• Arne
    795
    because they keep trying to sell me extended warranties for my auto
  • Borraz
    29

    No one exists. We are misinformed corpses.
  • christian2017
    1.4k
    Every person, as a self, body, or both, knows they exist. But that knowledge is certainly variable with concern to each one, as a lot of philosophies about proving one's existence have emerged, and are known for their common contradictions.

    What's yours? I would like to hear from you.
    Unlimiter

    If i go to work, i get paid at the end of the week. I believe that is definite proof that i exist.

    How do you define exist?
  • christian2017
    1.4k
    I just ate some kielbasa.Terrapin Station

    That is a lie straight from hell. I just ate that kielbasa, back in your dark hole you arragant thought inside my head!
  • christian2017
    1.4k
    Because you know you'll die.Anthony

    alright you are the winner. Mine was just like everyone elses but that was different.

    How do we define exist and how do we know if we die is the next stupid question that will be asked.
  • Sam26
    2.5k
    By doubting your existence, you show your existence. I agree, how would such a doubt be rationally presented?
  • Eleonora
    87
    If I could prove the relative physicalistic existence of my being (exist, as the general natural world) no one would understand it and I’d no longer ‘exist’. It’s more about the question being limited in it’s range and assuming it means something ‘beyond’ comprehension.I like sushi

    I get that. It means everything. If with it I can regardless on the state of my existence, from my non-existence infer that your existence has no meaning. Then in my non-existence, to which your existence has no meaning, I would have made a direct connection to it. Therefore both of us have real meaning and the state of my existence is non-essential. Feel me?
  • Eleonora
    87
    One cannot not know he exists unless he exists. One can only doubt his existence if he exists. Existence is a precondition to both knowing and doubting.NOS4A2

    Certainly; but do you think non-existence would bother with such technicalities?
  • Eleonora
    87
    we just collectively validate each other's existence because we interact with each other.aporiap

    It does not have to be freaky. Believe you are loved enough in the context that matters to you and there is validation enough to go around. I love you.
  • Eleonora
    87
    On what ground can it be doubted?creativesoul

    God could be placing ideas in a creative way around a soul that does not exist. Then in adhering to its own introspection for the remainder of this idea in itself, the creative soul could with a little aid from within the introspection, be pointed to the fact. That maybe it?
  • Eleonora
    87
    Indeed; who would have the proof?Banno

    I've got it. In all honesty we've just got to work for it to be worth it. Enough for it to be evident.
  • Eleonora
    87
    Why do you need proof? Why the preference for doubt here?Banno

    The proof is sealed by the understanding of who we also are to exist. Doubt is merely a measure to perpetuate dignity to that conclusion. It's well worth the while.
  • Eleonora
    87
    and that has never changed!Daniel C

    I wouldn't say that. There's a brave new world out here. Magic and unicorns around every corner.
  • Eleonora
    87
    Thus the reality or existence of ourself is observable & identifiable with these particular & actual states of thought or perception, & isn’t to be looked for beyond or outside of these.aRealidealist

    Ideally so. Ideally too though, it does not exclude what it does not involve; it is simply just not within its ethereal purview. On it we can as a concept preclude what we do not understand and in doing so know what it is. Then it's just a matter of abstracting your way through living. There is no means to a matter - so to say. Boundaries are not my thing.
  • Eleonora
    87
    What would be irrational would be to doubt where doubt is incoherent.Banno

    What would also be irrational is to outrule what it precludes though. It is merely the positions of the doubt that is coherent. Not what rests outside of it. That's where the very boundaries of the frame to think outside of involves initiative.
  • Eleonora
    87
    As for whether or not the self exists, who cares. Selves do not die any more than they live.Swan

    The oxymoron of samsara. It does have a solution though, which is why we care; I reckon.
  • Eleonora
    87
    I know this: I can't think of any 'grounds to doubt' that I exist which do not also presuppose that I exist; 'doubting that I exist' is, in fact, a performative contradiction.180 Proof

    How about all those doubts you did not have?

    *stands ready to catch the falling*
  • Eleonora
    87
    "Cogito Ergo Sum". According to prof John Cottingham (Reading) in the "Oxford Companion to Philosophy" this is perhaps the most celebrated philosophical dictum of all time. Perhaps someone on this forum feels like doing a master's dissertation on the topic - especially if the era of the Enlightenment is what turns you on!Daniel C

    I'm sort of working my way through it with all my answers on this thread right now. It should qualify in any sensible official regard. I'm not much for the prevalence of authorities.
  • Eleonora
    87
    I know that I exist because when I kick someone in the teeth it is my foot that hurts and not my mouth.A Seagull

    Watch that mouth.
  • Eleonora
    87
    Doesn't a question logically presuppose a questioner?ovdtogt

    No. Because that in itself would be a question. Does it produce an answer? If anyone isn't there to be patient enough to answer it - it should then be a smooth operation in conclusion. Who then gets the reply?
  • Eleonora
    87
    Proving existence then involves demonstrating an absence of contradictions and proving nonexistence requires one to show that a contradiction follows.TheMadFool

    What then of proving both? Such as the chain of infinite contradictions amounting to the substance of naught so; which we then found our logic upon. The ultimate contradiction would be that all the contradictions constituting non-existence would amount to the existence of a non-existence, which in term is not a contradiction since that is what existence is. Different same.
  • Eleonora
    87
    I thought the Devil's greatest trick was convincing the world he doesn't exist.TheMadFool

    I thought the devil's trick failed because the very notion of his existence was too absurd to begin with. The trick only served to have people doubt. So it succeeded, right?
  • Eleonora
    87
    Heck I don't know if you're conscious or not.khaled

    I am conscious about your consciousness. Feel free to act conscious about it. I love life.
  • Eleonora
    87
    Mess with that, and your sense of self consciousness/identity should degrade and vanish into a chaos ideas, facts, memories but without any form, function, or purpose, which I not call that ‘thought’ or ‘thinking’, so a problem to the Descartes way of evidencing oneself.Sir Philo Sophia

    Your ideas on qualia are nice. I believe that we are de-facto the qualia of each other. Real substance to it that from the perspective of a single individual is atman. It in turn is the essence of the World Soul, because it constitutes what the soul would be. From here it is a mere matter of interacting with myself in order to reach the conclusion of everyone remembering who I am before I do, in effect giving me the qualia to remember my essence by. Either that or not, until there was no more. To be or not be is the question. I reckon that everyone has given their real answers.
  • Eleonora
    87
    The skeptic just doesn't get anywhere, doesn't move the conversation forward, and, in the end, is just kinda boring.Artemis

    I think the point is for the sceptics to get it though. It might not be so boring as we imagine. Life is all we have far and in between. Although personally I prefer to live the notions rather than speculating on them. Or even better; compose life from them in completely Descarterian ways. Doesn't matter if it persists to any other range than us having a good life of it. Knowing it to the point of the question only acts as joint for the notion of eternal life, to which we can relax; or smoke - preferably both simultaneously.
    Be it a Big Bang, a Big Bong or a Big Boing. It all takes us right here. I don't do either.
  • Eleonora
    87
    I AM, no matter how we choose to designate it.BrianW

    My love to that.
  • Eleonora
    87
    No one exists. We are misinformed corpses.Borraz

    You know nothing. Salutation.
  • Eleonora
    87
    How do we define exist and how do we know if we die is the next stupid question that will be asked.christian2017

    I'm in deep shit. I don't know.
  • Eleonora
    87


    Alright: pose this;

    You cannot doubt yourself in a way wherein your doubt does not pose as proof of your existence. I understand this. If proving your existence by doubting it in any way was vital to your existence, then having doubts about the doubts you have not yet finished having would qualify as progress in cementing yourself to subsistence. Then would you imagine having missed a doubt to do so before having doubted it, or worse it happens before you've doubted yourself in that regard - what then would happen to your immortal soul?
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