How do you justify existence?
To say "I think therefore I am" is circular because you assume existence when you say "I think". How do you know you exist?
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But to say "I think" presupposes 'I'. Everytime you try to prove existence using your own experience, you are begging the question, because in order for it to be 'your' experience, you must assume you exist. Thoughts are something you experience, but before you can say "I experience thoughts" you have to assume you exist in order to make those assumptions. In a nutshell, the argument says "How do I know I exist? Because I think. How do I know I think? Because I exist to experience" It's viciously circular reasoning. 1
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I understand where you're coming from. Stated by socrates: "True knowledge exists in knowing we know nothing." Simply put, everything we have came to "known," has been taught from human to human. If you think to the begining of humanity, we didn't have the capability to speak or reason. Then throughout the history of life, a thing called "knowledge," becomes absolute? Say that what you're saying is correct. Perhaps my thoughts are just a programmed act, etc. If i didn't have free will of my mind, even to be enslaved without acknowledgment by some puppetier. What ever you have rationalized into an ideal that thinking could be false, or misconceived. Does it not seem odd that if you were to be correct on your ideal, that you had the capability to doubt what society has percieved. The fact that you can doubt anything in life, means something w.e it may be exists. Non-existence is perceived as "unkowing." If what we experienced day to day, the unkowing of non-existence, (hypothetically speaking) Then what would existence be, there can't be one without the other. Does it make more sense to doubt an existence that you're in, or to doubt the non-existence the submurges you. If you're not doubt why we're non-existent, you must be existent. 1
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It doesn't matter whether I exist or not, the problem is how do you logically come to existence without using existence in a circular manner to prove it? You can't arbitrarily say "that doesn't exist" or logical reasoning would be impossible; all you have to say is "that doesn't exist." |