Searching for GOD...

[Stranger]

In order for the speed camera to determine velocity, the data obtained needs to be referenced to a datum which is not moving.

And a detector is something that compares the two. A fixed reference point is not a detector.

It is human conscious awareness acting within its own conscious "present" which is the essential means by which this data can be used to determine speed.

You seem to have mixed up your absurd analogy with your nonsensical claims.

The "present" is still totally meaningless no matter how often you repeat it. Something that is not subject to time is static, it can't act, it can't think, it can't interact, and it can't choose.

But it is our conscious awareness of change which allows us to choose how to react rather than react instinctively.

A choice is a change of state with respect to time.

[Gordon]

For example, you do not measure velocity of an object which is moving from another object which is also moving.  To consciously detect a change in state with respect to time, the conscious detector needs to be outside the time line, but aware of the time line.

So, let's say we have two parallel train tracks and on each track a train is travelling in the same direction, with one moving faster than the other. You're on the slow train travelling at 30mph as indicated on an accurate speedometer and the faster train passes you.

Are you saying that even if you had a radar device that could measure the increasing distance as the faster train proceeded passed you and a stopwatch you couldn't work out the faster train's speed relative to you and relative to the ground because you too are moving (and let us not forget the Earth still spins)?

[Alan Burns]

I can't believe I'm having to spend time (!) explaining why minds can't operate without changing over time. The idea of a mind outside of time is just ridiculous. You seem intent on digging yourself ever deeper into total absurdity.

Sorry if I am confusing you.
I find it a difficult concept to explain in words.
The concept is all about the "present".
To try to define the present in the physical world is impossible - as soon as you define it, it disappears into history.
The present only exists in your conscious awareness, where it is constant, and from where you are able to perceive the passing of time and changes in state with respect to time.  If your conscious awareness was itself a reaction, then the present would be just as elusive as it is outside conscious awareness.  Your conscious awareness must always remain in the present in order to perceive reality and not just react to it.

[Alan Burns]

So, let's say we have two parallel train tracks and on each track a train is travelling in the same direction, with one moving faster than the other. You're on the slow train travelling at 30mph as indicated on an accurate speedometer and the faster train passes you.

Are you saying that even if you had a radar device that could measure the increasing distance as the faster train proceeded passed you and a stopwatch you couldn't work out the faster train's speed relative to you and relative to the ground because you too are moving (and let us not forget the Earth still spins)?

You still need to work it out with respect to a baseline datum.  You will be utilising your own conscious awareness to process the data to determine the desired result.  It could not be done without your conscious ability to transpose the results with reference to a datum.

[torridon]

You still need to work it out with respect to a baseline datum.  You will be utilising your own conscious awareness to process the data to determine the desired result.  It could not be done without your conscious ability to transpose the results with reference to a datum.

Eerm, you don't need to be conscious to calculate a difference in speeds.  We can do this using insentient instrumentation.  You seem to be saying it is impossible because there is no such thing as a universal 'now'.  This is flawed on multiple levels.  Firstly that there is no universal 'now' means we cannot say what the objective speed is, but we can still say what the relative speed is. Secondly, we do not need consciousness to be able to measure speeds.  Consciousness is merely how sentient beings experience things, and that certainly is not some sort of objective universal 'now'.  It is just an apparent 'now' within the flow of experience.  And in fact, it is subject to time delay compared to simple insentient measuring devices like a speedometer, so it would be closer to the truth to regard your conscious 'now' as an actual 'then'.

[BeRational]

Sorry if I am confusing you.
I find it a difficult concept to explain in words.
The concept is all about the "present".
To try to define the present in the physical world is impossible - as soon as you define it, it disappears into history.
The present only exists in your conscious awareness, where it is constant, and from where you are able to perceive the passing of time and changes in state with respect to time.  If your conscious awareness was itself a reaction, then the present would be just as elusive as it is outside conscious awareness.  Your conscious awareness must always remain in the present in order to perceive reality and not just react to it.

How do you define the  present?

For example are your feet in the same present as your head?

Physics show that they differ in time.

When you look at your toes you are seeing them as they were a very short time ago, but the difference in time does not matter for day to day life.
This is also not something we experience and is counter intuitive but nevertheless seems true

[Gordon]

You still need to work it out with respect to a baseline datum.  You will be utilising your own conscious awareness to process the data to determine the desired result.  It could not be done without your conscious ability to transpose the results with reference to a datum.

Don't be silly: machines can do this sort of thing without reference to humans (conscious or otherwise).

[Stranger]

Sorry if I am confusing you.

I'm not confused.

I find it a difficult concept to explain in words.

Perhaps because what it actually means is "something utterly absurd that I made up so that I can pretend it gets me out of a logical problem I made for myself due to my blind faith in simplistic nonsense" but your subconscious mind is refusing to let you realise that?

The concept is all about the "present".
To try to define the present in the physical world is impossible - as soon as you define it, it disappears into history.

Now you seem now to be confusing the definition with the thing itself. The present is rather easy to define, it means "The period of time now occurring.", your problem is that it has no logical relevance because it is a period of time, not something that is separate from time. If we're going to be strict about the definition, it vanishes to a period of time of zero length and hence doesn't exist.

If there is some possibility that it means something to you that is logically significant, then you need to call it something else because "the present" has a meaning and it is logically irrelevant. To be clear: the word itself has a meaning but your pronouncements about it are gibberish because you are trying to make it into something that makes a logical difference.

The present only exists in your conscious awareness, where it is constant, and from where you are able to perceive the passing of time and changes in state with respect to time.

You can't perceive the passing of time without actually changing your state over time, because that's what perception involves. Hence the logic of systems within time applies to you.

If your conscious awareness was itself a reaction, then the present would be just as elusive as it is outside conscious awareness.  Your conscious awareness must always remain in the present in order to perceive reality and not just react to it.

Now we have the totally circular attempt at a definition. "The present" is defined as "that which excuses me from the solid logic I have no answer for".

[Alan Burns]

Don't be silly: machines can do this sort of thing without reference to humans (conscious or otherwise).

Machines are an extension of human creativity which has been enabled by our consciously driven freedom.

[Alan Burns]

Eerm, you don't need to be conscious to calculate a difference in speeds.  We can do this using insentient instrumentation.  You seem to be saying it is impossible because there is no such thing as a universal 'now'.  This is flawed on multiple levels.  Firstly that there is no universal 'now' means we cannot say what the objective speed is, but we can still say what the relative speed is. Secondly, we do not need consciousness to be able to measure speeds.  Consciousness is merely how sentient beings experience things, and that certainly is not some sort of objective universal 'now'.  It is just an apparent 'now' within the flow of experience.  And in fact, it is subject to time delay compared to simple insentient measuring devices like a speedometer, so it would be closer to the truth to regard your conscious 'now' as an actual 'then'.

Speedometers would not exist if humans did not experience the universal "now" from their conscious awareness of the parameters required to design and build them.

[Alan Burns]

You can't perceive the passing of time without actually changing your state over time, because that's what perception involves. Hence the logic of systems within time applies to you.

Conscious perception is not a reaction - it does not need to change state in order to perceive.  It is awareness of reaction - not the reaction itself.  Reactions do not perceive themselves - they can only induce other reactions.  Therein lies the mystery of conscious perception and why it will always elude any physical definition.

[torridon]

Machines are an extension of human creativity which has been enabled by our consciously driven freedom.

So what ?  That does not magically render your strange misunderstanding of relativity suddenly valid.

[torridon]

Speedometers would not exist if humans did not experience the universal "now" from their conscious awareness of the parameters required to design and build them.

Totally irrelevant.  Humans do not experience a universal 'now' because, as pointed out, such a thing does not exist.  All we experience is an apparent 'now', which might relate to a local 'now', but is a phenomenon of mind at the end of day.

[torridon]

Conscious perception is not a reaction - it does not need to change state in order to perceive.  It is awareness of reaction - not the reaction itself.  Reactions do not perceive themselves - they can only induce other reactions.  Therein lies the mystery of conscious perception and why it will always elude any physical definition.

I think you are trying to redefine perception to your private agenda again.  Perception that was unchanging would not be perception.  Perception is an ongoing process, what you are seeing and hearing now is different to what you saw and heard a moment ago.

[Stranger]

Conscious perception is not a reaction - it does not need to change state in order to perceive.

Don't be so silly. Something happens, you perceive it, it enters your conscious mind, therefore your conscious mind has changed its state from not perceiving it to perceiving it. I also note that you're studiously ignoring that fact that a ("free will") choice is a change of state from not having chosen to having made your choice.

It is awareness of reaction - not the reaction itself.

More silliness. Becoming aware of something is a reaction to it happening.

Reactions do not perceive themselves - they can only induce other reactions.

Assertion.

Therein lies the mystery of conscious perception and why it will always elude any physical definition.

Now the dishonesty. Nobody has asked you for a physical definition, just something that addresses the logical contradiction you've made for yourself.

Your mind cannot possibly function without changing state over time, it is therefore a deterministic system (and you couldn't have done differently) or it isn't (and it involves randomness).

[Alan Burns]

I think you are trying to redefine perception to your private agenda again.  Perception that was unchanging would not be perception.  Perception is an ongoing process, what you are seeing and hearing now is different to what you saw and heard a moment ago.

It is not conscious perception which changes.  It is what is being perceived which changes.

[torridon]

It is not conscious perception which changes.  It is what is being perceived which changes.

External change happens, and then that is reflected in your perception of said things.  I drop a boulder on my toe.  The boulder dropping is the external change, the sudden corresponding pain in my toe is the internal change in my perception that results.  It is a process, a continuous information stream.

[Enki]

It is not conscious perception which changes.  It is what is being perceived which changes.

Quite often our conscious perception of a work of art can change, for instance, when the work of art hasn't changed at all. This suggests that what has changed is our conscious perception. Indeed conscious perception seems to be the result of complex processes within the brain which can vary according to the brain state at any given moment.

[Sebastian Toe]

It is not conscious perception which changes.  It is what is being perceived which changes.

All anyone has to do is look at say the "two face  one vase" picture.
Sometimes you see two faces sometimes one vase.
The picture has not changed has it?
Your perception of it had changed, hadn't it?

[Alan Burns]

How do you define the  present?

It is where my conscious awareness exists, perceives and acts.

[BeRational]

Speedometers would not exist if humans did not experience the universal "now" from their conscious awareness of the parameters required to design and build them.

Surely you know there is no universal now?

[BeRational]

It is where my conscious awareness exists, perceives and acts.

Simplistic how it seems to be rather than finding out how things really are.

There is no universal now.

[Nearly Sane]

It is where my conscious awareness exists, perceives and acts.

Illogical gibberish. All of those statements deny the idea.

[Alan Burns]

Simplistic how it seems to be rather than finding out how things really are.

There is no universal now.

It is the only now I, or you, will ever know.

[Nearly Sane]

It is the only now I, or you, will ever know.

Idiotic pish