Does the moon exist when no one is looking at it?

Someone, somewhere, is always looking at the moon. For those who are not, does it exist?

Computer gaming. First person gaming for this purpose. The world you see is rendered for you because without something to see there is no gaming experience.

Does the gaming world you do not see from your current position in the game exist, or is it only rendered on a need-to-see basis?

Are we living in a simulation?
 
Mr. G said:
Are we living in a simulation?
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Probably...

...Called into a simulacrum of existence by jaded immortal beings, long since having transcended the physical, but after seemingly endless aeons so bored and lacking for distraction that they had no more to amuse themselves but the nigh-insignificant carryings on of their petty creations: The Rebel Apes.

Conceivably they managed the equivalent of a bemused chortle now and again as we stumbled through blithering idiocies almost without number in unknowing duplication of fooleries so far in their pasts that they had been forgotten a thousand thousand times over.

Perhaps in time we became so tedious to them that they forgot so much as setting what we glibly refer to as "reality" in motion, and our prefabricated paradigm merely proceeds apace because there is no one to mind it - or better yet, turn it off...
:tongue: :tongue: :tongue:

Mr. G said:
Someone, somewhere, is always looking at the moon. For those who are not, does it exist?
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No, it doesn't - since it doesn't even exist when you are looking at it.
 
Mr. G said:
Someone, somewhere, is always looking at the moon. For those who are not, does it exist?
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If a tree falls in a forest...

Two thoughts:
1. The moon is kinda persistent in that it keeps coming back. Sure, I don't see it all the time, but I see it often enough. That suggests to me that it exists. The idea that it goes in and out of existence, depending on whether I'm looking at it, strikes me as self-centred, at best. What would make me so special?
2.Do believe in "true for me, not true for you", Mr. G, or is there just "true"? Can the moon exist for me but not for you, simultaneously? Or is the existence or non-existence of the moon something we (all) share? What do you think?

Mr. G said:
Computer gaming. First person gaming for this purpose. The world you see is rendered for you because without something to see there is no gaming experience.

Does the gaming world you do not see from your current position in the game exist, or is it only rendered on a need-to-see basis?
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You need to drill down in what you mean by "exist", maybe. On the computer, there is code and data that can be used to render all parts of the game world, in principle. So, in that sense, the parts of the gaming world that aren't on your screen right now still "exist". But on the other hand, the gaming world truly is "rendered" on a need-to-see basis. Does that mean it doesn't really "exist" - or it "exists" only when it is "rendered"? Or what?

Going back to the physical world and the moon - do you think the moon needs something to "render" it and otherwise it doesn't "exist"? Or can it exist regardless of whether it is being "rendered" to a particular individual human being?

What if, by some bizarre chance, no human being is looking at the moon at a given moment. How could the lack of an observer affect the moon's existence? Is the moon's existence "all in the mind" or is there something else to it?
Mr. G said:
Are we living in a simulation?
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There's no way to tell. Personally, I don't think it's a very interesting question for that reason (it's an unfalsifiable claim), and certainly not one worth worrying about.
 
Jeeves said:
I hope somebody somewhere is looking at the moon, or the tides would be seriously messed up.
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Posit a world with perpetual cloud cover - no-one would see the moon without a way to get above the cloud layer yet evidence of it would exist in the form of ocean tides. Whilst no-one would know what colour it is or whether it is made of cheese it would be possible to know something exists, what amount of mass, something of it's orbital characteristics.

As it happens a lot of the universe can be observed directly as well as indirectly. The observations at a distance are consistent with observations close up - eg the nature of light, how it reflects and refracts and polarizes and etc.

If no-one has observed something then no-one knows. I'm no philosopher but to me that is not the same as something not existing.
 
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