What is Real? Discussions with Ranga.

Thu, May 24, 2007 at 6:29 PM
Hi Ranga,I think we will have to take stock of where we are so that we may know what points we agree upon and on what points we don’t. I will summarize out conversation that way in the next couple of days. Just a couple of quick point here.

Even the postulate that AR is undifferentiated is weaking the original definition of AR. It comes because of our urge to explain it somehow. It could be manyfold more differentiated than our PR. Who knows? Or it may be “hoosbitted” (a new word, actually comes from Kannada – let me know if you are interested in the meaning:-) the nature of which nobody knows. Or it may be just our PR and nothing else!

Yes, what is “hoosbitted”? I also didn’t understand “differentiated” as you used it here.On the last point of it being just PR — we certainly know that there is more to reality than what we see. When we look at the night sky, what we are looking at is the way the universe was some time ago, not the way it is now.

Secondly, tactile, olfactory and auditory sensations although can be argued to be fundamentally based on EM (there are also non EM interactions here)

All interactions that we can sense are electromagnetic in nature. We sense either EM directly, or the effect of some other interaction on EM matter. Nothing else. What interactions/sense were you thinking about here?

Cognitive representation of space does not need language, and please don’t write that in your book 🙂

I do believe language (as in the philosophy of language — vehicle of thoughts, rather than just words) is a pre-requisite to reality. To the extent that space is a part of PR, yes, without language, you won’t have space. This is well-articulated by Helen Keller, who didn’t have a reality until she discovered language.

However, given a model, we can certainly verify whether it is consistent with our PR.

So, I have made my point about this, and I shall rest it. Whatever model you propose, you can neither verify nor falsify.

I beg to differ :-)I think we can do both. Verification through how well the predicted perception is indeed perceived. Falsification by the pr edition of features that are forbidden, that may be observed.

As talked about space is a representation of sight and other organs too. For the convenience of a study, you can choose to study one aspect and that is sight.

To me, what smell is to olfactory sense and what sound is to hearing is what space is to sight. I know you don’t agree with me on this, because touch sense seems to corroborate space. But that’s only because sight overwhelms touch. At least that’s my view; we may never see eye-to-eye on this one.

I have spent equal amount if not more of my time on this too, in writing something new every time, while you have been just repeating your book!

Fair enough. May be you should consider putting your thoughts as a cohesive whole and writing a book!

I don’t remember whether we have talked about observed superluminality?

Yes, superluminality has been observed in certain astrophysical objects. It is considered an optical illusion related to the angle of the object velocity wrt our line of sight. Will find some more info for you. (I thought superluminality was observed in an object called M87, but now when I search for M87 and Superluminality, I get only my writings! May be I have gone crazy and imagined the whole shit?? :-))
– cheers,
– Manoj

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