snowflake

My concerns are not anthropological. But it depends on your way of thinking. It's totally possible to have electronic devices attached to the neural network, in that case are we expanded to include those devices in ourselves? How far can this expansion be continued? For instance I might be neurally attached to a keyboard in another country. But even in that case it's possible to estimate the time delay between my decision on pressing a keyboard and the key's being pressed, which gives us a sense of locality. These time delays are still available without such an odd example in our usual actions. This might lead one to ask in what part of the brain the decisions are made. Which of course might entail an objection like "this isn't physics nor philosophy, but neuroscience" If someone wants to have a clear picture of the whole universe, that picture should necessarily contain mind(or brain).As long as wave function reduction upon facing with an observer(this terminology is rough) isn't totally resolved the observer's problem stays as an issue in physics.

We always deal with an observer in physics, implicit or otherwise. And this observer as we usually deal with is not of course considered to be the whole universe. Some quotes might make the point clear: A consistent physical interpretation of QM formalism can be given only if we divide the physical world into two parts: the system under study, represented by vectors and operators in a Hilbert space, and the observer placed in the rest of the world, for which a classical description must be used [Peres, 1977]. We must impose this 'cut' (Schnitt) dividing the world into two parts, or else QM will be simply meaningless [von Neumann, 1955]. The problem arises when we note that the observer is itself a part of the physical world and this scheme (usual QM) doesn't permit talking about the state of the whole world. I'm concerned that this issue is not a solved problem in current physics, and as it's pointed out, apparently the time has not arrived for the common thought to accept problems related to consciousness and alike arguable in areas other than philosophy or psychology or religion. The only reason I started this topic in physics forum was to check the above point. And I do accept your objection.

What are the boundaries of my existence? Where do I stand, in my head?! Isn't that a rough estimation as it gives us an accuracy of about some ten cms? From the current physical point of view the observer is dealt with as a local entity. An observer distinct from the observable traveling with a velocity or in case of usual quantum mechanics doing experiments reducing the state function. But all in all not much is said about the reality of the observer itself. And debates of the sort are usually avoided and considered unphysical. The problem exists though even if we keep ignoring it.

Well let me disagree with my first post. Change doesn't necessarily need spatial dimensions, as we can perceive the change in our feelings without a need for meter.

Might seem irrelevant but are there any clues that the poor animals are not conscious? I agree with you runlikell, a question of the sort "is it good or bad?" is not enough accurate to be logically debatable.

Thanks immortal for the great article, I finally read it. According to this article the whole space time is emergent not just time (or the geometric time as is said) and what exists is the fundamental time. But I have no idea what the fundamental time is and why we would presume its existence. It seems like a metaphysical assumption.

Of course we need our bodies to be aware of ourselves, in other words we need to be in order to feel "being". What is real? A first guess might be "possible to be experienced", in that case I am real as I can experience myself. But there is a presumed "I" in my sentence which is a flaw. And my definition of real is also not satisfactory as it implies reality might be different for individuals... Seems like we should make a distinction between the subjective notion of "I" and the objective experience of me which leads to dividing reality to subjective and objective compartments.

There have been lots of debates about time, but there are no certain logically consistent standpoints. (At least i haven't found one) The commonly accepted view is that of relativity which states time is a dimension very similar to three spatial dimensions, but there are some significant differences that should be considered: 1. We can't go back in time. 2. Time is a measure of change. There are no changes if we don't have the spatial dimensions, so the existence of time is depended upon the existence of spatial dimensions meanwhile they don't have such a dependence on time. I have heard of some saying time might be an emergent phenomenon which seems considerable to me for the above reasons. Haven't found much supporting material other than pure skepticism. Any related resources and comments would help.