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Existence only demonstrates itself in the form of a subjectively experiencing person and that which the person experiences while the person experiences it.
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Nothing else demonstrates and controversially can show it exists. Thus anything that is not a person and that which only appears because it is experienced by a person can only appear as an idea in the mind of a person.
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Given existence only demonstrates itself in the form of a subjectively experiencing person and that which the person experiences while the person experiences it, it may be existence can only demonstrate that which exists: that which does not exist does not exist as it is not demonstrated.
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Only persons are demonstrated to exist, thus it may be that only persons exist.
You cannot even conclude that.
The real consequences of your first statement entail only YOUR existence.
And thus the only conclusion that this line of argumentation can allow is that YOU alone exist.
Sculptor:
You too can verify in yourself that existence only demonstrates itself in the form of a person. Solipsism is not a factor in this observation.
Existence demonstrates itself by things having impact on other things. As long as that impact registers somehow, causes some kind of change or force upon the recipient, that’s an example of one thing “demonstrating its existence” to another thing.
You might say only beings with sufficiently human-like consciousness are able to understand this fact. I wouldn’t necessarily agree but I can see the argument. But understanding something and reacting-responding to it, or simple being affected by it, are all different things. Or different quantities or degrees of the same thing (that’s a more extreme position which does away with qualitative distinction as such, and I’m not prepared to defend that position because I can see flaws in it).
When you look at a tree you’re not only demonstrating your own existence in the experiential subjective act of observation, you’re also demonstrating the existence of that which you are observing. This is especially true once you understand what vision is and how it works and why it exists in the first place, all of which confirms what I just said that when you observe a tree you’re also demonstrating its existence. The tree demonstrates its own existence to you by changing the direction and properties of photons impacting upon its surface, some of which go on to impact your retinas and impart information to your brain. That’s just one easy to understand example.
Must be a real peach.
Read more Descartes.
Why does this forum allow trolls?
ExtraCoronas:
“The fact is…its fiction.”
-Rush, Vital Signs
If by ‘the existence of that which you are observing’ refers to the tree as it exists in the external world, there is no way you can know the external tree exists simply by the existence of the experiential tree.
Why?
Because the idea the experiential tree “points” to the external tree is an entirely made up fiction based solely on the belief the external tree exists, which, like God, must be something accepted purely on faith as we have no experience or proof of the existence of the external tree as the only thing that we can experience is the experiential tree.
As a Panpsychist, I claim the experiential tree is all we need and indeed may be the only thing that exists. We know rhe experiential tree exists: we cant know the external tree exists thus one must imagine it, believe it exists, and believe the external tree can somehow communicate what it is like to the brain ( for those believing the brain creates consciousness).
Believing the brain creates consciousness create problems of its own. The brain creates the experiential tree: it does not create the external tree because the external tree, if it exists (or pretending it exists for the sake of argument), exists outside the skull and body of the organism having the brain, this the experiential brain-creates tree and the external “not-created-by-the-brain-because-it-exists-outside-the-brain-and probably-predates-the-observer’s-brain” tree are by logical necessity two separate things. Not to mention the brain-created tree disappears or ceases to exist when the person no longer pays attention to it or if the person suddenly falls unconscious or dies while observing the experiential tree. Meanwhile, according to the mythology of the process of perception or belief that something other than subjective experience exists, the external tree continues to exist in the sudden absemce of the experiential tree. This in itself is conceptual (conceptual only to the Panpsychist) proof they are not one and the same thing.
Further, think of the illogical magic the brain creates consciousness or every instance of consciousness ex nihilo. Based on the “evidence” of godless death whwrein consciousness ceases to exist upon cessation of function of the brain, the opposite is implied in which the brain is able to create something without using anything that already exists to create it. Logical forms of a creation involve using stuff that already exists lying around before the fact waiting to be used to “Frankenstein monster” the thing that is created.
This isn’t the case when it comes to consciousness, for those believing the brain creates consciousness and as such believes no conscious experience can exist unless the brain creates it in order to exist, it follows the experiential tree must come from non-existence and is magically created from non-existence. As consciousness does not exist before it is created by the brain, there is no way the external tree can inform the experiential tree what the external tree is like, as the experimental tree magically popped into existence from total non-existence a moment before. It is logically impossible, therefore, for something that exists to communicate with something that does not exist in order to tell that which does not exist yet what it shall be like when it comes into existence.
The simplest thing is to remove or deny the existence of that which is not subjective experience. We don’t need an external tree that is not just the subjective substance of the observer formed into the shape of something called a “tree”, nor anything else not composed of subjective experience.
To avoid solipsism, we can propose that other persons exist and of course they too are composed only of the only thing that exists: subjective experience.
PG
Your eyes don’t work on your beliefs. They work on photons bouncing off stuff.
Not sure why you think your senses respond to your “beliefs” but ok man. Whatever you wanna believe.
This forum is fucking retardation. Sorry but I gotta say it.
ExtraCoronas
Photons not made up of subjective experience that is not just the idea of photons in a person may not exist.
Are you high? Do you realize your statements are incoherent and make no sense?
Yikes.
Existence demonstrates itself by things having impact on other things. As long as that impact registers somehow, causes some kind of change or force upon the recipient, that’s an example of one thing “demonstrating its existence” to another thing.
That paragraph strongly reminds me of James S. Saint.
With love,
Sanjay
No, because I am not saying that things actually exist because they impact other things. I’m saying that existing things demonstrate their existence by impacting other things. There’s a world of difference between those two statements.