Blind Faith

[JamesHunt]

A good example is radio waves. We can't see or feel them, but our radios and tv's can detect them.

Why do we have to experience something with our own senses to beleive it exists?

YouTube- ‪Re: Take your god and shove him‬‎ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDU3D-bMiv4)

[trish]

A good example is radio waves. We can't see or feel them, but our radios and tv's can detect them.Exactly. Maxwell codified the discoveries of Faraday, Ohms, Wheatstone and other investigators into a mathematical theory that unified the electrostatic and magnetic forces. The unified theory of electromagnetism predicted that a disturbance created at one point in the field should propagate in a wave radially outward from the initial disturbance at the speed of light. Maxwell immediately recognized that light had to be an example of such an electromagnetic wave. So it turns out we do see electromagnetic waves! In fact without them, we wouldn't be able to see at all! To prove Maxwell's theory Hertz invented two laboratory devices. One created periodic disturbances in the electromagnetic field (below the frequency of visible light) and the other detected them and translated the received signal into sound. When Marconi read of Hertz's laboratory devices he had a wonderful commercial idea. We call it radio. The point is, radio waves are known to exist because we understand their sources well enough to both create them on our own and detect them.


Why do we have to experience something with our own senses to beleive it exists?We don't have to. To know a particular form of matter or radiation exists we do need to be able to reliably detect it on a regular enough basis that independent investigators can attest to the its existence. Moreover, we have to be able to understand the detectors well enough to surmise what it is they're detecting.

The examples of water and air are simply ridiculous. We experience wind through our senses of touch and hearing. Moreover, we can literally see, touch and hear water.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=faith-and-foolishness

[Rogers]

How each of us see OUR "reality" is down to how OUR environment is perceived by OUR brains.

Genetics + environment = phenotype.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2003/godonbrain.shtml

God on the Brain (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7991385426492181792)

Allegory of the Cave - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia@@AMEPARAM@@/wiki/File:Plato-raphael.jpg" class="image" title="Plato from The School of Athens by Raphael, 1509"><img alt="Plato from The School of Athens by Raphael, 1509" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4a/Plato-raphael.jpg/100px-Plato-raphael.jpg"@@AMEPARAM@@commons/thumb/4/4a/Plato-raphael.jpg/100px-Plato-raphael.jpg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_Cave)

YouTube- &#x202a;The Cave: An Adaptation of Plato's Allegory in Clay&#x202c;&lrm; (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69F7GhASOdM)

[russtafa]

wow trish thats incredible

[JamesHunt]

Exactly. Maxwell codified the discoveries of Faraday, Ohms, Wheatstone and other investigators into a mathematical theory that unified the electrostatic and magnetic forces. The unified theory of electromagnetism predicted that a disturbance created at one point in the field should propagate in a wave radially outward from the initial disturbance at the speed of light. Maxwell immediately recognized that light had to be an example of such an electromagnetic wave. So it turns out we do see electromagnetic waves! In fact without them, we wouldn't be able to see at all! To prove Maxwell's theory Hertz invented two laboratory devices. One created periodic disturbances in the electromagnetic field (below the frequency of visible light) and the other detected them and translated the received signal into sound. When Marconi read of Hertz's laboratory devices he had a wonderful commercial idea. We call it radio. The point is, radio waves are known to exist because we understand their sources well enough to both create them on our own and detect them.

We don't have to. To know a particular form of matter or radiation exists we do need to be able to reliably detect it on a regular enough basis that independent investigators can attest to the its existence. Moreover, we have to be able to understand the detectors well enough to surmise what it is they're detecting.

The examples of water and air are simply ridiculous. We experience wind through our senses of touch and hearing. Moreover, we can literally see, touch and hear water.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=faith-and-foolishness

trish, you can huff and puff your scientific bile as much as you want, but you are just talking about models dreamed up by scientists to explain the phenomenon. Do fields of force really exist? When you look at a red apple, does the redness really exist?

Newton talked of fields of force to explain gravity, Einstein talked of space curvature to explain it. Which model is correct?

[trish]

trish, you can huff and puff your scientific bile ...I'm sorry. I didn't know I was spewing bile, I thought I was responding in a reasonable manner to your question.


Do fields of force really exist?You can feel the force exerted by one magnet on another. You can feel the force depends positively on the strengths of the two magnets, negatively on the distance between them and that it's also effected by their relative orientation. Since you can feel these dependencies, it's not surprising that you can measure them too and model them mathematically as vector valued functions (i.e. fields) of position and orientation that obey the Maxwell field equations. The accuracy of the Maxwell model has been checked for over a century by ever more excruciating tests that push the envelop of our ability to measure the smallest variations in force and charge. Insofar as the theory has yet to fail, I would answer this question with a tentative, "Yes, there are electrodynamic fields."

I realize the question is more general. It asks whether fields of force (not specifically electrodynamic fields) exist. The strong nuclear force and the weak force almost certainly exist as well as the electrodynamic force. Indeed it seems they are all three aspects of a more general force. The gravitational field is more aptly thought of as metric field; i.e. a symmetric covariant tensor of rank two defined over the four dimensional event manifold of spacetime.

I also realize that I'm still huffing and puffing about models designed to quantitatively describe specific domains of experience and that I'm avoiding the question, "Do fields REALLY exist?" I must honestly confess, I don't understand the function of the adverb "really" in this question. If you can tell me what it means, maybe I can give a better response.


When you look at a red apple, does the redness really exist?Some philosophers distinguish between the qualia of redness which is in the mind of the beholder and the reflectivity of the apple which is a distribution function describing for each wavelength of light, the percentage of the incident light of that wavelength that is reflected by the apple. Are there photoreceptor cells in the eye that respond specifically to light in the red spectrum? Yes, they are essentially photon detectors designed by evolution to detect light falling in what we call the red region of the electromagnetic spectrum. Does the reflectivity of red apples peak in that portion of the spectrum which we call red? Yes. Do color-sighted human beings recognize apples reflecting "red light" as being or having the color red? Yes. What more can be said?


Newton talked of fields of force to explain gravity, Einstein talked of space curvature to explain it. Which model is correct? Both, though today we regard Einstein's model as more fundamental, and in the future we may be in possession of an even more fundamental model. There is a gravitational field strength. You feel it when you lift weights or walk up hill. You can model it by assigning a vector to each point in space that points in the direction of the gravitational force that you feel and with a length proportional to the strength of the force. That's how you model gravity as a field of force. Einstein demonstrated that the universal nature of gravity could be deduced from Newton's first law (the law of inertia) and the hypothesis that spacetime carried a metric field that responded to the density of matter and energy in any given region of spacetime; i.e. matter and energy warp the metric field and the metric field determines the geometric paths that bodies take when responding to the law of inertia. Einstein's model is regarded as more fundamental than Newton's because it replaces Newton's ad hoc inverse square law with a point of view that allows one to deduce it (to first approximation) from the law of inertia. Einstein's model is more accurate than Newton's and continues to survive rigid experimental tests which Newton's theory persistently fail. Insofar as Newton's theory is a first order approximation of Einstein's it's still applicable to many engineering problems.

To the question in the orginal post,
Why do we have to experience something with our own senses to beleive it exists?We don't. We don't even have to experience something with our own senses to know (to within the standards of reasonable doubt) that it exists. But if you say you have knowledge of the existence of something...call it X, I won't believe you unless you can transfer the certainty you have about the existence of X to me. If X cannot be directly experienced, I will want to know what detectable indirect effects X has on me or the world around me. I will want to "see" and measure those effects. I will want to know why X is the best explanation for those effects. I will want to theoretically and experimentally eliminate other explanations, or at least be in a position to judge those other explanations are less satisfying as explanations than X. I think it's important to realize that such questions are never settled with absolute certainty, but we can attain at times a reasonable, provisional certainty.

Some of the problem with discussions of existence, I think, come about because most natural languages treat "exists" as a verb. In logic "exists" is merely a quantifier and has no proper role as a predicate. In logic "exists" is dual to the universal quantifier, "for all." For example, to say "Black holes exists," without making the logical fallacy of treating existence as a predicate, one says instead, "It's not the case that everything in the universe of discourse isn't a black hole." The claim "The gods exist" translates into proper logical form as "Not everything isn't a god." Now how does one translate, "The gods really exist" or "Fields really exist"? Perhaps, "Not everything really isn't a field." Or "Not everything isn't a field, really." These forms of question, at least to my mind, illustrate the difficulties in assigning a reasonable meaning to the world "really" in the context of questions about existence.

[evilernie]

We refuse "Blind Faith" because it's easy. We praise logical reasoning and evidence because it's hard.

[russtafa]

trish is so cool . i love her reasoning

[Dino Velvet]

Blind Faith isn't always bad.

YouTube- &#x202a;Blind Faith - In the Presence of the Lord&#x202c;&lrm; (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fe19Sas5RSs)