What do we know?

[molendijk]

If time is non-finite, 'In the beginning, God created ...' cannot be true, because there's no beginning if time is non-finite.
If time is non-finite, the Big Bang (if there was one) cannot be the origin of everything, because if time is non-finite there must have been something before the Bing Bag.
If, on the other hand, time is finite, there must have been an (uninvestigable?) 'non-time' before time came into being. Is that what we call 'God' (or 'Allah', if you like)? Is God / Allah non-time?
Anyhow, there's a limit to what science can investigate, since if time is non-finite, science can never study the whole lot, and if time is finite, science can only study what's related to time, not what's related to non-time. (Non-time has no boundaries, I guess).
This all boils down to my conviction that we know nothing. So we cannot be a theist. But we cannot be a non-theist either (like Dawkins).
I think both theists ('believers') and atheists are too much convinced of a reality that cannot be grasped. (Mental concretizations of what you cannot know are just fairy tales).
Just some thoughts before going to dream time (= sleep).
Amen,
Arie.

[djr33]

Is perception nothing?

[traq]

Is perception nothing?

I'm not going to answer that.

[molendijk]

Is perception nothing?
That's something, because their must be a perceiver.

I'm not going to answer that.
Why not, Adrian?
---
Both of you must be thinking of something I don't understand.
Btw, had a good dream time.
Arie.

[djr33]

My point was a little more complicated than that. If you ignore perception then these questions of nonfiniteness are relevant. If you do consider perception, then they are not. A simple case is like asking what was "before time" if there is indeed some starting point (not that it doesn't need to be unbounded at both ends to be infinite anyway). But if we only perceive within time, then asking a question is perhaps unfounded logically-- your reasoning, language (=question), answer and understanding are all within that bounded perception of the greater phenomenon.

So perhaps you could prove that god does not exist (it seems logical to me, for example in that god apparently exists beyond time) but then that really proves nothing because your argument is within your perception and so forth.

Let us imagine for a moment that we solve all of these things and, let's suppose, we find that time doesn't exist linearly, but rather simply as a dimension (as I've heard string theory explained for example). But then what is the point of saying that if we do perceive time in a linear way? Is it "true" that time is linear? Who knows. A lot of this ends up relating to the idea of truth, which is a lot more difficult to work out than you might think. It's something I've been looking into for questions of semantics and the philosophy of language.


Anyway, I'm not sure what practical gain there is to asking the questions, at least without presupposing some context/purpose.

Personally I find knowledge useful and important, perhaps circularly because I believe that to be the case. I also seem to run into the paradox of knowing more and realizing I know less. But that's how it works, I suppose.

(As for traq, I don't blame him. I can't really answer these things myself. And as I said, I'm not sure what the productive result would be.)

[molendijk]

I see what you mean, Daniel, but I don't think we need the notion of perception in order to make statements like the one I formulated. There's a difference between wanting to have answers to certain questions with the help of perception and 'stating' (with the help of some reasoning) that you will never (all) the answers.
As for the usefulness of knowledge, I competely agree. We should try to know everything that is 'knowable'.
Btw, could there be anything outside/beyond time if time were non-finite?
Arie.

[bernie1227]

God / Allah

Allah is the Arabic word for God.

[djr33]

That's true, it's a literal translation, not a contrastive concept. (Religiously, sure, but "god" can be used for Zeus and so forth as well.)

---

I see what you mean, Daniel, but I don't think we need the notion of perception in order to make statements like the one I formulated. There's a difference between wanting to have answers to certain questions with the help of perception and 'stating' (with the help of some reasoning) that you will never (all) the answers.
As for the usefulness of knowledge, I competely agree. We should try to know everything that is 'knowable'.
Btw, could there be anything outside/beyond time if time were non-finite?
Arie. All of those concepts are defined within perception (or "consciousness" if you prefer). "Everything" and "knowable" are, I think. Even metaphysically, it's hard to know what you would mean beyond our awareness.
In answer to your last question, sure, why not? What actually creates boundaries there? And isn't it conceivable, metaphysically, that there is always something beyond everything else, infinitely/recursively? Certainly if you allow things like "non-time" or "non-space".


So if we focus on your idea of "knowable knowledge" then that seems completely compatible with what I said, no?

[jscheuer1]

As for science, why not? I don't see it as limited by time/non-time. If experiments can be devised, a thing can be knowable. The Taoists I think believe that the 'time' and nothingness before time was the Tao and from it arose the the "ten thousand things". That's the closest theological parallel to the Big Bang I've ever come across.

In science the telescope is a time machine. The farther away from us we can see, the farther back in time those events happened. We may one day even be able to see back to the Big Bang, we're already pretty close to that, but never before it. But there must be other means, theory and experiment, perhaps using colliders. I've often thought the Big Bang might be the other side of a black hole. I mean all that junk has to go somewhere, or not, it just accretes. But at some point everything would be there and time would stop. Then what happens? It's also widely held that the universe is expanding. At what point does that reverse or what happens when there's nothing close enough to anything else to matter? Time slows as you approach a black hole. Does that mean time is speeding up as the universe expands?

As for the perceiver, you are it. You have your senses (the traditional ones) and your imagination, perhaps other means. You can perceive virtually anything and thereby know it.

But I pretty much agree with Arie. We don't know, not yet, may never. We choose to believe based upon the evidence we're willing to accept, which is incomplete and/or an article of faith. So I suppose one could have faith while at the same time one is secure in the knowledge that one does not know. A sort of born again agnostic who has a personal relationship with God whom he doesn't fully know and cannot prove. They don't send folks round door to door, you can believe that, but perhaps they should.

[djr33]

It's also widely held that the universe is expanding. At what point does that reverse or what happens when there's nothing close enough to anything else to matter? Time slows as you approach a black hole. Does that mean time is speeding up as the universe expands?There's another possibility here. The big bang was faster than current change in the universe, but the direction of time and movement is constant. Thus there is no "beginning" of the big bang, but it has been happening forever, infinitely. However, the rate of change (perhaps as you said even affecting our perception of time itself) is not constant and therefore gives the impression that the big bang is in itself a beginning, but in reality it's just another part of the same continuum we're in now. (There may be another "end" that we could call something like the "slow fade" where matter and time cease to function normally and things like atomic bonds start to break down-- as the universe continues to expand. But that as well would not be actually finite in length (although it would be slower than the big bang). Whether there is then some cyclic nature to all of it is uncertain, but irrelevant to our perception of time and whether it's relatively "fast" or "slow" at any point.)

There may be some effect of something vs. nothing -- that at some point early in (='at the beginning of') the big bang there was not enough space between matter for a relevant "something" to exist; and that after the subatomic bonds fail there will be "nothing" to talk about -- and thus within perception and relevance there will be a beginning and end. But that entirely depends on our definition (perceptual/cognitive) of "something" vs "nothing".



If experiments can be devised, a thing can be knowable.Only to the extent that we know the result of such an experiment is such a result. The rest is inference. "Knowable" in any grander sense (for example, whether time "exists") doesn't fit within such a paradigm.


(Note: I run experiments as part of my research and I support the idea of research/experimental methods. That doesn't change the limitations in terms of this kind of question, though.)

[molendijk]

And isn't it conceivable, metaphysically, that there is always something beyond everything else, infinitely/recursively? Certainly if you allow things like "non-time" or "non-space".
Yes, even without concepts like "non-time" and "non-space" (which, by the way, I cannot see as existing independently of each other).
And that's why I think we'll never know (everything).

[jscheuer1]

I like the idea of the Big Bang continuing to this moment and reaching forever in both directions of time.

I wonder about the expanding universe. It's a little like predicting the weather. They thought they had it right at least once before, and discovered they were wrong. I think it's several times revising the speed and acceleration of what has been called an expanding or contracting universe until the latest theory where they seem to have settled on a constantly expanding universe that eventually dies because nothing is close enough to anything else and all energy is lost to entropy. Pretty dismal if you ask me.

I guess we won't be around for any of that anyway. It would be so cool to KNOW though.

[djr33]

Pretty dismal if you ask me.

I guess we won't be around for any of that anyway. It would be so cool to KNOW though. I agree. There are other similar things if you look at such a wide scale. The sun burning out is one example. Another was something I experienced at a museum on the Galapagos Islands-- they explained that in about 2 million years all of the islands would be underwater because as the tectonic plates shift, that part of the ocean floor (and the islands attached to it) is very slowly sinking to the point that in about 2 million years there will no longer be any islands there.

[molendijk]

I like the idea of the Big Bang continuing to this moment and reaching forever in both directions of time.
Me too. But what I'm most interested in is the question INTO WHAT (http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=kV33t8U6w28) (click!) the universe is expanding.

[djr33]

Hm. That's a cool video.

Note that it opens with basically the same explanation I had-- we're within the universe so everything we know and can know is within our perception (within the universe).

As for what it's expanding into, it's explained there-- either something we can't ever know, or not into anything at all. It's interesting to think about, but it's still hard to see it as a productive (answerable) question.

[molendijk]

As for what it's expanding into, it's explained there-- either something we can't ever know, or not into anything at all. It's interesting to think about, but it's still hard to see it as a productive (answerable) question.
That's exactly why the question excites me. The mere thought that there is something we will never know has mystic dimensions. In a very strange but absolute way, that gives me a feeling of great security (ever since I was very young). For me, it has a 'grandeur' that is absent in any religion. (Religions always somehow simplify things and take away the 'grandeur').
Arie.

[djr33]

Ironically, it sounds to me like you've found something to have faith in. (Faith = believing in something despite the fact that it is logically impossible to know the facts about it)

[molendijk]

Ironically, it sounds to me like you've found something to have faith in. (Faith = believing in something despite the fact that it is logically impossible to know the facts about it)
Yes, very true. (In all other respects, I'm quite normal, ha!).
Despite the fact that I love logic / reasoning, that my job has always been to teach formal logics to students (within the field of linguistics), that I base my practical-life-decisions on the 'head' rather than on the 'instinct' (if that's possible), that I hate 'New Age' and that I don't trust 'convictions' that just come out of 'feelings', I allow myself to behave in a non-logical way as soon as metaphysics enter the scene, because there our human logic fails.
And yes, I have been quite happy ever since the moment I realized you cannot 'know'. No need for searching anymore. But of course, that's only my personal truth.
Well, this is getting too heavy perhaps.

[jscheuer1]

It may be irony, after all isn't it said that if God doesn't exist we would have to invent him?

But I think this is different. It is awe inspiring. Even though it's unknowable, it's also undeniable.

Arie, I agree with you, most religions as presented to the world are kind of dry compared to an unknowable undeniable reality. But I'm not sure how deeply you've looked into the various religions. They almost all have one or more mystical components. The Jewish religion has Cabala, the Christians have their Gnostics, Islam has Sufism, Hindus have their Yogis, Buddhists have Zen masters. I'm sure that any other religion that's been around for a while has something of the sort. All of these apparently claim there's real mystical knowledge of both the self and the universe that can be apprehended via their various practices and studies.

[molendijk]

It may be irony, after all isn't it said that if God doesn't exist we would have to invent him?
But I think this is different. It is awe inspiring. Even though it's unknowable, it's also undeniable.
Arie, I agree with you, most religions as presented to the world are kind of dry compared to an unknowable undeniable reality. But I'm not sure how deeply you've looked into the various religions. They almost all have one or more mystical components.
I know. You're right. When I said 'religion', I was referring to the official versions of the various religions. But I think even the goal of their mystical components is/was to obtain truth. I don't want to obtain anything. But then again, that's also truth in a way. I think we mean the same.
Arie.