can conceivably imagine, but what reason do we have to believe that consciousness spans beyond our human bodies?
Is there any evidence? This is science, so we must be able to test our postulations. Agreed? Maybe such an inference will always remain a question mark?
at least until we cease to be human. . .
I just took a sec to check out your post to DaTa:
I too have had many strange experiences with my own consciousness, that have been qualitatively different than my everyday experiences, but how do we know that is nothing more than imagination? Or in many of my cases, the enormous quantities of drugs I have taken. Could it all be delusion? How can we really know for sure? The scientific method has always been a platform for solid epistemology. Without the scientific method, I don’t trust experience.
If what we know of the fourth dimension is true, then wouldn’t it help to prove the existence of an after-life? If time isn’t in a straight line as we perceive it, then consciousness may not cease after we physically die. Just a thought
Not sure on that one. Are you saying even from a materialist non-dualist point of view an after life could exist?. Maybe if our preception of time changed when we died. So we would experience eternaty in a single moment and hence an afterlife, I guess I’m open to that idea. Although I can’t think of any physical conditions to allow for spacetime bending like that.
I like this discussion. Talk about consciousness and afterlife is interesting to me.
I’m with Delbolt and Skeptic in saying that consciousness is a facet of everything. All physical systems are really sensory representations of other experiences being had by the universe and being communicated to us by the universe. We don’t cease to be physical systems after we die, therefore our conscious experiencing of things will not end then. Instead, they will morph into new forms - we will become conscious of different things. It will be like experiencing a different world, one that we can’t possibly imagine given the current neurochemical configuration of our brains. Because our bodies go through decay and our molecules end up disperse back into nature, I think the experience will be like becoming one with the greater consciousness of the universe (or at least Earth).
I would have to think more about it. I don’t fully understand the fourth dimension idea but I’m gonna look into it. And yes, I suppose it could even make sense from a materialist’s point of view.
Gib - Exactly! - and I guess what I’m trying to say is that my experience is that it is possible while our bodies are still alive - like the poem “Samadhi” describes - to have a dual existance - the bliss of the physical world without fear and, at the same time to have the superconsciousness of the “All That Is” - like being aware of the smallest details of the Universe and still being able to touch my nose… Kind of cool.
Dimension four is non-spatial. You would ‘see’ only yourself, if it were possible to see at all. A photon is non-spatial and ‘sees’ a Universe so small it wonders how it could be. We are in the spatial, seeing a Universe so large that we wonder how it could be.
Because of our ‘speed’ we ‘see’ more of the Universe. Although we are dissipating, simply going through the cycle of all that exists. Our ‘matter’ will compress and wonder why the Universe is so dang small…
:o
Non-physical awareness is non-spatial awareness. All that is physical, or that moves, has a component in the non-spatial. Our ‘non-physical awareness’ as you put it, is truly non-spatial.
How much that is ‘in’ the non-spatial determines our speed, or matter.
The photon is ‘dipped’ in the non-spatial and the electron/photon relationship determines what that physicality truly is.
In other words, a human being is 99.9 % spatial and the rest is non-spatial. The complete opposite of the photon. This is why we do what we do.
If a photon could speak it would speak of physicality as humans speak of non-physicality.
The fourth dimension is not time, it is non-spatial, imparting time (or motion) to the rest of reality.