Classical question. Heard it often. I mean, yes without someone being aware we can’t prove the existence of it. But I think this is a really human self centered world view. The earth existed for millions of years even before we or any other animal was aware of it. I mean we can prove that now later. Yes this prove now also only exists thanks to someone being aware. But it shows to the past to something that was there already even without it.
I don’t think the Universe cares. It was before us, it will be after us. Yes we have no prove while we are gone, but the Universe doesn’t care.
By definition, we don’t know
I have a similar question: can things exist if they have no physical connection at all to their surroundings? The double slit experiment shows that light seem to be information (if we pretend waves are information) until its forced (by observing) to exist. This works with photons, electrons, neutrons, atoms and even particles. So what if i take a cup and put it in a “magic box” that disconnects it from every “observing” system? Does it vanish? Is it gas if i open that box again?
Write your definition for “things” and that’ll answer your question for you.
This is the correct answer. It seems like matter and energy exist regardless of our attentions but the rest comes down to ontology. What is a thing? How does it come into being? How does it cease to be?
Next, ask yourself “do things need to be made of matter and/or energy to exist?” What about Mickey Mouse?
Then you move on to questions like “does a piece of art exist if nobody has ever witnessed it?”
And finally, the psychiatric ward. 😜
Please define “art” :)
Yep, that’s another great question. Personally, I like the idea that art is any form of human expression that exists for its own sake. Not in order to be instructive or useful or to make money but simply because the person creating it felt like it (obviously this is an ideal and real life motivations vary).
More pragmatically, one might ask what art is good for, but since you didn’t, I’m not going to ramble here.
That said, there is the question I raised in my comment whether the work needs an audience, someone to behold it, in order to fully become art. I believe it does. If you paint a picture in the dark and hide it so nobody ever sees it, I struggle to accept it as art.
What’s your take on these questions?
For me it’s just a dictionary trick.
Old definition was defining Art as transforming nature for the purpose of a human.
usual definition is something human made that someone finds pretty.
Contemporary art definition is making something that makes people react / feel. Performance art went all the way to saying that what the artist felt made it art.
If you hide it on purpose, the hiding itself may be contemporary art (similar to Once upon a time in Shaolin bu Wu Tang Clan). A hidden piece by an unknown artist may be considered art according to the performance art demonstration.
So… Choose your definition, similar as the sound of a tree falling in an empty forest (is sound a pressure wave or the brain processed signal?)
Edit: linguists will just say art is whatever sufficient people believe it means.
No, things outside the player’s field of view are unloaded to save memory, obviously.
If that’s the case, would things outside our field of view still have an effect on us? And to what extent?
In a good game they do, but those effects can be abstracted rather than simulated to save processing power.
People were dying en-masse because you had doctors not washing their hands when moving from autopsies to giving birth.
No one was aware about the germs that are causing this. It still killed people.
This is true for most of the early medicine/illneses/hygiene, this was just an example I remember. Especially in regards to germs and bacteries, the humanity wasn’t even close to getting it right.
Perhaps I just confabulated all that, and your comment. Perhaps in the process, I manifested the history therein described.
The human body needs water to survive. Perhaps you are different.
Your question is a lot like this thought experiment:
If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?
Whatever your answer is to the above text can be applied to your question.
Does the pope shit in the woods?
The actual one or at any time since Catholicism?
Yes, they necessarily do.
did neptune exist before somebody looked at it?
I think Neptune is a him. He was named Poseidon before romans looked at him.
Animals are sometimes declared ‘extinct’ (no one is aware of any living examples) while they still exist (sometimes for decades).
Until 1967, noone was aware of the existence of gamma-ray bursts, the result of the biggest explosions in the universe. The bursts were only visible to specialized satellites.
Right now, people are suffering from diseases caused by unknown viruses.
The atoms are there for sure, but we could argue, whether it is a thing/object without an animal being aware of it, since it’s us that define things to be objects.
The universe doesn’t care whether a pile of atoms behind Pluto happens to be chair-shaped. It’s only when we look at it, that we declare it an object.
Object permanence is technically an axiom. The idea that things exist even when we aren’t observing them.
There’s also a problem with terms, particularly related to quantum mechanics. It uses the term observer. To a layman, that’s a person watching. To a scientist its any collection of atoms/fundamental particles that can cause the quantum waveform to collapse.
The results of the axiom are that things do exist when we are not observing them. Our observations don’t back propagate to retroactively bring them into existence. We can’t prove that however, though it’s fundamental to a lot of science making sense (quantum mechanics being the oddball).
Does the concept of an axiom actually exist and make sense in physics? I thought we just had models.
One of the goals is to minimise them. Most of those left are blindingly obvious, but unprovable. They are technically there, but just part of the base assumptions of the models.
E.g. we couldn’t do science if an all powerful being was deliberately messing with our results. We also can’t prove the universe isn’t a computer program, only rendering what a “conscious” entity is looking at, while back calculating the required history on the fly.
How do you distinguish axioms from just another parameter of your model? If an all-powerful being is messing with our results, then you just get a stochastic model. In fact, we already have stochastic models in quantum physics. And whether or not the universe is a simulation doesn’t affect the model’s ability to make predictions at all, so why would it matter from a physics perspective? The model would be unchanged either way.
Obviously, yes. But now the question is, can you be aware of things that don’t exist?
As fiction exists but describes things that may not exist, I think the answer is also yes.
Maybe we’re not aware of a non-existent thing itself, but of an idea or perception in our minds.
Actually this is the right answer, and doesn’t deserve the downvotes.
I think me and Ahmed gave the same answer, but with mine being indirect using an example, and Ahmed’s answer being direct, so maybe people had a harder time understanding Ahmed’s answer.
How does this differ from having an idea or perception in our minds about existing things?
purely imaginary things exist only in the mind.
But are we aware of existing things in themselves, apart from the idea and perception in our minds?
Well I exist, despite it seeming that no one else in the world is aware of my existence.
You’re ruining it.
Bacteria and viruses existed for billions of years before humans ever existed and the majority of the time since. Dinosaurs existed before we were aware of them. Lots of things have.
This isn’t a very well thought out Shower Thought
That’s what you think, but as soon as I leave this comment thread and become unaware of it, I’m sorry to say, but you will stop existing. Tough luck.
Dinosaurs have conscious awareness. They were “anyone”. Some evidence suggests that consciousness is a fundamentally intra-cellular process that became inter-cellular, and that even the simplest organisms exploit some form of consciousness.
