Do I exist?

pekin · Post by **pekin** » October 25th, 2015, 7:36 am

Londoner wrote:
pekin wrote:You seem to accept an idealist interpretation of the statement "you [actually] exist in someone else's dream".
No, it is simply a matter of what we mean by the word 'exist'. A dream exists in the sense that dreams exist, a material object exists in the sense that material objects exist, Hamlet exists in the sense that characters in plays exist.

@Londoner, In order it to be informative, I have previously provided two alternative [idealist and materialist] interpretation of the statement “you exist in someone else's dream [thought or belief] - "you" or anything”

Please note that, I have suggested that a- we can think word “dream” in this question interchangeable with words “thought” or “belief“, which would not alter the possible answer to the question “Am I real?”, b- what is in the dream/thought/belief of someone may be you or some perfect being or something.

You seem to have rejected both alternatives and stuck to the original answer “you exist in someone else's dream” to the question “the possibility that I'm existing inside of someone else's dream [thought or belief]. Am I real?”.

If this is the case, we are not informed whether a being in someone’s dream, thought or belief actually and necessarily exists or not.

Democritus

Londoner · Post by **Londoner** » October 25th, 2015, 11:58 am

pekin wrote: @Londoner, In order it to be informative, I have previously provided two alternative [idealist and materialist] interpretation of the statement “you exist in someone else's dream [thought or belief] - "you" or anything”

Please note that, I have suggested that a- we can think word “dream” in this question interchangeable with words “thought” or “belief“, which would not alter the possible answer to the question “Am I real?”, b- what is in the dream/thought/belief of someone may be you or some perfect being or something.

You seem to have rejected both alternatives and stuck to the original answer “you exist in someone else's dream” to the question “the possibility that I'm existing inside of someone else's dream [thought or belief]. Am I real?”.

If this is the case, we are not informed whether a being in someone’s dream, thought or belief actually and necessarily exists or not.

Democritus

I didn't think it was for me to select from your two alternatives, or to add any alternatives of my own.

The OP asks; If it was the case that they existed inside someone else's dream, would they exist/be real?

And as the next post in the thread rightly remarked, they have answered their own question. Unless they meant those two uses of the word 'exist' to have two different meanings. In which case, if they explained what the second meaning of exist was, they could again answer their own question.

Pending that explanation, our problem is not with answering the question. It is knowing what is being asked.

Regarding your other points, I don't agree that 'dream' can be interchangeable with 'thought' or 'belief'. I do not 'believe' in my dreams in the same way I believe in other experiences. We do not treat all our thoughts as equal, which is why we have all these separate words, like 'dream', 'imagine', 'sense', 'calculate' etc. to describe them.

Besides, in this case we are not discussing 'dreaming' but being the subject of a dream, being 'dreamed of'. I have no reason to think that my thoughts have a self-awareness distinct from me; that if I dream of a dragon that dragon has thoughts of its own, of which I am unaware, or continues to have a dragony life, even when I am not thinking of it.

There might be such a dragon somewhere, that just happens to be just like the one I dream of, but it wouldn't be there because I had dreamed it. That the dragon is both dependent on my dreaming and also independent of it is self-contradictory. So, if I used the word 'real' to describe both dragons then that 'real' must have different meanings.

I did not address your description of the possibilities as 'idealist' and 'materialist' because I did not recognise them as what I understand by those terms. Earlier (212), and above with the mention of 'some perfect being' you seem to be suggesting this distinction and the whole topic has some link to Anselm's 'Ontological Argument'. If so, I don't see it.

Belinda · Post by **Belinda** » October 26th, 2015, 5:23 am

Londoner wrote:

if I dream of a dragon that dragon has thoughts of its own, of which I am unaware, or continues to have a dragony life, even when I am not thinking of it.

One can't escape from solipsism that way. One might have dreamed that the dragon continues to have a dragony life, even when you are not thinking of it, so the dragon's own life pertains also to your dreaming mind.

Londoner · Post by **Londoner** » October 26th, 2015, 6:49 am

One can't escape from solipsism that way. One might have dreamed that the dragon continues to have a dragony life, even when you are not thinking of it, so the dragon's own life pertains also to your dreaming mind.

We have already rejected solipsism if we use words like 'dream'.

To say something is a dream is to discriminate between different types of mental experience, but if we deny, or say we cannot know, whether anything exists apart from our own mental experiences, then all our thoughts are of the same kind. For example, there can be no such state as 'being awake' because we deny there is anything external to 'be awake' to.

But I agree that it could be the OP was written by a solipsist, and thus that the word 'dream' in the OP had some special solipsist meaning, but we don't know. So we are back with what I wrote last time. Pending some explanation, our problem is not with answering the question in the OP. It is knowing what is being asked.

Belinda · Post by **Belinda** » October 26th, 2015, 12:18 pm

Yes, Londoner, but I was using 'dream' rather loosely. My excuse is that I thought 'dream' would in the context be more accessible to some readers than 'mind'. Let's say 'mind 'then. Okay?

I fully agree with your second paragraph.

Metathought · Post by **Metathought** » October 26th, 2015, 10:27 pm

I do not exist in someone else's dream. My existence itself is not a dream and it is independent of the dreams of others.

If I stub my toe on a rock or accidentally bump my head into a wall, I experience pain. I know that I am actually experiencing pain and not dreaming that I am experiencing pain. Furthermore, I know for certain that I am not experiencing pain within someone's dream.

If you do not know whether or not you are dreaming, or whether you are part of someone else's dream, how about if I were to pound your naked toe with a hammer or stick you with a sharp pin? Would you accept that the pain you experience is real in the here and now? Or would you think that you are dreaming of experiencing pain whether it be in your dream or as part of someone else's dream?

This experience of pain is an existential reality and is a confirmation of my existence.

I know that in Descartes' “Cogito, Ergo Sum”, the focus is on thinking and “I am”, or “being”, and not on experiencing pain. Perhaps I can extend the argument to “thinking about experiencing pain” versus “actually experiencing pain”. Either way, I think that the idea about existence and dreaming, whether it is my dream or whether it is my being in someone else's dream is nothing more than a case of extreme imagination and pure philosophical abstraction.

Belinda · Post by **Belinda** » October 27th, 2015, 4:20 am

Reply to Metathought:

After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the nonexistence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it -- "I refute it thus."

(quoted from The Samuel Johnson Sound Bite Page)

Metathought · Post by **Metathought** » November 14th, 2015, 10:17 pm

In post #161, I asked:

What is "Thinking"?

What is "Thought"?

Some replied that thought is the “pattern of brain activity”. The idea was expressed that certain brain activity patterns lead to the particular thoughts experienced. My view is that thought leads to the related brain activity pattern and not vice versa.

What determines the particular thought that we experience? It was mentioned that it may be some entity. Mention was also made of Nature.

What I had in mind when I asked the question, is not something esoteric or mysterious.

My view of thought is that it is related to concepts. It involves the manipulation of concepts. Such manipulation may be highly structured according to some definite rules or laws, for example, Aristotle's Laws of Logic. This is a feature of scientific and mathematical analysis.

However, not all thought is structured by these laws of logic; for example, poetry writing. The poet experiences a certain “affective” or emotional state which generates relevant thoughts to match the affective state.

If thoughts are viewed as a manipulation of concepts, the question arises:

What is a concept?

I view a concept as a mental construct. It exists only in the human mind. Some form of language or symbolisation is used to embody concepts.

How do concepts arise?

Belinda · Post by **Belinda** » November 15th, 2015, 6:29 am

Metathought asks:

How do concepts arise?

Concepts arise socially, mediated through language. Claude Levi-Strauss in chapter one of his The Savage Mindgives examples from many different peoples of how taxonomic systems vary according to environmental habitats and how taxonomic lexicons reflect the taxonomic concepts.