At 9:08 AM +1000 on 7/11/99, Paul Sutton wrote:
>>It's in opposition to reality. Not a reality "shared by many cultures," but
>>_the_ reality -- a reality created by the biology of the human body: People
>>must eat. Period.
>
>Alright, alright, now I've can't resist joining in. :) You make one
>very big assumption here and you probably don't realise it. That is, do
>people have to eat, or do we just think we have to eat. Does everything
>we see and touch really exist or are we just imagining it? Mind or
>matter? Is it that we are made up of millions of atoms working together
>to make us function and think, or are we just an intangible thing which
>imagines all the tangible (and other intangible) objects around us. Do
>you exist, or am I imagining you? Are you imagining me? If matter
>doesn't exist, then just imagine humans don't need to eat and they won't.
> Note, don't imagine you're imagining we don't need to eat, that won't
>work.
I'd invite you to test it. I mean, try not eating and see what happens. Of
course, that'd leave us with the problem of whether you are actually dead,
or if we are just immagining it. But I think we could solve that. We'd get
three people, who have no knowledge of you experiment, to independantly
gauge your aliveness. If they all agree...
>
>And that assumption is central to your entire argument and I don't see
>anyway anyone can ever prove if things really exist or not, so your
>argument stands on very shakey ground. The problem is, the same thing
>applies to the other side of the argument as well, so I declare both
>sides the looser! :)
LOL. Thanks for the definition of "axiom" :)
