💾 Archived View for tilde.team › ~smokey › logs › are-abstractions-real.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 17:26:46. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2022-07-16)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
This is an exerpt from a fractal fourm I am a part of. I thought the question and my reply were interesting enough to psudo-archive in gemini.
I had a discussion where this quote came up:
"If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_a_tree_falls_in_a_forest
Can something exist without being perceived? – e.g. "is sound only sound if a person hears it?" The most immediate philosophical topic that the riddle introduces involves the existence of the tree (and the sound it produces) outside of human perception. If no one is around to see, hear, touch or smell the tree, how could it be said to exist? What is it to say that it exists when such an existence is unknown?
And that made me wonder:
What about all those unrendered locations in the Mandelbrot-Set (or other fractals)? Do they exist? Have they existed since the beginning of our universe? And ultimately: Are we the render of a very specific location in the fractal universe and do all those locations we will never be able to reach (speed of light) actually exist or matter?
'''
Im very late to the party on this one but still want to get my two cents in. It more or less comes down to ones philosophical stance on the nature of abstraction and imagination. whether or not an imagined or discovered concept exist in some separate imaginary dimension waiting to be discovered or if it comes into existence at the exact moment someone thinks up the concept.
Is math invented or discovered? where do logic and physical laws come from and why do they exist the way they do? where do dreams come from and what is imagination? how do people create concepts in their minds that werent there before and possibly nowhere else in the universe? are thoughts unique to an individual, how so? does consciousness truly exist if it cant be measured or quantified or broken into subatomic particles?
im of the personal opinion (call me crazy) that there exist a 5th dimension parallel to space-time where all abstractions, intangible laws, ideas, dreams, fantasies, and ideological forms (the perfectly shaped tree, fern, apple, or person alla Platos world of forms), exist. all possibilities are realized, all natural laws exist, all forms are shaped, and all abstractions are present. The dimension of Imagination and infinite possibilities waiting to be discovered or realized in our reality. consciousness allows observers to tap into this abstract dimension as consciousness itself is not solely physical in nature, the brain may be compartmentalized, biochemicals may be fully charted, neuron structures completely understood, but generated consciousness, emotion and spirit itself is something purely metaphysical in nature which cannot be fully understood through a physical, mathematical, or logical lens. you cant examine love or anger or determination or creativity under a microscope or smash them into particles, only the physical chemicals that help generate them.
This line of thinking also calls into question the existence of a God of some sort needing to create forms and laws and possibilities, but many scientist and philosophers work around that by claiming something along the lines of infinite universes with varying degrees of physical laws and mathematics, some collapse in on themselves and only the ones that work out are the ones that generate consciousness that can observe itself. I dont want to say which camp im in and it really doesn't matter, that's something each person has to decide: whether a clock has to have a maker or if it can simply pop into existence without one.