do we exist?

[udsuna]

Obviously we exist, in as much as our presence influences that which is around us, and vice-versa. Now, if we are in fact "dream entities", we STILL exist, just not in the state which we believe ourselves to be.

Do these words your reading exist? They are made of nothing but recorded coding displayed on your screen. Heck, even my typing them doesn't make them anything more than, for all intents, an illusion. But, I type them, and you read them, and you come to see the meanings behind these funny little shapes and know (or at least COULD know) what I mean when I type these "non-existant" words.

So, even if we're a dream, even if we're a fantasy or an illusion, we still *exist*.

[smittenkitten]

No i don't exist because no-one loves me and its dream i can't wake from im either still on titan having this bad dream or this is some hell i can't escape from...

[Shadow_Wolf 6354]

awwww everyone loves you smitten



you wont remember this encounter
:shoot:

[Mercen-X]

Existence doesn't matter. Even if you believed well enough that you don't exist, you'd still feel pain and sorrow and emptiness. Not that these emotions define existence but denying it will not allow you to escape them.
Whether we are but the dream of another is beyond our consideration. We should continue to strive for happiness here even if it is meaningless to someone else. You feel, you see, you think, you question, you are and cannot stop being.

Mercen-X, though what you said is right that was not the question... even if existance doesn't matter we can still ponder over it for numerous reasons. And the fact that we are pondering over it proves we exist, something that doesn't exist doesn't exist so therefore it does not know about itself or anything else for that matter and has no consience thought. So this whole forum is proof of our existance.

You don't seem to understand. I never suggested that I don't exist, it's my suggestion that for all I know, you don't exist and you can't prove to ME that YOU do AND it DOESN'T matter. I still have to carry on. I can't just stop, even if I'm all that's real. I know I exist even if my body doesn't. You know you exist too . . . but I don't know you exist. Understand?
How can you prove to me that YOU'RE pondering? You can't. For all I know, you are merely an imaginary friend I am pondering for. Imaginary friends can have secrets you know. Secrets the dreamer doesn't know about.
This forum is NOT proof of our existence because every word can merely be the imagined foresight of the dreamer: me. When you dream of a monster, the reason it chases you is because you expect it to, the reason you cannot fight it is because you expect it to be stronger. In my dreams, I expect all my foes to be weaker and thus, I am always the victor. I also expect that there will be continued responses to this forum and thus it is a possibility that every response is merely a thought derived from my subconscious.
Everything including your misspelling of "existence" can merely be the results of my subconscious expectations.

[Halifax Housewife]

kitchens exist

[boris no no]

i exist....otherwise my hands would go straight through the keyboard :s

[Leene]

I think we exist.

[Project G]

Oh my god, it's a vivi moment, we can't prove that we exist or not, this life could be a dream of some weird alien

[Mercen-X]

Off topic:

What would be worse?
Trying to explore the entire universe and never succeeding because it's infinite . . . or reaching the end of the universe and realizing that we're trapped inside.
People always want to get out. Nobody ever wants to climb into something. We're all so claustrophobic.

[Primus Inter Pares]

Off topic:

What would be worse?
Trying to explore the entire universe and never succeeding because it's infinite . . . or reaching the end of the universe and realizing that we're trapped inside.
People always want to get out. Nobody ever wants to climb into something. We're all so claustrophobic.

The second one, infinity leads to opportunity and therefore reaching a limit has... errr, limits

:twocents:

[Craig]

If this world I'm in is infact a figment of my imagination, then physically where am I really? Am I just a person in an Insane Asylum? Or is it something beyond imagination?

Oh, and Tidus was real. The Fayth dremt him, but he was still real. The Fayth made him real.

[Peegee]

There was no life, no meaning, no perception, no colour, form, gravity, energy. The universe existed for billions of years with nothing to sense it, to give meaning to it. For billions of years there was no morality, no ethics, no semblance, no truth, no fact. Planets swirled around and matter collided with matter ad nauseum until suddenly...

We had sentience, and with sentience comes activity, comes form, meaning, abstraction, survival and death, birth, sickness, hunger. Organisms consumed one another recklessly. Predators attacked prey until their numbers dwindled and predators died. Multi-celled life became organs which melded together to produce gene reproducing machines -- the meaning of life revealed so quickly -- reproduce, bear offspring, die. Next in line, carry on. No end, nothing more. Breed and die off eternally until extinction.

A flicker of activity in a stream of void, and it was all over.

Do we exist? We only get to ask this question because we do. Then we will die, and there will be no life, no meaning, no perception, no colour, form, gravity, energy, no meaning, no morality, no ethics, no semblance, no truth, no fact. Planets swirled around and matter collided with matter ad nauseum until suddenly...

[Halifax Housewife]

there were pies

[Dolentrean]

Life, the universe, everything, this is a concept I have driven myself insane thinking about. There is no real way to prove we exist in the way we perceive existence, the only thing I can believe is that I have some type on reality to me, even if I am not real in the sense we all perceive real, I can feel and I feel my reality, so even if I cease to be, I was real.

my thoughts may not be my own, they may be the random spin-off of someone else’s manifestation of an imaginary mind? Yet to prove or disprove any of this is an impossibility
. "I think Therefore I am" this can be discredited as a ideal with no backing. how do we know our thoughts are real? we don’t... how do we know this world is real? you don’t, How do you know you are real? because you can feel something within you telling you that something real is within you.

the struggle to find what reality is will never be won, we strive for a way to prove we are real and have some significance. well live in your mind, if it is possible that you are created by the thoughts of someone else, is it not possible that your own thoughts give birth to a new mind? a new universe? if this is what it all is, Is in to within the realm of possibility to have your own mind created you? are we all a god to another world? did we crate our own universe? Questions that may be better left unanswered for they are unanswerable.

[krissy]

fao: PG

how do you know atoms don't experience love