Are these things illusions?

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Are these things illusions?

space

time

number

free will

What do you think?

These are ideas, not illusions.

They exist in the brain.

First you need to define how illusion and perception differ.

I think they kinda are. There are times when I lost the sense of time passing and it felt like it didn't exist really. When I was a child I always thought about time stopping even though that's impossible.

Saying that though I don't have any scientific evidence to say those things are illusions.

I can ask you to define illusion. In the Hindu sense it can mean having a wrong understanding of things, say that wrong is right. The Hindu can work away from this with goodness to liberation. They may say what we see is not quite what is. Can you see how the issues of illusion and free will are tied up together in the HIndu belief?

I am not sure how meaningful the question is to me. My five senses tell me what is real. I think therefore I am, or if I didn't exist I wouldn't think or have any awareness. Plato writes in The Republic that it is if we are in a dark cave. We cannot see clearly beyond the entrance where true reality lies. David Bohm's Implicate Order Alfred Whitehead the mathmatician and philosopher dealt with this in a profound way which people like me cannot hope to understand. Bohm was a genius physicist and Whitehead a mathmetician who became a philosopher, yet they were both apparently believers in meta-physics.

This is an interesting concept, but I don't quite agree.

http://www.hinduwebsite.com/hinduism/essays/maya.asp

They are neither illusions, nor do they just reside 'in the brain' as one commenter below you stated. They are aspects of our shared reality, as real as anything that can be called real could possibly ever be.

Numbers are a reflection of the patterns of Nature.

Human beings have 5 digits on each hand and 5 digits
on each foot; most of the time, at least.

The numerical symbols are abstract constructs.

The essence is real.

Space AND distance is measured nicely by a ruler.

Humans CAN measure distance and space ALL NATURALLY through
the ORGANIC EXPERIENCE OF HUMAN proprioception; AND other
human senses.

Some humans have to be massaged
to sense their body in space and distance;

others can get around
with their eyes closed or blind;
fairly well sensing the space of their
environment; including distance,
greatly, with finely tuned
ISA's; Instincts,
Skills,
and Abilities
of
proprioception
and other senses

Time is measured nicely by a clock.

For some humans, they rarely ever experience a subjective experience of time;
as they live in the the flow of the moment of now always.

For other humans, they live in a constant state of deadline this and that;
they live as slaves to time; and culture of course.

Free will is relative, as of course there are limits to human nature;
however, some of us excel in relative free will in terms of empirical results;
and others of us; stagnant, without much change
for human potential in human relative free will..

As in all things human and the rest of nature; a broad
spectrum of reality exists; some folks get to experience
more colors of the 'rainbow'; and some folks
literally exist in a black and
white much more
limited experience
of life;
MILEAGE VARIES.

I FOR ONE, live rainbow,
over shades of grey
and black
and
white..

Space, time, and number all have objective existence.

Free will is an illusion, unless you have a different definition of free will.

Let me say why I disagree ...

In my opinion, there is no "shared experienced", because no one knows what the words by themselves mean. Ask ten people what "space" or "time" or "number" means , and they will give you several different answers.

These words can be nouns or verbs:
- "space" may be a verb as in "to rearrange things" or a noun as in "the distance between things". However, someone will probably mistakenly think of it as "outer space".
-"time" may be a verb as in "to measure something". However, more people probably think of it as a noun as in "the passage of existence".
-"number" can be a count as in "the number of apples", or it could be a "string of numerals".

These are just abstract words with no physical context.

This is how we get "Zeno's paradox" of "Motion is an illusion" of the arrow going 1/2 way , 1/2 way, 1/2 way ..... but never reaching its target. "Motion" used without physical context results in a funny paradox.

Free will an 'illusion'? Why? Explain.

Sometimes I wonder if everything in the universe is a mathematical inevitability, which would make freewill an illusion.

Another thought I have is how our motivations are based on survival instinct and abstract thought just perverts them, but the roots are the same.

Well, as I understand it, a shared experience is when two or more people experience an event or sequence of events wherein they both agree upon certain defining features of the event in question (ex. two - or three, four, or whatever the case may be - people spot a U.F.O. in the sky). Now, it is true that each person will have their own unique perspective on the event in question, but the fact will still remain that they were all in the same place and time, and shared a common relationship to what was encountered.



Ask ten people to provide the definition for whatever word you can possibly think of, selected at random, and you will probably get the same result. It's irrelevant. Words have precise, dictionary definitions, and we generally accept those definitions because we would not be able to communicate effectively otherwise.



So words may, and often do, have different meanings. So what? This is where context comes in.



The words themselves may be abstract (and they are), but what they refer to are not. The word 'space' is a sequence of squiggles, but it has meaning and purpose that extends well beyond those mere squiggles. That's the whole point of language - it conveys meaning about things that are real.



Zeno's 'paradox' isn't paradoxical anymore. It was solved aeons ago, and the only reason why it was even formulated in the first place was because the ancient Greeks simply did not understand motion. Motion is not an 'illusion' as they may have believed it to be. It's real. If you don't believe that, then just stand in the path of a speeding bus and see what happens, or jump off a tall building and whilst you are descending repeat the mantra, "I won't hit the ground, I won't hit the ground, because I am not actually in motion. Motion is only an illusion".

Seigfried, the fact that you posted what you did here - was that entirely predetermined, or did you choose to do this? Do you agree that you could have decided to completely ignore this discussion, and just stay out of it? Are you an automaton, following a programme, or can you actually think for yourself?

If these things are all illusion we have no frame of reference for anything not-illusion. Stretching the term that far makes it meaningless.

Exactly!