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CF has always been a site that welcomes people from different backgrounds and beliefs to participate in discussion and even debate. That is the nature of its ministry. In view of recent events emotions are running very high. We need to remind people of some basic principles in debating on this site. We need to be civil when we express differences in opinion. No personal attacks. Avoid you, your statements. Don't characterize an entire political party with comparisons to Fascism or Communism or other extreme movements that committed atrocities. CF is not the place for broad brush or blanket statements about groups and political parties. Put the broad brushes and blankets away when you come to CF, better yet, put them in the incinerator. Debate had no place for them. We need to remember that people that commit acts of violence represent themselves or a small extreme faction.
ragarth
Well-Known Member
We must assume that what our senses tell us is real within the limits of our senses' capacities. To assume otherwise is to not trust our senses, and if we cannot trust our senses, then we cannot trust anything since all information we receive is derived from our senses. If my senses tell me I am here, I must trust that, because I have no other body of proof or method of attaining a body of proof.
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Eudaimonist
I believe in life before death!
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If I'm not here, I must be afk. And yet my post exists. Either I have very long fingers, or I am "here".
eudaimonia,
Mark
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L
Legion.As.One
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heheheh, looking at it philosophically I'd say my concious is here... but 'I', who am I to say that 'I'm' here
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Wiccan_Child
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We all know that we exist. I know I exist, you know you exist, but I don't know you exist (and vice versa). The next step, working out in what form we (and anything else) exists, requires assumptions on the reality we see before us: we assume that what we see is real and not the fabrication of Descartes' demon.
But to answer your question: yes, we are here. We don't know for certain where 'here' is, but we're here!
But to answer your question: yes, we are here. We don't know for certain where 'here' is, but we're here!
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I dispute that I even know I exist. All I have is this collection of thoughts and experiences. To say that I exist as anything other than this collection is to posit some kind of metaphysical identity, and I think I'd have to disagree with that.
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Eudaimonist
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Wiccan_Child
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But you nevertheless exist, if only as a collection of thoughts and experiences. This is what the 'I' is: the thing doing the thinking. We may not know what it is, but we know that it is. You think, therefore you are.
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Our experience is only of thoughts and experiences, not of some metaphysical I having them. As such, if we're going to be serious doubters (as Descartes was not), then we must not make assumptions beyond the base experience.
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Wiccan_Child
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We are not making assumptions, we are making definitions. For thoughts to exist, there must be some thing doing the thinking. That thing is you.
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If you doubt your existence, there must be a "you" before there can be an entity of "you" that is able to doubt. You cannot doubt unless you first exist. Your act of doubting only confirms your existence.
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ragarth
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This is improper and references the fallacy of the humunculus. Rather, we are our thoughts, we exist as the thoughts we think. I think, therefore I am states that the act of thought proves existence because thought is existence. If this were not the case, then there would be an infinite chain of 'I' doing the thinking.
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