Non-existence

[Edwardo Piet]

Why can't we be the video game of a very advanced race?

Why can't we? Could just as easily ask: Why can we?

1. What practical difference does it make whatsoever? So you are saying this hypothesis is entirely indistinguisable in experience then?

2. With the computer simulation are you postulating anything futher whatsoever, than what we actually experience...in which case, if you are - I'd require evidence to believe such a thing, I consider any futher unnecessary postulation to be unlikely.

3. If you're not postulating anything futher then it's exactly the same and the fact you call it a 'comptuer simulation' is an entirely semantic thing.

If there's actually no computer then it's just a semantic thing when to say this is a 'computer simulation'

If there is (in this hypothesis) a computer, then you are posulating furhter as I said; it's extra complexity, unnecessary, gratuitous, less parsimonious - and without evidence I see no reason to believe it.

EvF

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I just say that "This" is reality. This experience, whether other minds exist or not (and yes, for the record - I believe they do, lol).

So you appeal to personal experience. Fine.

On what grounds do you believe that other minds exist, again? Personal experience, I presume?

By the fact that I don't know of any evidence that I'm a special case in anyway in my consciousnes. I am personally aware of my own consciousness, yes. I'm not personally aware of others, yes. But I don't consider the fact I personally experience my own consciousness to make me in any way special, so it's contrary to appealing to personal experience there. I see no reason to treat myself as a special case and the only one conscious.

And on what grounds do most people accept the existence of God? Personal experience, exactly.

There's evidence for brains. Not God.

If I get hit on the head hard I lose consciousness. I am an example of that, and the fact that other people appear to experience the same thing when they get hit hard on the head; means that I see no reason to believe they are somehow an exception, and somehow aren't conscious unlike myself.

God however? No evidence for him at all (that I know of anyway - unless you can enlighten me?) - consciousness I am aware of in myself, and I see no reason to believe that other people who also get knocked out when they get hit on the head, somehow 'aren't', just because I'm not 'them'. I don't consider myself to be a special case just because of 'I think therefore I am'.

The question whether reality actually is real or exists, is not about whether you seem to be doing what you seem to be doing (e.g. being here discussing), because you would seem to be doing that if you were a Matrix-style brain in a vat as well.[/quote] But if I was a 'Matrix-style brain in a vat' then that would be reality, so reality would still exist. It would still be a semantic problem again.

The question is if any of reality actually exists (outside our minds), and if it does, then what you appeal to to justify that claim.

Outside our minds? Oh, well I thought it was just about whether reality exists or not. Because if our minds are real and they're all that actually exists then out minds are all that actually is, our minds are actuality, or 'reality'.

All you can really appeal to is presupposition due to personal experience, and the same is the case with the existence of other minds.

If this is just an illusion and I'm a brain in a vat. Then would there need to be something generating the illusion? If that's the case then I require evidence for such a generator.

So I think the whole idea of whether reality is real or not, or the universe exists or not, is just semanticial. Whether we say it does or not - it makes no actual difference its just words.

It makes no difference whether everything is an illusion, arbitrary sense-data fed to you by a computer, or actually real?

But that wouldn't be not real. Reality would then be the computer world. Unless that was an illusion to, and there was another computer, and so on, untill you get to a computer that is real, there you go, that's reality.

I would say it makes very much of a difference, whether everything and everyone I know and hold dear to exist is actually just an illusion, digits coming from a computer, or real things and real minds just like me, who I can have a real relationship to.

If this is really all just a computer simulation then...

...Then it really is all just a computer simulation! That's reality. In other worlds reality still exists - it's just different to what we think it is.

So it's merely that I see no reason to believe that this is a computer simulation. Out of all the countless hypothetical thought-up illusions one could think of as a way to argue that this could possibly "not be real!".

EvF