Can you doubt you exist

Well the way I heard it Schopenhaur said that when I die the world will die with me. ,Recently some gun man shot up a mall, and he said: now I'll be famous. Living people can be famous; but dead people are just dead. We cannot expect the dead to find meaning as we do in what living people do. Meaning is a far better expression than being, because if I were dead the world might still have being, but no meaning to me because meaning is a thing of life to such an extent that we give much meaning to stuff that has no actual being. Life is meaning, and as long as you live you can find meaning.

Holiday:)

That seems like a play on words because it is like saying that since chaos has no form it can't manifest even though it is 'pure potential'
To be manifest, is to have taken on form, form itself is limitation in being, again, chaos is pure potential, because it is without form.

When you say chaos do u mean randomness?
Would chaos be the opposite of causality, flow of time.:confused:

Holiday,

Chaos, just feeling my way around here, could be defined by the lack of order or arrangement, though apparently there is some order to be found in chaos. Causality it seems to me a term that gets tossed out there all the time, yet, no one seems to know its nature, perhaps it infers the gathering of the elements, in which case, it would look like chaos. The time arrow, time does seem to go in one direction, until you realize, there is no direction.

The existence of heaven and hell and the matters of life and death are proofs that we exist. I would like to think that I could disolve myself out of the past to prove that I never did.

Holiday, I cannot imagine that the soul can decay, just simply cease to be. It is the body that decays. By the term mind I do not mean the brain but the essence of life that the soul can associate with the host, be it memory or awakening awareness and the senses outside of the life. Heaven and hell are just levels of experience. Just like falling from a plane without a parachute is a hell of an experience, that same fall with the knowledge that a parachute will open to prevent the inevitable can be viewed as a heavenly thing. All the while there is an in between.

Objectively, we exist because we create the meaning of existance. However, I believe we may not exist simply because there is a chance that we don't.

That we live is the most undeniable subjective fact we can know, but existence must last in time, beyond our own being to be real.

That seems rather contradictory and I am completely lost. Yes we live, duh
. If you are saying that existence must be for eternity then does it become important whether or not an entity exists when it cannot perceive and nothing else can perceive it?

urangutan wrote:

Fido, I certainly don't understand, that you can say, we don't eat minerals. My point about eating is not that we must to survive but that an individual cannot expect to exist as a human and then as no other entity, whether before life as a human, during that life, after it or all.

Now it is my turn to say I don't understand your question, since as it is stated, I agree with it. We have one portion of a life that is for all practical purposes, Eternal. Our piece of life we will lose out right unless we can pass it on, but in any event, we die, and that is the pitch black end.

Quote:

Yes of course you are correct with your definition of heaven and hell being that of speculation. What one calls a hell of a ride, another calls a ride to hell.

yes.

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Just one question, by the Greeks definition of animus being capable of decay and such, are we talking of, from the host, as in some mental conditions or are they saying the soul of one departed.

Fido wrote:

That we live is the most undeniable subjective fact we can know, but existence must last in time, beyond our own being to be real.

That seems rather contradictory and I am completely lost. Yes we live, duh
. If you are saying that existence must be for eternity then does it become important whether or not an entity exists when it cannot perceive and nothing else can perceive it?

I don't think it becomes important whether or not any entity exists. We sense we live, but if we search for objective proof that we live, and are free agents, then we find very little. If people devote great portions of their ability to security, and not only for themselves, but for their children and children's children, even when such behavior actually destabilizes the world and their whole society, it is because objectively, security is illusion. We want to exist, but if as Job, we should lose all our children, then did we ever exist? To exist we need witnesses to that fact. We need forms of relationship that were before us and will be after us for two puposes. One is recognition, and the second is realization. We are made real by our relationships. We know we exist when others say hello, and notice us. But forms of relationship also secure our existence, as does every form of economy which puts food on our tables and clothing on our backs. And we know that our life and our effort, that we put into forms of relationship will carry on after us, giving and taking from our children, friends, and neighbors.

That we live is the most undeniable subjective fact we can know, but existence must last in time, beyond our own being to be real. What we want, and what all of our forms of relationship support is the sense that life will go on after us, so we can be like all else we feel exists, having a tangible reality and being stable in time. We want to give the subjective sense of existence through life a sort of objective reality that it will never quite have. Further, we do not create the meaning of existence, but the support of life, and life itself gives all things meaning, and value in relation to whether they support life, detract from life, or are neutral.

If a tree falls in the woods and noone knows, did it really happen?

I think that's what bassplayer was getting at here. Our consciousness breathes existence, but we must take into account we are not the only ones conscious. If, however, there was nothing consciously observing the world, some theories point to the universe not even existing. Existence because life exists.

It is not that the universe would not exist if we were not here experiencing it; but it would have no meaning, because meaning is a value we assign to bits of existence as they affect our lives. The question about the tree is a simple one. There is an almost universal feeling among people that there is only one existence, though I can't say if this feeling is conscious. Though people some times talk about multiple planes of existence they pretty much all talk only of one existence, or of existence as though it were the monad. If this is true there is no event not connected to all other events, and our ability to percieve their connection does not mean they are not connected. Those people who cannot hear a single tree fall in a distant forest are often in part responsible for global deforestation. It is not the accuity of their hearing that is the problem, but the accuity of their understanding.