Yes. You aren’t the main character of reality.
Obviously they’re not, because I am.
I’m not aware of anything that does.
Physical things exist, and will continue to exist. Energy is not created or destroyed, only converted.
Abstract things may come and go. Thoughts and ideas, understandings, etc…
Math and language are constructs we created to better understand and describe the world around us, and when the last human dies, so may all our amassed understandings.
Girl, go read some Enlightenment philosophy, why’re you askin us 😭😭😭
No. There is always at least one observer.
Of course.
Unless we’re in a simulation, and only things you and other characters perceive are rendered.
Yeah we find new bugs and animals and plants all the time. We find new planets. Stuff doesn’t pop onto existence once we find it.
People were dying en-masse because you had doctors not washing their hands when moving from autopsies to giving birth.
No one was aware about the germs that are causing this. It still killed people.
This is true for most of the early medicine/illneses/hygiene, this was just an example I remember. Especially in regards to germs and bacteries, the humanity wasn’t even close to getting it right.
Perhaps I just confabulated all that, and your comment. Perhaps in the process, I manifested the history therein described.
The primordial Universe itself may have only been possible with an observer. No Big Bang, no primitive Earth, no organisms and evolution without the All-Seeing-Eye that has allowed our Universe to exist.
Haha, I wouldn’t put my faith on this, but still fun and disturbing to think about…
The human body needs water to survive. Perhaps you are different.
No, things outside the player’s field of view are unloaded to save memory, obviously.
If that’s the case, would things outside our field of view still have an effect on us? And to what extent?
In a good game they do, but those effects can be abstracted rather than simulated to save processing power.
Obviously, yes. But now the question is, can you be aware of things that don’t exist?
As fiction exists but describes things that may not exist, I think the answer is also yes.
Maybe we’re not aware of a non-existent thing itself, but of an idea or perception in our minds.
How does this differ from having an idea or perception in our minds about existing things?
purely imaginary things exist only in the mind.
But are we aware of existing things in themselves, apart from the idea and perception in our minds?
Actually this is the right answer, and doesn’t deserve the downvotes.
I think me and Ahmed gave the same answer, but with mine being indirect using an example, and Ahmed’s answer being direct, so maybe people had a harder time understanding Ahmed’s answer.
Yes, they necessarily do.
Yes, my one man black metal project exists and no one knows about it. 🥺
One man black metal? Must be fuckin excellent!
I can’t believe it’s you! Your one-man black metal project changed my life!
Write your definition for “things” and that’ll answer your question for you.
This is the correct answer. It seems like matter and energy exist regardless of our attentions but the rest comes down to ontology. What is a thing? How does it come into being? How does it cease to be?
Next, ask yourself “do things need to be made of matter and/or energy to exist?” What about Mickey Mouse?
Then you move on to questions like “does a piece of art exist if nobody has ever witnessed it?”
And finally, the psychiatric ward. 😜
Please define “art” :)
Yep, that’s another great question. Personally, I like the idea that art is any form of human expression that exists for its own sake. Not in order to be instructive or useful or to make money but simply because the person creating it felt like it (obviously this is an ideal and real life motivations vary).
More pragmatically, one might ask what art is good for, but since you didn’t, I’m not going to ramble here.
That said, there is the question I raised in my comment whether the work needs an audience, someone to behold it, in order to fully become art. I believe it does. If you paint a picture in the dark and hide it so nobody ever sees it, I struggle to accept it as art.
What’s your take on these questions?
For me it’s just a dictionary trick.
Old definition was defining Art as transforming nature for the purpose of a human.
usual definition is something human made that someone finds pretty.
Contemporary art definition is making something that makes people react / feel. Performance art went all the way to saying that what the artist felt made it art.
If you hide it on purpose, the hiding itself may be contemporary art (similar to Once upon a time in Shaolin bu Wu Tang Clan). A hidden piece by an unknown artist may be considered art according to the performance art demonstration.
So… Choose your definition, similar as the sound of a tree falling in an empty forest (is sound a pressure wave or the brain processed signal?)
Edit: linguists will just say art is whatever sufficient people believe it means.
Well I exist, despite it seeming that no one else in the world is aware of my existence.
You’re ruining it.
That’s solipsism
Why do you think it’s solipsism? Can you explain your reasoning?
I mean, they don’t have to think it’s related to Solipsism, by definition Solipsism id an answer to your question
Why are all your responses in bold, you mad lad?
