mojodragon

I started typing this earlier, and realized it didn't make any sense, so I decided to start over. I'll try to write it in a story-like format, to make it easier to understand.

I seem to do that a lot, don't I?

John last saw Mary at the store. She waved goodbye, and got in her car, and drove off. Later that night, John gets a call from the police. Mary had gotten in a car accident, and died.

How much of her life was real? What about the part after she left John? Nobody witnessed anything that happened to her, and she's no longer alive to relate the details. Did she cease to exist when she left John? We don't know what songs she listened to, or what thoughts were going through her head. We can make guesses, but how assured are we that we're right? She can no longer tell us that she was thinking about her upcoming promotion, or that she listened to this station for 5 mins, then flipped to another. We can suppose that everything that happened to her was real to her, but what if it wasn't? Have you ever blacked out, and lost sections of your memory? Or drifted into a lower level of conciousness, where you go about your normal activities, but everything seems surreal? I go through weeks at a time like that, sometimes. It seems like I'm watching my current experiences from behind my eyes. Are they real? I certainly hope so, but what if I'm wrong? Have you ever noticed that a 5 minute dream can last you all night? What if my "life", the "world", and my "experiences" are actually just a flash of a daydream that my real self is having, while I'm waiting on the coffee to finish brewing, or something equally mundane.

Do people stop existing when there's nobody else around? They stay in your mind, but more like memories of the past, and expectations of the future. You expect to see someone later today, but what if they don't show up. Did they ever really exist?

wnker85

I don't get it??

Is this like the "If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it did it make a sound?"

Of course they exist, because if they didn't then who is to say that you yourself exist if noone is around or me for that matter. Then that means that noone exists if there isn't anyone there to witness us.

mojodragon

I can't really answer whether I exist or not, because I haven't ceased to exist yet. Maybe it is a "tree falls in the woods" type question, and if so, I'm sorry for bringing up that tired, worn out topic. I was just asking how valid experiences are if noone is there to share them, or to even know about them.

Master_Shake

I think the answer is that it doesn't matter.

Assume that any of that is true, how would it affect your actions now?

Why are experiences valid if people are there to share them? What do you mean by valid? It seems you are holding individual actions to some sort of community standard, not just in moral or ethical terms, but in terms of existence. Just as morals and ethics are stuff we made up to make us feel better, maybe continuing existence and the idea of valid experiences are just as made up.
We're all going to die someday anyway, and then the sun's going to consume the earth, and even if we get out of this system we've got entropy to worry about. Eventually everything will cease to exist and that will be it.

Ponder that for a minute. Everything will cease to exist.

Maybe the great fabric of reality will find another permutation and something else will take shape, but it absolutely will not matter what happens to us.

I know some people find such views to be depressing or sad, but I've always found it somewhat comforting.

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You know something, I don't think the sun even... exists... in this place. 'Cause I've been up for hours, and hours, and hours, and the night never ends here.

d*d

You have to exist, you've started this thread. How are we validating experiences now, by simply experiencing something it is valid as an experience, every experience you have is relative to yourself and how you convey it (if you wish to) is entirely dependant on your standpoint of the experience, two people may have two vastly different responses to the same shared experience both as valid.

Hain

I take this into account. I believe in a multiverse. There simply are an infinite amount of universes to exist for all eternity. Chances are, in that infinte amount there will be a percentage of them where I still exist. And if this person either looks like me or thinks me is not to matter. They are my interdimensional doppleganger and my life, my will exists through them. Sure I can't hop through a wormhole and meet them because that'd be too much to expect I guess.

Her life ended at some point after she left you. However, her existence to you ended that moment you no longer saw her. And who is to say what radio station she was listening to. And would that really matter in the grand scheme of things? Her existence with the world ended when she was no longer in human contact.

And if everything is to end in some terrible fade out of existence, then what does it really matter if she died listening to 101.9 or 102.1? What was the purpose of any of us then if we are to die someday? Don't ask me, I am still trying to figure that one out.

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////\\// IRONSKY.NET \\//\\\\

roachboy

any social "reality" has places where it tails off and/or appears to either be negated or to negate itself.
death is one of these places.
from the outside, most conceptions of the afterlife, whatever that means, can be understood as attempts to integrate death and its implications into a mirror image of the social game. which in turn can be seen as attempts to maintain a kind of conceptual closure----that is to avoid generating the kind of response you outline above.

at what point does "reality" wobble? it wobbles all the time--if "reality" is a series of games (rule-bound environments) that social actors perform as they perform themselves as parts--and if these games are in a sense about positing "reality" as coherent and stable--that is outside of history and immune, to an extent, to time--then the fact of history, the experience of time, and (most importantly) the emergence of the new makes "reality" wobble at every point, every day.

what changes is how much of thje above you see.
what you choose about this is how you process it.

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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

cellophanedeity

The answer really depends on if you're a solipsist or not. I don't think that a solipsistic reality is likely. I like to think that there are other minds out there, even if I can't access them.

And did an event not happen because no one can remember it? Depends on the event. No one can remember the creation of the universe, but we're pretty sure it happened.

Or, on the otherhand, I could be no more than a sort of bubbly essence somewhere being poked with the right currents that makes me believe I'm responding to your question. But, if that's true, I think I'm happy with my little delusion.

sargon

We're all stuck in lil bubbles just like in teh matrix. m4tr!x l!f3 is tr!ck!3.
I think you're phasing out of reality and realizing it's NOT REAL.

Killconey

I think that the only way that Mary could not be real was if she never truly existed in the first place. Let's say that I am John and that all of reality is just a random daydream that my real self is having. Then every time Mary left me, she would cease to exist because her only existence was as a figment of my imagination. Her death is actually a minor issue because all she would need to do is leave the room to achieve a similar effect.

Personally, I do not believe that I am the only reality in all of existence. I think, therefore I am, but you also think, therefore you should be too. Mary's reality continued all the way up until her death and her remains are still a part of this reality even after she is gone.

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Look out for numbers two and up and they'll look out for you.

meembo

The only reality we are sure of is our own. Are dreams real? -- yes, they are real, but not concrete. I like to wonder how to prove that my existence is as concrete as I assume it to be, and not a thought or a dream of someone or something else.

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less I say, smarter I am

zen_tom

Either you exist, or you don't. It's that simple.
If you do exist, then what you experience is either real or it's not. That's pretty simple too. If you don't exist, then hey, I'm typing to myself here.

Next, you get to choose what to do.
a) Act as though what you experience is real.
b) Act as though you are living in a dream.

xepherys

define reality...


To me, reality encompasses everything. Life, the universe, love, thought, soul, religion... If I die, and my spirit wisks away to the astral, I still exist... only in a new form and in a new place. My death does not change my existance.

martinguerre

*nods. I tend to think life is more interesting when i assume that i exist. one definition of afterlife that i've heard is "being remembered in totality by One who loves you fully."

I won't say that's my line...but there's something about it that makes me think.

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For God so loved creation, that God sent God's only Son that whosoever believed should not perish, but have everlasting life.

-John 3:16

Zeraph

Without getting into a bunch of hoop a dos (ya I just made that up) you can solve this 1 of 2 ways (that I'm aware of) by believing in either, or both of
1. Souls or something goes on after death
2. Every action has far reaching consequences, called the butterfly effect I think (i.e. what you do with your life will affect humanity throughout its lifespan.)
If neither of those are true, then there is no meaning to life.

I can't see away around it, if your actions have little to no consequence then your life has no meaning to the universe/humanity as awhole. And if your actions ultimately don't effect you after you die (no soul) then they don't matter either.

zen_tom

Zeraph, I think there is a third thing that creates meaning in our lives - and that is the beauty of it. Something like a snowflake falling from the sky, it's uniqueness a reflection of its journey from the heavens - only to melt away later, it's water adding to the rest of the water seeping through the soil. It's a beautiful thing, and that should be enough.

xepherys

zen_tom, I couldn't agree less... while beauty is a wonderous part of life indeed, it does not lend meaning to the existance of humans. If we do not help society progress, our lives are for naught. Like the saying goes, If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. *shrug*

Johnny Rotten

I've come to the conclusion that nothing has to exist beyond your senses, but the physical is probably as real as it seems. Plumbing the depths beyond what you can see and hear is futile. It is better to take stock in what you have than brood over what might not be.

kitsune

i don't think quesitons like that were meant to be answered as much as they were meant to instill a sense of questioning in the listener.

pennywise121

there are a hundred thousand different ways to explain this situation, and all that matters is how we define it (although in worrying about how "we" define it, there is a presupposition of existence on the part of the worrier-- thanx descartes).

cellophanediety- solipsism deals less with whether they exist once they leave our sight, and more with whether we exist when they are gone. hardcore solipsists believe that when they die, the entirety of existence dies with them, because it all exists in their heads.

we can take the doxastic or non-doxastic foundationalist approach, and claim that the only thing we can truly be sure of is our sense-perceptions (doxastic) or our feelings about senses (i have a white feeling of that wall-- aimed at a white wall)(non-doxastic).

when we look at this situation, we all tend to try to be foundationalists- we want to find one, if only one, thing that we can all agree on as being true. the sad "reality" is this: no two people will ever agree on the same thing completely if they are being honest with themselves. what it means to me to exist is inconsequential when compared to what anybody else thinks it means to exist.

science tells us there has to be a material cause for things- i exist because my parents made me.

religion tells us there has to be a cause (not necessarily material) for everything- i exist because God (the one substance, the supreme godhead, etc etc) made me.

beauty is not the only thing in the eye of the beholder. existence is in the perceiver. if we are to claim that we exist, we must acknowledge that either we are individual, and have a unique view of things (therefore what it means to exist is transitory) or we must acknowledge that we are all one and the same (souls and the like), in which case we must realize that we are a part of the whole, a face of the one substance, etc, and that so long as any other person is here, we are here as well.

oh ya, and none of that mind-body dualism stuff. it is a way to get around my line of thought, but you must ask which is more important, the body, or the soul? if you say body, refer to individual perception. if you say soul, refer to infinality of being.

anyway, thats my ranting two cents. enjoy

braindamage351

I'll keep it short: The only thing we know for sure is that there is existence.

This is proven by the fact that I at least believe that I am typing right now. Everything else about reality is constructed by the mind, and there is no way to know what the truth is. For all I know the people of this board only exist in the form of a couple of paragraphs of text. For all I know when I'm not around the world stops existing. For all you know I don't exist, and am just a paragraph in your mind, with a name attached to it.