Convince me of your existence

[Sevothtarte]

Solipsism, I guess you know the story...

I am convinced I exist. I have to be, without it everything else would be pointless. I am not sure everything else exists. Including you, the chair I'm sitting on, the PC screen in front of me. Maybe I'm floating through infinite darkness imagining it all to experience some meaning, maybe I'm an unconscious test subject in a laboratory somewhere and all my sensory perception is being faked.

Let's assume I want you to be real (heh ). Help me believe it. Offer proof, convince me.

[Zarathustra]

How about . . . your question presupposes that which you doubt? If you're asking ME to prove my existence, then you are already assuming I exist just by asking the question.

Not very satisfying, huh? Okay, how about this: your being-in-the-world is fundamentally, existentially being-with-others. Forget whether or not I'm real as an objectively present object, or whether I'm a figment of your imagination. Instead, realize that this being-with-others is a necessary structural feature of your consciousness, necessary in the sense that you wouldn't BE without this as a feature of your experience. What you are is intimately tied to your being-for-others. If it weren't then this question couldn't even be framed. You wouldn't even have the conceptual framework to ask this question, because the possibility of the existence of others wouldn't be known.

The question is asked from a perspective of "stepping back" from your involvement with others. Your involvement with others is primordial, just like your being-in-the-world. That fact of your involvement already-always exists, and in order to ask the question of whether or not we're real, you have to take a step back and enter into a reflective attitude towards that involvement. This reflective attitude is a kind of "secondary" being-in-the-world. It is not primary. It takes an effort to step back and reflect. In a sense, merely asking the question is inauthentic, because it is a denial of a primordial, previous form of being: the being-with-others. The "doubting you" is less authentic than the "interacting you," because the "interacting you" came first; it is where you originally started when you stepped back, and it is where you will return once your reflective attitude ceases (by lack of applied concentration). You interacting-with-others is the ontic fact of your Being, a fact towards which you develop a reflective, analytical attitude (by "stepping back") in order to ask the question in the first place. And even when "stepping back," you are still fundamentally involved in a relationship with Others even in the act of doubting their existence.

That's roughly what Heidegger would say on the matter.

[Lord Mhoram]

The Buddha would like this question.

[Phantasm]

I type, therefore I am.

[The Laughing Man]

Solipsism, I guess you know the story...

I am convinced I exist. I have to be, without it everything else would be pointless. I am not sure everything else exists. Including you, the chair I'm sitting on, the PC screen in front of me. Maybe I'm floating through infinite darkness imagining it all to experience some meaning, maybe I'm an unconscious test subject in a laboratory somewhere and all my sensory perception is being faked.

Let's assume I want you to be real (heh ). Help me believe it. Offer proof, convince me.

I need your address.....

[Edinburghemma]

Poop, there you go. There can't be a more rancid proof of existence than that. Poop. Something goes in, something comes out.

Sorry I kind of lowered the tone. I left my brain behind at Starbucks today. I will rethink.

[Marv]

really, what difference does it make?

[Edinburghemma]

not having a mind, or proof of existence, or both? Oh my that could be profound. Does one exist without a mind? Well no, unless in the mind of others.

[wayfriend]

Offer proof, convince me.

You don't exist, so I shall prove nothing! Come to me with proof of your existence, and I shall consider proving mine.

[Phantasm]

Lucimay believes I exist.

From another thread -

heh. it's easier to believe in YOU, phantasm!!

[Tjol]

I believe I exist, and I'm not especially troubled if I can't convince others that I do...but it's always fun giving these things a try...

Let's start here....

Think of all the people that you can see via media and out in public who you will never know...who will never know you. Why would you imagine disinterested strangers? There are people whom you see and whom you know, and who know you as well in the world.

Given that we haven't much in the way of a priori knowledge about a person before we've spent some time around them, how is it that we pick one from the other to know, how do they pick us? If it's all created by the mind, or by a disembodied thought, would we bother imagining people in the world whom we'd never imagine interacting with?

If we've imagined both, wouldn't we, being semi-rational, at least give those strangers some quality by which they were obviously not of our interest and we obviously not of theirs? But this is not the way of our imagination of things, so it becomes a bit hard to believe that this all a consequence of imagination I think.

[The Laughing Man]

Solipsism, I guess you know the story...

I am convinced I exist. I have to be, without it everything else would be pointless. I am not sure everything else exists. Including you, the chair I'm sitting on, the PC screen in front of me. Maybe I'm floating through infinite darkness imagining it all to experience some meaning, maybe I'm an unconscious test subject in a laboratory somewhere and all my sensory perception is being faked.

Let's assume I want you to be real (heh ). Help me believe it. Offer proof, convince me.

All I have to do is convince myself I exist in the same way you do, and therefore you cannot deny my existence.

[lucimay]

Lucimay believes I exist.

From another thread -

heh. it's easier to believe in YOU, phantasm!!

and Phantasm believes that my belief in him is proof of both our existance.

i am therefore i type.

[Fist and Faith]

Let's try from the other direction. Maybe I can argue against whatever reasons you have for not believing I exist.

I type and hit post, and my words pop up on this fancy website. I also see a lot of things that look like posts, but I have no memory of having made them. I guess I'm just willing to accept that these other so-called posts truly are posts that were made by other people.

And I look around me throughout the day, and see things quite similar to what I see whenever I look in the mirror. Again, I'm willing to accept that these truly are other people like me.

If you see posts that look like yours, but you don't remember making them, do you have reason to doubt that they are posts made by other people? Do you have reason to doubt that things that look like you are not other people?

[Elfgirl]

I stink, therefore I am...

Have you ever noticed that you cannot believe OTHERWISE when you meet people who haven't bathed in ages?

[Marv]

Bill Hicks said:

“The world is like a ride in an amusement park. And when you choose to go on it you think it's real because that's how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down and round and round. It has thrills and chills and it's very brightly coloured and it's very loud and it's fun, for a while. Some people have been on the ride for a long time and they begin to question: "Is this real, or is this just a ride?" And other people have remembered, and they come back to us, they say, "Hey, don't worry, don't be afraid, ever, because this is just a ride.......And we kill those people.”

[lucimay]

Let's try from the other direction. Maybe I can argue against whatever reasons you have for not believing I exist.

I type and hit post, and my words pop up on this fancy website. I also see a lot of things that look like posts, but I have no memory of having made them. I guess I'm just willing to accept that these other so-called posts truly are posts that were made by other people.

And I look around me throughout the day, and see things quite similar to what I see whenever I look in the mirror. Again, I'm willing to accept that these truly are other people like me.

If you see posts that look like yours, but you don't remember making them, do you have reason to doubt that they are posts made by other people? Do you have reason to doubt that things that look like you are not other people?

niiiiice!!

[Avatar]

Haha, it's been said already I see. I don't need to prove my existance, because I clearly exist. It's all you other buggers I have trouble believing in.

At any given moment, I am aware of my own existance. It's the only thing I can always be aware of, because it's there in order that I can be aware in the first place.

Nice quote Tazz.

The real problem with believing in other people's existance is that you don't know. You believe it, (if you do), but it's a matter of faith. It's possible to infer it, but not to prove it.

--A

[Elfgirl]

I believe in me...

[Xar]

Then of course, if you believe you might be the only thing existing in the whole universe, and ask us to prove our existence, why should we bother? No matter what we do and say, you can always claim it's an illusion anyway For example, let's suppose that I want to show you I'm real by, say, discussing things you don't know anything about. Let's say, for example, I'd like to describe my job at length, and in a detailed enough manner that someone who is not a biologist by trade would never be able to know, let alone understand. You, on the other hand, could always say that all I'm telling you is crap, and that if everything else (including other living beings and even the universe's physical constants) is an illusion, then it follows that everything I say is based upon an illusion and therefore I must be an illusion as well. In short, if you believe you're the only real thing, there's nothing others can do to persuade you they're real too (well, perhaps they could pummel or kill you... ).

However, this of course is beside the point, because I haven't the faintest idea whether you exist in the first place: I just know that the computer screen in front of me sometimes shows posts by mysterious, possibly nonexistent people. How can I know that on the other side of the screen, there are so many people and not just one person pretending to be alternatively Avatar, you, Loremaster, Lucimay, and so on?