How can space or time exist without physical objects and vice versa?

Space and time are the same - I don’t understand how they could exist without physical objects, just like physical objects could never exist without space and time. But we always talk about space and time as if they came before physical objects, how do we know that it wasn’t because of physical objects that space and time existed. But of course that’s a rather pointless question because it’s presupposing the existence of time for there to be an order to things, or it could just be asking the question, is time necessary for causality? Can causality exist independent of time? Association can, but can order? Order exists in space, but space and time are basically the same type of thing, they’re both media, for storage of information.. And I begin to be reminded that this must all just be a problem with the limitations of language to explain the concept that we already understand, have always held, in our way of experiencing or perceiving, but that cannot be conveyed through thought in the form of language. Or “thought” is only language, a product that “happens” but is not caused? At least not by intention. But arguing about all this is meaningless because of the nature of “truths” anyways, so just leave that.

Back to the problem - How can time exist without physical objects? I seem to have defined* “time” as the order of events happening between physical particles**. I said, if there are no events, how can there be time, how would we know if there were time, and more importantly, what difference would it make if there were or weren’t time if there were no events to happen anyways? And how could there be an event without a physical particle? Well, a physicist would say, that’s silly! Light exists, and light is not a physical particle. It could well be a particle, but it is not physical, and it takes “time” for a photon t travel from a point in space to another point. But that’s silly too! The time it takes for light to travel from one point depends on the reference frame of the observer, the motion, the relative velocity of the observer in the reference frame, but if no physical particles existed to be a observer in a reference frame, then how would we know how much “time” it takes for a light beam to travel from one point in space to another point in space?

Is saying that other photons exist in other reference frames to observe other traveling photons stupid? Time does not exist in the reference frame of a photon. For a photon there is no such thing as time, no such thing as velocity, no such thing as motion. But then what is a world completely devoid of physical particles but filled with empty space and photons? Does it even make sense to suppose the existence of empty space when the only existing particles are non-physical (by virtue of the same argument of time)? We, as perceivers only used to experiencing and perceiving a universe with both physical and non-physical matter could imagine a universe filled with empty space and photons, with photons moving from point to point at different “times” some before, some after, and at first sight it seems perfectly sensical, but immediately on second thought, how could this possibly be?

How could photon 1 start traveling from point A “before” photon 2 starts traveling from point A if time flowed for neither of them? Or imagining of that scenario requires us to “be there” to observe it, even if it is only a scenario in our heads, but by being there, we are the physical particles there to “observe” the photons. Photons cannot be observers because the act of observation seems to require “time” or at least anything that we, as human perceivers, could possibly imagine. But then isn’t it pointless to “think about” the non-existence of physical matter anyways? Since you would never be able to imagine it because the very act of imagining it, perceiving it, trying to perceive it at all creates its existence.. Just like everything else.. But what if it’s completely “internal”? Having nothing to do with the physical world, but only with what “goes on” in the mind?

What is an event in the mind? It requires no physical objects at all! It requires no “real” physical objects, but then are we saying that just because a physical object that exists purely in the mind if not “physical” at all simply because it is not “real”? It seems that everything and anything “real” has the exact same properties as everything and anything “imaginary” except that one is real and the other is imaginary; one exists in the “real world”, and one exists in the “mind”. So I don’t think that just because an imagined physical object is not real, it is not physical, so to say. And so we are going in circles once again, trying to “imagine” the unimaginable but circularly causing the imaginable just because we are “imagining” the unimaginable, which is not being “imagined”.. I think that the conclusion always gets to the same basic point - that creation creates itself, everything and anything creates itself and itself and itself, and back the the problem of zeros and ones and ones only creating ones and zeros only being zeros all over again. Everything is so unimaginably “simple”. “Simple”.

*Not a good thing. I use the term “define” loosely here. I don’t want to give anything a definite definition.

**By “physical particle” I really just mean non-relativistic. I’m not really sure what being a “physical” particle would entail anyways (as opposed to an “imaginary” particle?) not sure why I just completely forgot about the term “non-relativistic”. Sorry.

Real and Imaginary People

Just because something is imaginary does not mean that it does not exist. It would seem absurd to say that thoughts do not exist even though we clearly experience them. Perhaps more surprisingly however, just because something is real does not mean that it exists either.*

People, grown-ups in particular, have lived in and experienced reality the way they have for so long that they forget, or don’t even understand how to question and interpret through questioning what they experience anymore. General consensus of belief makes this even more difficult.

Let’s say the people who we perceive in real life every day - friends, family, strangers on the street - we can all agree that they are “real”, that is, they “exist”. And now lets say I decide to create certain “imaginary” people in my mind, that I know are not “real”, but that I know exist because I can think about them. In both cases, I can attempt to communicate my thoughts with them and also receive responses, but in the real case, I hear a response concretely through sound waves, through my ears, and in the imaginary case, I hear a response through the form of “my thoughts”.

“My thoughts”. What does this mean? Yes, any lay person could simply dismiss all of this as ridiculous because I have obviously “made up” in my mind all of the responses from my imaginary people that I have created, and they are not the ones that are communicating with me; I am communicating with myself, they don’t exist. Sure, but what really is a “thought”? Yes, I perceive it through my head. Yes, it seems so be associated with intention, and I seem to be the underlying reason why they are appearing, but how do I know that? I perceive them, but how do I know that I’m not also just perceiving intention as well? That there is actually no underlying causal relationship between what I perceive as “intention” and what I perceive as a “thought”? So there is indeed no way of knowing whether these responses that I get from my imaginary people are from the imaginary people who do exist, or I “made them up”.

Now, there is a more fundamental difference between real and imaginary people that does not have to do with whether I can physically perceive them and their behavior or form of communication, and that is their own underlying intentions and thoughts. We perceive the behavior of real people, but we do not perceive their thoughts. We believe we may know what their thoughts and intentions are, but we do not and cannot perceive that.

But - it seems like we do and can perceive the thoughts and intensions of our imaginary people. We perceive their consciousness directly from the inside as if it were part of our own. It most certainly “exists” - we may not know how exactly it exists, but we know it does because we can directly perceive it, rather than just infer it. Well, shouldn’t this make the consciousness of imaginary people be more “real” than “real” people? And yet not at all - this is exactly what makes them imaginary. That is, you can only be “real” when you don’t directly perceive it. And when you do directly perceive it, you somehow… are no longer “real”.

So, which do I choose to be the “real”? Which one is really the “imaginary”? Obviously there is no answer because there is no “truth”, there is just what I believe in - again and again it’s the same answer, it’s so obvious, just because of the nature of unfalsifiable things… But how am I supposed to know what to believe? Well, I wouldn’t know. I wouldn’t know, again. I’d be worried if I knew, wouldn’t I? Yes, Indeed.

It is 5:08 am again, and I can never find myself living in the reality that “everyone else” does.

*We could go into the definition of existence and raise books and books of arguments, but they would only be arguments based on definition and language, devoid of actual meaning, so I don’t want to go into that.