there are so many theories that show the impossiblilty of life being an illusion and that only you are real.
but is the ONLY reason that we cant know for sure is because we can directly experience what another person is experienceing? but other than that its wrong and fataly flawed correct?
2007-03-22 17:42:48 · 6 answers · asked by Anonymous in Arts & Humanities ➔ Philosophy
Here's my take on it. Our brains are capable of asking certain questions that have no simple answer. We wonder if things exist if we are not there to observe them, we wonder why our personalities are ours and not someone else's, why were were born when we were, etc... We are capable of killing ourselves over these questions. They simply have no answer. The fault in our brains is that we can't find an answer to a question we can ask.
Monkeys, dogs, fleas, lions, etc... don't sit around wondering why they are here, what their purpose is, etc... We do. How ironic that we are looking so hard for something that isn't there and actually stop living b/c of it. Just b/c we have big brains doesn't mean we have some cosmic purpose. I assure you we don't
2007-03-22 17:59:34 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Flaw #1 Can you quantify certainty?
Flaw #2 The evidence of the world's existence is of an extra-rational sort that has its effect on our unconscious, but is elusive to rational proof.
Flaw #3 Putting subjects and predicates together can produce nonsense sentences. "The green idea vomited." The question that asks for proof of the world's existence is one such sentence. Wittgenstein made an interesting comment, "Not HOW the world is, is the mystical, but THAT it is." (TL-P6.44) Our language, analysis and intelligibility-skills can deal very well with descriptive aspects of reality, but not with the fact of its existence.
___If you want to know if the world is real, have a worldly person hit you in the head with a worldly baseball bat, and see it the worldly event disables your ability to doubt the world's existence. OK, well make it one of those little souvenir bats.
2007-03-23 07:59:23 · answer #2 · answered by G-zilla 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
We can't be sure that anything but us exists because it could all be the invention of our minds.
It's not fair, though, to say that 'other than that' it's wrong, because 'that' is the whole idea. It would be like saying 'other than the fact that this is a calculator, this isn't a calculator'.
The flaw in the idea, really, is that nothing could EVER happen to disprove it, because anything that would could be explained as also imaginary, and nothing could ever prove it, either. I suppose that's also the strength of it. *g*
2007-03-23 01:05:10 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
I was going to something to the extent of, "Because we both think this, we know for sure." But then I thought about it some more, and your right. Unless you can read the other person's mind you can never know for sure that they exist at all.
2007-03-23 01:31:02 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
I think that the idea of being separated from one another is a fundamental error in thinking. From a spiritual perspective we are all one. From a materialistic perspective, we are separate.
When we stop looking at ourselves from a material perspective, we have a chance to find the interconnectedness we share.
2007-03-23 00:50:54 · answer #5 · answered by Skeptic 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
people and things do not exist independantly of us..i call this my Lumpy Gravy theory of the universe...there is only one big thing, and that thing has thick and thin places in it..the thick places are objects and people and the thin spots are the almost void of space...the stuff inbetween is water and air, but it is still all just one big thing...we are all just lumps in the universal gravy boat!
2007-03-23 15:23:55 · answer #6 · answered by mrjones502003 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋