Welcome to Gaia! ::

I can never know more than that I exist.

Many prime examples
Heres just one

No-Mind: The Vimalakirti Sutra says:
If you wish to understand the truth or achieve the reality of no-mind, just stop all accessory conditions; i.e., suddenly and absolutely do not allow false thoughts and discriminatory ideas to arise. Without others, there is no self, no greed, no hate, no love, no abhorrence; neither is there victory or defeat. So just eliminate all delusions, and what remains is the Original Bright Nature.

Why don't you start off with the oh so popular qoute "I think therefor I am"

Let that shift through your mind for awhile but to say I guess existence of ones self is from their own personal perspective

blaugh It is a strange concept. This is kinda hard for me to explain,
Uh on certain aspects I can personally care less if it was a figment of my imagination. Even so I have seen some uh "beautiful" things in this world, in an artistic fashion. Such as scenery paintings etc etc. even if it were still considered fake atleast I have some value within that.

rofl I wish I could actually put my thoughts out more clearly rofl

Besides stuff like this varies between individuals

But is that quote justified?

Cogito ergo sum brings up a lot of arguing because the first issue is that it is not a complete syllogism.

I don't see how thinking is being. It seems like wishful thinking more than anything.

Whether or not the very phrase can be argued is somewhat pointless, though. In my philosophy class we debated this term over several weeks. A conclusion was not exactly drawn, but we did decide that thinking =/= being. We may think we are, but that doesn't mean we are.

A very common quote, that, by most people who are into the subject (as well as I) is well known and well thought out. I am guessing it is my age that caused you to think that I hadn't already looked into this. I may have to remove it to prevent future assumptions from people in the guild. =_=;

rofl I was actually hoping to keep the conversations we were having here more casual.

surprised What a shock that I have to take more consinderation into what I state other than random thoughts.

We'll since it seems that we have "underestimated" you. I guess it can't be helped. blaugh Atleast you're someone in which we can have an interesing and in-depth conversation with rofl

Let's see here... Can you define your own "Existence" without using the factor of your personal perception?

Now I just had an interesting thought and I would like Rookherst[KOS] and Kulshedra to get in this discussion since it's they have already discussed some like this already.

This was one of the quotes from this conversation: Imagine that you are just a thought of a higher being, imagining of a possible world (like writers do before writing a book). They think about what the character would be thinking, what they would see and experience. This is what I was trying to convey.

neutral Kinda lost the concept of it stare

Ok let me think.

Now if we take that into consideration. That an individual is merely thoughts of a higher power. Yet the concept of that individual still exists.
( Feel free to step in if you find anything wrong with this thought)
Now once the Character is fully developed and has a personality and a type of working indivdual thought process. This character now exists as a consciousness, even if apart of a story line, in that specific creators mind.

And im speaking in sense of the persons mind not an actual book.

Thinking about it if that character is now "real" ( this is a circulation of thoughts rofl ) and this character decides to do the same wouldn't that establish that this is a thinking individual even based off of the higher beings concept.

To think and put it simply it would be like, in a religious sense, God creating humans and humans creating another consciousness.

Okay lets apply that to a psychological level.
Now if a person whether mentally ill or not, has created an alternate personality or consciousness within their own mind wouldnt that consciosness exist in the original persons reality. Which would make it real only to them confused sweatdrop

Yeah that was one of the thoughts I just had rofl kinda came out of nowhere or rather off the top of my head.

Sorry, I just felt like mentioning, that I saw no underestimation here. And, yes, I realize ageism is an issue. The fact that everyone knows that I'm a 9th grader definitely causes them to think I am without the ability to think logically. The fact that everyone knows that I spent years studying philosophy abroad would cause them to think that I had a knowledge of philosophy beyond what they would be able to comprehend. Fortunately, neither of these facts are true.

Anyway, I believe somewhere on this page is a more full explanation than I have time to type out right now:
http://www.gaiaonline.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=24087411&page=2#1125981892

But, pertaining to the argument at the moment:



Even that isn't true. To be perfectly honesty, you can't really know anything. You can only believe in something. What I mean by this is that nothing that you 'know' can be proven to be there. There is literally things that you 'know' are there, that quite possibly aren't. Your brain is able to fill in your perceptions with things that it calculates is there, but doesn't necessarily know is there.

For example, your eyes have blindspots, whether you know it or not, where the nerves don't have the ability to sense the light in certain areas, although this only holds true when you close one eye. Your brain no longer 'knows' what is within that spot, but you don't see a grayish blotch there. You don't see a big black spot on your vision. You'll see what your brain calculates to be there. It will automatically pick out the information received by nearby nerves, and it will imitate the responses the sensors pick up from the light waves into what you perceive as your vision. So, your brain puts it there; it may or may not really be there.

On a larger scale, you can't know that anything around you is real. All you can do is believe it is. I'm pretty sure that I explain it in far greater detail in that post I linked to up above, but I think this is a bit of what I was saying.