Have you existed before?

Discussion in 'General Philosophy' started by birch, Aug 10, 2017.

  1. just me Registered Senior Member

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    no it isn't, Dave can't have ever been aware of nothing, there isn't anything to nothing to be aware of, so Dave must have experienced something instead perpetually, if you don't experience nothing you must experience its non existence, which is something, and no one can ever experience nothing.
    any evidence of Dave's to suggest that the universe existed before him could have come into being when he did even if Dave did have a beginning.
     
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  3. just me Registered Senior Member

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    quantum physics supports my theory of subjectivity, what with the measurement problem.

    and the universe doesn't get reinvented by self actualization, just invented, there is no universe until it is observed by someone or other, and your universe, the stuff you are aware of, is uniquely yours, although it may be similar to others.

    and you ask what/who are/am we/I? you must be your own awareness if it is true that awareness is the same as existence because in that case your awareness is the same as your existence.

    and the same goes for anyone else.

    I don't see why exactly everything must exist at the same time, but perhaps it must.
     
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  5. RainbowSingularity Valued Senior Member

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    i clearly read a religious concept in there.
    i am not anti spiritualism. just pointing it out.
    that is me making a statement about posing a point for consideration.
    the question is not the issue, the thought to consider possible ideas around the question is the point.

    i was being a little "to be or not to be" in prose

    for all things in all directions ... ?
    but you do see why slightly ?

    speed reading these subjects on top of typos tends to confuse some slighter meanings.

    the debate on time has been quite interesting on this board though a little over my head.
    "time" as a discussion point has been avoided on the most part.

    remember that a predominant proportion of all living people believe in a god concept
    also they believe in a living before birth concept and a living after death concept.
    this tends to colour the debate.

    thus the idea of all time being concurrent ...
    the concurrentness mandate is required to justify their religion in how it has been allowed to build and bed-sit their ego.
     
    Last edited: Nov 30, 2019
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  7. RainbowSingularity Valued Senior Member

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    co-concurrentcyismness ...
     
  8. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Indeed. It could have.

    The universe could have been sneezed out of the nose of a Cosmic Unicorn.
    But there's zero evidence of a Cosmic Unicorn, and there's zero evidence that the universe popped into existence the day I was born.

    There is, contrarily, a preponderance of evidence that the universe is significantly older than that.

    I think, just me, that you are confused about what, exactly, "evidence" is.

    We observe nature, we see patterns in activity. We build models that seem to explain how things work. If those models continue to be accurate predictors of how our world works, we keep them and improve them. When we wonder if our model is right, we say "Well, we see new stars being born, and we see old stars dying. We have a pretty good idea how stars work. And they only work if those old stars were new billions of years ago." Same with Earth and the Moon. That's evidence.

    Were we to build a model that says the universe popped into existence the day I was born, we would have far, far more questions than answers. There would be nothing in nature we could point to and say "This phenomenon right here - this is more consistent with a universe that did not exist yesterday but does exist today." In short, there is no evidence. The model would do nothing to help our understanding of how nature works, and would make no useful predictions.
     
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  9. just me Registered Senior Member

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    I do not believe in a perception independent universe.
    your universe is your experience, it is all that exists to you because you are not aware of anything else and it is different from everyone else, although it might be similar.
    e.g. birds can see different parts of the spectrum than humans, so a bird universe would look different to a human one.
    and my statement was hypothetical, I don't believe you even had a beginning because to do that you would have had to not be experiencing anything at some point, before you existed, and that is impossible because it is impossible to experience nothing, there isn't anything to it to experience, it is not a thing but the absence of anything,
    and so because no one can ever experience nothing everyone must be experiencing something instead, perpetually.
    you can't experience neither nothing nor something, because each is the absence of the other, and so, if you are not experiencing nothing you are experiencing something and vice versa, and as aforementioned it is impossible to experience nothing.

    also, here is some evidence for that cosmic unicorn:

    everything=everything

    therefore everything is every other thing,

    and therefore anything you can think of is absolutely everything, including a cosmic unicorn.

    it is this sort of outlandishness which makes me love non dual philosophy.

    I have a theory as to why duality can exist in the instance of everything being everything else, and that is that if everything exists in every way, then it must exist in every possible dual state.

    and I'm not too keen on pattern recognition or prediction or any of that stuff, because it shows how things work very well but not why they work that way, which is what I am into.
    I use the word evidence rather than "PROOF" mainly to be humble, in case my ideas turn out to be wrong.
     
    Last edited: Dec 1, 2019
  10. just me Registered Senior Member

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    300
    I'm not religious because even though I do believe in other entities who could sort of be called gods, I definitely don't worship them, in fact I despise them because I am their unwilling puppet.
    I basically believe the same thing as most people, that everything is caused by something, but the only difference is that with my theory that experience is the same as existence, everything must actually be a self aware being.

    would it really matter all that much though if the things that cause things to happen to us are aware? same result, different causes the way I see it.

    I haven't really considered the issue of time very much myself, but the present takes 0 time to change into the future, which then becomes the present, so by that logic there is 0 time between every moment in time and all time therefore occurs at the same time.

    and I just don't think that the idea of awareness as a fundamental aspect of reality should be attacked merely because it is not the general consensus,
    there should be a better reason to attack an idea than that in my opinion.

    I believe in science, and logic, like most curious people do these days, but I do not believe in the materialism cult, which is itself based on unjustified faith.

    I am sorry if I misinterpreted some of your statements, rainbow singularity, it is difficult for me not to due to your flowery language.
    although I do like your flowery language.
     
  11. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    While that may be true, it doesn't disqualify the existence of an objective universe independent of my perception.

    "...impossible to experience nothing..." presupposes there is an entity to do (or fail to do) the experiencing.

    That logic does not compel an entity into existence. Thus an objective reality, independent of life experiencing it, is not disqualified.
     
  12. just me Registered Senior Member

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    your experience is the same as your existence because the experience of experience is the existence of experience so experience is the same as existence.
    you either exist as nothing or something, if not 1 then the other,
    and in order to exist as nothing there would have to be a you experiencing it because experience is existence.

    although you are right, the logic I used before does not compel anyone into existence on its own, it has to be paired with what I have just written, It is a bad habit of mine leaving things out.
    also, didn't mean to refer to you in third person, I was under the impression that I was responding to rainbow singularities message and not yours.
     
    Last edited: Dec 2, 2019
  13. just me Registered Senior Member

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    300
    it is impossible for anyone to experience nothing, there isn't anything to it to experience, as it is not a thing but the absence of anything.

    and so because no one can ever experience nothing everyone must be experiencing something instead, perpetually.

    No one can experience neither nothing nor something, because each is the absence of the other. and so, if anyone is not experiencing nothing they are experiencing something instead, and vice versa, if anyone is not experiencing anything, they are experiencing nothing instead.


    and as aforementioned it is impossible to experience nothing.


    your experience is the same as your existence because:


    Experience is comprised entirely of experiences.

    Therefore experience is the same as the experience of experiences.

    Therefore experience only exists by being experienced.

    Therefore the experience of an experience=the existence of an experience.

    Therefore experience is the same as existence.

    And therefore your experience is the same as your existence.

    everyone either exists as nothing or something, if not 1 then the other, because to not exist as anything is to exist as nothing, and vice versa, to not exist as nothing is to exist as something.

    and in order to exist as nothing there would have to be a you experiencing it because experience is existence.

    Furthermore, as aforementioned, no one can experience nothing, there simply isn’t anything to it to experience.

    and therefore, because experience is existence, no one can exist as nothing, and instead must exist as something.

    So the fact that no one can experience nothing, translates to no one can exist as nothing, which compels everyone to exist as something instead, something which, because experience is existence, experiences the manner of its own existence.

    The implications of this are that you have always existed as something, and have consequentially always experienced something, and also that you always will exist as something, and will consequently always experience something, as the alternative, which is to experience nothing, is not possible.

    I don't separate awareness from its owner.
     
  14. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    39,397
    It sounds like you're claiming there is no objective reality.

    How do other people fit in with your view? Am I a figment of your imagination, just like everything else that exists? If I see a tree and you see a tree, why is it that our separate experiences so often agree? Is it because I'm just a part of you? Or coincidence? Or what?

    What about knowledge I seemingly have that you can't access? For example, suppose I have a sister. What's my sister's name? You don't know, but I do. Or don't I? Do you think my sister's name only becomes real when you know it? Is her name created by you, because the entire universe, including my sister, is just your experience?

    No. You slid from talking about everything as a whole to talking about individual things, there. From the law of identity (that a thing is always itself) it does not follow that all things are one.

    No. If I think of a cucumber, I'm not thinking of everything, because there are plenty of things that aren't cucumbers.
     
  15. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    39,397
    Makes sense so far. An experience is an experience of something. Got it.

    You've now introduced the idea of beings who experience things. If being can have experiences, it follows from above that they cannot experience nothing. Got it.

    The "perpetually" thing seems to be a non sequitur. Perception doesn't go on forever, in my experience.

    Previously, you said, in effect, that an experience is an experience of something, so here you contradict yourself.

    That just repeats your first point.

    That's a contradiction, since you said it is impossible to experience nothing.

    It looks like, early in this piece, you're tying yourself in logical knots and losing track of your own argument.

    A thing is itself. Okay. Seems obvious.

    I don't see the point of the recursion. Turtles all the way down, but why?

    Earlier you introduced the idea of a being who experiences. Now you expand slightly to say that it is meaningless to talk about experience without any experiencers. Okay.

    If an experiencer has an experience, then the experience must exist. Okay. Makes sense.

    Non sequitur.

    This doesn't follow from anything that came before.

    An assertion that you have yet to support with any argument.

    "something" and "nothing" are opposites, and an "everyone" must be one or the other. Okay.

    Here you introduce the notion of "not existing". This doesn't relate to anything that came before, since you started talking about experiences than later about existence.

    I take it, therefore, that this is a definition of "to not exist". Apparently, we are to understand that "to not exist" means "to exist as nothing", which is possible because of your previous definition that things can exist as either nothing or something.

    You're tying yourself up with double negatives, which is probably the cause of a lot of your confusion. My advice would be to try to make positive statements, which will help avoid this confusion.

    Here, since you defined "to not exist" as "to exist as nothing", we find you saying "to exist as nothing as nothing is to exist as something", but earlier you said that these two possibilities are mutually exclusive. So, you're not even following your own logic here.

    This is a new definition of what it means to "exist as nothing" - something you haven't discussed up to this point. Apparently, to "exist as nothing" requires that there is a "you experiencing".

    I take it that we are to conclude from this that all of us exist as nothing. Is that correct?

    This is a new assertion: that there isn't anything to experience. It doesn't follow from anything that came before.

    For some reason, you've reached the opposite conclusion to where your own definitions logically led.

    At this point, I think it's time for you to go back to the drawing board and do this over from scratch. Next time, make sure you define terms in advance, and check carefully that each step in your reasoning leads logically to the next. And be careful to avoid double negatives and pointless recursion; they only caused trouble this time around.
     
  16. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    Bye bye

    You are producing more waffle than a waffle stand at a waffle convention

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    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  17. just me Registered Senior Member

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    yes, I am claiming that there is no objective reality.

    and I am aware of you, at least in some way, so you are indeed a figment of my imagination, as anything I am aware of is, but you may also be a figment of your own imagination for all I know.

    and no, the fact that people seem to be aware of the same things as you is not a coincidence, certain perceptions are likely to be caused to coincide rather than doing so by chance.

    my experience is existence from my perspective but not from yours, and so I can't be aware of exactly the same things as you are, such as your either real or hypothetical sisters name.

    also, this experience=existence thing is what I based by moral relativism on, before I got sidetracked by its implications.

    also, the cucumber is only only a cucumber because you think it is only a cucumber.
     
  18. just me Registered Senior Member

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    actually, I have changed my mind about this not proving what I think it does, because, you say I presuppose the existence of certain entities who must be aware of something or nothing, but then, even non existent entities must be aware of either something or nothing, they can't be aware of both, nor of neither nothing or something because nothing is the absence of something and something is the absence of nothing,

    so to not be aware of 1 is to be aware of the other, and so, if a non existent entity is not aware of nothing, it must automatically be aware of something instead and vice versa, a non existent entity can't be aware of neither nothing nor something because to not be aware of 1 is to be aware of the other, and it can't be aware of both nothing and something for the same reason.

    and non existent entities can't be aware of nothing, ever, so they must be aware of something instead, forever.

    and thus, the fact that nothing can not be experienced does compel non existent entities to exist as self aware beings.

    also, an entity is never really non existent anyway, because every entity must exist as either nothing or something, if not 1 then the other, because something is the absence of nothing and nothing is the absence of something, well, of anything really, which includes something.
     
    Last edited: Dec 2, 2019
  19. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    No, it is a bad habit of yours to not make sense and just type stream-of-consciousness, repeating yourself over and over.

    Take some time, compose your thoughts, come back when you have distilled them into an argument that isn't merely self-referencing the words "experience" and "existence" over and over. We'll still be here.
     
  20. just me Registered Senior Member

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    nothing is the absence of something and something is the absence of nothing.

    so you are either something or as nothing, if not 1 then the other.

    so, you must be real in some way.

    and as a result there is a you around which must be aware of either nothing or something, if not 1 then the other, as nothing is the absence of something and something is the absence of nothing, so to not be aware of 1 is to be aware of the other.

    you can't ever be aware of nothing because there isn't anything to it to be aware of.

    so you must be aware of something instead, perpetually, you always have been and always will be.

    and having to be aware of something does indeed compel you to exist as an aware being.



    also, awareness is the way in which qualia exist to the individual who is aware of them.

    so, awareness of qualia=existence of qualia.

    so, awareness=existence.

    I know you don't like me using the word experience again and again, so I used the word awareness instead.
     
  21. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Circular definitions are not valid.

    Your logic is dead on line one.


    Not that there's any need to go further, but just for gits and shiggles:
    The latter does not follow from the former:

    OK, so: nothing then.

    Why? This is a non sequitur.

    Nothing does not equate with real.

    etc.
     
  22. just me Registered Senior Member

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    it is not possible to be aware of nothing, awareness must be of something because there isn't anything to nothing to be aware of.

    and if nothing can not be real, then non existence can't be, which actually supports my argument.
     
  23. just me Registered Senior Member

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    no one can be aware of nothing, there isn't anything to it to be aware of.

    also if nothing can not be real then non existence can't be, which actually supports my argument.
     

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