e-book 7 Aspects of Reality

Wits and Wires

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What is a dimension? The image the word brings to your mind might involve alternate worlds, aliens, and time travel. And while these are related to the subject of dimensions, it might not be in the way you thought. At it's core, a dimension is simply a measurement.

For instance, "The dimensions of this room are 14 feet by 12 feet.

But how does this pertain to alternate realities and other sci-fi story elements? The only way to explain is to start at the beginning, so without further adieu, buckle in for the 10 dimensions of our reality.

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Freges Logic.
A universe of 10 dimensions.
Leibniz and the aspects of reality.
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Length is a simple distance measurement. But what is a 1-dimensional object look like? A 1-dimensional object would be imperceptible to the human eye. Not just transparent, but unseeable, because it has no width or depth, and therefore, nothing to see. Traveling in the first dimension can only occur in two opposing directions. You can only move along a single line, so there is no turning, no changing course, no freedom other than moving forward along the line, or moving backward along the line. While the line is infinite in both directions, there is nowhere else to go, even if there's an obstacle in your way.

As we enter the 2nd Dimension, we discover width.

This provides us with a bit more freedom of movement and perception, and also gives me a chance to introduce Dimension Dave, a brave little stick man illustrating what it's like existing in the next several dimensions. Above, you'll see him scratching his head and contemplating his existence. Instead of moving along an infinite line, as a 2-dimensional being, Dave can now move in all cardinal directions along an infinite plane, like a flat and perfectly straight sheet of paper spreading out forever in all directions.

If an obstacle presents itself to Dave now, he can utilize both the dimensions of length and width and simply walk around it. Getting used to his 2D freedom, Dave decides he wants more, and becomes aware of a 3rd Dimension: As a 3-dimensional being, Dave can now move up and down in addition to forward, back, left, and right. If Dave came across a short wall in the 3rd Dimension, he could easily hop over it, or dig a tunnel under it because of his newfound vertical freedom.

In the 2nd Dimension, Dave could only get past a similar obstacle by going around it because the only alternative would be to pass through a solid wall. Perceived from a 2-dimensional vantage point, this would seem like Dave spontaneously disappeared on one side of the wall and a moment later reappeared on the other side. Here's where things get interesting. With the fourth dimension of time it may be tempting to conceive of time the way our human brains perceive it: But when thinking about dimensions, it's more helpful to think of time much like we do length, width and depth.

That is, that every point along the line of time exists. The "you" of 2 hours ago still exists, just as much as the you reading these words. If we think about time like a line, we can see that if we zoom in, we can find infinite points along that line. Each of these points exists at the same moment, and each of them together make up what we see as the line.

Following that train of logic, if we could see time the way we see the first three dimensions, we would see each person and object at every point in their existence from beginning to end all at once. This snake would be thin at one end, representing our conception and birth, growing and thickening as we get older before thinning out and dispersing at the time of our death and decay.

What we see in the real life present is merely a cross-section of this time-snake-person. Notice in the image above how "Present Dave" stands at the front of a procession of his former selves. This image is a short slice of Dave's 4-dimensional self, from several seconds before, ending with his present moment. Simply put, that means that the 5th dimension takes into account the element of chance, choice, randomness, and any way things could have played out differently than they did in the universe we experience right now.

The Quantum Experiment that Broke Reality - Space Time - PBS Digital Studios

Any time there is a chance that an event could play out in more than one way, it's theorized that an almost identical universe branches off from the original. Each break-off universe represents the timeline where things played out differently. If you ever made a decision at the flip of a coin, this created at least two timelines, one wear your flip came up heads, and the other where it got tails. If your buddy Jeff ever rolled a 6-sided die to see which of your friends should go outside to get the pizza? And this effects more than just human acts and decisions.

Think at an atomic level, the infinitely complex interactions that happen between particles. Imagine one of those physical or chemical reactions happening just a tiny bit differently, and this creates it's own timeline. Then consider the dizzying number of particles in the universe, and everything that could happen to them, and you quickly see the mind-blowing amount of alternate universes that this would imply. Let's take it back down to the personal level again for a second.

The 5th Dimension would, in effect, turn the 4-dimensional snake-person we explored in the 4th Dimension into a 5-dimensional, tendril-covered squid monster reaching out a new limb wherever a new possibility presents itself. The view that the so-called external world is really merely a social, or cultural, artifact, called social constructionism , is one variety of anti-realism.

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The distilled knowledge of the universe is recorded there. There is no separation since everything in the Universe, including you, originates from the One Source. For example, if philosophical physicalism is true, a physical TOE will coincide with a philosophical theory of everything. Scientific realism is, at the most general level, the view that the world described by science perhaps ideal science is the real world, as it is, independent of what we might take it to be. Accepting the above article as fact -- What does this have to say about "Free Will"? While imperceptible as far as our senses are concerned, they would have governed the formation of the universe from the very beginning. The traditional debate has focused on whether an abstract immaterial, intelligible realm of numbers has existed in addition to the physical sensible, concrete world.

Cultural relativism is the view that social issues such as morality are not absolute, but at least partially cultural artifact. A correspondence theory of knowledge about what exists claims that "true" knowledge of reality represents accurate correspondence of statements about and images of reality with the actual reality that the statements or images are attempting to represent. For example, the scientific method can verify that a statement is true based on the observable evidence that a thing exists.

Many humans can point to the Rocky Mountains and say that this mountain range exists, and continues to exist even if no one is observing it or making statements about it. The nature of being is a perennial topic in metaphysics. For, instance Parmenides taught that reality was a single unchanging Being, whereas Heraclitus wrote that all things flow.

The 20th century philosopher Heidegger thought previous philosophers have lost sight the question of Being qua Being in favour of the questions of beings existing things , so that a return to the Parmenidean approach was needed. An ontological catalogue is an attempt to list the fundamental constituents of reality. The question of whether or not existence is a predicate has been discussed since the Early Modern period, not least in relation to the ontological argument for the existence of God. Existence, that something is, has been contrasted with essence , the question of what something is.

Since existence without essence seems blank, it associated with nothingness by philosophers such as Hegel. Nihilism represents an extremely negative view of being, the absolute a positive one. Timothy Leary coined the influential term Reality Tunnel , by which he means a kind of representative realism. The theory states that, with a subconscious set of mental filters formed from their beliefs and experiences, every individual interprets the same world differently, hence "Truth is in the eye of the beholder".

His ideas influenced the work of his friend Robert Anton Wilson. The status of abstract entities, particularly numbers, is a topic of discussion in mathematics. In the philosophy of mathematics , the best known form of realism about numbers is Platonic realism , which grants them abstract, immaterial existence. Other forms of realism identify mathematics with the concrete physical universe. Anti-realist stances include formalism and fictionalism. Some approaches are selectively realistic about some mathematical objects but not others.

Finitism rejects infinite quantities. Ultra-finitism accepts finite quantities up to a certain amount. Constructivism and intuitionism are realistic about objects that can be explicitly constructed, but reject the use of the principle of the excluded middle to prove existence by reductio ad absurdum. The traditional debate has focused on whether an abstract immaterial, intelligible realm of numbers has existed in addition to the physical sensible, concrete world.

A recent development is the mathematical universe hypothesis , the theory that only a mathematical world exists, with the finite, physical world being an illusion within it. An extreme form of realism about mathematics is the mathematical multiverse hypothesis advanced by Max Tegmark. Tegmark's sole postulate is: All structures that exist mathematically also exist physically. That is, in the sense that "in those [worlds] complex enough to contain self-aware substructures [they] will subjectively perceive themselves as existing in a physically 'real' world".

The theory can be considered a form of Platonism in that it posits the existence of mathematical entities, but can also be considered a mathematical monism in that it denies that anything exists except mathematical objects. The problem of universals is an ancient problem in metaphysics about whether universals exist. For example, Scott, Pat, and Chris have in common the universal quality of being human or humanity. There are various forms of realism.

Two major forms are Platonic realism and Aristotelian realism. Aristotelian realism , on the other hand, is the view that universals are real entities, but their existence is dependent on the particulars that exemplify them.

Nominalism and conceptualism are the main forms of anti-realism about universals. A traditional realist position in ontology is that time and space have existence apart from the human mind. Idealists deny or doubt the existence of objects independent of the mind. Some anti-realists whose ontological position is that objects outside the mind do exist, nevertheless doubt the independent existence of time and space.

Kant , in the Critique of Pure Reason , described time as an a priori notion that, together with other a priori notions such as space , allows us to comprehend sense experience. Kant denies that either space or time are substance , entities in themselves, or learned by experience; he holds rather that both are elements of a systematic framework we use to structure our experience.

Spatial measurements are used to quantify how far apart objects are, and temporal measurements are used to quantitatively compare the interval between or duration of events. Although space and time are held to be transcendentally ideal in this sense, they are also empirically real , i.

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Possible world theory is related to alethic logic: The many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is a similar idea in science. The philosophical implications of a physical TOE are frequently debated. For example, if philosophical physicalism is true, a physical TOE will coincide with a philosophical theory of everything. The "system building" style of metaphysics attempts to answer all the important questions in a coherent way, providing a complete picture of the world.

Plato and Aristotle could be said to be early examples of comprehensive systems. In the early modern period 17th and 18th centuries , the system-building scope of philosophy is often linked to the rationalist method of philosophy, that is the technique of deducing the nature of the world by pure a priori reason. Hegel 's Absolute idealism and Whitehead 's Process philosophy were later systems. Other philosophers do not believe its techniques can aim so high. Some scientists think a more mathematical approach than philosophy is needed for a TOE, for instance Stephen Hawking wrote in A Brief History of Time that even if we had a TOE, it would necessarily be a set of equations.

He wrote, "What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? On a much broader and more subjective level, [ specify ] private experiences, curiosity, inquiry, and the selectivity involved in personal interpretation of events shapes reality as seen by one and only one individual [ citation needed ] and hence is called phenomenological.

While this form of reality might be common to others as well, it could at times also be so unique to oneself as to never be experienced or agreed upon by anyone else. Much of the kind of experience deemed spiritual occurs on this level of reality. Subsequently, phenomenological themes were taken up by philosophers in France, the United States, and elsewhere, often in contexts far removed from Husserl's work. In Husserl's conception, phenomenology is primarily concerned with making the structures of consciousness , and the phenomena which appear in acts of consciousness, objects of systematic reflection and analysis.

Such reflection was to take place from a highly modified " first person " viewpoint, studying phenomena not as they appear to "my" consciousness, but to any consciousness whatsoever. Husserl believed that phenomenology could thus provide a firm basis for all human knowledge , including scientific knowledge, and could establish philosophy as a "rigorous science". Husserl's conception of phenomenology has been criticised and developed not only by himself, but also by his student and assistant Martin Heidegger , by existentialists , such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty , Jean-Paul Sartre , and by other philosophers, such as Paul Ricoeur , Emmanuel Levinas , and Dietrich von Hildebrand.

Skeptical hypotheses in philosophy suggest that reality is very different from what we think it is; or at least that we cannot prove it is not. Jain philosophy postulates that seven tattva truths or fundamental principles constitute reality. Scientific realism is, at the most general level, the view that the world described by science perhaps ideal science is the real world, as it is, independent of what we might take it to be.

Within philosophy of science , it is often framed as an answer to the question "how is the success of science to be explained? Generally, those who are scientific realists state that one can make reliable claims about these entities viz.

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The most used and studied scientific theories today state more or less the truth. Realism in the sense used by physicists does not equate to realism in metaphysics. Furthermore, a mind-independent property does not have to be the value of some physical variable such as position or momentum. A property can be dispositional or potential , i. Likewise, the mind-independent properties of quantum systems could consist of a tendency to respond to particular measurements with particular values with ascertainable probability.

A closely related term is counterfactual definiteness CFD , used to refer to the claim that one can meaningfully speak of the definiteness of results of measurements that have not been performed i. Local realism is a significant feature of classical mechanics, of general relativity , and of electrodynamics ; but quantum mechanics has shown that quantum entanglement is possible.

This was rejected by Einstein, who proposed the EPR paradox , but it was subsequently quantified by Bell's inequalities. The quantum mind—body problem refers to the philosophical discussions of the mind—body problem in the context of quantum mechanics. Since quantum mechanics involves quantum superpositions , which are not perceived by observers , some interpretations of quantum mechanics place conscious observers in a special position.

The founders of quantum mechanics debated the role of the observer, and of them, Wolfgang Pauli and Werner Heisenberg believed that it was the observer that produced collapse. This point of view, which was never fully endorsed by Niels Bohr , was denounced as mystical and anti-scientific by Albert Einstein. Pauli accepted the term, and described quantum mechanics as lucid mysticism.

Heisenberg and Bohr always described quantum mechanics in logical positivist terms. Bohr also took an active interest in the philosophical implications of quantum theories such as his complementarity , for example. Bohr never specified a demarcation line above which objects cease to be quantum and become classical. He believed that it was not a question of physics, but one of philosophy. Commonly known as " consciousness causes collapse ", this interpretation of quantum mechanics states that observation by a conscious observer is what makes the wave function collapse. The multiverse is the hypothetical set of multiple possible universes including the historical universe we consistently experience that together comprise everything that exists: The term was coined in by the American philosopher and psychologist William James.

The structure of the multiverse, the nature of each universe within it and the relationship between the various constituent universes, depend on the specific multiverse hypothesis considered. Multiverses have been hypothesized in cosmology , physics , astronomy , religion , philosophy , transpersonal psychology and fiction , particularly in science fiction and fantasy.

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