The Real Tautology

Ayush Jain

"Anything only exists because we think why it doesn't exist"
"All theorems are true until proven wrong"

You need the ability of reason to question something. The earth till date would have been considered flat if someone wouldn't have thought otherwise. We are finding more and more bizarre things in our search and yearn to understand this universe. Even though the discoveries are afresh, but the subject of discovery has been in existence since time. The universe will allow us to observe itself until we keep looking, the day we stop, it will freeze its own existence and state.

Language came into existence because we needed ways to communicate. Take up any random word and think why somebody would have felt the need to coin it?

As we keep imagining and exploring, the universe unravels itself. In your day to day life, I don't think the black hole sitting in the center of our galaxy has any direct impact. you will be indifferent to its existence.
But its there now since somebody has observed it. If nobody would have, it might or might not have existed?

All of these thoughts intrigue me a lot. What do you think?

Brendan Golledge

I believe that reality exists independently of our observation, or else nothing makes sense.

It is common in mathematics to prove P because NOT P contains a contradiction. Likewise, you can prove NOT P if P is contradictory. So, there is truth to the statement that we don't understand something unless we understand the opposite to be false.

Corvus

I believe that reality exists independently of our observation, or else nothing makes sense. — Brendan Golledge

Can something be reality if you don't know what that something is about? Can something be claimed as existence if no one knows what the something is about?

Hanover

What do you think? — Ayush Jain

I think there were trees in the forest before anyone saw them.

Arne

I believe that reality exists independently of our observation, or else nothing makes sense. — Brendan Golledge

I believe that reality does not exist independently of our observation, or else nothing makes sense.

Corvus

I believe that reality does not exist independently of our observation, or else nothing makes sense. — Arne

:up:

Maybe it does or doesn't, but it is meaningless to say it does, when there is no knowledge available about the reality.

Arne

Maybe it does or doesn't — Corvus

exactly

Brendan Golledge

If you say that reality exists only when we observe it, isn't that like saying that we're living in a video game where the map is loaded only whenever we try to look at it? It seems bizarre. Everything is so consistent in nature, and it behaves as if it's much older than humanity. It would seem to be very strange if it worked that way.

Tom Storm

As we keep imagining and exploring, the universe unravels itself. In your day to day life, I don't think the black hole sitting in the center of our galaxy has any direct impact. you will be indifferent to its existence.
But its there now since somebody has observed it. If nobody would have, it might or might not have existed?

All of these thoughts intrigue me a lot. What do you think? — Ayush Jain

I have no real commitments either way here but it might also be said that the universe doesn't so much unravel itself as we co-create or even invent it. Everything we see and experience is subject to our cognitive apparatus, our arbitrary language and our frames of reference which may not (and in my view are unlikely to) map directly onto reality. 'Reality' itself is a human construct, the ultimately real, the foundation, the prime mover, whatever conceptual frame you wish to insert.

There's a whole thread on this here: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14685/the-mind-created-world

Ayush Jain

↪Brendan Golledge

Great example of the video game. Even the unseen territories of the video game are consistent with the seen territories and as a whole, because they were designed that way. It's only that we observed a part of it, which does not impact the creation. But, we derive our understandings only from the things we have observed or imagined. For example, anti-matter was always in existence, but we found it later. Before the discovery, all our theories did not account for anti-matter. After the discovery, some theories would still be consistent and some might be proven false which were yet considered to be true. (Everything is true until proven false).

I like to think from the direction of nothingness. How can you arrive at the universe (or reality) as we know it today, from the state of nothingness. Everything makes a lot of sense with this POV.

Ayush Jain

↪Tom Storm

I agree. If you keep extending this theory and keep asking, "why this exists", you end up at, "the universe is nothing but a particle which got curious"

Corvus

If you say that reality exists only when we observe it, isn't that like saying that we're living in a video game where the map is loaded only whenever we try to look at it? It seems bizarre. Everything is so consistent in nature, and it behaves as if it's much older than humanity. It would seem to be very strange if it worked that way. — Brendan Golledge

We are not saying reality only exists when we observe it. But we are saying we have the parts of the universe we can observe and know them as existing. But there are also the parts we cannot see or observe, which we don't know if existing or not.

To say, everything exists, and everything is consistent and the world works perfectly sounds misleading. Because it doesn't. Some parts seems it does, but some parts are in chaos and uncertain.

We need to say that there are parts of the universe which we don't know for certain, and there are parts we do know because we can observe and experience. This is the truth.

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