Philosophical: What Must Exist?

[UnknownOne]

I know this is not really political, but politics is the closest thing to philosophy on Newgrounds forums, lulz

Anyway, we're having a school project about The Matrix and existensialism. And we have 1 "hardcore thinking" task. What is there that MUST exist, regardless of what we sense, regardless of what we can reason out? What is there that must exist, which can be reasoned through logic and definition?

I'd like to see how the Newgrounds community will figure out this one...

or how someone will point out the pointlessness of this or come with some LOLz and jokes or off-topic stuff LOL

[blackattackbitch]

The truth of the matter is that the only thing that you can count on 100% to exist is your own perception of reality. I want to emphasize that I'm not talking about reality itself, only your own perceptions of it.

When you take any action, you are only percieving yourself taking that action.

Deal with it.

[gumOnShoe]

Language is the only thing that MUST exist.

[gumOnShoe]

At 1/10/11 03:11 PM, gumOnShoe wrote: Language is the only thing that MUST exist.

I'd also add as an addendum that some structure or essence for storage must also exist.

Everything else could be or is a simulation.

[GameBlade]

At 1/10/11 03:11 PM, gumOnShoe wrote: Language is the only thing that MUST exist.

I think you mean a form of communication because the forms of communication doesn't hold up to languages but also sounds and the communication between animals.

But the one thing which I believe that exists is the truth. But this is just guesswork because what is reality? A question that never can be answered with the only truth that exists.

[Heretic-Anchorite]

Everything experienced must exist, but to an extent.

In Schopenhauerian epistemology the world we experience is created not by the emulation of an absolute reality, but our limited perception of an absolute reality.

the fact that you experience a phenomenon means it exist, but they doesn't mean it's absolute.

I see it as not "what's real and unreal?" but "what's absolute and limited?"

[Ravariel]

There are three schools of though on the notion of existence that hold any weight in my opinion.

The first is Descartes' famous cogito ergo sum. Basically the only thing that he could positively say existed is his own doubt of the existence of other things.

The second is the school of thought that says that for anything to exist, everything must exist, because only through interaction (light interacts with objects, bounces off, interacts with eyeballs, ergo we see said object) can we say anything exists. Therefore if we can say anything exists (see #1) then everything we experience must exist, including those things we cannot see but that must logically exist to make what we experience possible.

The third school of thought is to do your own homework :P

[The-universe]

Everything that we have obtained and will obtain in the future. Because if remove something, we will lose something and not advanced as quickly.

[dontpanic01]

uncertainty must exist otherwise we wouldn't be having this discussion and so many different arguments.

[gumOnShoe]

At 1/10/11 03:28 PM, GameBlade wrote: I think you mean a form of communication

No, I do not. I mean language. IE that there is a "substance" that is capable of state change and that upon that substance is a set of rules that makes a language and defines all things that are possible with the use of that substance; but to go further since the substance cannot exist without a language which tells it it can exist, at some level the two cannot be divorced. So when I say that language is necessary, I mean that the substance is also necessary, and when I say the substance is necessary I also mean the language is.

Like aristotle's cave, we can only know what we have the capability to perceive. In the absence of omniscience, the only thing we can say beyond that is that there must be rules and objects to which those rules apply.

Science's attempt to understand those rules via hypothesis, trial, and error is how we can get closest to the truth of what that universal language is.

Computer science and the idea of computing is the proof of concept.

[Bacchanalian]

At 1/10/11 03:28 PM, GameBlade wrote: But the one thing which I believe that exists is the truth.

That... funnily enough... is a truism.

[SadisticMonkey]

The only thing that necessarily exists is oneself, and a reality in which one can exist, of course.

If you're experiencing anything, then some form of consciousness must exist. Everything you experience through this consciousness may just be "imagined", but you, at some level, must exist.

Though, for all I know, I'm just imagining you and everyone else posting in this thread.

In which case telling you this is pointless.

Hm.

[MonkeyV]

You have to define "must" first. I assume you mean, "Name something that DOES exist, PERIOD, known with 100% certainty."

Well this is a silly question, because no absolute knowledge is possible. How can we know if our system of logic is even valid?

But if your teacher isn't being a total cunt, the answer is probably "your own perception." Think, "I think, therefore I am."

[ArmouredGRIFFON]

Do you want me to just copy and paste and 8000 word essay.

The truth of the matter is what MUST exist in terms of the human brain is some capacity to acquire our experiences.

What MUST exist in terms of the outside world are necessary truths (analytic) that we can only reach intellectually (without referencing to sense data), Humes Fork is pretty good at this.

Everything else you knew was a lie.

[ArmouredGRIFFON]

At 1/11/11 12:48 AM, MonkeyV wrote: You have to define "must" first. I assume you mean, "Name something that DOES exist, PERIOD, known with 100% certainty."

Well this is a silly question, because no absolute knowledge is possible. How can we know if our system of logic is even valid?

But if your teacher isn't being a total cunt, the answer is probably "your own perception." Think, "I think, therefore I am."

I think therefore I am does not prove the existence of self it merely underlines it.

It is merely a tautology, and states I think therefore I think. How do you know if you are really thinking? Because you are thinking, or are you just being coerced to some false perception of 'thought' by some all powerful outside being.

It's like saying, "all brown desks are brown", it gives us no reason to infer that brown desks can be anything but brown. We might as well state, the desk is brown, and cannot be brown as it is brown.

How do we know the desk is brown? Because it is brown, how do we know we think, because we think. That doesn't REALLY answer the question. How do we know we exist? Or, how do we know that our "thinking" is merely a mechanical function controlled by some outer being, since if we are we are independent of thought. This we could never justify.

The epistemological problem can go as far as it likes in terms of fucking things around.

[Gustavos]

What must exist? What a broad question. Well, if we're considering what needs to be here to support life (human or otherwise), we'd first start with resources. Water, food, oxygen, a way for all creatures to reproduce, body systems to pump blood and handle digestion/waste. I feel genetics has a right to exist. Without natural selection, there may never be such a thing as "sentient" life, unless of course humans really were spontaneously generated. Once we have primitive species' wandering about, that should cover it for "how to have life exist".

Or perhaps what things in our universe most certainly exist while others do not? Well, all tangible things exist, at least as far as our range of perception believes. If we're talking religion, I'd rather not start something about the existence of somebody's god. Is there extraterrestrial life? Nobody could tell, but I personally hope so. We don't know how big this universe is, nor do we know the chances of there being another planet supporting actual life as we speak. But if it can happen once, it can happen twice.

[WizMystery]

I think therefore I am.

There is not a single logically founded philosophical system that denies we, as in the individual experiencing life, exist. The belief that we are only sure that we exist is called solipsism, and is one among several "theory of knowledge" philosophies.

[MonkeyV]

At 1/11/11 06:16 PM, ArmouredGRIFFON wrote: I think therefore I am does not prove the existence of self it merely underlines it.

I know. I realize it's not the "correct" answer. I was just saying that it's probably the answer that what's-his-face's teacher or instructor wanted.

It is merely a tautology

All statements are tautologies.

[ArmouredGRIFFON]

At 1/11/11 11:32 PM, MonkeyV wrote:

At 1/11/11 06:16 PM, ArmouredGRIFFON wrote: I think therefore I am does not prove the existence of self it merely underlines it.

I know. I realize it's not the "correct" answer. I was just saying that it's probably the answer that what's-his-face's teacher or instructor wanted.

It is merely a tautology

All statements are tautologies.

See, thats where I think that part of humes fork isn't particularly true.

Like 2+2 = 4. 2+2 creates a synthetic statement whilst 2 is a tautology (self definitive).

[Bacchanalian]

At 1/11/11 06:16 PM, ArmouredGRIFFON wrote: how do we know that our "thinking" is merely a mechanical function controlled by some outer being, since if we are we are independent of thought. This we could never justify.

If you think, "well maybe something is thinking for us," refutes Descartes, then you're not getting it.

[ArmouredGRIFFON]

At 1/12/11 11:17 AM, Bacchanalian wrote:

At 1/11/11 06:16 PM, ArmouredGRIFFON wrote: how do we know that our "thinking" is merely a mechanical function controlled by some outer being, since if we are we are independent of thought. This we could never justify.

If you think, "well maybe something is thinking for us," refutes Descartes, then you're not getting it.

I get that he claims, I think because I am thinking, and I cannot doubt that I am thinking for that is a form of thought. So we can know existence of our 'selves', but I don't see it so grandly. How do you go about explaining it? Have I got it wrong somewhere down the line, if you could elaborate it for me that'd be great!

[GameBlade]

At 1/10/11 07:41 PM, Bacchanalian wrote:

At 1/10/11 03:28 PM, GameBlade wrote: But the one thing which I believe that exists is the truth.

That... funnily enough... is a truism.

Well your maybe right but isn't it so? Can there be a world that holds everything except truth?

[Bacchanalian]

At 1/12/11 04:22 PM, GameBlade wrote: Well your maybe right but isn't it so?

Isn't a cow a cow? Ofcourse! But you're still presuming it's a cow.

Can there be a world that holds everything except truth?

What does that even mean?

At 1/12/11 01:37 PM, ArmouredGRIFFON wrote: I get that he claims, I think because I am thinking, and I cannot doubt that I am thinking for that is a form of thought.

No. "I think therefore I am" is not equivalent to "I think therefore I think." The latter is a tautology. The former is a conclusion upon the construct that thinking necessitates a thinker. This relationship is explicit in the former, and implicit in the latter.

No matter who you identify as thinking for you, you still identify yourself, and the thinker.

[altanese-mistress]

Well if we're talking about 'logic' and not 'existential bullshit', everything we can sense or otherwise record exists.

[BlakeMo]

I can't see an instance where Time and Space doesn't exist....
I mean except for an Afterlife (if you believe in it), but we aren't "alive" so I don't count that.

[Bacchanalian]

At 1/12/11 10:38 PM, BlakeMo wrote: I can't see an instance where Time and Space doesn't exist....
I mean except for an Afterlife (if you believe in it), but we aren't "alive" so I don't count that.

How does our being alive or dead weigh into whether or not you 'count' the afterlife as an instance where time and space don't exist, particularly when you, immediately prior, betray the notion and claim that time and space don't exist in the afterlife?

Since the question is "what must exist," why does it matter that there be one instance in which space and time don't exist? If you're claiming that they otherwise do, then there you go.

And since the question is, "What is there that MUST exist, regardless of what we sense, regardless of what we can reason out?" do you have a proof for the existence of space and time that doesn't employ perception or reason? (if so, then how is it proof?)

[UnknownOne]

Well, I for one, have reasoned that there is at least 1 thing about us humans that must exist: a personality. Regardless of us being a brain in a vat or even a computer software, our personality has to exist. If we are all software programs, or brains in vats in some sort of computerized world in which we are all connected, we are all interacting with each other and form our personalities.

If I'm wrong, I guess we just have lots of instructions inside us on how to react to different things... but isn't that a way to cope with our experience of this world we live in? And besides, if we were programs, wouldn't that list of coping with different experiences in the world be kinda infinitely long?

[Bacchanalian]

At 1/14/11 07:35 AM, UnknownOne wrote: Well, I for one, have reasoned that [...]

What you're touching on is a dilemma that your teacher's question presumes.

Essentially, everything you can think of exists. The question is, in what way? Consider...

I was a pirate.

I was a pirate in my dream last night.

There is a vast difference between the former and the latter, so much so that we'd call a person dishonest for saying the former while meaning the latter. You might say, "well, you weren't actually a pirate," which aught to clear up just what exactly "exist" means in the question, "what must exist?"

You're sort of getting away with skirting the question because you've chosen an immaterial construct as your existent subject: personality. But, you're still skirting the question.

[ArmouredGRIFFON]

I've always wondered if people are said to be social animals who do nothing more than 'react' to their environment, then how would we be able to evaluate the world around us, rather than just 'responding' to it.

[Bacchanalian]

At 1/14/11 01:19 PM, ArmouredGRIFFON wrote: I've always wondered if people are said to be social animals who do nothing more than 'react' to their environment, then how would we be able to evaluate the world around us, rather than just 'responding' to it.

Your question presumes that merely responding precludes evaluation. How did you reason that?