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IAMTHEEMPEROR · 08-09-2007, 05:57 PM,

Then there are the concepts of illusions. In the future, we will have virtual reality, where the game uses your senses to play. You'll be able to touch things, hear things, see things, but is it real? No, it's not, it's a program making it seem real. We could always debate that we are indeed in some sort of program or illusion, a simulated reality, and in truth nothing exists.

I cannot prove you exist, nor can someone else prove I do either, because no one has seen me or where I live. I am nobody to you, yet somebody to myself.

llamaranger · 08-09-2007, 07:41 PM,

whats interesting is that even what we percieve is virtuall reality in a sense. The brains interpretation of the stuff we seen is often largely made up, from past experience. For example, if you look through the interweb you'll probably find something about the blind spot in the eye. There's a test which makes stuff disappear when it lines up with the blind spot (something to do with dots on paper).. the interesting bit is that rather than the cross becoming a black spot, as technically it should do, it is replaced by blank paper.

So if we prove existence through senses, but your senses can lie to us because of our meddling subconcsious minds... what is really real?

Edd

IAMTHEEMPEROR · 08-09-2007, 08:14 PM,

What do we define as reality? What we perceive, what we know, or what we think we know? I don't think reality is what we know, because we don't know reality.

All of our concepts, they don't exist. Like Time. Time doesn't exist, yet the world keeps moving with it. Can the simple fact that we exist be that we in fact don't? I lose touch with my surroundings quite often, a sort of hypnosis if you will, and everything around me just fades into oblivion and I am only me, no one else but. I know myself but cannot prove myself.

The mind is a funny thing. We have a physical object that we call our brain. But for some reason it has a state of nonexistance inside it, our minds. It's been staring us in the face, and in reality we don't exist. Do your memories exist? Your imagination? Your knowledge even. They don't, yet somehow you see them, hear them, feel them sometimes.

Does the past exist? It doesn't. The future? It doesn't either. So does our little slim time called the present exist? I don't know.

DarkAsmodeous · 08-09-2007, 10:20 PM,

"To go with your idea of beings that can't think, it doesn't matter. Trees don't think, but you do, so they are real to you, but not themselves. They have no minds and are incapable of assesing their own existance. "

This is the memory concept, what I'm saying is, is our true nature defined by perception? We know for certain that the me you all know is quite different than the me that I know, and yet, which one is more valid.

Before we can prove that we exist, you need to set parameters for what that means. Us as a concept? Us in a particular form? Us as we see us? Even slight changes of wording can change everything, before you can have an answer you need to ask many, many questions. It's obvious here that everyone is discussing very different views of what the question means, so I tihnk a deffinition of terms on the part of our question asker is in order.

Seniosh · 08-10-2007, 01:01 AM,

You know what? There's a better answer to this, to take the practical route:

I don't care whether or not i exist, i'll just have fun anyways. If this is all some gigantic game of the SIMS 1000, don't care. If you prove you exist, well then what. I say i'll have fun, and go with the assumption that i'm not nothing, because it's more convenient.

Maybe i'll come up with a real answer later, cause i KNOW the point of this is that it IS pointless to debate, since the answer's rigged, it's all about getting there. But i'm not feeling particularly debate-minded, just wanted to interject some good old philosophy.

IAMTHEEMPEROR · 08-10-2007, 07:38 AM,

You're right Seinosh. It's a good thing to have fun, so you can have yours. My fun is this, hence why I'm here Big Grin

I beleive our true nature is defined by perception. You don't exist to someone you've never seen, nor do they exist to you.

We might not exist too. What is actually us? Is it our physical bodies? Or is it whatever force lurks in our minds, storing our memories, emotions, and thought? I have no idea how to prove that exists, and I beleive that is what we truly are. I guess it can be called your soul. I also beleive it goes on with conciousness after the body dies away, free to be itself, yourself, myself. That is existance somehow, because if it didn't exist it would be nothing, we would have no thought or memory. Now some can argue "Well it is physical, it's your brain." But that I beleive is false. Your brain is just a collection of cells meant to register thought, but it most certainly is not thought. Thought and memory are different things entirely that I am unable to comprehend.

Seniosh · 08-10-2007, 03:15 PM,

Well the thing is that in some form, we have to exist. it's just not debatable. If none of us existed, we couldn't be writing this. Even if i only exist as your perception of me, that's still existance. Point is, we can't not exist

Maybe you're just an idle thought i'm thinking up during some gigantic day-dream, but that's still a sort of existance, in that you would exist as a collection of thoughts, linked together to create whoever i'm typing to.

Therefore, because you all respond to me, i know you have memory of me saying things, thus, even i am forced to exist as an idle thought somewhere in your mind. That of course doesn't answer how much i exist, because being only someone else's thought isn't reassuring.

Plus, there are things nobody has seen or thought of, but they still exist.

DarkAsmodeous · 08-10-2007, 06:56 PM,

IATE, there is a common misconeption there... The brain is more than memory.

The brain is interests, the brain is your response to things, your brain allows you to have fun, your brain is choice! Your brain is you, does that make you any less special than if you had some "soul"? No! And if you want to live forever, do it in the memories in others. Maybe there is some sort of colective unconcious, maybe there isn't, but we live on through the consequences of the actions we make while our minds are here. Why do people feel bellittled to think "This is it."

And to all mods, I am aware our discussion is bordering slightly on religion, but I'm also quite pleased at how mature everyone is being about discussing it from a purely philisophical standpoint, and thus far no specific theology has entered, we'll be happy to stop if you ask, but I think is going quite well. So far.

IAMTHEEMPEROR · 08-10-2007, 08:22 PM,

I have no idea what I said. Remind me not to debate at 3:00 in the morning Tongue

DarkAsmodeous · 08-11-2007, 12:52 AM,

Well it seems like my message to the mods has reached me, and I have taken time to think about what I said, and have deccided to allow this discussion to continue with the warning that anything venturing into specific belief systems or anything assaulting belief in general will lead to a closing of the thread.

Sorry, just had to do that Smile