Science tells us matter doesn't exist

reply to post by argentus


I never said anything about nothingness.

I said that matter doesn't exist absent our perception.

This is what science shows us based on things like the double slit experiment and black hole entropy.

I just want the scientific evidence that matter has an objective existence absent observation.

This should be easy to prove for materialist.

reply to post by platosallegory


I think you're floundering a bit. Again, the double-slit experiment was conclusive in demonstrating particle/wave duality. Really has nothing to do with matter.

What you are adament about stating...... science doesn't say that. You say that, and that's fine. I have given you my side of the picture, and we have had a good conversation, a philosophical conversation, but one that hasn't involved science at all.

I understand your point of view, and, within a philosophical view, can even agree. I think you go astray when you attempt to pose your thread point-of-view as being backed by "science", which, incidentally, doesn't assert anything; people say things. Science is a meld of art and mathematics.

I knew I had a chink in the armor when you stated that my first sentence "proved" your POV. It's been fun. Hope to enjoy future discussions with you.

Cheers

What I find most intresting is the double slit test. What that seems to imply is that once something is viewed it changes. It also shows that the foundation for existence is knowledge and intelligence. The mere act of observing caused the reaction to change, and since light goes into the eye and not out, the experiment should not have changed unless it had some degree of reaction to thought.

reply to post by Fromabove


That's the 'Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle'.

Notice, it is called a 'principle'. NOT a theory, yet. It is observed. It is still in the stages of being understood. The observations are undeniable, repeatable. THIS is the process of science.....

The LHC, and other 'super-colliders', dwelve into the mysterious world of the very small....seeking knowledge. I guess you could say that these scientists, et al, are 'denying ignorance'....

reply to post by argentus


There's nothing philosophical about this.

I understand why some would want to make it a matter of philosophy because they don't have any evidence that matter exists absent observation.

Again, this does prove my point. If you can't show that matter exists then materialism falls down the tube.

This should be easy for materialist. Their always asking for proof about God or the paranormal but they have no proof that matter exists.

Again, this is not philosophy but scientific. There's no scientific experiment that shows that matter exists absent observation. It's just a huge assumption and a leap of faith.

The double slit experiment is important because it shows that observation can influence the outcome of an event. We also see this in the delayed choice experiment.

Black Hole entropy tells us that the entropy of a black hole or matter in general is not found in it's volume but surface area.

So volume is an illusion.

These things are scientific and they have nothing to do with philosophy. I'm sure the materialist wish this was about philosophy. They can't prove that matter exists and this means materialism falls on it's face.

Originally posted by platosallegory
reply to post by argentus

 

I never said anything about nothingness.

I said that matter doesn't exist absent our perception.

This is what science shows us based on things like the double slit experiment and black hole entropy.

I just want the scientific evidence that matter has an objective existence absent observation.

This should be easy to prove for materialist.

I'd like to point out something many of us are forgetting.

Time.

Once an observation is made - all of time is then taken into account. There may be an infinite number of ways the present could come to be - one, or all, are perfectly valid. From there - an infinite number of possibilities exist for the future.

However, one should also keep in mind what truly is "nothing." "Nothing" does not include space. Does not include time. Does not include matter, energy, consciousness, etc. Few people can envision "nothing" - even fewer can do more than grasp a fleeting moment of insight into such an alien concept.

We erroneously assume, quite often, that "nothing" is the default. The absence of matter is the default state of the universe.

However, mind and matter are inherently linked and inseparable from each other. The link will not be readily accepted, nor will it be understood any time soon. I will not journey to attempt to predict - realistically - the impact of mind/matter - what, exactly, it means for the future understanding of our universe and physics applications. However - the link is there, and is real.

However, it's a chicken-egg problem. Does my decision to go right instead of left cause a certain group of electrons to 'choose' a certain position at some point in time? Or is it the other way around (some force causing both to occur)?

While oversimplified - the meaning/implications of that should remain intact.

I think you may have misread whatever information you read to have come up wih you post. As far as I am aware the thing scientist cant find is what causes matter to have MASS.
Matter IS not linked to observation rather reality is
Einstein famous equation proves matter exists E=mc2

Here is a link to the higgs boson

www.exploratorium.edu...

here is a link to Matter
en.wikipedia.org...

Originally posted by platosallegory
Show me the scientific experiment that proves that matter exists.

Sorry, mate - you're the one making the claim, you're the one who needs to be showing us some evidence.

And remember that the claim you're making is not that matter is nonexistent, but that science tells us matter doesn't exist. Show us evidence of that.

None of the scientific 'evidence' you proposed proves it in the least. At least three posters before me have already shown you where you went astray. Like them, I know some science. They are right; you are wrong.

If you call yourself a philosopher, it shouldn't be hard for you to understand that any scientific process that did succeed in abolishing the material would invalidate itself, and therefore its results, in doing so. Your argument is an Ourobouros.

Originally posted by Quest
CITATION NEEDED!

Absolutely!

Originally posted by platosallegory
Our observation brings matter into existence. This is what's shown by science through things like the double slit experiment.

We don't have any observed evidence that matter can exist absent our observation.

So I want a materialist to scientifically prove that matter exists beyond our perception of it.

[edit on 21-4-2009 by platosallegory]

You have actually misinterpretted the double slit experiment. Many people do.

The obsertvation that they are talking about in the double-slit experiment is not observation but measuring. to "observe" which slit the electron or whatever it was goes through which slit, they had to use a device that would interact with the electron as it passes through one of the slits and this interaction causes the electron to i guess come back into existence.

but the observation was not observation. it was interaction. if nothing interacted with it, it would have gone through both slits.

Thats why i sort of view the universe as a big simulation on a computer. the computer knows where and when things interact and should touch thus making it appear. when an atom interacts or should interact with another atom, etc or something else...... then it will be there real as day.

Originally posted by platosallegory
Scientifically prove that matter has an existence absent of our perception of it.

Heck, I can't even prove that all this isn't just another non-lucid dream that's fooling me once again like all the previous non-lucid dreams that had me fooled. If you've been fooled by a dream before, you could be being fooled again right now. And, if an illusion can so easily fool us, why is a non-illusionary reality even necessary? Couldn't all this be going on in the mind of god as just another dream? It need not be really real to appear real and believable. Occam's razor!

There's 2 things going on here.

1. I said matter doesn't have any objective existence outside of our perception. I then asked for proof that matter exists. So far I have not been shown one experiment that concluded matter has an objective existence absent observation.

I have heard alot of opinion but no proof. Many materialist ask for proof that God or the paranormal exist and I thought this would be easy for them to do. Something this simple should be a one page thread. If there's an experiment that's been repeated and published that shows matter exist absent observation then present it.

2. I explained about the double slit and delayed choice experiment and it hasn't been disputed the REPEATED and PUBLISHED test confirm that the observer influences the outcome of events.

I also talked about black hole entropy.

Black hole entropy is the entropy carried by a black hole. Here's some info:

If black holes carried no entropy, it would be possible to violate the second law of thermodynamics by throwing mass into the black hole. The only way to satisfy the second law is to admit that the black holes have entropy whose increase more than compensates for the decrease of the entropy carried by the object that was swallowed.

Starting from theorems proved by Stephen Hawking, Jacob Bekenstein conjectured that the black hole entropy was proportional to the area of its event horizon divided by the Planck area. Later, Stephen Hawking showed that black holes emit thermal Hawking radiation corresponding to a certain temperature (Hawking temperature). Using the thermodynamic relationship between energy, temperature and entropy, Hawking was able to confirm Bekenstein's conjecture and fix the constant of proportionality at 1/4:

en.wikipedia.org...

What this is saying is that volume doesn't exist it's just an illusion. All that exists is the observers understanding of the laws of physics. Absent our perception matter doesn't exist.

We also have some exciting developements that occured at a gravitational wave detector GEO 600 at Fermilab.
www.newscientist.com...

If the holographic principle holds up then it will be like that movie The Thirteenth Floor. We would have reached the edge of reality if this noise is confirmed in later experiments. This would mean the 3 dimensional information is embedded in a 2 dimensional space. We already know this is the case through black hole entropy, we just don't know if it follows the holographic principle.

Again, I'm just asking for evidence that matter has an objective existence absent our perception.

This should be answered easily by materialist who always ask for proof. Just cite the repeated experiment and published paper.

[edit on 22-4-2009 by platosallegory]

Two words i say BIG BANG unless you want to claim that life humans was already present at the time of the big bang

Originally posted by platosallegory
So far I have not been shown one experiment that concluded matter has an objective existence absent observation.

You are being disingenuous, my friend. Even an infant in philosophy knows that the idealist position collapses to solipsism, and that the solipsist case cannot be disproved. It's impossible to prove that anything exists - even the self that thinks, as Nietzsche demonstrated in his famous riposte to Descartes.

Many materialist ask for proof that God or the paranormal exist and I thought this would be easy for them to do.

From a materialist perspective, it makes sense to ask for proof. From an idealist perspective, there is no such thing as empirical proof, so why are you asking for it? Disingenuousness again.

I explained about the double slit and delayed choice experiment and it hasn't been disputed the REPEATED and PUBLISHED test confirm that the observer influences the outcome of events.

Why do you take this to mean that the event has no objective reality?

I also talked about black hole entropy.

Yes, a particular case of the holographic principle (which remains unproven). The contents of the inside of a black hole, or the universe, can be regarded as a projection of phenomena on the surface.* Why should that mean that the interior content of the volume doesn't exist?

'Matter is a projection' is not equivalent to 'matter is an illusion'. In a sense, the entire world as perceived by human beings is a projection - we see the world in just the way the organisms we are have evolved to see it; it's not the definitive picture. There may be no definitive picture. But the world is real all the same.

A holographic projection is not a hologram, but it certainly exists.

Black hole entropy is the entropy carried by a black hole, etc...

Old stuff to anyone who keeps up with developments in cosmology. It certainly doesn't prove, as you seem to think it does, that matter doesn't exist.

*Which doesn't necessarily mean it is.

First off neither the particle/wave duality (double slit experiment) or anything about black holes prove that matter doesn't exist. That is your interpretation of what you've read.

Aside from your argument being based on conjecture, you're begging the question. en.wikipedia.org...

When you say
1. The observation of matter is the only proof of matter
2. Therfore matter doesn't exist without an observer

That is a circular argument, i.e. a Logical Falacy.

You can't demand scientific proof of something that has no logical validity.

[edit on 22-4-2009 by Camcorder_Truth_Jihad]

The Universe does exist when not being observed. Take a a look at this link www.economist.com...

The universe DOES exists when not observed, but we do not know how it exists fundamentally.

To say otherwise, is flawed. Space and time are most likey quantized. Descrete bits of information/energy. The universe is not laid out, it's continually being projected. Not static, not mechanical, but digital.

The question would be like "what IS the fundamental nature of information?". That's the question to ask and tackle full on.

The reality tests - Seed magazine

[edit on 22-4-2009 by tobiascore]

Originally posted by platosallegory
Again, I'm just asking for evidence that matter has an objective existence absent our perception.

The problem is, what you're asking is implicitly unprovable by human beings. It is impossible to prove anything 'exists' outside of our observation because 'observers' is WHAT WE ARE. Even if we use an intermediate piece of equipment (such as a tape recorder in the old 'tree falling in the woods' idea) to take a measurement, finding out whether there is a sound recording on the tape STILL involves a human being observing whether that is the case or not.

Your argument is essentially not disprovable, nor provable either way. Of course, it is not necessarily the case that you were making an argument at all, i.e. you are not saying matter DOESN'T exist, you are simply asking materialists to prove that it does without the use of observation. The problem is, they can't. The only thing you're left with is a decision about what use you decide to take from science, or whether you decide to disregard it altogether.

Originally posted by DaRAGE
but the observation was not observation. it was interaction. if nothing interacted with it, it would have gone through both slits.

This seems to me to be nothing more than an exercise in semantic pedantry. Observation and interaction are essentially one and the same. Even the act of looking at something with our own eyes involves an interaction with the light that is providing us with the data.

Could you please provide an example of a method of observation that does not require interaction in at least some form or another?

Science is just an ordered method of perceiving the universe. A common system to describe something as accurately as possible to another entity that understands the same system.

People tend to use these systems to try and understand things they currently don't understand. Which is akin to trying to play scrabble when you don't understand the rules or the language.

Religion has faith in common with science.

Religion places trust in his (gods) system.
Science places faith in the system they have created ..
Both are trying to understand and define reality.
Both are making it up as they go along.

reply to post by platosallegory


I've been trying to tell you..... and I've run out of ways to say this. You're confusing the double slit experiment with quantum interactions experiments. I understand how easily it is to be confused about this, as it the double-slit experiment DOES have quantum implications, such as: for the waves to "stack up" and cancel each other out, one "wave" must be able to hit the other, and yet how can this be if the photon "packets" left the source at the same time? Stuff like that.

The works you're referring to are more in line with Heisenberg's studies, wherein he and others, determined that to determine a location of a particle made studying its momentum unlikely, and that the mere act of studying or attempting to quantify it, interferes with and alters it. From this came Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, wherein things were measured via a probability.

The double slit experiment did, does and will outline the wave/particle duality -- that is, how photons and light can "act" as a particle and a wave both. micro.magnet.fsu.edu...

Observation of particles on the quantum level interferes with them, true, as does measurement or any attempt to do so.

It will happen regardless of observation, or the lack of it.

Prove to me that all spiders are not purple. That is why -- in my opinion -- this is a philosophical question you have asked -- a philosophical question about science.

cheers