Do we exist?

I am all ears.

Joe(and several other excitable body parts, but mostly ears)Nation

I exist . . . the rest of you are just fig newtons of my imagination.

Premise---he who smelt it dealt it
Observation---I smelt it
Conclusion--I dealt it
Extension---I'm real, now where are all you zombies from?

Rap

what if i flog you upside your head? will i exist then?

Can you prove that you think?

For Descartes to be certain of anything in the first place he must prove that God exists, God is the basis for his epistemological enterprise. His whole philosophy is fundamentally flawed.

As I see it, Decartes was stuck at the level of thought. And since your question is one framed as thought, the only "logical" (i.e., thoughtful) response is that you DO exist by virtue of your behaving as an agent of thought.
Buddhism, however, is not a philosophy in the sense of existing as a system of thoughts. It operates--as I see it--at the level of immediate and concrete experience, experience that is "pre-reflective" or independent of thought.
Now if we LOOk at (as opposed to just think about) experience [and notice that the dualism inherent in our language requires that I speak of "my" experience as something separate from a "me"] we see it both coming into existence and fading from my phenomenal field simultaneously.
BOTTOM LINE: The non-dualistic posture of buddhism (AS I EXPERIENCE IT) holds that "I"/"my" life both exist and not exist simultaneously.

No, that would just prove that he's a bit twisted.

Solipsism ain't for the faint of heart; it's more for those who like to masturbate.

But DrewDad, look carefully and you'll see that language and culture are forms of COLLECTIVE masturbation.

There are more exciting forms of collective masturbation. I prefer seedy movie theaters, for example.

Well I would too if the audiences in those theatres included women.

Haha... but then no one would be watching the movie....


But regarding cogito ergo sum... In my opinion he could have said just "sum" and it would be proof enough and with fewer assumptions.

Cyracuz your signature line--"We don't see things as they are. We see things as we are"--is useful here.
Decartes' dictum, "cogito ergo sum" seemed axiomatic to him as it does to most people everywhere because it reflects THE WAY WE ARE: ego illlusions.

"Sum" would have said what "cogito..." denoted because they are both expressions of this ego illusion.

_________________

I'm gone for a few days and the level of conversation drops more than a few notches.

Anyhow, JL, to be honest I have no idea how we can both exist and not exist simultaneously.

Consider, Aperson, that static "being" does not exist, only dynamic "becoming", process, flux, and change "exist". And because of its dynamic nature this "existence" is also "non-existence."
I'm thinking, of course of the perspective of Zen buddhism, Nietzsche and Heraclitis. The latter famously noted that we cannot step into the same river twice because the river is never the same; its continous change amounts to its simultaneous existence and non-existence.
The same applies to the person who cannot step into the river twice because HE is changing as well. All in nature is process, but all thought refers to artificially static conceptual "entities." This applies even to logic with its reference to artificial static As, Bs, Cs, etc..
Good night.

Ok, I understand now.

Cheers.