If light has a speed,

[7th]

then why am I able to create light in my brain?

[Sisyphus]

Care to expand on that?

[7th]

Two things:

 

Firstly, conciously I can create 2 lines in this manner: "^" once I close my eyes. I can rotate the lines and break the ^ shape into two \ /, lines, that rotate seperately - purely through the "thought process". I can sort of do it with my eyes open. This isn't creating light, however it's creating an image, and for an image to be "seen" it must have some form of light.

 

Secondly, dreaming, when we dream, light is present - from memory or not, it is still present in our minds for we see it and therefore the light is observed in our mind; and this light most definetly doesn't have a speed...

[Ringer]

Just because you imagine something doesn't mean it's there.

[7th]

I can though, that's the point. I can imagine light, and so can you along with everyone else. If it can be pictured in our minds, a fundemental resource to create any visable being/vision, then how can it have a speed? It seems to be the mark for top speed, so are you sure that it even has a speed but rather has "0" speed, and its just the mark for everything between, 0% and 100% speed?

[Ringer]

So what you're saying is that since I can imagine a car moving, cars don't actually move?

[swansont]

The use of "vision" in reference to imagination is not the same "vision" that involves light. Sight involves light, the interaction with the eye and the post-processing that the brain does. Imagining cuts out the first two parts of that process. Light forming an image in the eye is not involved in the "imagining" of an image. It's all brain.

[7th]

So what you're saying is that since I can imagine a car moving, cars don't actually move?

 

If you imagine a car moving, you are already imagining light - that is if you're visually seeing it (A.K.A dreaming). So.. no.

 

@swasont, I understand now, thanks.

[PhDwannabe]

This isn't creating light, however it's creating an image, and for an image to be "seen" it must have some form of light.

 

I see now after I've finished composing the following that swansont already said much of it in fewer words, but what the hell? Anything worth saying is worth saying again, and with as much unnecessary verbiage as possible.

 

Your visual cortex is fully capable of creating whatever mental images or experiences it feels like, whether or not they correspond precisely to the images cast on your retina at the time. When many of the cells involved get... for lack of a lengthier explanation... "bored," they make up all sorts of things. Your visual cortex represents to the little homunculus that is "you" (er... not really) a closed-circuit television view of the world which is far less faithful of that retinal image than you often think it is. (In physiological psychology, the fun and oft-repeated phrase is that the retinal image arrives in the cortex "upside-down, full of holes, and standing still.") The phenomenological experiences of light or light patterns don't involve actual, physical light at the cortical level anymore than phenomenological experiences of pain involve getting your grey matter stuck with a pin.

 

As noted above, the experience of a dream or hallucination can be easily thought of as an example of an image without light necessarily falling on the retina.

[Mr Skeptic]

I make plenty of infrared light in my brain.

[PhDwannabe]

I make plenty of infrared light in my brain.

 

<shakes fist> Perceptible light in the visible spectrum! You got me, you ol' hound dog, you got me.

[Edtharan]

The "images" we "see" in our mind (and yes, even what we see with our eyes too), are not like a camera. Just because we can see or imagine seeing an object does not mean that there is "light" in our brains. What is happening is our brains are processing information, and it is the result of that processing that we percieve (but not as light, instread as the processing of the result of the processing).

 

With a computer, if you unplug the monitor, the computer can still work and can still run a 3D game (like an FPS). This means that the computer does not need to produce "light" (from the monitor) to process the information about a 3D scene that would normally be outputed as a visual system.

 

So to process visual information (as the 3D game does) you don't need "light" to do so. Thus, there is no reason that the brain needs to have "light" to process visual information either.

 

This means that just because you can visualise something in your mind does not mean that it actually has to have any phgysical reality or involve any physical construct.

 

When you visualise those two lines, you are not creating two lines, but you are processing information that "tricks" your mind into seeing two lines, even though there is nothing there. It is just information, not lines.

 

I can imagine and even visualise many things that don't exist (like flashing neon unicorns), but that does not mean they are real in any way. What it means is that my brain is capable of simulating the same information that it would recieve if such a thing did exist, not that it does exist.

[dragonstar57]

but what about the light bulb that appears above your head when you think about a light bulb?

that emits light! and its from your brain to.

so Ernestine must have been wrong!!!

light has no speed

so E=mc2 is now E=m02

and if i picture a flying puppy its real

 

and the smilies i have have been using have all been eye roles

wait that part's right

Edited August 31, 2010 by cipher510