Can you prove water exists?

[AquinasForGod]

The question for debate: Can you prove water exists?

You might say, we cannot prove anything absolutely. I agree. Then you might say, we can show evidence for things to justify our beliefs. Right, we can show evidence that water is a composite of hydrogen and oxygen.

But do you have evidence water exists outside our minds? What is that evidence?

Showing what water seems to be made of is not evidence it exists outside our minds. You might say, why not stick your head underwater and see if you drown? How would that be evidence that water exists outside our minds?

It could be that we are all living in some very long shared dream or something like the Matrix. In that case, we would all mentally see me drown. I would experience drowning. I have drowned in a dream. The fact I drowned sure doesn't show that the dream water existed outside my mind.

This question of course extends to everything. Do we have evidence that trees exist outside our minds?

If we cannot even offer evidence that water exists beyond our minds, something we probably interact with daily, why would we expect to demonstrate God exists outside our minds?

Now if we cannot show evidence that water exists outside our minds, does that mean it doesn't exist outside our minds? If we cannot give evidence that water exists outside our minds does that mean it is unreasonable to believe that water exists outside our minds? i.e. is it unreasonable to believe water exists as a physical object even if we cannot give evidence it is indeed a physical object that exists outside our minds?

[AquinasForGod]

Could be that I am the only thing in this universe, and everything is no more than a construct within my mind. Or maybe a construct within some mind. Or maybe there's in infinity of beings like me, each with a universe within their minds.

What difference would it make? If everything is a construct in the mind of God or me, how does that change anything at all? People who assert solipsism are putting Descartes before the source.

That is a fair question. The difference it makes is that we have no foundation for physicalism.

We do have a foundation for idealism, however, because if I try to doubt that I think, I only demonstrate that I think, so I know at least mental stuff exists.

Now if someone wants to claim, for example, that my mind depends on physical stuff, they need to first demonstrate that physical stuff exists, that physical stuff is more than a mental construct or just a form of mental stuff.

Without a foundation for physicalism, they have no grounds to claim minds are dependent on matter. Or that the death of the body is somehow the end of mental experiences.

Get drunk one night and stumble through a darkened living room. You're apt to quickly find coffee table legs and toes are both real things.

I have felt pain in a dream. I was stabbed once and it was extremely painful. Does that mean the dream knife was real?

[Diogenes]

The question for debate: Can you prove water exists?

What is the point of this question? No one can prove anything absolutely. You could be a turtle with aliens manipulating your mind with electric probes making you think you are a human who believes in water. All we can really do is make approximations about what is more likely than something else assuming we can trust our senses. So what we conclude is merely a hierarchy of credibility. That water and earth exist is more likely than fairies and gods.

[JoeyKnothead]

I have felt pain in a dream. I was stabbed once and it was extremely painful. Does that mean the dream knife was real?

Wow. I never knew that was a thing.

I'll retract, and refer everyone to Diogenes' Post 12.

[Purple Knight]

I have felt pain in a dream. I was stabbed once and it was extremely painful. Does that mean the dream knife was real?

You would think it was if you didn't wake up and find it wasn't. I mean, this is the same line of thought that you expressed to Barbarian. You know mental stuff exists, and you know because you experience it. It could be a trick, but at that point what is being tricked? There must be at least something. It may or may not be physical.

The only thing I would argue is that we don't have a strong basis for ideology then, either, because you don't experience any of the things the penguin does, so how do you know he's the sort of thing that you shouldn't hurt? You don't even know if he exists to be hurt or not. At this level, you know at least some of your own mental experiences are real (in that you do actually experience them) but you don't know anybody is experiencing his.

Get drunk one night and stumble through a darkened living room. You're apt to quickly find coffee table legs and toes are both real things.

There was a faith-healer of Deal,
Who said: "Although pain isn't real,
If I sit on a pin
And it punctures my skin,
I dislike what I fancy I feel.'

Exactly.

[JoeyKnothead]

I have felt pain in a dream. I was stabbed once and it was extremely painful. Does that mean the dream knife was real?

You would think it was if you didn't wake up and find it wasn't. I mean, this is the same line of thought that you expressed to Barbarian. You know mental stuff exists, and you know because you experience it. It could be a trick, but at that point what is being tricked? There must be at least something. It may or may not be physical.

The only thing I would argue is that we don't have a strong basis for ideology then, either, because you don't experience any of the things the penguin does, so how do you know he's the sort of thing that you shouldn't hurt? You don't even know if he exists to be hurt or not. At this level, you know at least some of your own mental experiences are real (in that you do actually experience them) but you don't know anybody is experiencing his.

Get drunk one night and stumble through a darkened living room. You're apt to quickly find coffee table legs and toes are both real things.

There was a faith-healer of Deal,
Who said: "Although pain isn't real,
If I sit on a pin
And it punctures my skin,
I dislike what I fancy I feel.'

Exactly.

"Perception is reality" whether that coffee table leg, or my toes are real or not, the pain from stubbing em makes em real enough.

[AquinasForGod]

[Replying to JoeyKnothead in post #15]

"Perception is reality" whether that coffee table leg, or my toes are real or not, the pain from stubbing em makes em real enough.

Real enough doesn't mean physical. See, I can start from my mental experience, knowing that mental stuff exists, then logically induce that other people exists and are also mental stuff. I can then induce that we are interacting with a shared world, but I cannot presume to know that world is physical.

So I have a stronger starting point for mental stuff than you do for physical stuff.

[JoeyKnothead]

[Replying to JoeyKnothead in post #15]

"Perception is reality" whether that coffee table leg, or my toes are real or not, the pain from stubbing em makes em real enough.

Real enough doesn't mean physical. See, I can start from my mental experience, knowing that mental stuff exists, then logically induce that other people exists and are also mental stuff. I can then induce that we are interacting with a shared world, but I cannot presume to know that world is physical.

So I have a stronger starting point for mental stuff than you do for physical stuff.

I'm with ya here. It's plenty fair to say all our perceptions are bound to the mental.

I use "real enough" to mean "just as well be physical". As in that solid concrete wall I can't walk through, we'll it just as well be physical.

I fear what might confuse folks here is an implying that the mental (mind) is somehow separate from what it takes to have it. Our best data is that the mind is a product of the just as well be physical, as opposed to the mind just floating around randomly within, or without, an imaginary universe.

[William]

[Replying to JoeyKnothead in post #15]

"Perception is reality" whether that coffee table leg, or my toes are real or not, the pain from stubbing em makes em real enough.

Real enough doesn't mean physical. See, I can start from my mental experience, knowing that mental stuff exists, then logically induce that other people exists and are also mental stuff. I can then induce that we are interacting with a shared world, but I cannot presume to know that world is physical.

So I have a stronger starting point for mental stuff than you do for physical stuff.

I'm with ya here. It's plenty fair to say all our perceptions are bound to the mental.

I use "real enough" to mean "just as well be physical". As in that solid concrete wall I can't walk through, we'll it just as well be physical.

I fear what might confuse folks here is an implying that the mental (mind) is somehow separate from what it takes to have it. Our best data is that the mind is a product of the just as well be physical, as opposed to the mind just floating around randomly within, or without, an imaginary universe.

FTL;

There are no mistakes in life some people say
It is true sometimes you can see it that way
But people don't live or die, people just float
She went with the man
In the long black coat

[AquinasForGod]

[Replying to JoeyKnothead in post #17]

I fear what might confuse folks here is an implying that the mental (mind) is somehow separate from what it takes to have it. Our best data is that the mind is a product of the just as well be physical, as opposed to the mind just floating around randomly within, or without, an imaginary universe.

But that supposes the physical to begin with. All science assumes there is an external physical world. Scientists observe changes and try to explain and predict those changes. If we start from the idea that the body is external and is physical, then we see thoughts are correlated to the body, but this would be just as true if the body were a projection of the mind. The mind needs to justify the projection of the body and so it correlates thoughts with bodily functions.

But also, this would be the case if we were in some shared world, be it a simulation or whatever. In order for the shared world to be convincing, there should be properties in the world that convince us we are in it, such as neurons correlating to bodily functions or thoughts.

Or a table breaking if I put enough weight on it.

Or a balloon making a sound when it pops.

[JoeyKnothead]

[Replying to JoeyKnothead in post #17]

I fear what might confuse folks here is an implying that the mental (mind) is somehow separate from what it takes to have it. Our best data is that the mind is a product of the just as well be physical, as opposed to the mind just floating around randomly within, or without, an imaginary universe.

But that supposes the physical to begin with. All science assumes there is an external physical world. Scientists observe changes and try to explain and predict those changes. If we start from the idea that the body is external and is physical, then we see thoughts are correlated to the body, but this would be just as true if the body were a projection of the mind. The mind needs to justify the projection of the body and so it correlates thoughts with bodily functions.

But also, this would be the case if we were in some shared world, be it a simulation or whatever. In order for the shared world to be convincing, there should be properties in the world that convince us we are in it, such as neurons correlating to bodily functions or thoughts.

Or a table breaking if I put enough weight on it.

Or a balloon making a sound when it pops.

So there's some sentient thing "out there" trying to trick us into thinking a wall ain't solid, it just wants us to think it is? Or is it that we all suffer the same problem of a block wall being impassible is merely our own thoughts playing tricks on us? As a schizophrenic, I find such a notion a bit insulting. I take meds to help me, the theist takes the god pill.

This whole "imaginary" angle is as goofy as thinking dead folks ain't.

It's far less a stretch to think the physical exists than to think I'm ever gonna magically appear on the other side of a block wall, and there stands Jesus, saying , "I told ya so."

How the heck can I ever know a god exists if all this is imaginary? That more likely means it's God that's imaginary, not that stubbed toe of mine.

And if it is all some kinda mental, imaginary thing, God can kiss my fourth point of contact if he's gonna punish me for an eternity just cause I did me the imagining.