Bigthink - Idea Comments Feed

Comment on: If I dont believe in you, do you exist?

Bigthink — Tue, 06 May 2008 19:17:11 +0100

" A is A. Run from anyone that tries to convince you otherwise." Ayn Rand.

All great discoveries and knowledge comes from individuals that acknowledge a is a and facts are facts. To think you live in your own universe or that you create sound or any other simple objective idea, you wade in a subjective area of which there is no reality and hence end your own right to genuine objective meaning.

Comment on: If I dont believe in you, do you exist?

Bigthink — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 01:36:23 +0100

Heres the thing about the tree in the forest question, there is no answer. Absolutley everythin we know is our perception, if something is outside our perception its existance is absolutley imposible to determine. I would go as far as to say that even the existence of things with in our perception is not certain but thats a diferent topic.

When it comes to people, as long as thay have a conssisnes thay do exist without you perceiving them. However you can neverr be certain that they do, you can not experience their conciosness via your perception, in a way we view other people simplly as complex objects, capable of complex actions.

So basically the question of weather our perceptions is the only reality (for us). Or if there is objective truth outside of it, can not be answere, because we are bound by that very perception and can never see the world objectivly.

Comment on: If I dont believe in you, do you exist?

Bigthink — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 17:09:22 +0100

To answer your 8 questions:
No, no, yes, yes, yes, no, no, no.

The issue is not belief. Neither of us exists. I recommend Anthony Peake's book, Is there life after death? where he puts forward the theory that "You are totally alone in your own Everett universe, isolated from all other human beings who in turn inhabit their own universes. You do not exist in time and are in effect an observer travelling through your own life, a life whose future events are out there waiting for you to encounter. They do not exist in any objective future. They exist now, embedded in the block universe, just waiting for you." Mr. Peakes book, in my opinion, in my own universe, which I created, according to what I read in his book, answers many questions I've pondered for most of my life.

Comment on: If I dont believe in you, do you exist?

Bigthink — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 02:12:57 +0100

Being so totally long-winded......sorry!

Comment on: If I dont believe in you, do you exist?

Bigthink — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 02:11:53 +0100

If I'm not mistaken you're talking about Schroedinger (sp?) and his cat....? If you put the cat in the box and close the lid is the cat alive or dead? Or both? If you're not "seeing" the cat somehow - visually, by sound, by heart monitor, how do you know the cat is still alive? Or even still in the box? The cat may be alive, or may still exist, but it doesn't exist to *us* until we can "see" it.

I "know" if I look out my window I'll see my condo parking lot and a lot of snow. But how do *I* "know" its there when I'm not looking? Does it just appear when I do look?

On pokoj's "deaf" example - I think the argument is that to be considered "sound" or "speech" what you say has to be perceived somehow by the deaf person. If he can't hear it to him it doesn't exist, but if he sees you looking at him and moving your lips he perceives that you are creating sound aimed at him, and therefore the sounds you make do exist to him.

Or I could be totally out to lunch.....

Comment on: If I dont believe in you, do you exist?

Bigthink — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 22:55:07 +0100

okay like pleasure not being able to exist without experiencing pain, and vice-versa...

Comment on: If I dont believe in you, do you exist?

Bigthink — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 22:50:13 +0100

not the right so much as the recognition. If every action has an opposite or equal reaction, then our action of existence requires recognition in a sense.

Comment on: If I dont believe in you, do you exist?

Bigthink — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 22:44:49 +0100

so a recognition of existence gives the object being recognized as existing the right to exist?

Comment on: If I dont believe in you, do you exist?

Bigthink — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 22:36:21 +0100

I wasn't inferring that my perception was ultimate reality. I was merely postulating that any perception, by any thing with the capacity for perception, this could include your own, may be enough to warrant your existence.

Comment on: If I dont believe in you, do you exist?

Bigthink — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 22:19:26 +0100

You didn't know I existed until I replied, so i must have existed before you didn't know if I existed or not...

I think everything in existence is tied to everything else. this connection is not voluntary based on belief.

I think you have to define God before we start talking about His existence...

We may not hear the tree fall, but animals do, the worms and bugs it may fall on feel it, so the tree still falls regardless of whether or not humans hear it...

If you say something to a deaf person, and he doesn't hear it, you still said it...