It exists because you can sense it exists. It is different from a dream. To exist is simply to have presence.

quote:

Originally posted by Yuka:
What I would like to know, is for those who believe in reincarnation, do those people exist at all, or is that just being illusional?

Peace,
Yuka

We come back to the aspect of this is mroe of a personal belief, where there are people who believe in reincarnation, Yuka. Those who are reincarnated, can still do the same thing that anyone else can do...see, touch, sleep, eat, and everything else that we all can do. So, to answer your question, those who believe in reincarnation do exist. Although, not everyone believe in reincarnation, so they may think that it is just being illusional.

What I would like to know, is for those who believe in reincarnation, do those people exist at all, or is that just being illusional?

Peace,
Yuka

it's all in your head. and everyone you meet is the result of an overactive imagination. perhaps you are really of an alien race and are in a mental institute (or whatever the alien version of that is...) and the world is your mind has invented to keep you occuppied.

I think you guys would enjoy watching "What the @%*& Do We Know?". It gives some insight on a few of these questions.

quote:

The human mind is the most powerful creation on the face of this Earth. But of course, the human mind existed long before we knew what it did.

Some people still don't know how to use it.

Well, my only reply Anna, is that I exist for certain.

Descartes (sp?) said cognito ergo sum, I think therefore I am. If I think, I must exist because I have thought and can realise my existance. This means that you do exist, but only as a figment of my imagination. If we take this world to be a dream, then it again must be real because a dream is a real thing. This next concept is hard to put into typed English; We may not exist because the entire way in which we percieve the world is by our senses, which can be easily fooled. Therefore, since they are so often deluded, what is to prove that they exist? And if they don't, what are we really? Mere thoughts?

Think where we are refering to is what is one of our personal philosophy and belief whether or not we live in a world that either does or don't exist. There's so many different ways that we could talk about our world, and whether or not that what we are living on has any existent at all.

If we look back to what we may have learned in school, what we are living on is full of life, and it's our basic natural resources that man have destroyed over time. Now days, we are telling each other that we don't have a whole lot of natural resources because we've destroyed them. Though, to think that we are living in a non-existing world, then my question to you, do we as individual exist, or are we just being brainwashed?

Eutrepe, you're thinking in the terms that make so many scientists say, "Duh...it exists," to this question. How do you know all of that existed before we discovered it?

Because science (i.e. man) said it did. Brehon, is correct. We are only aware that we as individuals exist. I can't say that I don't exist because then I would cease to exist ("I think, therefore I am"). But how do I know anything else exists? I don't. I'm not it so I can not be fully aware of it's existence. Ever.

And, thanks, Brehon. I still say that it is irrelevant whether or not the world exists. But I have some could arguments as to why we can't answer a direct yes to the question.

Euterpe, I only recently found out what your screen name was. But off the point...

The whole idea is that only I exist. I can't prove that you or any other person or item exists, because you all mmight be figments of my imagination. Or even less than that.

And Worth has a good point, as always, that it may very well not matter that the world is either existant or non-existant, only that you make the best of what may/not exist.

The fact is that the world was real before we existed, and was real before we figured out what it was. Before we gave everything names. They already existed. We could not have made up things we cannot identify.

Everytime a new bug pops up, a new virus is detected..we didn't invent it because we weren't aware of its existence. It did, however, exist without us knowing it. Bacteria was long floating in the air before we clamped into a petrie dish and slid it underneath our fancy magnifying glasses and said, "Holy crap, there's stuff in my tissue."

Catch my drift? Arguing the world's existence is one of the most useless philosophies we ever came up with. The human mind is the most powerful creation on the face of this Earth. But of course, the human mind existed long before we knew what it did.

The world will exist long after we're gone, just as it existed long before we got here. And the only way for it to disappear, is for you to die.

Did EG get here yet to make an "I hate the world"-esque comment? ... Yep. Thought so. If the world didn't exist, EG, you'd have nothing to complain about. What dull existence that would be.

I've never even heard of (and therefore have never researched) anything that you mentioned. And, ha, I have never seen The Matrix (yeah, I know...shame on me and such).

And I wanted to write a really good reply to this and I sat down with some paper and a pen and it did me no good because of this: It doesn't matter whether or not it really exists.

Why does it not matter?

Well, we certainly all have to believe it exists in order to have a reality. So, even if it doesn't exist and so-and-so believes it doesn't exist, so-and-so still has to live in the world and therefore has to at least pretend that it exists. So that's my first argument - whether or not it really does exist doesn't matter.

Here's my next point: It is a very valid idea that it doesn't exist. Because all the science is man-made - man came up with all the ideas for why it is real. This keyboard I am typing on is physically here because science says it is made up of matter and such. So if everything in the world is explained by something that man came up with then it's possible that the world only exists in man's mind. Perhaps to other animals, this world doesn't exist or it's completely different from what man says it is.

To be honest, I cannot come up for a valid reason why it is possible that the world does exist. Because, I'm sitting right here and I can tell you that it's over my head how the keyboard I am typing on, the chair I am sitting in, and the computer I am looking at could possibly not be real. But, then again, if the world only exists in man's mind then I couldn't very well trust what I believe to be real now can I?

So in our minds, the world exists...but the world may only exist because of our minds.

Very interesting proposal... extremely deep. I'll have to say that it does, but I wouldn't be able to tell you why I thiunk so. It's just a feeling.

Good point.

I wish it didn't.