According to myself i am the only one who truely exists in this world. Of course you other readers may also know that you exist, but i only have proof of my own existence. How do i know that everything i see and “know” is actually there? Eventually i get so tiered from this question that i say to myself, whatever it doesn’t matter because whether its real or not, i am still here and should make the best of it.
But the question still bothers me. Have you ever been up really late at night and feel like your on auto pilot, like your watching your life like TV from the inside of your head? it feels like nothing is real.
what is real, and how do we define the real and true?
A table in front of you is real (u can be sure of that). Therefore it exists but it is neither true nor wrong. However, the idea that you get out of it implies the notion of truth. You can reckon that it is big but ur friend will think the contrary.
That’s how you can say that reality is what it exists, and that truth is the idea that you have of the reality.
Its not very clear, i know, sorry about that.
you can read Cartesius if you want to. He’s like the most famous philosopher (worldwide) that asked this question. i’d better warn you, it is really really boring.
You know that the other is real because you make mistakes. Have you ever lost your car keys, or tried to guess how someone would behave, and ended up wrong? The only explanation for this is that there is something other than your consciousness.
Also, consider that you define yourself in terms of the outside world, as well. If the rest of the world doesn't exist, then neither do you, at least in any form you can recognize. You say you know you exist. If there are no other people, then beliefs you have about yourself such as who you love, who you hate, whether your are funny, generous, mean, aloof, all have no meaning. If material reality has no existence, then beliefs you have about yourself such as being tall, short, light, heavy, rich, poor, and so on also have no meaning. So without the outside world, what is this 'you' that you claim to have evidence of, really?
what do you define as really existant? i say anything which has the potential to be perceived is really existant. i don’t have to be able to touch something to know its existant. i have other senses. so anything i can sense is real.
real, reality, truth, touching, seeing, hearing, tasting,feeling, love, anger, happiness, sadness, apathy,smelling, pain, Even when you are watching yourself and feeling the way you describe, you have your anchors.
Anchors are the above. We have these things, multiple things and more that I did not write, to prove we are, we exist, we know.
To get more, one must mentally stretch out and rise above your corporeal form and sense more. I do not suggest this course though. It will be hazardous to your health. coz that means death. I suggest waiting till your body expires from natural causes to try this. Otherwise, I suggest you go hug someone and ask them if they are real, if you still doubt that is. Asking someone that question might land you in that padded room. So really if you ask that question be prepared for a wierd look from that person.
Now, I really have to go clean Litter boxes my senses tell me that my babies have decided to come in and use them instead of using the outdoors. That is reality. Spoiled rotten 4 legged kids and 2 legged ones too.
Try this: Drop your television on your unshod instep and then immediately write a post about why the television is not real. Reductio ad footum.
The philosopher’s task is to get past momentary feelings. Your particular mood at any given time might not be the best clue to the answer to your question. But then again, your instep might be able to tell you something. You just have to know that you can’t drop a TV on it every time you are thinking about this. Once oughta do it. Good luck.
If you drop a television on your foot, you could still have the idea that the image of the television is all in your mind and the pain in your foot is all in your mind.
One way to see that there is reality beyond your own mind is to think about how your mind came into existence. You could also think about all that is required to keep it in existence.
What does the word ‘real’ really mean? And can reality possess varying degrees of ‘realness’? Plato believed that physical material things were nothing more than shadows or imperfect images of some great transcendent and metaphysical entities he called Forms, which were essentially mental concepts readily percieved by the mind, thus, in a sense, reversing the idea that concrete physical substance predicates reality while mental concepts suggest subjectivity. I think Plato was right. The physical material world is only one small cross-section of reality, giving us the illusion that this is all there is. It is “real,” but so little in substance as to be insignificant and, thus, illusory. Reality seems covered in opaque layers that must be peeled off somehow, layer-by-layer, to be ultimately revealed.
Real is both the sensible and the un-sensible. This is because we humans are not fully sensible.
If we consider sensing things as real, what would you say a supernova explosion that we see up in the sky which happened millions of years back and the light reaches us now. This is the past-reality but still we could sense.
We really exist but does the ant that just passes under my shoe know that I really exist. I am neither real nor imaginary to that ant.
The true “real” may be one who can sense completely the entire happenings. If we achieve that higher dimension, duality may end there. And Einstein’s vision on Theory of Everything becomes the reality.
is seeing a supernova not done by the eyes? even if telescopes aid our eyes without our eyes we couldn’t see it. just because light has to travell for years to get to us, doesn’t mean that its beyond reality, it means the supernova was far away.
Hi. There’s a newer topic of this name on the board, but I found my questions were closer to the comments on this one.
What is the difference between existence and being? Excuse my moderate neo-Platonism, but doesn’t the cause of something have to be at least as real as what depends on it for existence? For Plato, the Forms would be causes of the things in the world which participate in them – does that mean they have more existence as well as having more being?
In a more moderate way of thinking, some philosophers rank things ontologically – the more spiritual things having a higher form of being than the lower: angels over man over brute animals over plants over rocks. Does that mean they exist more, or have more being?
Following from this, I wonder if contact with a rock has the same amount of contact with being as contact with a person. My thought was a teacher asked if the world is real tossing a ball to the student and saying, “The world’s as real as that is.” Then, if the teacher were to shake hands with the student, would he convince the student that inter-personal contact was a higher type of contact than that with the ball, if it was contact with a more ensouled – and thus higher – being?
Maybe existence is the act of a being composed of form and matter; and ontology is the degree of perfection of that which is in the matter.
anything which exists exists in its own way. the differences can be spatial(location), properties(make up), potential action(the reactions potentially caused). obviously different things “come to be” in different ways.
a baby comes into existance in a different way then a tree does or a computer. there are things which exist naturally arround us(the universe including earth) and there are things which are man made(houses, cars, babys(man/woman made).
being a human is different than being a rock(i have no proof of a rocks sentiant/conscious nature) just that they hurt if thrown at something sentiant/conscious. this is the difference between animate and inanimate objects. animate objects can feel/sense. inanimate objects cannot feel/sense.
inanimate objects can’t die because they’re not alive. animate objects do die(they are mortal). I am a human and lots of things have the potential to effect me and i have the potential to effect many things. as i grow older and attain specific knowledge about how things work in my environment from my own personal experiance and other peoples accounts of how things work, i develop likes and dislikes. i develop goals and aspirations;(one thing every aspiration has in common is that they pertain to the future)
what is this conception of the future i have? obviously i know i exist right now in this present moment, i also assume(from accounts others gave to me about life; namely that people live between 50-100 years before they die. ) i know with certainty that my body needs food, water, air to live. i also know my body is sentiant(from my experiance of my bodies relationship to its environment)
when i fufill my bodies needs i am free to move about my environment and do what i please(limited by biology(my physical limitations) physics(my physical limitations). now that weve become a civilized society there are alot more things to do and alot more laws(limiting what we can do to a certain extent). we now need money to buy things and the way you get money is by working a job.
what motivates my every decision are my beliefs, i have a wide ranging set of beliefs that cover a divers set of topics. some are absolutely held some are not. as we grow old some of our beliefs change some don’t.
money = good(allows me to do things)
work = bad(not as good as not working, but work is a necessity to have a good life because work allows you to do things in your sparetime)
this conception of spare time is the artists conception of free-will. we have the ability to do what we please as long as we stay within our limitations. not just anyone can become an astrophysicist or a professional athelete. it takes a high starting potential and determination. our will can never be free from consequences but we have the freedom to try.
Might i propose, however, that work might be just as good as money, and in a more spiritual way. Especially and more clearly for those whose work is uplifting. Through work, we leave our marks in the world, and in a certain way it tries our virtue. However I realise this thought might only be clear to those who live in an economically mobile society, where the talented can rise to their level of competence. There is also a distinction between work and leisure, with some fortunates being able to get paid for their leisure, and others doing menial jobs as volunteers.
it is funny how you say bwing sure of your existance and not others when the truth of your existance conscience would be real only if you saw it objectively of others beings, your fears condition you to not judge correctly your feelings and allows you to see more calmly the truth in others
Might i propose, however, that work might be just as good as money, and in a more spiritual way. Especially and more clearly for those whose work is uplifting. Through work, we leave our marks in the world, and in a certain way it tries our virtue. However I realise this thought might only be clear to those who live in an economically mobile society, where the talented can rise to their level of competence. There is also a distinction between work and leisure, with some fortunates being able to get paid for their leisure, and others doing menial jobs as volunteers.
I agree; to have a more enjoyable life one needs to enjoy thier work as well as thier liesure. do the guys playing hockey on the t.v. hate thier work? certainly not, does stephen hawkins hate his work? no way
does that girl at the stip bar hate her job? maybe sometimes(drunk slaps on her ass)
thats kind of the point; there are innumerable professions and expertises one can specialize in, so we should put alot of thought into any job we plan on doing. If you want to have a good life you need a good job; good as in you make good money and good as in you enjoy going to work eveyday.
I think the life of the senses becomes real when you are absorbed in it. So does the world of thought. Detachment, as the Buddha preaches, reveals existence as illusion. Pure consciousness, disconnected form sensory imput, then becomes the absorbing reality.
At that, the word ‘real’ is, of courese, only a word. By itself it is not real.
“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.â€
Albert Einstein
For me, as a visual artist, creating illusion feels the most real. Although it probably lies in the creating and not in the illusion.
i hope trevor you were’nt serious of what you feel, i can see how each soul struggle to achieve being happy in real, it means that it is the sense of men, but our reality is God plan to live in world He did to please our senses but conscious of it means to give to our needs of happiness the best in reality of spirit ruling our world, all the desires of money status of power knowledge exposure, are only scenes created to say the same truth of void He did to break, this truth will break you of the void truth, that is how noone is happy in real it is all a question of surviving the best in what we dont understand, but LOVE God set it real beyound the void in prooving to be, for that to feel you have to see yourself in void and love, concretely it would mean to see all your desires of status in world, they come all from the lackness of faith in God, desire only being surounded by love this is how you will feel being real and let it be your only job, i can see as i saw long time ago that any normal person could do any work of world if he feels desire to learn it, so imagine that any work would do in world as long as you feel being with others who love you the way you are and that you love to see each one of them in real, what would be in that condition if you are preaching or serving food to whom you enjoy being in, if only in sweden they can love it would be a perfect adaptation of God spirit for the world to mans life, this is how i see it, if you feel love in you something real give it all your strength to be of faith, this is how illusions of being would become real by revealing themselves as scenes to feel and give love
