and that's the point how can you know truth if you don't even regard your own existence to yourself as absolute truth ..what reference could you possibly use to measure truth if not yourself

When you're ready.

when you're ready to come out of denial

And how do you know this Funches?

How do you know what I say is not truth?

What can you use to substantiate your claims?

Have you died yet? Left your body behind? Clinically dead?

Do you know what comes next?

jess...And how do you know this Funches?
funches....because of how you can't answer a simple question as to your existence


jess...How do you know what I say is not truth?
funches...you don't even view your own existence as truth so how would you know truth from fantasy


jess...What can you use to substantiate your claims?
funches...just answer the question without deversion tactics ..do you "believe" you exist or "know" you exist or "know" and "believe" you exist as a figment of someone's else imagination


jess...Have you died yet?Left your body behind?Clinically dead? ..
funches...this is about life your existence, so explain why are you going off the topic including death ..one thing at a time now Jess


jess..Do you know what comes next?
funches....again this is about your existence in the here and the now

because in your reality, it is not feasible for me to have such answers.


I know different, and I have answered, unfortunately your concrete box won't allow you to see any other reality.


As Robin would say,

'May much good come your way.'

I know you just want to know what I know....so that you too shall know.....




And worse yet..you honestly don't have a clue who jess is either....to bad she is one cool chica.....and we don't believe the same things....but I have mucho respect.....for her.

Jess and Funches, while there seems to emanate a certain degree of frustration from your exchange, you're actually doing a great job of revealing one of the oldest and most fundamental question of the human race.

'Who am I ?' aka
'What is this seemingly existince I feel I'm in?' aka
'Do I really exist?'.

And in there lies the ultimate paradox. The original illusion of them all.

Whether we look 2500 years ago, when Socrates, Plato and Aristotle were questioning the 'evidence of existence'?
Or more recently when Descartes gave us ‘Je pense, donc je suis!’, or Schopenhauer's notion of “will to live” , or Nietzsche's notion of "will to power", or yet again Sartre “Existence precedes Essence” , all of them have been sorting out the question of human existence: knowledge, belief, or what ???

The majority of us believe we exist because we breathe, we think, we feel, we need, we do. We have a ‘sense of ourselves’ that give us a realistic ‘feel’ that "we are".
And, for most of us, that's all we need to know and all we want to know.

For others, the question is larger than the answer, and it very much remains unanswered, and possibly unknowable, eventhough it is ‘thought’ to be known.

Descartes ‘… I think therefore I am…’, is as straight forward as it gets. What gives me the conviction of existence, is my capacity to think 'of' myself (distnct from 'for' myself), and then to think of myself as ‘existing’.

First, it is a thought which ‘we’ think.
Second, it is a thought in which we think our ‘selves’.
And third, it is a thought which we think, in which we think our ‘selves’, and in which we further think our ‘selves’ to exist.

Somewhere in this illusion creating process, most of us lose track that it is a self-conscious thought process, or representation of existence, and figure we ‘really’ exist!!!

I my humble opinion, and while just like any other one of us I have this ‘real’ feeling of existing (from all my senses feeding my ‘meaning making’ neo-cortex), in the end, I DON’T KNOW that I exist. All I KNOW, is that I THINK that ‘I’ exists.

As for believing!!! … it’s neither here nor there.

Still a fascinating question (which for some of us) the human race has been pondering for million of years.





:)

And now back to 'believing is to doubt!!!'.

would you blieve me if i told he 'believed', i think this is why he deactivated,lol

aaaaahhhh sad day....the funches is gone.....for the some reason I picture lil munchkins singing the wicked witch is dead.....shakes it off......

I truly will miss our e-mails and battles.

it may appears to be frustration only because I choose not to add the illusion of "LOL" to any of my post

I have no interest in beening assimulated into the fantasy world of the "LOL" collective

so feralcatlady are you referring to those same munchkins that sang in a tribute to you...follow the yellow brickhead

On the sidelines or in the middle of the fray --- kind a like believing is doubting for some but to others ......... the possibilities are limitless, except to the limited of course.

the possibilities are limitless because you can not claim any as truth and therefore doubt all

Really? Prove it!

well you kind of proved it yourself...truth is constant and undisputable ...the fact that you said limitless possibilities suggest the opposite and implies doubt

Your perception does not constitute truth.

the existence of yourself to yourself constitute truth ..but there are some that are unsure if they exist or not which means they have no template to measure truth

This is kinda off the wall??? I do not understand the question.

I exist because I do. I breathe, feel, eat, cry, love, dream. DREAM.... If I were someone else's imagination; would I dream within a dream? In my dreams, I live sometimes a better way. Sometimes not. But, I know they are MY dreams.

To exist simply because of someone else's imagination is silly.
Who's imagination would I be from? My Moms? Don't think so. We think sooo differently. My grandmas? She is dead. Would not her imagination cease to exist? Therefore me as well?

However; I can see me being Gods imagination. My belief is He is the creator, the giver of life. His imaginings became reality.

Would we all be from the same imagination? (Not of God?)
Is this real? Why of course it has to be. We all see the same things. We all see grass, the sky, feel what we see. Smell the same smells. But think differently.

What kind of mind would in good conscience, be able to live with itself giving us so many life differences? Stephen King?

Don't tell me God. God gave us reasoning. To make our own choices and see where they lead us. Sometimes not so good. Sometimes wonderful.

I know I exist because in a dream I would most certainly change things daily to make me more comfortable and enriched. As it is; it is what it is. Life being lived for better or worse.

So no; I do not think my reality is a thought.

Kat