all it takes for something to exist is...

catefrances wrote:

though one would imagine that knowledge gained empirically would be assumed to include outside influence. society having an impact upon the indivdual rather than what he/she experiences solely from within.

Either way, epirics tells us that a persons experience is empirical. Therefore if only one person experiences something as real, that is considered empirical evidence. People can take that as they will.

lucylespian wrote:

Now now, don't twist things out of shape.

Your words stand as they are. If you would like to clarify, great.

I think you know what I mean.

It looked to me that you were disconnecting humans and their effects from the physical environment.

lucylespian wrote:

Nah, just discounting effects which occur without hands feet, vaginas etc. Ya know I type slow and badly !!

Ah, the old "I type slowly and badly" story.......

lucylespian wrote:

Various people persist in asserting that the human mind is powerful enough to affect the physical world. It ain't, it's just able to influence other humans.

You said "it ain't".

To me, it's very clear that we can affect other humans, and as OutOfBreath pointed out, that's enough to get other humans to create an entire war killing ungodly amounts of people. That's pretty real on a physical level. Humans are a part of, and interact with and affect this entire level of existence all the time. Like I said earlier, some people are wired to acknowledge impersonal systems, and they have strengths in that. That preference can become a weakness when that manner of filtering "reality" means that human actions, experiences and values are minimized, overlooked or ignored. In psychology, just as we have hallucinations, we have negative hallucinations which is when people tune out obvious happenings.

catefrances wrote:

though one would imagine that knowledge gained empirically would be assumed to include outside influence. society having an impact upon the indivdual rather than what he/she experiences solely from within.

I overlooked something here: my spiritual experiences happened to me on a level that was not external or physical, even though they were woven within the physical level that everyone perceives. These empirical experiences did not come from society, or outside influence. In this sense, your assumption was not true in this case. The nature of spiritual experience in general is that they don't come from the commonly-accepted 3-d plane of experiences, but are generated from a different level that some apparently do not perceive.

Cosmo wrote:

...
Actually... Math translates into and represents the real and physical environment in which we exist. Whereas, One Apple plus One Apple equals Two Apples. There is not denial, no arguement that can dispute that statement. We can discuss whether the apples exist or don't exist... or whether you and everyone else in this entire Universe exists only in the conscienous of my mind... the fact remains... one plus one equals two. This is a Universal truth.

You are NOT a mathematician, are you Cosmo? Firstly, "one apple plus one apple makes two apples" does NOT mean that "1+ 1= 2" divorced of any specific objects- that's a completely different definition. There are many arguments to dispute your stance that "math translates into and represents the real world". There are many areas of theoretical physics & manthematics that have no basis in the observed data of the real world.

As for other things: category theory was not developed with the intent of doing anything for the real world.

Non-euclidean geometry was developed without recourse to the real world, it was an attempt to see if the parallel postulate was independent of the other axioms, and its models were a long time in being invented.

Just because something has now got a use modeling the real world doesn't mean that it started off with that intention.

Here's an interesting spin on the issue:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism

angelica wrote:

Great link, baraka! It's interesting what we as lay people know about math or science, and are taught is "real" and tangible, that really doesn't hold up the way we think it does when it all comes down to it.

A lot of people get caught up in the "well if it doesn't apply to the real world....." argument and then try to argue that math is all based in real world applications and that simply is not the case. Hell, might as well throw out all of theoretical physics. The esoteric concepts are what makes it so amazing!

catefrances wrote:

...for someone to believe it does. agree/disagree?

Disagree, unless by "something" you simply mean a belief.

farfromglorified wrote:

Disagree, unless by "something" you simply mean a belief.

You think beliefs are simple???!

farfromglorified wrote:

Hehe...depends on the belief I guess.

hehe....So how do we figure out whether the contents of beliefs are real or not? Or are you saying they are not real across the board?