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Essorant
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0 posted 2002-11-14 02:41 AM



Christopher and I touched upon this in the "ghosts" thread and I was just wondering if any of you could add a few thoughts to help clear this up!  
How can any thing, a thing, a creation of any kind, able to be referred to, not be existing??  

Look at the definition for Nonexistance from dictionary.com:

1. The condition of not existing.
2. Something that does not exist.

How can nonexistance be a condition!  
And If you are something doesn't that confirm your existance!

I don't think I will ever be able to believe in something not existing.   Everything must exist.  If you are pointing at it saying it doesn't exist that is paradox for you are pointing at it, if it weren't existing you wouldn't be able to say it wasn't existing.  
Does this make any sense??  Or am I just going crazy!!  

[This message has been edited by Essorant (11-14-2002 03:27 AM).]

© Copyright 2002 Essorant - All Rights Reserved
Christopher
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1 posted 2002-11-14 03:33 AM


Glad you made a new post for this.

What we need to clarify right off, I think, is whether you're discerning between something physical or something conceptual. There's a huge difference between the two (although, as with anything, that too can be argued).

If there is a chair sitting in the middle of the room and you point to it, saying it does not exist isn't a paradoxical statement, it's a statement that is either a lie or a matter of perspective. If you recognize the chair does exist, saying it doesn't is a falsehood. If the chair is there but you do not recognize it as such, you can say it is non-existent.

Concepts, however, are a much different thing. You can't see them, you can't touch them, smell them... so how do you prove they exist in the first place? In science, the burden of proof isn't in saying something is non-existent, but rather that it exists in the first place. (Which of course ends up being the same thing if you can't prove that it DOES exist).

Look to your right and point out Time for me. Can you prove it exists? If you can't, it's non-existent.

Essorant
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2 posted 2002-11-14 12:03 PM


Christopher--

"If the chair is there but you do not recognize it as such, you can say it is non-existent."

You can say it is non-existant,  but you you are still recognizing it as there if you are giving a term and tagging the attribute "non-existant" on it...aren't you?

"Look to your right and point out Time for me. Can you prove it exists? If you can't, it's non-existent"

I think that there is a science, a chemistry that goes further than just being available to bodily beholdings.   We can behold things in other planes--and this is the argument and proof of thier existance.  It is beheld, therefore it is!

Time seems to exists in every plane that I am presently part of.  I behold it and it beholds me.  am present to change and age and memory loss, the substances of Time, therefore these are the avouch of Times existance.   If there were no thinking, remebering, forgetting, regarding change...then there would be no time, everything would be in an absolute present, but nothing could be concious of that!  There is no "that" or "it" to refer to at all as not existing.  You simply are another thing where time is not a thing, so doesn't exist.  If you are referring to Time in that area from here, I suppose you can say it is non existant there--but this is from regarding its here because it is an thing existing.  It still exists..

[This message has been edited by Essorant (11-14-2002 12:37 PM).]

Stephanos
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3 posted 2002-11-14 01:12 PM


If someone proposes "flying pigs" exist, we usually say something like, "flying pigs do not exist".  Language forces us to at least formulate the concept and then refute the reality by proxy.  The only thing that exists is the image of flying pigs in our brain... thus we are able to apply the condition "nonexistant" to it while intending it toward a real living flying pig (that isn't to be found).  


Language provides symbols for things.  When something doesn't exist, we are required to create the symbol in order to be able to discuss it.  But an actual flying pig, and the idea of a flying pig would be two different  things.  Time, though conceptual in our minds, is merely a word describing a process.  The thought of time is conceptual.  But Time in reality is not conceptual ... it really works and changes things in a tangible way ... the concept is just a description of a reality that is indescribable.

Stephen


[This message has been edited by Stephanos (11-14-2002 01:17 PM).]

Essorant
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4 posted 2002-11-14 02:06 PM


Yet with "flying pigs" we can only imagine flying pigs because we are able to refer to "flying" and "pigs" that exist--it is the artwork of our mind but there is no other paint than reality.  "Flying Pigs" exist as a potential.  "Flying" and "Pigs" exists so Pigs I think could potentially fly if God, nature and evolution so provided.  Whatsoever we imagine most likely has a potential though of existing some other where or someother time than not.  I am just saying we cannot say "Flying pigs are nonexistant"  in the absolute sense.  They are only nonexistant here and now but this here and now isn't what exists throughout the universe.
In absolute terms, I would therefore be preponderated to believe they are existing in a reality because they do in imaginations and in excellent possibility.  This outweighs the matter of them not existing here and now.
Now you are going to call me crazy    

[This message has been edited by Essorant (11-14-2002 02:32 PM).]

Stephanos
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5 posted 2002-11-14 02:48 PM


Okay,

Pigs and flying are both things we have seen (in the external world) and have noted in our minds.  Because of this we can put them together in concept.  But it's still only a concept as the biology of pigs does not allow for flying.  Yes theoretically and logically a flying pig is not impossible, it just isn't currently the case.  Pigs do not fly.  Of course I guess someone could take a pig on a 747 jet plane ... There's your flying pig Essorant!  But is that what we had in mind when we said "flying pigs"?  ...lol...


To make things more complicated... Flying pigs we can visualize by means of imagination... so we have the concept linguistically and visually.  But what about something that can only be concieved linguistically?  Square circles do not exist.  Try to visualize one and tell me what you see?  If you weren't crazy Essorant, I think I might have just pushed you over the edge.  


Stephen.

Essorant
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6 posted 2002-11-14 04:31 PM


If a circle is a circle every day of the month except for one day when it turns to a square, does it mean it now ceases to be circle at all just because it turns to a square for a day?  On that day and moment, that here and now, it is a square, but you would only perceive it as being totally a square and call it that if you weren't aquainted with the rest of its existance and nature as a circle, otherise you would call it a square circle!  
You see everything exists in Possibility, therefore everything most likely exists because the universe we live in seems big enough that it could fit all of it...at least to me  


[This message has been edited by Essorant (11-14-2002 04:34 PM).]

Essorant
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7 posted 2002-11-14 04:56 PM


Sorry.  I deleted it  

[This message has been edited by Essorant (11-14-2002 07:26 PM).]

Wind
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8 posted 2002-11-14 06:59 PM


(drools) I think this is too intelegent for me... Having a test aftershock.

"Sticks and stones will break my bones,
But words will break my heart"

Essorant
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9 posted 2002-11-14 07:04 PM


It is hard to stay sane with flying pigs, and square circles in your brain  
But I suppose stranger things have taken one to the truth...

I think I scared away Stephenos.

[This message has been edited by Essorant (11-14-2002 07:32 PM).]

Stephanos
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10 posted 2002-11-14 10:19 PM


Nah,

I'm still here.  A circle is always a circle.  A square is always a square.  If a circle changes into a square once a month, it changes into a square once a month.  The mystery at this point would not be how a circle could also be a square, but what changes that circle into a square on the 2nd Saturday of each month.  If the circle is on my refridgerator door, it could be my 4 year old son, or even me.  (I've been known to do stranger things)

You see, Essorant, a square circle (meaning a geometrical shape that is circular and square all at once) is what is non existant except for a linguistic concept... heck we can't even picture that one in our heads.  Go ahead and try.  I still think I'm gonna scare YOU off!  and from your own thread!  LOL.


Stephen.

Christopher
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11 posted 2002-11-14 11:25 PM


i'll be back eventually, but i think i agree more with Stephanos... though i believe the point is starting to wander, lol (have we ever had one here that didn't?)
Ron
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12 posted 2002-11-15 12:54 PM


I'm going to both agree and disagree with Essorant. According to Stephen Hawking, if you stand next to a black hole long enough, you WILL see a flying pig emerge. And square circles can not only be mathematically imagined, but are probably inevitable in a sufficiently distorted gravity field. It's little different than straight lines that curve, as evidenced by non-Euclidean geometry.

However, when I yell, "Come here!" there is an implied "you" in there, and when I say "Flying pigs don't exist," I think there is an equally tacit implication that I'm referring to the here and now. In other words, saying something will exist someday within the confines of infinity is not the same thing as saying it DOES exist.

Essorant, you are essentially arguing that non-existence is non-existent. Surely, you see the paradox in that?

Essorant
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13 posted 2002-11-15 03:19 PM


Ron,
But you use the word "infinity"...
In comparison to the Universe itself we are very small and confined beings, so  isn't the highest probablity of whatsoever we might imagine that the being of the Universe as large and seeming perpetual or infinite as it seems, has probably already created it?  Could we be imagining things the reality of a whole Universe has not already begot?!  
I believe there is a possibilty but this would be against the potential of the whole Universe--that we do not know yet!   Nonexistance of a thing can only be in local "here and now" but in the "here and now" of an infinite universe itself--everything must exist...it seems

Ron
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14 posted 2002-11-15 04:49 PM


The Universe is probably not infinite and almost certainly not eternal. It's only been around about fourteen billion years and, at most, its radius can be no larger than its age in seconds times the speed of light. The Universe is still a tiny child.

But it doesn't matter. Your argument is a self-referencing paradox. If everything conceivable must have existence, then non-existence must exist, too. Otherwise, we couldn't have this conversation about it.

Essorant
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15 posted 2002-11-15 07:20 PM


I yield now   But something seems awry!  

I am thinking of when someone states "God does not exist"
No matter how much one denies a God existing, it seems to me when you refer to "God"--you are still always referring to an entity no matter how artfully you refer to it, a something that exists in some way or another.  This may be  universal, maybe native, maybe yourself, it maybe something of yourself, of anything! but it exists--therefore atheism seems paradoxal.
It does not refer to the same way or same thing for everyone, and more abstract or more physical for people, but none of this reduces the existance.   Sometimes we lose sight of the matters amidst the diverse shapes referring to them--but this is a beauty that reflects how differently we wonder about and perceive things.  
If you want to call me a worm, when I am a butterfly so be it-- Just because you call me a worm doesn't not take my existance as a butterfly away, you are referring to an existing thing no matter what you call me!  

[This message has been edited by Essorant (11-15-2002 08:22 PM).]

Christopher
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16 posted 2002-11-15 09:07 PM


so i go back to what i said in the other thread, since there is belief in God -

show me the Wizard of Oz, Zeus, aliens... on and on, we could spend years writing lists of things we can refer to that don't truly exist.

Essorant
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17 posted 2002-11-15 10:10 PM


I don't agree.

To me artwork is an impression of something real, for something cannot come from nothing
It a reference, therefore as a creation it exists and as reference and what it refers to exists, no matter how indirectly.  Just because they are not in the same shape(s) as what it is referring to, does not change its aspect of having the substance of as a thing that has a real influence. It has  a real influence because it is referring to something real in one way or another.

[This message has been edited by Essorant (11-15-2002 10:11 PM).]

Essorant
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18 posted 2002-11-15 11:45 PM


Actually I don't know why I bother thinking at all about things like this-- every line of thinking in me always seems to return to confusion, or get shattered at a paradox or make me feel embarassed and insane ineveitably.  In this case all of them at once.   I could make a guess and it would be a smarter thing than what my thoughts end up at.  I could flip a coin, I could take everything for face value and these would be more logical.   I don't think that there is even an -ism word for believing that everything counts and exists, therefore it confirms to me even more that my thoughts have once again taken me to more stupidity.   I give up.

[This message has been edited by Essorant (11-15-2002 11:58 PM).]

Christopher
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19 posted 2002-11-16 01:17 AM


rofl - Essorant: if you end these conversations feeling more confused, that's a GOOD thing. There's a paradox for you. It means you're paying attention and opening up to new ideas. I don't recal the exact way he phrased it, but I think Brad said it best when he said that (paraphrased) philosophy isn't about convincing someone to change their mind, but opening them to new ideas.

Essorant
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20 posted 2002-11-16 04:01 AM


I hope so.
    
I am trying to do more intensive thinking early in my life so I can get to an early retirement from this sooner--the point where no more thought will have to exist, and wisdom can fare well by the educated impulse and instinct alone.  I hoped to be done thinking by the age of 25, but these errors and aches are putting me back and I will probably have to think now until I'm 30!  No matter what though I'm going to wing it from there! Want to come along  

[This message has been edited by Essorant (11-16-2002 04:02 AM).]

Christopher
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21 posted 2002-11-16 04:18 AM


lol - you're lucky then... i didn't START thinking until i was 25...
Christopher
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22 posted 2002-11-16 04:18 AM


oh - but then your thoughts would be non-existent...
Essorant
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23 posted 2002-11-16 12:28 PM


Now I am picking up the bad habit of the age, acting as if a thing doesn't exist just because it is elsewhere or in a different shape!  
Thoughts that aren't converted to knowledge or written down in influentual volumes that will change the world's way of thinking forever, will be stopped and put away in padded cells--they are no good so they might as well be ingnored and treated as if they don't exist.  You see, treated as if they don't exist, but they really do exist.  And even when I'm 30 Ttoughts I know will still exist in a way in the impulse and instinct they are just smoothened to flow in the river, not to be as a dam to it.  You must have been thinking before 25, your thoughts just didn't jutty out and engross the flow too much with articulations--something disturbed there swiftness, and then you started noticing their imposition.
The same matters are always existing, just in different shapes and places.  
After death, one is not non-existant, she is only elsewhere and in a different shape.  
I believe the chiefest elements of things are an immortal body of specks and sparks, sources and influences; and what ever shape these  take will always still be the same being overall, everything existing.  They are always the substance and any physical object or concept will always betoken them, in one way or another.  

[This message has been edited by Essorant (11-16-2002 01:39 PM).]

Essorant
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24 posted 2002-11-16 02:04 PM


Here is the the ism, so that the future ages will know well the very name of truth!
Scientists and philosphers worldwide will have this word in their mouths. It will be chewed by every thought and future theory revolving.  All religions will become restored with the believing vigors that founded them originally and civilizations will rise out of confusion and be in their highest states for that there is name and way now for referring to the truth, directly  

Essorantism--everything exists, everything counts!      

[This message has been edited by Essorant (11-16-2002 02:19 PM).]

Essorant
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25 posted 2002-11-17 07:14 PM


Phaedrus



Smiles are contagious


Phaedrus
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26 posted 2002-11-17 07:21 PM



I was wondering where it had gone, thanks for putting it back.


Essorant
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27 posted 2003-09-03 03:11 AM


And.......In Respect to the "Nonexistance" of God
No matter what God is or isn't according with what any say or don't say he is and how he exists, believe or don't believe,  he  is still a "thing" we are referring to!  How could we behold anything if nothing, no being, no influence, or object-like thing were there?  There is always something...as everything exists, therefore God must exist...everything exists!  "nothings" and "nonexistings" must be but an absence of things we too fondly expected...

Essorant
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28 posted 2003-09-03 03:48 AM


Ron,

I think I have come to a way of clearing up the paradox ....


Everything exists including non existance because nonexistance doesn't exist.

[This message has been edited by Essorant (09-03-2003 03:49 AM).]

Stephanos
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29 posted 2003-09-03 03:47 PM


Essorant: "No matter what God is or isn't according with what any say or don't say he is and how he exists, believe or don't believe,  he  is still a "thing" we are referring to!"


But it is the nature of that "thing" which is in question.  There's no doubt in my mind that Zeus does not exist as the Greeks thought he did.  But now he's a nice piece of literary creation ... a myth.  This is far different from a muscular older male who flings lightning bolts at mortals who annoy him.  So yeah, Zeus "exists", but the nature of Zeus is now known to be only a projection and invention of ourselves.

So your proprosal that God "exists" irrespective of his nature as an objective personality to be dealt with, or only a creative design of humanity, doesn't really say anything new.  No one is arguing on the atheistic or agnostic side that he doesn't "exist" as a myth.  It's just that Theists keep on insisting that he exists in a real and personal way, and is not dependent upon us to invent him.  They keep saying that he was, before we ever came to be.  Theists would reject your view as allowing a false, and less than honoring estimation of God.  And many atheists would say that if God is just a myth, we should not encourage people to be taught to fear or love a bogey.  And to be honest ... IF he were not real, I would have to agree with them.


Stephen.        

[This message has been edited by Stephanos (09-03-2003 03:51 PM).]

Essorant
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30 posted 2003-09-04 01:31 PM


I believe all sincere beliefs in a God or Gods all have lines to a true center in realness.  If God were not very manifold than our perceptions it seems would not be.  So if we don't perceive in a God the same way to draw the same lines and characterizations as someone else it is very unbecoming of a theist to dismiss that person's notion as just lines and characterizations for that you want yours to be piedstalled above all.  We are all in the end always yet seperated from the truth and God by the partition of the manifoldnesses of our own mind and the embodiments thereof through which truth like a ray is variously refracted, absorbed, and reflected, and becomes more faint the more we upheap on and fill the corpulence of the that inevitable partition.  Zeus, however Mankind, still refers to a power above mankind, refers to nature, and weilding nature, correction on wrongs.  Just because something doesn't fit the exact body of terms doesn't make idle the terms.  People sincerely did believe in Zeus and many other deities and blindly sacrificed a billion creatures in thier names.  No matter how false the many terms and deeds were, the sincerity of their beliefs and art were kept and made the substantialness--if they had no lines to centers of realness and goodness overall, and in a way to what God really is, I believe they never would have endured so far and powerfully through influence and time.  They would have been mostly discarded and we would probably not be given to admire them very much at all.  
It may be because we should judge the valor of our way of perceiving in and worshipping a God through the strenght and goodness of the influence and how it perdures over time.


[This message has been edited by Essorant (09-04-2003 01:51 PM).]

Essorant
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31 posted 2003-09-05 02:21 PM


But back to the main matter....

Just like nonsmoking does not smoke, nonexistance does not exist.  

How could it be nonexistance if it it did?  

The only way it may exist is by not existing...

[This message has been edited by Essorant (09-05-2003 02:37 PM).]

jbouder
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32 posted 2003-09-05 02:44 PM


Essorant

So are you suggesting that non-action is analogous to non-being?  I think that the problem you'll run into is that, in the absense of one action, there will likely be another in its place.  You are either breathing air laced with tobacco smoke into your lungs or you're breathing air without it.  The action of breathing remains, just without the smoke.

I don't see how you can do the same with being.  "Being" isn't active, it's passive.  If you don't exist, you are not replaced by something that does.

Jim

Ron
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33 posted 2003-09-05 05:22 PM


Essorant, if it doesn't exist, you can't tell me it doesn't exist. You can't talk about it at all.
Stephanos
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34 posted 2003-09-05 08:19 PM


Let's get real...  An actual 50 kilometer hamburger, dripping tons of onion-flecked ketchup, flying over Florida, between 6PM and 6AM on September 9th does not exist.  

There I told you something does not exist.  And indeed it doesn't.

You can say the mental concept exists.  You cannot say the reality exists.  You can say it potentially exists, but that's about it.


Stephen.

Ron
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35 posted 2003-09-05 08:30 PM


quote:
You can say the mental concept exists.

And nonexistance would be what again?

Brad
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36 posted 2003-09-05 10:01 PM


Existence as a concept is the problem; it's very ambiguity causes a lot of problems because it's so related to discussion of Being and beings and whatnot -- a lot of discussion has been generated by attempting to find the common 'nature' as Stephan put it to things that exist. In order to do that, of course, you have to counterpose something that doesn't exist -- otherwise, we'd have an undifferentiated esistence.

As far as I can tell, most of these discussions presuppose a difference between concepts and reality sans concepts and the ambiguity surfaces when someone tries to integrate mental concepts back into that same reality. The other problem is a lot of people seem to jump back and forth between relational existence and absolute existence.

Take a horse for example. If I see a horse, feel it, touch it, feed it etc., I can say the horse exists, but as I look out my window right now, I see no horse, so I can say that no horse exists there, now. The reply is usually something like, "Yeah, but there are still horses. Horses exist," and that is indeed true, but it's a shift in context and irrelevant to whether a horse exists there, now.

But take a unicorn in contrast. As far as we know, no unicorns have ever been known to exist in that there, now in the same sense that a horse can indeed exist in that there, now (but not outside my window there, now). Thus, we say unicorns don't exist. Perhaps we can make that clearer by saying that unicorns don't exist in the same way that horses exist.

The response then is usually something like, "Yeah, but we have a concept of a horse and we have a concept of a unicorn. There both concepts and concepts exist, therefore, they both exist" but this is a mistake, for it forgets the difference between the two concepts. The concept horse includes the ability for a horse to be there,now (and not there,not now) whereas a the concept unicorn does not. Historically, it might have been different, but it's not today:

"There's no unicorn there now," already presupposes the ability to be there, now.

Cute, huh?

But this doesn't answer all the questions that questions of existence and Being bring up -- it's a tough nut to crack and, perhaps, a psuedo-problem created by a tendency to confuse adjectives with nouns.

I don't know.

[This message has been edited by Brad (09-05-2003 10:02 PM).]

Ron
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37 posted 2003-09-06 12:02 PM


When I was maybe eight or nine, I saw a unicorn in a sideshow. No, really, I did.  

Even at that age, I kept looking around for the accompanying virgin.

If a unicorn said, "I am lying," would it still be a unicorn? Or just a donkey with a big zit?

  

"Some things exist" is cool.

"Some things don't exist" is equally cool.

"Nonexistence is nonexistent" is a self-referencing paradox and can be neither true nor false.


[This message has been edited by Ron (09-06-2003 01:46 AM).]

Local Rebel
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38 posted 2003-09-06 12:58 PM


Abbot:  If you're not in Cleveland or Denver you must be someplace else right?

Costello:  Right.

Abbot: If you're someplace else then you can't be here.

Costello: ?


Essorant
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39 posted 2003-09-06 02:24 AM


I am too confused.

I just don't think anything may not exist as at least something...how is that possible?

[This message has been edited by Essorant (09-06-2003 02:29 AM).]

Local Rebel
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40 posted 2003-09-06 08:38 PM


That that is, is.

That that is not, is not.  

Zero is Zero is null.

Stephanos
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41 posted 2003-09-06 08:50 PM


Stephen: "You can say the mental concept exists."

Ron: "And nonexistance would be what again?"


I said that you can say the mental concept exists, not an objective reality ... ie, an actual hamburger with so many pounds of hamburger meat, etc...

Brad said it more descriptively, but there is a true difference between mere imaginative thoughts, and objective external reality.  


Essorant, I think this is the point you are failing to grasp ... the fundamental ontological difference between imaginative thought, and externally verifiable realities.  And though you might argue that "Zeus" is in some sense real... it is not Zeus himself who is real, but the imaginations and misconceptions of people, and the effects they produced.  No one is arguing that all thoughts are not "real" in some sense of the term.  Hallucinations are "real" as well.  Yet, all would call you delusional for  believing such images to exist as realities.  It's one thing to say, "I ate psilocybin mushrooms and see spiders crawling on my ceiling ... I am hallucinating".  It is quite another to say, "I see spiders crawling on my ceiling, Essorant get the Bug spray, and a cigarette lighter!!!".  See the difference?

Stephen.  


Ron
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42 posted 2003-09-06 09:28 PM


Stephen, nonexistence IS a mental concept. And it is ONLY a mental concept. It can't be a condition, as is the state of existence, because by definition, there is nothing to which the condition can be applied.

"This sentence is false."

"Nonexistence is nonexistent."

Both of those sentences are self-referencing and self-contradicting. They CANNOT be true.

Stephanos
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43 posted 2003-09-06 10:44 PM


Ron,

I wasn't talking about the paradox of "nonexistence is nonexistent".  

Essorant has been using this paradox all along to assert that there is no entity that can cogently be said not to exist.  I disagree with him.  I was merely pointing out to him the obvious:  There is a real difference between mere mental conceptualization and objective existence.  I was trying to get him to see the same thing by pointing out that we all recognize the difference between dragons and alligators.  In a more direct approach, you have been trying to show him the paradoxical (therefore false) nature of his premise.  As usual, we're arguing past each other.  We agree here.  

If you go back and read what I was saying to Essorant, it was that with certain things, you could only say the "mental concept" exists, and not also the reality. (as in the example of the hamburger)  I never said that you could say "nonexistence is nonexistent".  I was actually arguing to the contrary via a different route.  Understand?

I think you felt, somewhere along the way, that I was arguing that the paradox could be true, but I wasn't.


Stephen.


  

[This message has been edited by Stephanos (09-06-2003 10:48 PM).]

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