tar

Mike, Interesting that before you can knock down a row of dominoes, you have to set them up. It is not so automatic or likely that the dominoes will continue to fall if they are not set up just so and in sufficient number to continue the fall for a particular length of time. Reminds me of one of my favorite sayings. You can roll the dice as many times as you want, and you will just get 2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10, 11 and 12. You will never get a queen of hearts. For that you need a deck of cards. Regards, TAR

Fred, Point being that if a clock runs correctly it must be keeping time. If it is keeping something, there must be something there for it to keep. You indicate that change is important in noticing that time has passed. One thing having an effect on another. The cause and effect, one way sequence of events, is exactly what it is we are considering when we consider time. That thing has been sitting there for a long time. No change, just its atoms bouncing around, and it sitting there, for a long time. The Earth has turned, and traveled miles on its path around the Sun and Sun has continued its trek around the center of the Galaxy, and in comparison to its immediate surroundings, the thing has just sat there, for a long time. Cause and effect? Perhaps the relative lack of it, counts as well, when we talk of time. If you and I, and the lamp post, are experiencing the same moment, there must be something consistent which we are all experiencing. Regardless of how we are changing, what we just did, or what we are about to do or not do. Regards, TAR

Mike, As long as there are people who will be that guy or gal that takes responsibility, and cares, there will always be somebody there. Regards, TAR

Mike, If they are so smart they already know exactly where you are. However its probably unlikely they would be specifically focused on you. There are 9 billion other folk that they might care about as well. It is nice to imagine a personal relationship with the universe. It is true in certain ways, but cannot be true in others. Sort of a Sudoku puzzle, where you can figure a number by what it must be and by what it cannot be at the same time. Might have to do with my personal opinion of religion, that "God" or the universe, or the powers and reality that create our exiistence, are already available to all and everything, and NOBODY can hold a special key, unique and specific to them, that nobody else has access to. Such a thought as this, disallows such determinations as "only Jesus holds the key", or the "secret of the Vedas", or "til all the world is for Allah". The world is already by and for Allah, by definition, and no "personal" opinion changes are going change that. So if the advanced observers are so advanced, and have answered your questions when you asked them, then they of course would know your where-a-bouts. But, given only a finite number of advanced observers capable of hearing your question and swirling clouds in response, it raises one question, which raises another. Why you? Why would they answer you, and not everybody that asked. You may have lucked upon the particular formulae for asking the question, so that they would feel obligated to answer, but what are the chances of that? Seems, if they were in such a position of attentiveness and in such control of the flora and fauna, rocks and wind and waves of the place, as to create significant answers, then they would be doing this all the time, for everyone, and everything, and would not "wait" for a particular phrasing of a particular question, by any particular individual. By logic, they would be answering "everybody", "all the time", and one gets immediately back to religion and the concept that there is a heavenly father that has created us, cares for us, listens to our prayers, judges our thoughts and actions, and will accept our soul back into the master fold, when we die. I am not adverse to being welcomed back into the master fold, when I die. I sort of think it OK to consider we are already IN the master fold. The universe is already ours. We are already in and of it. It cannot disavow our existence. Even should we die, we will be remembered by our children and family, friends and workmates, and by the sentient beings that chance upon our works. And even the unthinking universe will be vibrated by the photons that spread like ripples on a pond, reflected out, from our visible self, while we are alive. And the thoughts and promises we have had and make, exist as well, and do not crumble to dust, as easily as our bodies will. So, IF these observers are observing, the question would be, what, substantially makes them different than us, and why would they care about Mike, and not equally about a salamander? And secondly, who is THEIR heavenly father. Regards, TAR

Fred Champion. There are certain things that can be understood, and then there are certain things that can only be understood over time. There are only a certain amount of concepts or modes or feelings or "thoughts" that one can have at once. To have other concepts than these, you have to have them over time. Some sequence, this, then that. You can not add two numbers together, unless you start with this number separate from the other, and then concieve of them together...a sequence, a situation, then another. I do not argue the fact that we have to sense, and store and remember and compare, to notice a change. But that does not mean the change did not occur independently of our noticing. A C note wafting through the air, is a particular frequency of vibration, that will hit our eardrum as such. A "timing" is embedded in the note. It reflects the vibration of the string on the guitar that was plucked, and it vibrated at that timing, and shook the air and our eardrum in a matching way. You cannot have a frequency unless something in happening over time. And you don't have to have the brain to pick the timing up. You could put a big horn with a needle at the end of it touching a rotating spiral groved peice of properly heated vinyl and the frequency will be recorded with no human brain involved. Sure one thing causes another, but it happens in a sequence of cause and effect, and here and now is the current condition of any place and everyplace in the universe you wish to choose. Take a star 3 lightyears from here. It is currently putting out photons that we will see in three years. We are currently seeing photons it put out 3 years ago. There are photons thusly "on the way" here. Tomorrow"s photons are just a light day away Its going to take those photons time to get here. Regardless of your noticing. Regards, TAR

Fred Champion, "A threshold is reached and exceeded, or not. If it is, we observe change and may impute time. If it is not, we do not observe change and there is nothing to impute as time." I don't think that is true. Time marches on, regardless of whether the rock is moving perceptably or not. It, the rock still weathers in the Sun and is eroded by wind and rain. The rock is still securely attached to an Earth that spins on its axis once every day, and travels around a Sun once a year that is in turn on a course around the center of Milky Way that it completes every however many million years. And the Milky Way is engaged in its dance around Andromeda and the both around the great attractor. The "time" that is evident in the universe needs no imputing. Its already marching along, quite independently of human thought. Regards, TAR

Ten oz, Perhaps we have already figured a way, as we have language. This is turn indicates that it cannot be only the inside of our own minds that we experience, since we are experiencing as well, what is inside somebody elses mind...through language. In the computer code example, there is a code, one thing standing for another. Only by agreement, and convention can the meaning of the code be known. There must be an analogy drawn, where one thing is standing for another, where a symbol stands for a something. If this is understood, this transform, by two parties, there can be common understanding, the meaning of the code can be known...but this requires two or more minds...that is language requires two or more minds, not to be concieved of, but for the meaning to be communicated OUTSIDE ones mind. Thusly for one to communicate meaning to the outside of ones mind, or to understand what somebody else means, there must be an outside party involved. If there is an outside party, then it all is NOT happening inside one's own mind, for the other party is, as well. Regards, TAR

Mike, I think perhaps your mention of near death experiences might be an indication of where you and I might be "at", you at 70 and I at 60, in regards to answering the question "what is it?". We are a little more "pressed for time" than a 30 year old would be, in arriving at a suitable answer. But I think it might be at the crux of the consideration "are we being observed by a higher life form" because the consideration offers the possibility of a "reader" of the book which is the life of TAR, and the U.S., and Western Civilization, and humankind, and life on Earth. And suggests that there might well be someone, other that us, that cares about the story. But, interestingly enough, even if there is nobody here, but us chickens, that is still 9 billion "observers", who care. Regards, TAR

Acme, So when you say cut in half you are wanting to put a rend in the "surface"? Oh, I was trying to imagine the thing as a solid, and split the crossection in half. In the simple moibus strip, you have to physically cut the paper or canvas, substantially cutting two sides at once, the up side and the downside. This made me consider the two sided strip as analogous to a beam, just very thin in one crossectional dimension. So you must define what you mean by cutting in half, so that we can attempt to visualize it. Are we cutting just the surface of Imatfaal's prism, as if it is paper, along the line of Janus' ball bearing, or are we to cut clean through the cross-sectional triangle? Regards, TAR

Imatfaal, The prism moibus is neat. I realized in recreating it in clay that I have done it before, with strips of clay triangular in cross section, just twisting the one end one side before joining. Just did it with a cross section of a square (four sided flexible beam) as well. In terms of slicing the triangular one in half, I would imagine cutting from the apex to the base would be appropriate but since there is that one side twist built into the figure, there seems to me would be an issue when you got back around to where you started, because the cross section cut you are executing would not line up with the one you began, as it would be 120 degrees off. What to do then? Regards, TAR You would have to keep cutting, go around again, find you where 240 off, go around again and "maybe" find at the end of your third round that the cuts would line up. Have no physical way to hope to execute that in clay, nor have any clue as to what you would wind up with, intuitive or not. Acme, Putting the strip and the prism in the same terms, I would say that the moibus strip is equivalent to the four sided beam, rotated two sides before joining. What you are calling a half twist. A full twist would be to turn the beam four sides, joining the original side with itself, or a complete 360 rotation. What you call a half twist would be a 180 degree or two side rotation. In Imatfaal's prism there is just a one side twist, or a 120 degree twist. If the two are to be considered in the same terms, his figure has executed a 1/3 twist, so I don't think the results of cutting it in half would be the same as cutting a figure in half that has undergone 1 and a half twists, as you project. I say this because 120 and 540 are not equivalent and the results of cutting in half, twists of these two different degrees are likely different. Regards TAR

Mike, So it seems Worthy is thinking "God" when you speak of higher intelligence. Seems a touchy subject we are dealing with here. I do not like Worthy's conclusions, although I like the flame and shadow analogy. And I am reluctant to go along with your higher intelligence idea, as well, as that it does not allow intelligences to be self sufficient. You do not consider the salamander an intelligent being. This is a human centric idea you seem to be holding, as if human intelligence is what intelligence is, and everything should be judged against it. Yet, you want a "higher" intelligence to be concerned with our existence, to be observing us, and deciding whether we are doing it right or wrong...like God/Allah/Brahman. An objective judge. Here I think is the weakness in your hopes that there is this advanced group watching us. If there were such a group, who would be observing them? It seems more likely to me, that the salamander is intelligent and alive, just in a different way than humans are intelligent and alive, as there is a difference between a diamond crystal and a hurricane. The beings that inhabited the lights that hovered over the power lines in PA when I was 18, had technology that I had never before witnessed, they could have been Americans in experimental vehicals, or Russians fueling up, or from some unknown race beneath our oceans or Earth's surface, or from some other planet in our solar system or from a planet circulating 'round a nearby star. But they were not "supreme" beings with the power to create the universe. And since they were not, they were subject to reality, the same as you and me and the salamander are. There is no reason to believe that they would be more concerned with how you are doing, than with what they are doing. Regards, TAR Being "in tune" with the universe is however something which is evidently a requirement for existence, so we can certainly entertain that thought.

Fred Champion, Well I think we are pretty much on the same page here, except for the time thing. Best I can do to express my notion of it is to tell a story. When I was 13 I heard that the light of a match (given oxygen) on a new moon could be seen from Earth. I struck a match on a clear dark starry night and held it to the universe, announcing my presence. I figure the light from that match is currently in a thin half sphere of a shell 47 lys from where the Solar system was that night. Cause it takes time for light to get from one place to another. In this, the light, although inanimate is subject to time and place as surely as a living creature is. If the universe is 13.8 billion years old, that means that every hydrogen atom in it has beaten its cycles for 13.8 billion years. Every hydrogen atom on the same beat...but space separating one from another causes the light to take some time to get from there to here. What seems to me is consistent and palpable about time, is the way the universe fits together, and each action has its reaction...every sequence with a consequence, and the universe has already done what it has done, except for the thing its going to do next. If it was already done, it creates the present with the consequences and it therefore cannot be undone. Time is in this manner, one way, fitting and certain and is a thing which ideas have little power over to manipulate in anyway. Regards, TAR

Janus, Made a string version of shape with the 12 diamonds we are talking about here. Then blew a balloon up, inside it and drew with marker on the balloon, dividing each diamond into 4 to get 48 sections, then divided each of those diamonds in quarters to make the 192 sections. (and then once more to make the 768 What was interesting was that the shield shape we got dividing each diamond into four, "stayed in the 120 degree corner. That is a diamond divided into 4 had two shield shapes a diamond divided into 16 had 2 shield shapes and the diamond with 64 sections had only two as well in the 120 degree corner. Led me to think that any continuing division would always have 24 of the sections shield shape, and the rest, exactly the same symetrical diamond shape. With enough divisions the 24 would become tiny areas, eight of them, analogous to the corners of a cube, and with enough divisions, just the imaginary "points" of the corners of cubes. Still seems to me we can make something of this way of dividing the cube, or the sphere. Any amount of pixels in that 12, 48, 192, 768 ... sequence could be used to define solid space around a point where each of the pixels minus the 24 shield shaped ones, were exactly the same size and shape, and in a definite, known position. Regards, TAR Thread recap. Take a cube. Cut off the corners to the midpoints of the edges and you have a cuboctahedron. Put the center point of twelve balls on the 12 vertices of a cuboctahedron and you have a close pack situation with 4 intersecting hexogonal plane orientations and a rather neat situation. Put a dot on a sphere in the exact location of each of the twelve balls an draw lines halfway between the points and you wind up with the twelve sections of the sphere or the dual of the cuboctahedron, the spherical rhombic dodecahedron, that Janus rendered so nicely. Draw the cube on the sphere and the sphere on the cube, using this scheme and you have the twelve sections of the sphere, all identical shapes with internal angles of 90 and 120 degrees. Regards, TAR

Fred Champion, I liked your Pi thought but I think I can not go all the way with you here, because there are many examples where things in reality seem to be more analog than digital. Like sine waves AND the flow of time and frequencies of sound and light and such. "That, by itself, is sufficient to convince me time is not experienced and thus is only a product of intellect." The thread topic tries to indicate that reality is only in ones mind. The world tries to tell us the exact opposite. I am not thinking that it is sensible to have to go fully one way or the other. The "middle way" might indeed be the best choice, so that one does not get too self important, nor feel too unimportant in the flow of things. It struck me one day about 10 years ago, that everybody I was around was experiencing the same now. I thought that very important to consider at the time, and it indicates to me, that time is indeed "something" that is occurring and structured in its happening, quite securely independent of a particular "intellect". Proof being, that great minds have come and gone, experienced a great number of moments, written and spoken about them, and have died, leaving those experiencial moments in your past, and mine, and the past of inanimate book upon whose pages the intellect's thoughts are written. Time proceeds on as one thing, to everybody and everything on the planet, regardless of what you think about it, or how much of it, you remember. We are all in the same moment, give or take the time it takes light or a radio signal to travel round the Earth. At 196,000 miles a second, considering a human moment is but 2 seconds or so, we all, pretty much, are experiencing the "same" moment. Your past is same as mine, your present the same as mine, and if the Moon would split in half (it being an inanimate object) we both would see it just about exactly when it occured, and the two moons would have begun to be two moons, at the same time as we experienced them becoming two moons. So time may be created by the acts of sense/storage/comparison/and recall, as those things take "time" to happen as the signals circulate about, but the thing is, everybody you are liable to talk to about it, is operating in the same manner, with the same equipment, and every human being that ever was has the same a priori intuitions of space and time. Everybody. So there is no way to, and no need to, "trump" the situation, and figure you have any way to be immune from time. Regards, TAR

Abstract ideawise I would like to add several components to the discussion. Banter. Friendship. Team Membership. Common goals. In the case of all these components, there is abstract idea, but always with human will and human judgment behind it, therefore always a component of a personal nature, that the relationship between the parties involved would wheigh greatly in the evaluation of the intent of an attack on or the defense of an idea. A year or so ago I visited the D-day memorial in Virginia. I cried. The allied powers had banded together and planned to get back onto the continent to defeat the axis powers. Powerful ideas of freedom and human rights against the Nazis' oppression and might. People fought and died for a common idea. There are some powerful ideas still at odds with each other in this world. There is NOT an objective, scientificly true idea, that everyone "should" hold. We have to hold the ideas we have, defend them, make them better, have them hold sway in the world, and defeat the ideas that are not so good, in our judgement. You cannot do that in some objectively true fashion. Not in one that trumps everybody, because it is only the everybody that is having the ideas in the first place. It cannot be only astrophysic experts, or brain surgeons, or billionaires, or European Heads of state, that hold and guard and mantain and improve upon the great ideas that have been in circulation on this planet for the last 4000 years. It cannot be only the top 3 percent of IQ that have and hold the ideas that humankind has. That would leave just about everybody idea free, which is absolute nonsense to consider. People tend to take sides. Sometimes with power, sometimes with sense, sometimes with reason, sometimes with ideals. But always with other people. And everybody protects their teamates and works for the good of the teams that they are members of. So if the question is, when does an attack on an idea become a personal attack, I would say, as soon as a word is spoken against the idea. Muslims place death sentences on people that speak against the ideas of Mohammed. That is certainly taking offense at the attack on the abstract idea, and considering it a personal attack, worthy of a fight to the death, in response. One is likely to defend their way of life against those who would like to take it away. So this thread question should be expanded to include the consideration of proper behavior within the family, and within various levels of objectivity, beyond the family. But not expanded so far as to pretend that there is an objectively pure stance one can take, that would remove the person from the thought. Regards, TAR

So, An association of a thought to a person, and that person to that thought is likely to occur during a conversation about a thought. Once a person promotes or defends a thought, thru an argument in its favor, or against its antithesis, he or she has "sided" with that thought, and invites others to take sides, one way or the other. Agreement with the person IS agreement with the thought and agreement with the thought is agreement with the person, in the context of the particular thought. Saying that a thought is wrong in this context is telling the person they are wrong in having the thought, and is automatically thusly a personal attack and people naturally and correctly take offense. Offense is an interesting word, in this context, because, in regards to defending yourself, and your idea, you take the offensive and strike back at the antithesis and its holders. And, my most insightful addition to this topic is that since ideas and words are inherently personal by definition, it is to be expected that people should and will take them personally, and thusly one should be careful and attentive at all times to not only what, but who they are defending or offending. And in terms of ad hominum attacks this means to not carry a grudge from one debate or discussion into another, based on settling a score with an individual, rather than based on discussing or debating the thread topic. <personal grievance with other member removed by moderator> Regards, TAR

PeterJ, Nicely put. I would like to add a little implication that presents itself, when the OP is considered. Which is sort of my point here, in general. If two people, both consider they are the only reality, they have just proved themselves wrong, by talking about it. I had a favorite joke while briefly a philosophy major in college, that I wanted to start a Sophists club. The OP suggests that one is just trapped in their own mind, in some sort of illusion, and that the whole thing is therefore a simulation of reality. I am thinking that this is a misappropriation of the perspectives that one is privy to, as a human. The particular mechanics of sense and perception and memory and thought are an enabling consideration of our awareness of the outside world. This is why I alway mention that our thoughts and perceptions are anolog representations of the outside world. So that the two are not unrelated, even though they are different in nature. The light that enters the eye, is real. It is a real representation or announcement or consequence of the electron that fell an energy level, and released a photon...over there...before...in an actual moment, in actual space. That we represent it, and symbolize it, and make this and that analogy in relation to it, means a great deal, and tells us about our abilities, and our common abilities, and not unimportantly, our ability to talk about it. It is obviously not one way or the other, but a thing that can only be understood by looking at it from both perspectives. As it is probably not possible to look at something from two perspectives at once, its probably best to alternate and accept the results of this alternation...over time. Sort of Zen-like a suggestion, but I think it important to allow not only oneself to have this capability of perspective shift, and to have this ability to put oneself in someone else shoes, but to allow another to have the same capability. And once you have allowed another this same ability, there is no question about the existence of this other, in a waking reality that is "outside" your mind. Regards, TAR

Fred Champion, Well speaking of metaphysics. From Kant: (found in Section III.---Of the pure Conceptions of the Understanding, or Categories, which is in a section called "Of the Transcendental Clue to the Discovery of all Pure Conceptions of the Understanding, which is in Book I:Analytic of Conceptions which is in the First Division(Transcendental Analytic) of the Part Second:Transcendental Logic, of the first 300 pages of Critique of Pure Reason, entitled TRANSCENTAL DOCTRINE OF ELEMENTS) "TABLE OF THE CATEGORIES. I. II Of Quantity Of Quality Unity. Reality. Plurality. Negation. Totality. Limitation. III Of Relation Of Inherence and Subsistence (substantia et accidens). Of Causality and Dependence (cause and effect). Of Community (reciprocity between the agent and patient). IV Of Modality Possibility.---Impossibility. Existence.---Non-existence. Necessity.---Contingence. These categories were Kants "improvements" on Aristotle's categories and they rather thouroughly cover what one can say about an object in general. Leading me to agree with the man, that you have your thing as it is, and then you have what you can think or say about it. Regards. TAR

Fred Champion, I also am cautious of getting sucked into the God thing. It is a thing so obvious to me, that we are in and of a greater thing, that one cannot either own it solely, nor "get it", in a manner that trumps another's take. As soon as it is identified as a solely owned or associated with personality, everybody else knows its lunacy, except for everybody else that feels likewise associated. But this, to me, validates a dual understanding of the place, and of oneself. Any fear that one might have of being a simulation is erased with the knowledge that the place itself would then have to be a simulation, which it can not be, since its the place we consider real and judge simulations against, in the first place. So the ghost in the machine supposes that the machine is false and the ghost is true. All or nothing? One or the other? So much more valid and understandable to take it, in the dual way it presents itself to us. The ghost can not exist without the machine to house it, the machine cannot move without the ghost to desire it. That we are in and of the thing. Already. I promised God that I would keep his secret, when I was 13. I have been an Atheist since college. I engage the thought of "others", anytime I fear that I am the "only" consciousness there is. There is obviously more than one. Has been for 13.8 billion years, and will be for more time to come, than one can reach. We are far from and thusly insulated from either the beginning or the end, so do not have to worry about unity leaving us with nothing to do. Non-duality is simply not evident. Non-duality would imply a statis, an end, a completion, that the universe is presently not in any condition to entertain. And if the universe need not fear having nothing to do next, a little peice and part of it, like a human, or any entity that has grabbed life and form and structure and pattern from such a universe, that is otherwise headed toward entropy, need not fear having nothing to do with the place. And any entity is thusly a victory of its own doing and is thusly not a simulation, but a real thing, that can get no realer. A conscious being is real. And exists in a real place. The pattern exists and the pattern is manifest. So it is not just you, experiencing your own mind as KenBrace suggests. I know this, because there is me. Regards, TAR

Fred Champion, Ok. I can go along with that. But such "focus" or awareness is to me more of a precondition than an a priori intuition. I suppose you could look at it like "I" is basic. But than you could go one better and claim "life" is basic. Without life, there would be no "I" in your take, and no sense and memory, prediction and thought, and nothing with which to understand and nothing in particular to judge, in mine. So, to the second part of the thread topic, it seems evident that one must be, on several levels the object of their own subjectivity. You don't have any equipment, other than the equipment you have, with which to experience and judge the world. But to the first part of the thread topic, the statement that this "I"ness should be proof of "non-duality", I say that it absolutely does not, because sensing light, requires that there be something called light, that is NOT part of the "I"ness to begin with. While there may be a bottom line, all inclusive argument, that non-duality implies oneness, and I may have to agree, that on some level, since there is only one universe, it "could" be considered this way, there is more evidence that a "severalness" is required for the universe to be. That is, there has to be a subject and an object. A thing as it is, and something to notice. An outside world, and the way we understand it to be. Regards, TAR Whether you are the subject of your own objectivity or the object of your own subjectivity, you are still aware of the dual nature of the thing. A concious being is a conscious being and NOT a simulation. You cannot simulate consciousness. Where would the "I" come from?

Fred Champion, Well as far as a priori intuitions go, Kant explains his reasoning rather well. It is hard for me, having read the first part of Critique of Pure Reason, to even come close to considering his take "incorrect". As far as "I" being the first thing a child experiences, I don't know that that is so obvious and plain as you make it out to be. After all a child's first experiences are actually before birth, when they are actually connected by blood and vessel to the mom. Plus, a child is usually pretty attached to mom and dad or care giver for the first years of life. Hardly ready to announce their independence. Plus there are developements, like having the ability to put yourself in someone elses shoes, that don't really occur until we are three or four. I think we probably "learn" about "I" same way as we learn everything else, by experience, and trial and error, and attempting to make coherent sense out of what we sense. Were I will agree with you, is that a body/brain/heart group, as is found in an instance of a human organism, is a "focal" point, that is at a particular place, at a particular time. But then we are back to being aware of here and now, which is what Kant said in the first place. In any case, I don't think you can contruct a good argument to place such a synthesised idea as "I", on the same a priori intuition level as the understanding of space and time. Regards, TAR

Dear Nicotine, We have had a good run, You have been there to provide completion when I sensed no end, you calmed, you satisfied, you moderated, you pleasured me in that general way you do. I want to still be with you from time to time, I touch my pocket, when my mind gets going on a subject, to check for you, to get that "interim" satisfaction, that you give. But, you are no good for me. You cost too much. You stink. You hurt my lungs. You mask and mimick real joy, real pleasure, real completion, real victory. I don't want to see you anymore. Its over. I have moved on. Love Tom

Deepak Kapur , "How do we know its a wave and not something else?" Interesting that light has been choosen as an example of something that should indicate to us the non-dual nature of reality. Seems a bad choice of objects to choose to argue for non duality. It being both wave and particle. But the obvious dual nature of light aside, if it were "something else" it would still do the things we say it does, when you saw it coming from the Sun and I saw it coming from the Sun and we chose to call it "something else" we could and would still say the same things about it, that we said, while we were considering it a wave. That is it would still have the characteristics of a wave in all those ways that it is like a wave. In parsing these things, like "how do we know?" I find Kant's take very useful. In Critique of Pure Reason he establishes that there are two intuitions that we have, that of time, and that of space, that can not be broken down into simpler, more basic, components of "understanding". That is, "how do we know". He builds logically up from these two, and establishes his table of categories of thought, along side his table of judgements. That is, how do we put the ideas or understanding we have of time and space together, to understand objects and say something about them to ourselves, and to others. His critique addresses your concerns and suggests that we cannot know the thing as it is, but we can say a great deal about it. It is these predicates that we use to describe objects in general...all the things we can say about an object in general, are categorized into areas of quantity, quality, relation and mode. So, bottom line, in terms of "how do we know its a wave?", we know because we can assign all the predicates we assign to a wave, to it. It is therefore a wave. If it were "something else" we would not call it a wave. We would call it a gabundafink and it would not have enough characteristics of a wave for us to call it a wave. Regards, TAR In terms of "other levels of reality", I would ask you the question, "If it has no relationship to here and now, why would you care?" and I would say "If it did have some relationship to here and now it would not be "another" level of reality", it would be an aspect of this one, and that would be something you could say about "this" reality. Which, is, by the way, by my count, the only one we have. Its very big, and very long lived, but there appears to be only the one we all refer to, and say stuff about. Only the one we have emerged from, and only the one that will continue after our deaths.

KenBrace, But once you make the realization that what you are experiencing is an analog model of the thing, the thing itself is thusly established. So you knew at first you were experiencing an outside thing, that you were in and of the world. Then you made the realization that you have interalized the entire universe so that you could predict and plan your movements through it , and your manipulation of it. That you have to have a model of it, internally, that matches in an analog fashion, the actual thing. You put it on the outside of your body/brain/heart group, because you also have a model of your body/brain/heart group, within your model of the thing. Once you sort the whole thing out, logically, you realize that your model is indeed correct. You are in and of the thing. For real. It is absolutely a model, and it is absolutely a correct model. You are thusly in and of the thing, and you know it is no simulation. What is difficult is to realize that the "simulation" is the way we percieve the world, and it is absolutely real and actual that we hold a model of the universe within the folds and chemicals and signals of our brains. There are not actual super novas happening in our brains, when we think of a supernova, but when a supernova actually does happen, the model of it is clear and plain to us, it has a position and distance and size that is understood within the model. While I have had many an argument with folk on this board, about what is happening in the model and what is happening actually, and the "difficulties" in shifting from one to the other and carrying all the analogies properly through, it is important to me that one maintain a dual understanding of the world, so that one can shift appropriately between the actual and the model. So that one can dream and plan in effective and useful ways, and so that one can enjoy experiencing the place in concert with the other 8 billion modelers of the place. Regards, TAR

KenBrace, "When your eyes pick up light" Well here, I think you have your answer. There was light, for your eyes to pick up. That establishes a reality that we can then build an analog version of, within our brains. While it is very true, that that first image a baby sees is a double image, upside down and backward, the baby "learns" which way is up, and how to merge the images into a useful representation of the world. I would say that a good deal of what we sense and remember, think about and predict, has direct analogies to actual real stuff. There are many instances of things, that you think about, that are in your model of the the world, within your brain, that are also within my model of the world, within my brain, because they are actual, and not creations of our brains, but common images, caused by the same real events and objects, being sensed and remembered in the same analogous fashion, from your perspective, and from mine. So, it has to be Dual. There is the thing as it is, and then there is what we can think about it/ say about it. You would not suggest there is no Sun or Moon or Earth, or Russia or Europe or North Korea. You would not suggest there is no such real things as a mother and father, sister or brother, workmate, schoolmate. fellow citizen, lover or friend. These things are not illusion, simply because we hold an analog model of them in the chemicals and arrangement of signals within our body/brain/heart group. The fact that we all hold the SAME model in so many aspects of it, proves the thing as it is, is. "When your eyes pick up light", there was light to be picked up. As to telling the difference between dream and reality, I have a simple test. If you can make up the rules and put things together with no consequence, then its a dream. If the thing you see or the thing you do has consequences, and effects things in a permanent fashion, then you are awake, and it is real. For instance, clouds do not have zippers. Once I solved a knotty problem in my dreams, and while rehearsing the solution I had come to, once I had awakened, I realized the solution was not actually fitting to reality, as that clouds do not have zippers. If we were to give all clouds zippers, then perhaps my solution might have worked. Do not tell me you have any problem separating what portions of that statement belong in dream world langauge, and what portions belong to the waking world. Since you can easily tell the difference, don't pretend you can't. Regards, TAR So, even if you are experiencing the inside of your own mind, since an analog representation of the outside world is folded up in and amoungst your brain, then you are as well, experiencing the outside world, through your experience of your own mind...hence the dual nature of reality. Both the thing as it is, and what you can think or say about it.