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How Do You Know You Exist? - Page 2

Interesting answers, but none of the prove you exist beyond someone elses dream or some program. You limitations you perceive could simply be set up limitation that you cannot perceive. Such real limitations would be needing oxygen. Suppose this is not a reality we live in, and needing oxygen is not real but a perceived limitation.

Dreaming is simply a programmed response to a state of rest that the body needs to recover. Dreams, indeed sleeping, does not imply existence, but the perception of existence. Good AI would mimic human beings this well.

Experience is also not a result of existence. On could think they have experience but if it never really happened, then the experience does not imply existence. If the experience is a false memory, then the experience never happened.

In short, we cannot technically prove our existence because all of it is based upon our perceived collection of memories, experience, and feelings. And in fact, whose set of feelings and memories are the correct one? Suppose this is the year 3,000 and computer programs have a complete mind of their own. Do you exist, despite the fact that you are a digital set of bits and bytes? Not as a human, with a soul, do you exist. You are merely the perception of an existing being operating within the confines of a computer simulation. If it were stopped, you would cease to exist, and wouldn't even know it.

Do I believe I exist? Yes, every person believes they exist. But this is an existential question that really had no right answers. Every answer can be countered by the idea that your perception is defined by your set limitations in your created reality.

Exist You You How

Other people notice me, talk to me, greet me, that means I am something material. Some combination of bones, muscles and flesh covered with skin and cloth. Since when I was a kid, I was taught that a certain combination of sounds is my "name" (ID?), so my walking shell reacts when hears this combination.
Sometimes is happens totally automatically and hardly depends on something what is inside this shell, and what is me.

Very often I feel non-existent, or rather like blended with the sunshine or wind, dissolved in the air. Quite often I feel surprised people notice me, because I don't always feel myself material, I am not sure I am "here and now", or rather what is "here and now" is not exactly me.

The huge question is what makes me to be me.



Edited: Klausse on 22nd Feb, 2006 - 2:34pm

How Do You Know You Exist? UFO & Writing Art Education Sciences

Some Roman said "I think therefore I am". I guess there is know way of knowing. How do we know the universe wasn't created a millisecond ago and all our memories just programmed. I hope we all get the answer in the hereafter.

Page 2 Exist You You How

HMph of course we will never know whether we do exist. It depends on yourself. For some example. Christian (no offence) they believe in God which means believing that they exist because of God. Or a mere free thinker like me wouldn't know at all whether I do really exist like what Neo said. Are we dreaming or some kind

Message Edited! Cleaned up spelling and grammar slightly. Please make sure that you are using the most correct English that you can in your posts.

Edited: Nighthawk on 2nd Apr, 2006 - 5:24pm

Exist You You How

Name: Bill

Comments: How can you say a dream is not continuous but reality is not, therefore showing dreams aren't real. Your "reality" ends every night when you go to sleep and is no more continuous than your dreams.

How Do You Know You Exist?

Name: Sora

Comments: I don't think [I] should exist in this world because I only have a few memories of what my life is like on earth, but only from the last year or so, all my other memories seem like dreams but know that their real, even if no one believes me. I also know that one day, soon I will return to the world were I belong.

Message Edited...
Persephone: Before submitting your comments please use good grammar - no net talk or slang, check your spelling and remember that names of places and people begin with an uppercase letter.

How You You Exist - Page 2

I don't think I really exist in the traditional sense of the word. I think memories and such are a tool that we use to grow from spiritually. To a certain degree I exist within the definition that humans have created. However when I look at what memories are, life, death, all that to its basic roots. I start to look at everything in a much different way.

Without memories I wouldn't know I exist. Memories are a collection of almost inanimate, intangible things in my brain that allow me to translate this physical world into a feeling or set of pictures. While these memories are nice and many of them priceless, I don't think they are eternal. They will die when my brain dies.

That said I think something of me will live on. I guess you would call it my soul, spirit, my essence, whatever. Those memories will be imprinted in a way on my eternal essence. So in a certain way I think I do exist, but certainly not in the way most people commonly think of it.

I picture my existence like an old abandoned building that has deteriorated over time. Each room within this building represents a life I have lived. All those room make up the building (me). Nothing in this building is alive in our sense of the word "alive". However the building has a certain life of its own. If you go into this building, no one is living there. Yet if you look around from room to room you can make educated guesses about who lived there and what kind of a person they were.

So in a way I suppose I am existing in a sort of dream. That dream comes from something though, the dream exists in its own right.

How You You Exist Sciences Education Art Writing & UFO - Page 2

For me, the only evidence I have is cause and effect. I am capable of affecting others and they likewise can affect me by their choices. In other words I am not solely in control of everything happening around me or vice versa.