If you are the center of your universe...

Do I exist?

If I have never met you do you exist?

If I am the center of my universe, you do exist in another
If we have not met, you have met another person within both of your place in the universe

I think it was called "The Window Theory", nothing exists if you can not see it. The rest of the world is just on hold until you get back to see it again or something like that.

Very interesting.

You exist, but only as a picture on my computer.

In my physical world you don't exist.

Want to meet for lunch so you can have existence in my world?

You bet!

this presupposes that lunch exists.

I imagine it does.

Solipsism:

It is simple people, things, stuff, everything does not exist. Here's why only the things that happen in your own mind can be proven by yourself i.e. you feel pain, love, happiness, you smell the difference between flowers and port o johns, you taste the difference between chicken and beef etc etc..... but everyone else's mind is unknown to you. You can not touch, taste, smell, see, or hear with another persons sense. So how do you know that they actually exist and are not figments of your own imagintion.

HAHA wrap your mind around that one.

I have actually given that question a lot of thought.

If you interact with it, and it is not completely under your own control, then it has existence that is 'somewhat' separate from yours.

The reason it does is because you acknowledge its existence.

We are all connected so we are all part of the body of one single organism or mind. But we have separated into individual units with our own purpose and will. We have decided to acknowledge each other's differences and each other's existence.

In short, you exist because I think you do. I exist because you acknowledge me.

So people that we deem "mentally unstable" i.e. the skitsphrentic patient who talks to thin air, or a 4 year old child who has an "imaginary" friend do we then accept that those "beings" exist since they interact with them?

follow up question if your answer is no. If you do not accept that the child's friend is real then how can you believe in the air you breath?

*I'm playing devils advocate here I think this view of some is stupid

Someone else's imaginary friend or hallucination is not real to me. I cannot judge how real it would be to them.

So the answer is that its not real - to me.



Your second question is not related to the first. The air I breath is real to me because I breath it.

I like your answer to the first question bravo.

Second question though. We are not debating the difference's between living beings and elements. My question was based around the existance of all things. People as well as air are both matter ( both occupy space and are effected by gavity and have weight). Matter is what physics use's to prove something exists. Unfortunately I can't re-ask that question, because I have pretty much answered it. I would say "So again justify air exists" but I think physics explains it well enough.

ha ha ha

I believe in simplicity.

Air (whatever it is comprised of) exists as long as I can breathe. I have no reason to "justify" it to anyone else.

I see the question as irrelevant. I don't get your point.

haha ight ill explain a little more.

you said my second question was not related to the first. Being you are not putting the theories of existance in to perspective.

you said "In short, you exist because I think you do. I exist because you acknowledge me." My question pertaining to the mentally ill patient and the child they both acknowledge the "person" they communicate with and if they acknowledge that "person" and being that they continue to correspond with the "person" that "person" must acknowledge them. So with your answer you have just unitentionally acknowledged you now accept the fact that the "imaginary friend" does exist. So using the commonly used definition of what exists (that of which consists of matter or energy) we can relate an imaginary friend to air because we both now agree they exist.

So my point if you were to say no you do not believe in the child's friend but you believe in air you would be breaking the laws you have just defined as having to prove something exists that you can not taste, touch, hear, smell or see. And no you can not hear air you hear wind, rustling of trees, whatever it is moving against. No you can not feel air when you breathe you are feeling the muscles in you chest expanding, or wind against your skin (which is a reaction of the nervous system to stimuli against your skin). You can not taste air or smell air nor see air.

Okay, I would like to explain why I said "I exist because you acknowledge me."

That is incorrect. It is only gratifying to be acknowledged. Even if I were a ghost and no one could see me, I would still believe that I exist because I have perception of things. If I could not be acknowledged, I could not make my existence known.(to others)but I would still believe in my own existence.

The only imaginary friend that I would acknowledge was one that I could see.

Also, I do not need to have any agreement with anyone else about what exists... for me. I decide what exists.




Tasting and touching and smelling or seeing etc. is not necessary to believe or decide that something exists.

All it takes is for me to decide that it exists.

If what I breath into my lungs is called "air" then I believe it exists even if I can't detect it or feel it or taste it... etc.

But if I did not know about "air" I probably wouldn't even give it any thought.

"IF" you could OBTAIN a universe
who would have blessed you
with such an enormous package?

This would be a grandiose undertaking.

And who would have counted you worthy
or qualified to navigate it?

As it stands some humans ought not have a drivers licence,
much less a licence to operate a universe.

The only universe most of us would qualify to operate would be
a "virtual" one and would come in the form of Sega Genesis or
X-Box 360, and with that someone else would have to program it
for you...
with easy instructions to get you started.

In a universe that you or I operated there would be partiality
and unfairness...
even the option to allow others to exist
or to manuver in that realm.

If you lived in that universe alone...
you'd be quite lonely.

I think our bodies are a universe. And most of us don't take very good care of them.

If you measure from you...

You are the center of your universe.

Every thing you see or touch you do so from the center of what you are.

Once you begin to understand THAT universe...

Exploring the Universe that contains us all takes on a whole new meaning.

and that which contains our universe...

Becomes even more awesome.

(see there are parallel universes... and 'parallel lines all meet in space').

Nicely put! And where did this "Universe" that the person lived in come from? A mini big bang?

I would hate to see the apocalypse of the individual universe.

Imagine all the people are sitting in a movie house watching a show when suddenly WHAM! "Oh crud! Steve's universe is ending!" Fire brimstone and all sorts of stuff start going off.

What happens to steve? Does he die? His universe just ended!

Where's my gravity? I am the center of my universe.

You live in the center of your universe, which is your body. When you die, you leave that mass of flesh. If you believe you have a soul, then you are not your body.

What happens to the flesh when you are gone? It is recycled. Maybe it is cremated. Maybe it is eaten by insects. It doesn't matter.