How do I know you exist? I mean, everyone could be a figment of my imagination.?

Answer 1

You can't. The only way anyone has to know anything is through their senses, and all of those go through the brain. So it is entirely possible that everything you have ever seen, heard, touched, etc etc has been a hallucination.

Answer 2

Here's my response: Although you can't prove or disprove anything for sure, you can use "inference to the best explanation", and in return say that it's most reasonable to believe a certain way given all of the evidence so far. Given all of the vasts amounts of evidence and sensory data, if it is true that there are real people, using the least amount of assumptions it would explain the most amount of evidence, and has been the best theory at predicting how things will turn out beforehand. Saying that others don't exist but you do doesn't explain why your senses say your body feels pain, etc, but those same senses say there there are other humans around. When you dream, you see things, but you don't notice pain, etc, as easily, which an "imagination world" would have more of a difficult time explaining why we have that when we're awake but not when we're asleep. Of course, you can make the theory of imagination fit the evidence, but you have to tact on more assumptions, so the explanation of best fit, or least assumptions, you get my point. Saying that other actual people exist is also better at predicting how your senses will turn out, before an event even takes place. If in the future you notice some failed predictions, that would make you wonder about imaginary people, but since all the predictions so far are consistent with a reality, it's more reasonable to believe they're real. This doesn't prove there are real people, but says that it's the best explanation given the evidence.

Answer 3

I suppose this question has crossed everyone's minds some time or the other.

How do I know YOU'RE not a figment of my imagination? I don't.

I used to think that maybe we're all pawns in a game, characters in a virtual world. There's someone/something monitering our every move, and everything is fake. The keyboard I'm typing on now is maybe just ...nothing.

Maybe it's better not to think about this. I'd hate thinking that everything I do everyday is fake.

Answer 4

There are several religions that believe that everything we see, taste, touch, hear, and smell are all just imagination and that we are creating our own reality with our minds. Some people believe that NOTHING we experience is really happening at all.

There are also several science fiction books that postulize that we are all "Holographic" and that even we ourselves are not real and all of the things we think are happening, aren't happening at all. The sci/fi thinks there is a "Mad Scientist" running the switch and its all a game. Life, in their opinion, is just imaginary...like a dream in the "Mad Scientist's" mind. Pretty soon, this "Scientist" will flip the switch and the game will be over...just like "Game Boy". We will fade to black.

Maybe we are all stuck in a hologram. Maybe nothing is really there at all and our dreams are reality and reality is a dream. Maybe we have it all backward. We can't actually prove that we exist as maybe the piece of paper that documents anything, doesn't really exist even though lots of people claim to "see" it. Just because everyone believes something, doesn't make it so. (Maybe our minds created everyone to agree with us...maybe no one is really there.)

FrEaKy!

Answer 5

how do I know that "I" even exist? Who the heck's imagination would you be a part of?

In fact, Descartes wasn't really making a very accurate statement when he said "Cogito ergo sum" since 'thinking' does not necessarily imply that there is a thinker. What evidence do we have that there is a thinker? thoughts are the only evidence!

That's the thing... both the notion of a thinker, and of the things that are thought 'about' are both suspect. All that is certain is that there is 'thinking'/ awareness.

Awareness has us. We do not have awareness. Keep looking for the thinker, and all you will find are thoughts 'about' a thinker...never a thinker itself.

-Rob

Answer 6

Perhaps, it is that you are a figment of our imaginations.

Do you exist? If you do, then we exist.

No way you could have thought us all up. Where is the individuality when we all have one mind and no distinction.

There would instinctively, be confusion to think along those lines..... To which I'd wonder if you were okay.....

You think, therefore, you are..... there is your imagination... we are not figments of it, individually we are unique......

We cannot all be like minded......

Imagine that!!!


Your sister,
Ginger

Answer 7

Biologists say most of your brain is unused and only a small proportion is actually able to do something, maybe that larger part is creating the word around you to keep you for going insane through loneliness.
I much prefer to believe in people and the world, it's much less lonely.
Beauty is truth and the world is beautiful.

Answer 8

That's true. And you could be a figment of all of our imaginations.

Answer 9

This is simple. Just transfer $1000 to the account I will state to you in detail in my answer to the email you are invited to send to me now. You will experience when doing that that your own money goes out from your own account into my account and with this you have documented prove that I exist. (Let me know if you want to get a tax reduction for it)

Answer 10

I guess you will only really know when you have an empirical experience that validates it for you. I had a vision of God once that showed me that all souls were cells in the body of God and for me that validates the existence of all people, living and dead.