Existence

[TonyG666]

Do we exist? Are seeing,touching,hearing something enough reasons to believe something exists? People are so convinced that what they see is true, but they do the same thing when they dream. I still don't know. I am between believing this is real and not believing it at all. What do you think?

[Pepin]

Why are you unsure?

[Rainbow Dash]

I think therefore I am.

[dsayers]

People are so convinced that what they see is true

 

Isn't this projection? I ask because I noticed an avoidance of your own fallibility in your other thread. I am fully aware that the sun and the moon aren't even close to the same size despite appearing that way. This comes from an acceptance that in the event that my interpretation of the evidence of my senses conflicts with the real world, my senses must give way.

 

You've successfully arrived at performative contradiction number three in your time here. You are communicating with and soliciting the feedback of people that you claim to think might not exist.

 

I wonder if you were aware when you joined this forum that this is a place for philosophy. If this is truly your interest, then may I recommend Stef's An Introduction to Philosophy series. I found it invaluable in teaching me how to think after decades of propaganda.

[Freedomain]

Do we exist? Are seeing,touching,hearing something enough reasons to believe something exists? People are so convinced that what they see is true, but they do the same thing when they dream. I still don't know. I am between believing this is real and not believing it at all. What do you think?

If you don't exist, who exactly is doing the typing?

[Pepin]

To add a thought I just had on this subject, let us assume that we are in the matrix, which is to say that the reality we experience is not the reality that exists. Despite haven woken up to the "actual" reality, not too long after we realize that this reality might actually not be real as well. If we are then to awaken to another "actual" reality, the same applies. The matrix concept of "this may not be the true reality" would still apply even after awakening to an infinite amount of universes.

 

Provided the statement "this may not be the true reality" is valid, from an observers point of view, he can never know if he is in the actual reality regardless of the properties of each reality, regardless of somehow being aware he has woken up into a higher reality, and regardless if he is in the actual reality.

 

It isn't like there is no null hypothesis, rather it is like there is no hypothesis. The statement is completely meaningless as it not only lacks predictive power, but it is fundamentally opposed to the concept of prediction, not to mention that it applies in all circumstances regardless if it is true or not.

 

To quote from a paper I am writing, which is still a work in progress.

 

The question ought not to be “does the reality we observe actually exist?”, yet rather “how would we know if asking this question is meaningful?”.

 

Imagine a hypothetical universe just like our own, where we know for certain that all that exists is contained within the universe. The humans in this organisms in this universe would be able to conceive of the Cartesian demon, yet as already established, this concept in this universe is objectively false. How would they come to understand the problem? What method of proof or disproof could be used? How would they know that the claim had any sort of relation to reality?

 

First, they would make it clear that it may not be the case, and that until proven, it should be assumed to not be the case. The Higgs boson had an incredible amount of reason and evidence to back its existence, yet it was assumed to not exist until there was hard proof. This idea is no different. They would ask if there was any reason to believe that this was the case. Then they would compare all of the reason and evidence behind the idea, and weighing it against all other evidence.

 

"What would a universe look like if the claim was false?" they would ask. Another way of putting this is "what would the "real reality" look like?". They would argue that it would look like the universe that surrounds them: consistent; rational; described by physical laws. They would argue that the very nature of the universe they inhabit is an incredible amount of evidence for it being the one and only reality.

 

What if the claim were true? If this were the case, it would say nothing about the reality they observed because assuming it is true, there would be no implicit correlation between the reality observed and it being the actual reality.

 

Upon realizing that the claim is non-falsifiable, they would say “we consider highly complicated scientific theories false because a single premise is non-falsifiable... either we consider all of these theories possibly true... or we apply the same standard to a claim where the premise is non-falsifiable”.

[TonyG666]

Pepin, I dream almost everynight and everynight while dreaming, I believe it. Until I wake up. What if this is a dream too.

 

Rainbow Dash, I would be sure we don't exists if I did not knew that quote.

 

dsayers, Anything about the topic?

 

MMD, But how do you know, any kind of typing was made?

 

Pepin again, in this second post you made, the first and second paragraph is the entire thing I wanted to say when I started this thread.

[cab21]

you could do the train track test

see if you wake up after being hit by a train

[Kevin Beal]

You cannot logically argue for the existence of the ontologically objective, real "external" world without begging the question that the real world exists.

 

There are things that have to be presupposed in order even have any kind of questions about what is real and true about the world in the first place. The existence of the world and the validity of our senses is one of those things. The fact that effects have causes is another.

 

So when asking if the real world exists and if the senses are valid, what that means to ask that question is to ask "do the objects I perceive exist beyond and independently of my first person subjective experience?"

 

How would we know? If arguing for the "external" world's existence must beg the question in order to be argued, are you willing to accept arguments at all? If you are not, then there's no point at all in debating it. But if you can accept arguments that beg the question that the world exists then what kind of approach should we take to demonstrate the objective reality of the world?

 

In order for something to be logical it must conform to the three laws of logic:

The law of identity: P is P.

The law of noncontradiction: P is not non-P.

The law of the excluded middle: Either P or non-P

 

(This is even before we accept that anything is real we have to accept at least this)

 

In order to show that our senses are valid we have to have some kind of standard. And it turns out that such a standard exists. We know this because there are pathological or illusory perceptions that we derived from the experience of our senses. We can actually reproduce the the experience of seeing a rainbow or oasis in the sand dunes. We can see that when an ear drum is punctured sound doesn't cease to exist, but rather that ear's capacity to hear it has gone away. Phantom limbs are felt and the experience of feeling that limb can be observed in particular regions of the brain.

 

The very fact that the senses can be illusory or pathological is proof of some gradation, that a thing is more or less illusory than another.

 

The problem you run into when you say that the senses are invalid because all perception is invalid (no world exists at all) is with the word "invalid" or "illusory". Invalid as compared to what? If everything is illusory and nothing that is not illusory, then the actual use of the word "illusory" is meaningless. You might as well be saying that the world does exist independently of my perception of it. The difference between real and unreal means nothing in that case.

 

You either have to accept evidence of some form and thus you implicitly concede the argument, or there is nothing to talk about and you are truly a crazy person.

 

You can some up the entire problem as "unreal as compared to what? Something real?"

[aFireInside]

Lets say you are a computer program or a brain in a bucket......

 

You still exist you are that computer program and or that brain in the bucket. 

 

 

 

 

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sometimes asking the right question can be harder than getting a correct answer. 

[greekredemption]

Maybe you, as you, don't exist as you think.

[Mike Fleming]

It's interesting to talk about possibilities every now and again.  Things like "are we all plugged into a matrix" or whatever.  And these are usually valid possibilities.  We don't truly know what existence is, we only have the information that we have to go on.

 

That information says that the world is real and so I treat it as if it is.  It doesn't mean it is, it's just that I don't have any evidence that says that it isn't or reason to think it isn't.   It's fun to speculate every now and again but ultimately I live as if the world is what I perceive it to be.  If evidence ever comes to light that this is not the case I'll re-evaluate at that point.