prove to me that the chair in front of me exists!?

Question

i seen this on 'Sabrina the teenage witch' but she never completed the explanation, as far as i can remember she began with "well, due to the act that i perceive you, you perceive the chair and i perceive the chair........" and that was it!!

sorry ,that's supposed to be FACT not act, and the question, or statement as i should say, was posed to her by her philosophy lecturer! i know its not real, i just wanted to put it into context!!

Answer 1

its a bloody chair... because i say its a chair :)

Answer 2

Assuming for the moment that you and I are in agreement about what, exactly, a chair is and that we would both agree on that particular manifestation of a chair, that leaves only the question of whether any particular apparent manifestation of reality is really there. So let's take this from the top.

We have an objective agreement about chairs. They are attributed certain qualities. You can personally experience those apparent qualities. That leaves only two options, really:

1) Your experiences and those are others are real.
2) Your experiences are false, requiring an unlying imperceptible reality which is creating the perceptible illusion.

Given that we have no substantial evidence of some external chair conspiracy, and that a secret reality model is more complex that a non-conspiratorial one (the conspiracy requires not only all the complexities of our experiential world but also an extra, unperceived world too), then Occam's razor would suggest that the simple model is true.

Thus the chair in front of you exists because it requires a lot less explanation than that chair NOT existing.

Answer 3

This is the part (or cue) for you to blink your eyes a couple of times (Sabrina was that teenage witch who has some mean karate kicks in her repertoire right?), look around the room and crouch down into a defensive position preparing for any attack from behind from an invisible uhmmm- was it demons she was fighting?

The story line was that she would see different dimensions so she continually had to check whether or not they were illusions because sometimes she can "see" but nobody else can see her back, nor know that she is in the room.

It was not a philosophical discussion at all.

Answer 4

It does not exist.



This is more easily understandable if one considers the actual scale of the components of an atom. If one takes into account the fact that the neutrons, protons and electrons of an atom actually have huge spaces between them it becomes clear that the atoms that make up seemingly solid objects are made up of 99+ percent empty space.

This alone does not seem too important till you add the idea that the atoms that make up seemingly solid objects are more of a loose conglomeration that share a similar attraction but never really touch each other.

At first glance this does not really seem relevant, but closer analysis reveals that this adds a tremendous amount of empty space to solid objects that are already made up of atoms that are 99 percent space. When so-called solid objects are seen in this light it becomes apparent that they can in no way be the seemingly solid objects they appear to be.

We ourselves are not exceptions to this phenomenon.

These seemingly solid objects are more like ghostly images that we interpret as solid objects based on our perceptual conclusions.

From this we must conclude that Perception is some sort of a trick that helps us to take these ghostly images and turn them into a world we can associate and interact with. This clever device seems to be a creation of our intellect that enables us to interact with each other in what appears to be a three dimensional reality.

I hope that helps to answered your question.

Love and blessings Don

Answer 5

it doesn't matter if the chair exists or not because you and everyone else will act as if it existed, even if it doesn't. this is a roundabout criticism of Descartes. he wrote extensively on how can we know if we are actually dreaming right now or experiencing the world as it is. the simple answer is, it doesn't matter. we will act as if the world were real.


and ps, if someone says the chair doesn't exist, bash him in the face with it and then ask him again.

Answer 6

I don't know the quote, but I never really felt that Sabrina the Teenage Witch was some pinnacle of philosophy...

Answer 7

I can't see the chair in front of you, so i don't even know there is one. Therefore i can't. Proof is something which is confined to the realms of mathematics and logic, not the world as perceived through the senses.

Answer 8

The chair doesn't exist. You perceive it as a chair, but that perception is in the model of the universe that you keep in your mind. I can tell you that I perceive it as a chair, but I am describing my perception which may be very different to your perception. Languages limit us to using the same word because we have been taught to use it when we perceive that non-existent chair. Now look again - it's not there.

Answer 9

The question is was it created or did it evolve ?
All matter can I think be boil led down to bits of information. If we knew how we could send the info through the air waves and alter it at will, if we only knew how.
"I think therefore I am" I don't think therefore I am not.
You can know the chair is there even if you don't see it, cos' you trip over the darn thing in the dark.

Answer 10

...coming from a show where a 28-yr old acted like a 17 yr old, a cat talked, and witches blinked thier way in and out of trouble
Proof that the chair is real! Head-butt it. If it's not real, that welt on your head isn't, either.

Answer 11

It may not exist in every reality, but it certainly does in the one that you're most accustomed to. If you can sit on it, or feel it, or use it, then it exists at least in the material world. All your friends and family would agree, though there may be several planes of existence in which it is absent, it is in at least one.