My mind exists... "I think, therefore i am." how do you go beyond that?
Nothing else can be proven or disproven beyond that, what is the point of debating anything beyond that point no conclusion can ever possibly be reached.
Just a sec, I gotta go make a house outta these bricks...
How do you go beyond that? Through a series of assumptions that are necessary not just for philosophy, but also all of religion, science, and your motivation to continue breathing.
For the difference between what you know and what you feel is such that you know life is meaningless but you feel your life has meaning worthy of continuance.
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>>4
If A is true, then A is true.
If A is false, then ¬A is true.
OH SHI-
>>6
No, he said:
If there exists an x such that P(x) is true, then P is true for x.
Which, while it does make sense, is a very stupid thing to say.
>"I think, therefore i am."
What do you mean by "think"? Are physical sensations (touch, smell, sight) thoughts? Are emotions? Dreams? What about thoughts that you are semi-aware of ("intuition")? Do you cease to exist when you stop thinking?
What do you mean by "I"? How do you know your stream of consciousness contains genuine true beliefs about what you refer to as "you"? Perhaps some physical process or machine is producing conscious sensations by accident, and these sensations have arranged themselves into the (false) dictum: "I think therefore I am."
> some physical process or machine is producing conscious sensations by accident
We call that machine a brain.
>How do you go beyond that? Through a series of assumptions that are necessary not just for philosophy, but also all of religion, science, and your motivation to continue breathing.
Science is content making observations about the world around us based on things they assume to be true.
Religion is content with not needing to search for "proof" of their beliefs.
But philosophers... are they not supposed to be pondering the very nature of our existence? How can they all be content to continue pondering when there is such a fundamental flaw right at the beginning? Why are we not trying to solve this problem, there must surely be a way around it without assumption?
If explanation is necessary, you just don't get it.
What a masturbatory way to waste your time, people. How about doing something real for a change?
Instead of eating menus.
>If explanation is necessary, you just don't get it.
Way to state the obvious there dude.
That's like saying 'If you need to learn something, then you haven't yet learnt it.'
>>11
Partying and having sex is more real in some respects, I will give you that. However, within the scope of a definition accounting for the whole of reality, philosophical "masturbation" is far more real than temporally infinitesimal physical pleasures one or several humans commits to with others.
I will exclude the proof, as you seem to enjoy trying to figure things out for yourself.
> But philosophers... are they not supposed to be pondering the very nature of our existence?
Philosophy spawned dualism and materialism.
> Why are we not trying to solve this problem, there must surely be a way around it without assumption?
Negative.
All I know is that everything is math and can be broken down into such.
It's all code, really.
What I was saying wasn't what you read. I never said "if you need it explained to you". More like if you feel you need to explain philosophy you've missed a crucial point about philosophy.
There are two kinds of people; those who get it and those who don't. If you don't even understand what I'm talking about, you may include yourself amongst the latter.
/post
That's like saying the road is really just a line on a map. We use symbols to try and describe the indescribable, and saying that the indescribable itself IS a mere single way of looking at it, well, that's inane.
Ehhh, I disagree. Quantities of physical things (like the number of oranges in a bag) are actual definite facts about the universe. Since we all agree that two follows one and that two plus two equals four, the ability to count gives us the closest thing to universally compelling truth we can possibly have. All of science and mathematics can be expressed as complicated ways of counting. You might make mistakes in counting, but the probability of this can be calculated in order to give what's called the 'statistical significance' of a result.
For maths see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peano_arithmetic#Arithmetic
The book, Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter explains this well.
For science:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_probability#Scientific_method
>>20
You make an interesting point.
>>19
Although yes, what you say is true, one must not forget that two follows one is an assumption. Impossible to prove. And okay, we might want to say "but I see it with my eyes!". Then again, who are you to say that what you see is the definite truth, and not a narrow range in the infinite scope of things. Do you see every possible variant of space and time of what you call "two oranges"?
As >>19 said, it's not because the stastistics have been consistent this far that we won't expose ourselves in the future to an anomaly -- which would actually redefine everything we would want to call "reality".
We define two as what follows one, and so it is not an assumption. We can prove things that follow from our definitions. That one and two have anything to do with oranges is an assumption based on observation.
The only way to properly create or discuss any philosophy is through telepathy of exact thoughts, which with our current technology is impossible. Writing, speech, and even our thinking is clouded by words, which are meaningless signifiers of signified thoughts. That chair is not a chair. It's not pieces of wood held up to use for sitting. It's not used for sitting because sitting does not exist. The word exist does not exist so you do not exist. You not existing cannot exist.
So then, what do all of these mean?
The chair is *
Sitting is *
Existance is *
Nonexistance is *
(note that * represents a human thought that cannot be written)
*****
The symbols above are my view on the world, but you will never know it. Why are there five? Maybe I have five different views of the world, maybe they aren't even related to philosophy, maybe each thought is me thinking how you will interpret this post, maybe each thought is just me imagining myself laughing in five unique ways. You have no way of telling what those five thoughts are. Maybe I am insane and none of this means anything to your sane mind or something like that.
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