Nothing Exists

You cant figure something out by just thinking about it. You need to learn the things you do not know. We can gear ourselves to learn, actually learn not the joke of an education we get in todays schools, then we'll have a chance of figuring something out. Until then, yes, we do exist. I'd have to say the evidence for far outweighs that of the against.

Re: Nothing Exists

Not a stupid question at all. In fact, some of the greatest philosophers of all time have tackled this one. As is the problem with philosophy, there is no definitive answer, just cases made. Some are convincing, some are not, and there is no universally 'right' answer.
Here is my take:
There is only one axiom; cogito ergo sum. I know I exist, but I can't be positive that you do. Or anything does.
In fact this line of thinking lead to another branch of philosophy called solipsism.
The problem with solipsism is it is too concerned with absolutes. Just because I cannot ABSOLUTELY know anything aside from cogito ergo sum, that doesn't mean I cannot 'know' things subjectively based on probability. If I throw a ball into the air, I will expect to catch it, even though I can't be 100% sure it won't fall upwards for some reason.

CrazyDiamond, on my way to my bookshelf to find a philosophical discussion on how we can prove the existence of something, I stubbed my toe on a non-existent footstool. I immediately lost interest in your question.

RoyalesThaRula, your speculation renewed my interest. It seems to me that nothing, in the sense of no thing, exists. There is only process, change, a flow of becoming. You and I only exist as things in the sense that we 'perceive' ourselves as things, we have the IDEA of things, but we cannot find anything that holds still; it only changes at rates slow enough for us not to see that change. The reality is that we are always in the process of unbecoming and becoming, nothing fixed or static about us as in the idea of things.
Heraclitus said we cannot step in the same river twice. I say there is no fixed "we" to repeat such steps. We as well as the river are always changing. In THAT sense we do not exist. The buddhists call this continuous process of changing emptiness. That makes sense to me.

Hmm, thats an odd one.
If someone is dying in the street and you dont call an ambulence because you dont think the person exists, could you deal with the consequences?

Id like to believe life is real and the people who question it are on a different planet.

Re: Nothing Exists


I certainly can't prove that anything exists, and I don't know of anyone who can... but when it comes to oil slicks on bad roads, electrical appliances next to bathtubs and meat that has been left out in the open for several days, I'm going to put my money on the "things exist" side of the argument every time.



In debates about, say, globalization, abortion or capital punishment, the claim that the universe might not exist doesn't really strike me as an impressive trump card. It's not so much a stalemate as a decision to leave the chess board and play pixie-sticks instead.

You know what, maybe you don't exist. Maybe your the product of an alternate realitie's deranged imagination.

Whether we can prove that we are in fact here or not, let's just assume we are and go about our lives. If we don't exist, but assumed we did, we won't really notice that we were mistaken until it hits us over the head in some form or fashion. At that point, well, you'll have your answer.

Well, as stated above, we can know that we ourselves exist. I think we can also know that something 'other' exists. You said it might be an illusion, in that case illusion exists.

Whenever we perceive something we can distinguish between subject and object, perceiver and perceived. You could argue that this distinction is itself an illusion, but then you are making another distinction: the distinction between illusion and illuded (is that correct grammer?). Incidentally, you are also making a distinction between illusion and reality. I guess you could argue that these distinctions are also illusions, but then you'd have an infinite regress of illusions, which I'm pretty sure is impossible.

Before doubting all existence, I would doubt the precept that you must have logical proof in order to justify belief in anything. I mean, if you think about it, you can't prove that logic is correct, because that would be circular! You just accept basic premises such as A=A as self evident. I would do the same for existence.

Crazy Diamond,

If you examine ontology (philosophy of existence) you will find that that one view of the concept is that is an "excluder" i.e. We "know" what does NOT exist, but we cannot "know" what does exist.

I tend to argue that we should grant "existence" to any "thing" with which we interact. I make no distinction between "physical" and "non-physical" things, which we distinguish by the nature of the interaction. A key word here is "we" since "thingness" tends to rely on consensus and mutual language rather than personal conjecture.

As shewolf once said, I think we are all just part of the Matrix.

Good, Fresco. You acknowledge the cultural nature of experience. Our experiences seem real, solid experience of actual things, because everyone around us does so as well. Consensual validation and joint definition makes our life so solid. Philosophical reflection softens it considerably.
It occured to me once, in my more sophmoric days, that if we take away all recognizable properties of a thing, say the "redness", "roundness", "weight", "taste", etc. of an apple, we are still left with its "thingness." How naive that was. What can a naked thing possibly look like, or be? It's a mere abstraction. Or is it the sum of its properties? I don't think it has any ontological reality from that frame of reference. But to me, I have no doubt that it, the apple, is the word I use to refer to an experience. That is, for me, as certain as Doktor's ontological confidence in Decartes' "Cogito ergo sum." The latter is not at all a solid ontological or epistemological foundation for me. "I" think? That's an linguistic assumption, a function of grammar (the need of a predicate for a subject, the logical need for an agent of any action). To me there is just thinking, or the subjective experience of thinking and the culturally conditioned logical presumption of an "I" who is doing the thinking. The thinking does not require, except logically, an agent or subject (an "I") of thinking. That is something that is added onto the act or experience.

Yes...within the act of thinking "I" is not present. In the meditational exercise of "observing thinking" the impression is of "IT thinking" rather than "I".

Depends what is meant by exist….

There is one thing that never changes though it's not a thing, (a process or movement), and as such it cannot be said to exist. Yet it is all that is ever known…Consciousness.

Its presence is self-evident. Yet it is like nothing……..to itself.

If that is the case, we as consciousness are awake to ourselves as nothing. Or, as consciousness, we are wake to ourselves as objects. Either way, we are Nothing that is awake.

Good guys. The gang's all here. Now we know that Twyvel still lives. Great to see evidence of you, T.
You exist again in this "nothing's" (i.e., JLNobody's) consciousness. How nice.

Yes, JLNobody, Good to see you/me/us/we.

It's so nice to be absent as anything, yet present as nothing (and everything). I can neither be found or lost.

I have never understood the importance placed on such reasoning. It seems little more than an attempt at drug-induced contemplation.

What reasoning?

Perhaps I should have used 'thoughts' instead of 'reasoning'. Whatever you wish to call it, contemplating the concept of non-existence is something I've never understood. It seems entirely pointless to me, as I can't fathom what use could be put to it.

I'm open for enlightenment, however.

Q , like I said in another post about the justification for phylosophy (sic), it serves no practical purpose. Even the pragmatists argue about practicality as a principle. It's sort of like astronomy's concern with the size and structure of the cosmos; it makes no real difference for our lives, except that it gratifies curiosity, resolves doubts and its findings put up barriers against people who would impose "theological" models of reality upon us. In the case of "seeing" the fundamental emptiness of reality, of having a mystical "enlightenment", as it were, that can do no more for us than bring great joy and acceptance of existential things like our mortality. I guess that's practical psychologically--but it is very private. Your enlightenment in that sense does nothing for me or the community at large. Or does it?

How do I know the consequences exist? How do I know the person in question exists? How do I know the person dying isn't just some vivid illusion that I, and everyone else, is seeing?

But it's really not that kind of question at all. If I saw someone get hit of course I'd call an ambulance. I was only speaking of the philisophical methods of proving or disproving the existence of physical things. I don't walk around imagining things don't exist, I'm just looking for some thoughts, theories, and speculation. Dok S and JL Nobody's were exceptionally good. Thanks for the insights guys.