I don't exist because other people exist
Thought of this not so long ago: the idea in which one realizes that other people exist and therefore he does not. What I mean: the land is filled with so many individuals that the truth is we won't start to know even a small fraction of them. And they all think, the same way I do; and, more important, eventualy they all think the same thing I do. It all comes back to the concept of the non-existence of originality.
The first question is: do I matter? I'm more likely to think that no, I do not matter: there are enough people (more than enough) that want to do the same think that I want to do and way better than I would do. Fernando Pessoa--Álvaro de Campos said: "And there are so many who think to be the same thing that there can’t be that many!"
Answeing the first question this way, the second question (am I original?) is already answered: I'm not original.
Then comes the third question: seeing as I'm not original and will never matter, and that my existence is swallowed by the existence of other people -- do I even exist?
Well, can the existence of others be used to prove my non-existence? Can my existence be used to prove your non-existence? The only person that exists is the one that does not know other people exist?
The first question is: do I matter? I'm more likely to think that no, I do not matter: there are enough people (more than enough) that want to do the same think that I want to do and way better than I would do. Fernando Pessoa--Álvaro de Campos said: "And there are so many who think to be the same thing that there can’t be that many!"
Answeing the first question this way, the second question (am I original?) is already answered: I'm not original.
Then comes the third question: seeing as I'm not original and will never matter, and that my existence is swallowed by the existence of other people -- do I even exist?
Well, can the existence of others be used to prove my non-existence? Can my existence be used to prove your non-existence? The only person that exists is the one that does not know other people exist?
Comments (21)
No need. Well, perhaps append it (edit and write further). Generally I like to post in a mindset that would (hopefully) benefit or at least entertain as many reading as possible as opposed to a single individual (the OP ie. you).
I mean, what is a PhD versed in all the sciences of this world who has lost the will to question or discover over one perhaps less titled with drive and curiosity?
That seems more like it.
Maybe now we can start a discussion
I don't exist either. I am merely a fragment of your imagination.
If it is proven you don’t exist, how did you ask whether or not your existence was disprovable? And if it was proven you didn’t exist, how would you know whether or not it was other people’s existence used to prove it?
“....For if a question be in itself absurd and unsusceptible of a rational answer, it is attended with the danger—not to mention the shame that falls upon the person who proposes it—of seducing the unguarded listener into making absurd answers, and we are presented with the ridiculous spectacle of one (as the ancients said), milking the he-goat, and the other holding a sieve....”
(Sigh)
Maybe "existence" was an exaggerated term. Maybe it would make more sense if I had said: "existence is the capacity of making yourself worth of something", but then I would not be referring to existence at all.
I do not exist for those who will never know of my existence. If nobody knows of my existance, do I exist?, or do I matter? Life is all around me, but it doesn't acknowledge my existence, because it does not need to. Do I exist if I'm the only one who knows of my existence?
(maybe I recognize it doesn't make any sense)
Correct. That would be popularity. And depending on the current society could be something very terrible and frankly undesirable.
It just seems we're still stuck on the same old false paradigm of acknowledgement being equated with existence. Reminds me of an old supernatural thriller series. Several actually. Not to say majority view doesn't pragmatically define most things. Not at all. In fact. That's my point. Yours too it would seem?
Or, create an argument showing that it does. The history of metaphysical dialectic is against you, but then, paradigm shifts have happened before, so.....
As a language example: if a majority of people start writing "bottle" as "botle", there will come a time when "botle" is the correct term. The same happens with the meaning of some words.
But then, of course (now I see), we cannot take this same process to the existencial department, cause a word is not conscious.
Maybe the absurd of it is its appeal for me. Like that book by Dostoievski, "Notes from Underground". Does the underground man exist? or needs to?
Presentism: "the view that only present things exist".
Can I be sure I exist if the only prove I have of it is my own consciousness?
I can't prove I don't exist, can I? However, if other people can't prove that I exist, could I do it?
I am not the “unguarded listener”, so I have nothing more to say about this.
Good luck.
Most folk have a general idea of how to determine whether you are dead or alive. They can listen to your heart beat, check to see if you are breathing, take your temperature, or take further lethal action to achieve certainty.
Generally living rational folk dismiss the possibility of ghosts due to lack of evidence.
If there were no other people to determine whether you were dead or alive then of course it'd be up to you to affirm it.
:nerd:
Unless you have existed at some other place and time, you are original and one of a kind. As a corollary, this is why you matter.
The worst thing one can do philosophically speaking in my view is to view themselves through the lens of the immense. You become an ant this way, you are a little spec that cannot even be seen. This perspective is unliving, mostly its conceptual, originality might be an example of that. From the perspective of "who is original" you can be seen as nothing, it's looking at millions or billions of people and you're one of them.
That's not how life really is though, you can easily and quite effortlessly make a huge difference from any living perspective. Whether it's owning a dog or making a friend, from their perspective, you are you, irreplaceable, absolute, uniquely existing physically and emotionally. Even going further, from your perspective, you are everything. Someone else can die and you won't even notice but if you die then that's the end of everything and from that perspective, you are everything.
Through the advent of nihilism, the self is an unrivalled dispenser of justice, conveyer of meaning, the ultimate narrator. Knowledge is an epistemological position, truth is determined by prerequisites that you layout. As opposed to seeing yourself as a cog in a great machine, see yourself as the seer of all that is seen, the epicentre of existence as you know it.
This is a confusion of three separate questions concerning three different areas of philosophy: ontology, epistemology and ethics. The question of your existence is answered by you asking it. If you didn't exist you couldn't ask the question. But the brute fact of your existence is independent of the question of knowledge. When you're asleep you cannot be said to know that you exist; you're oblivious to the fact that you exist. Others may observe you while you sleep and thereby know of your existence. But even if no one knew of your existence, including yourself, that would not mean you didn't exist. No one knew that Pluto existed until it was discovered in 1930. Does that mean Pluto didn't exist until 1930? Of course not. The very concept of discovery presupposes the possible existence of things before they are known, and even of things that may never be known. So it is a mistake to think that you do not exist for those who will never know of your existence, since existence is independent of anyone's knowledge. Existence is not 'for' anyone or anything. As for whether or not you 'matter', that is an ethical question. Even if no one else knows of your existence, your existence would still presumably 'matter' to you? This is a question of value, not of epistemology or ontology.
I suggest that you exist because other people exist.
We share a language in which and as which we can wrestle with such issues.