Unnamed philosophical essay

Blue_turnip · Post by **Blue_turnip** » 08 Oct 2007 01:18

I couldn't get to sleep last night so I got up and wrote this:

Whats to say that my perception isn't the only thing that exists? After all, its the only thing that can be guaranteed to exist. My human form, maybe not, but my perception most certainly does exist.

You may say there must be reality to cause my perception. Why? What sort of reality? And why would that "reality" existance be any more valid than simply my own. We don't know why anything does exist, so why should it be more realistic for a bunch of chemicals, stars and whatnot to exist than just my perception? It is impossible to explain the reason for the existance of the construct of the universe within my perception any more than it is to outright explain the reason for my perception.

How do I know you, reader, exist? I don't. And if you do exist, how do you know I do? There is no way I can convince anyone that I exist as well, and I'm not going to bother because I don't even know if the person I'm trying to convince does exist themselves. We might both exist, but there is no evidence to suggest that it is any more than simply me or you.

I therefore consider my perception to be an absolute reality, the only thing I can guarantee to exist. Anything outside of this realm (if there is anything) is meaningless to talk about.

That is not to say that I won't function as a human being within my perception. I will treat others as if they exist, because they do exist within my perception (whether or not they have their own perception is another matter entirely).

This won't affect how I live in any way, because I had already previously recognised that everything everyone does is in their own interest. Even humanitarian actions are simply borne out of ones own desire to see someone live or be happy. This is its own topic though, to be addressed maybe in some future essay.

The glass of water i see right now, I can consider real in the absolute sense, because it lies within my perception, which is the only guaranteed reality.

It is meaningless to consider an external reality that my perception is based off. There is no evidence to suggest it exists and it is unable to affect me in any way, because ultimately it is my perception that resemblance of an external reality will be, well, percieved. Maybe it is not an "absolute" reality, but that is irrelevant because I have no idea what lies outside of my perception (the laws of physics and space and time, for example, all lie within my perception), but its definately a reality because it exists in my perception. I suppose differing views on what is meant by 'reality' cause the majority of conflict here.

1 + 1 = 2 is an absolute truth. So is the theory of evolution. God does not exist, and religion is false (I have never percieved god, so his existance is a random stab in the dark - no more than me claiming there is a lion sitting under my desk that i cannot see or percieve). Science can be used to explain everything. My perception (or yours) is just working on it right now.

I tried to keep it as unpretentious as possible but sometimes thats really hard to do.

Blue_turnip · Post by **Blue_turnip** » 08 Oct 2007 01:24

After some heavy discussion with a friend I'd like clearly point out that my argument is I don't believe its any more valid for something to have particles or a body than simply a perception on its own - because even those things need a cause.

I'd also like to clarify that i throw the word 'perception' around merely because i have no substitute. "perception" does infer that you're registering the existance of something else... but that is not how i intend to use it.

james_dean · Post by **james_dean** » 08 Oct 2007 02:07

I don't believe you can say 1+1=2 and 'God does not exist' are both absolute truths. Has anyone actually disproven his existence?

Blue_turnip · Post by **Blue_turnip** » 08 Oct 2007 02:22

james_dean wrote:Has anyone actually disproven his existence?

So you take the guilty until proven innocent approach? Why don't you move to Singapore?

I can claim that lion exists and say 'someone disprove it'. Its a guess based on nothing. But this isn't really mean't to be about god.

I'm pretty confident about saying 1 + 1 = 2 in the spirit of what my essay was actually about.

Blue_turnip · Post by **Blue_turnip** » 08 Oct 2007 02:23

I never said god's abscence is an absolute truth. I merely said he doesn't exist.

Evolution and 1 + 1 = 2 are my two absolute truths.

james_dean · Post by **james_dean** » 08 Oct 2007 04:50

ok that's fine I thought you were saying it was an absolute truth. I agree with you then

Colin · Post by **Colin** » 08 Oct 2007 05:42

1 + 1 = 2 is less a truth than a convention inherent in human psychology which was later formalized (but not proved) by mathematicians. The sad/awesome/horrifying/beautiful truth is that we don't really have a firm grip on what numbers are, exactly.

If you're interested, the following wikipedia articles might be worth reading.

Axiom - Just read the intro part, before the contents.
Peano Axioms - The intro, and also sections one and two.
Natural Numbers - Read what you want!

The Actual Sized E · Post by **The Actual Sized E** » 08 Oct 2007 06:16

My friends father is a math professor and he has this button that says "Only mathematicians know that 1 + 1 â‰ 2." He explained it to me once, and I remember it making sense, but it was a while ago, and I forgot how it worked out.

BenRea · Post by **BenRea** » 08 Oct 2007 06:16

1 + 1 = 3

dumbass.

Jeremy · Post by **Jeremy** » 09 Oct 2007 05:47

Thank God maths and philosophy aren't science. "1+1=2 hasn't been proved;" only if we play meaningless semantic games.

Science doesn't prove stuff, but it accepts that 1+1=2 is an observed fact, just like our existence and the existence of almost everything we perceive. Oh and God is as much of an observed fact as Frodo or The Cat In The Hat are observed facts. We can't "prove" that they don't exist, but we can still be confident in claiming that they're human inventions, and not real.

Colin · Post by **Colin** » 09 Oct 2007 17:27

David Hilbert wrote:Mathematics is a game played according to certain simple rules with meaningless marks on paper.

Sporatical_Distractions · Post by **Sporatical_Distractions** » 10 Oct 2007 21:08

Maybe a supreme being causes you to perceive 1+1 as 2 when in fact it does equal 3

Tsiangkun · Post by **Tsiangkun** » 10 Oct 2007 22:09

Fine.

If the supreme Being wants me to perceive 1+1 as 2, when He sees it as 3, then so be it. There is no way to test that, but if the extra terrestrial zombie lord is perfect, then everything I Observe will be consistent with that.

We call things that are known, and never change, facts. God never changes the facts on us.

Science is like the wheel of fortune game. Each new fact never changes, much like the turned over letters in a single game never change in the Wheel. Each puzzle contains it's own facts, and scientist search to discover these items. Each scientist is like the contestants, competing to solve the puzzle first.

"Intelligent De-Science" is like this game. "Pick a number !"
"Oh, good guess, you were so close !, Pick a number !"
"Oh, so close !, double or nothing, Pick a number ! "
There are no facts. You don't even know if there was a number
to be picked.

wait, what thread is this ?

Blue_turnip · Post by **Blue_turnip** » 11 Oct 2007 07:07

This thread is like 20 times innapropriate derogatory language removed - dyalander than I thought it'd be.

FlexThis · Post by **FlexThis** » 11 Oct 2007 10:07

I think Science is like a speedometer. Facts only tell you what Science observes for the moment. Facts are constantly updated and changed like the earths gravitational pull or the rise and fall of the tides.

From a logical view God cannot be proved or disproved based solely on observance. That would be a falacy of logic.

I can observe a Leprechaun and his pot of gold ... if I were on LSD. It is in my perception and therefore must be true.

Come on ... And science once stated the world is flat, and velociraptors never had feathers ... oh wait they changed that .... Thanks Science!

Wu_ · Post by **Wu_** » 11 Oct 2007 10:32

FlexThis wrote:Come on ... And science once stated the world is flat, and velociraptors never had feathers ... oh wait they changed that ....

Wait.. your saying that.. that the world ..isnt flat!?!?!?!?! And what shape do YOU "think" it has!? ..BURN HIM AT THE STAKE!!!!!! *__*

Tsiangkun · Post by **Tsiangkun** » 11 Oct 2007 12:55

Religion once said that an extraterrestrial embryo was implanted in a virgin womb, born, raised, killed, and raised from the dead. Today people celebrate the extra-terrestrial zombie lord and savior by drinking His blood and eating his flesh.

FlexThis · Post by **FlexThis** » 11 Oct 2007 13:32

... not to mention wage wars in his father's name ...

The world is flat if all you ever do is walk "around" it.

Blue_turnip · Post by **Blue_turnip** » 11 Oct 2007 18:15

Tsiangkun wrote:Religion once said that an extraterrestrial embryo was implanted in a virgin womb, born, raised, killed, and raised from the dead. Today people celebrate the extra-terrestrial zombie lord and savior by drinking His blood and eating his flesh.

I laughed out loud, lol!

Jeremy · Post by **Jeremy** » 17 Oct 2007 16:49

FlexThis wrote:I think Science is like a speedometer. Facts only tell you what Science observes for the moment. Facts are constantly updated and changed like the earths gravitational pull or the rise and fall of the tides.

From a logical view God cannot be proved or disproved based solely on observance. That would be a falacy of logic.

I can observe a Leprechaun and his pot of gold ... if I were on LSD. It is in my perception and therefore must be true.

Come on ... And science once stated the world is flat, and velociraptors never had feathers ... oh wait they changed that .... Thanks Science!

Well the world is flat in a non-Euclidean sense of the word. It's a 2 dimensional plane in a 3 dimensional space.

But I think you're getting confused about what's considered an observation. Simply seeing something isn't considered a factual observation, it's considered an observation of what you're senses told you in those circumstances. If you take LSD and then see Leprechauns, that would be an observation that on LSD people see hallucinations. "Observations" really only count in controlled environments, or when enough people agree that it's real.

Also science has never stated that the world is flat (in the sense that you're talking) and if velociraptors have feathers or not is theory, not observed fact - as I said in my earlier post, there is a difference. The evidence we have at the moment suggests that the idea that they did have feathers better fits the evidence than the idea that the didn't. Neither would be considered proven.

Regarding God, with any theory, the first question science asks is "why should I believe this is true?" and if no answers can be put forward (as in the case with God), the default is the assumption that this statement is false, since it explains nothing and has no evidence to support it. If at a later date we do discover evidence, or it does make predictions that turn out to be true, we'd have to change our position. It is obviously irrational to believe anything when there is no evidence to support that conclusion.