Thursday, 20 November 2008

Human experience. What if, our human resolving time was on a par with the resolving time of a fast electronic device?

Threads that led to these thoughts

- Coherence
- Decoherence, the measurement problem, and interpretations of quantum mechanics

A fundamental attribute of the human cognitive apparatus? One that determines the kind of experience amassed? It guides experience? Human resolving time T is responsible for the instantiation of experience? Experience is what is, because of our resolving time

"Suppose that the waves are detected by an apparatus with resolving time T, that is, T is the shortest interval between two events for which the events do not seem to be simultaneous."

Our cognitive apparatus, with our senses, with its own resolving time T, the time length, the time interval between two events that is needed in order to make out each, as been distinct from the other. Definiteness, at stake? During which, we will be able to resolve the events as being separate. To discern the information that each event carries. The separateness of the events, as distinct entities. The information discerned is used to build experience. It determines its depth and breadth and its accuracy. Wholesome experience?

Phase?

Experience, as such described , it defines observation. It provides the foundation of our subjectiveness.

In the Answers.com entry of coherence it mentions that

"For the human eye and ear, T is about 0.1 s, while a fast electronic device might have a T of 10 billionths of a sec (10^-10 s). If the relative phase δ(t), given by Eq. (3), does not, on the average, change noticeably during T, then the waves are coherent."

Human resolving time T should bear a significance on the way we see the world. How would a fast electronic device with a T of 10 billionths of a sec (10^-10) would see the world? What would the world look to us, if we had an equivalent resolving time T as that of a fast electronic device?

Highly coherent to a fast electronic device? But incoherent to the human ear? Coherent waves in phases that represent states? Superposition of states? The observer?

In 'Decoherence, the measurement problem, and interpretations of quantum mechanics'

"In fact, scientists most righly claim that the purpose of science is to describe human experience, not to describe “what really is”; and as long as we only want to describe human experience, that is, as long as we are content with being able to predict what will be observed in all possible circumstances (. . . ) we need not postulate the existence—in some absolute sense—of unobserved (i.e., not yet observed) objects lying at definite places in ordinary 3-dimensional space."

If science can only describe human experience, then what would science be, if instead of our familiar human resolving time T, our cognitive apparatus had the resolving time of a fast electronic device? Would our fast electronic device equipped human resolving time, have revealed and made part of our experience, any currently unobserved objects?

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