Are we really here?

[PunkAlex]

Is what you are reading right now really written by another person? Another whole true entity? Ive been in thought about the subject, and I was wondering, how do we know that the world in which all of us see is what everyone else lives? What if everything youve ever seen is all just a world created by our "minds"? What if what I perceive as a house or a cat or as black isnt what the rest of the world would think of it as? What if this strange little series of questions was allready in your brain since you were born, but it was just now unlocked?

[eversio11]

I dont think this theory holds much weight. As someone two expert artists to draw the same house from the same perspective, I guarantee the images will look very similar.

[DGB454]

Did you just watch the Matrix?

[Syk0tic]

^Thats what i was thinking. n0w 5p34k 1337.

[PunkAlex]

HAH HAH no but i had just taken my meds for the night

[ghetto7o2azn]

wasnt there a scientist or something that asked that question? and came up that nothing is for sure except that something is asking these questions.... like the matrix we could all be somewhere else all imagining this world... who knos though lol not me thats for sure

[Joseph1082]

Rene' Decartes said the first thing he could be sure existed was the fact that he was doubting everything else.

[-Davo]

wouldn't it be pretty fu*ked up if you just woke up NOW.

haha.

[Parmenides3]

OK, so Descartes doubted everything except that he doubted. Whoever doubts exists. This is true, but limited. Descartes wanted to assemble a set of philosophical principles which no one was capable of doubting. It was an interesting project, but the projected was doomed from the start. People can doubt anything, even what they previously knew to be true. The chief limiting factor of Descartes' approach is that it's self-centered: it strives to deduce everything we need to know in order to be happy from the fact that one exists. It does not allow for the data of experience, thus it does not allow for knowledge to come to a person from the outside. How can we break out of a philosophy centered on ourselves? It seems to me that the immediate answer lies in a happy medium of trusting both our senses and our rational capabilities.

[PunkAlex]

Originally Posted by -Davo

wouldn't it be pretty fu*ked up if you just woke up NOW.

haha.

Oh hell yeah man! The first thing i do when i roll out of bed is run to the comp and check out the new threads!!!! AF PR1d3 y0!!

[pind]

How about this, reality as you or I know it, only exists because we perceive it to exist this way.

Everything in our "lives" is only brought about by our individual perceptions. Thats it. Blank slate to be filled with whatever we see fit.

We are not living beings having spiritual experiences, we are spirits having a "life" experience.

[Parmenides3]

The notion that things are perceived into existence was Berkeley's central thesis. His philosophy cannot be demonstrated to be plausible, because existence precedes action. We observe that the individual things in our surroundings are finite: they cannot explain their own existence. These things transcend our knowing them: they exist whether we perceive them or not. How could anyone fall in love if the one you love keeps vanishing from existence every time they're out of your sight? The notion that one's mind creates its surroundings is bad physics. It cannot explain the coherence of the physical world. British empiricism (the category of philosophy to which belong Berkeley and Hume) is adequately refutely, I think, every time someone stubs their toe and discovers that something really exists outside them.

[Joseph1082]

Parm, are you in philosophy class? Anyway, the idea is that we only experience the outside world through our five senses. We have no real way of proving that what we sense is real, or just a sense. The matrix is a perfect example, the fabricated sensory imputs to fake a whole world. Berkeley was basically saying we have no way to prove the world is real or an illusion like the matrix. When someone stubs their toe, the sensory imput is touch, including pain. How do you know that is really happening or that someone simply imput that sensation directly to your brain to give you the illusion. Honestly, this is an unanswerable question.

[Parmenides3]

"Hail and well met," as the Romans would say. My background is in Aristotelian philo (mostly metaphysics). Perhaps that might shed light on the optimism with which I receive the sense data that my toe sometimes hurts.

I like Hume's admission the introduction he wrote to his essay "An Inquiry into Human Understanding." Hume's framing of sensory knowledge is, as you know, a form of skepticism: he doubts everything except present sense data, and he receives that only for what it is, something felt. He says that he tries from time to time to adopt the skepticism he describes in the essay as a practical way of living. He admits that he cannot keep it up for more than a few fleeting moments and then he "surrenders himself to the amenities of life and drinks his tea." He says that "in the midst of his philosophy, he must still be a man." It looks to me like a frank admission that genuine Humean skepticism (that is, denying the coherence and transcendance of things) is not practicable. Hume would die of thirst not knowing what the source of his discomfort was, if he successfully enacted his skepticism.

The closed argument that sense data alone cannot prove its veracity is, as you are right to point out, air-tight. My contention is that we do not merely receive sense data (passive knowledge): we also reach into the sense data received and abstract real knowledge of the thing sensed from the data (active knowledge). An evil genius could only cast a cloak of deception over our senses: he/she could not also interfere with what we do with our sense data. The data necessary to recognize the deception would be implicit in the deception itself. (I speak of sensory knowledge, here.) We would have a fair chance to take the cloak away and wrap it around the genius' head rather tightly. Perhaps this is the history of philosophy. Parmenides3

PS-Glad to have you at AF!

[Joseph1082]

I agress with your arguments because I doubt the world is just an illusion. I think it was Berkeley that said the only thing we could be sure of is the contents of one's own mind. This is really an unanswerable question... there is no way to prove that anyone or anything exists beside your own mind!