Arguments For Why You Do Not Exist

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In the pub there is often some drunk who suggests with profound insight that can only come from twelve Aftershocks, that we can’t prove we exist. Challenged as to why he thinks this, he usually changes the subject, but there are philosophers who have come up with compelling reasons to genuinely doubt reality and self-existence. Here are some of the compelling arguments why you are not really here reading this. 1/. The Dichotomy Argument Of Zeno Of Elea - Movement of any kind , through time or space involves covering a measurable, mathematical space or distance. That means that at some point between point A and point B you have to reach a half way point. To travel forty miles, you have to at some point pass the twenty mile point. To reach the twenty mile point, you have to pass a ten mile point, a five mile point, a millionth of a micro millimetre point, and an endless sub-dividing infinite progression of such half way, quarter way, one-zillionth way points thus any motion or time duration is impossible so nothing can ever move or exist. 2/. Brain In a vat theory. - This is bog standard Matrix theory – we are just brains in a petri-dish being given sensations and memories. We exist, but not as what we think we are. It’s all a pre-programmed illusion. 3/. David Hume’s Bundle Of Perceptions – In direct counter-blast to Descartes and the notion I think Therefore I Am, nothing exists that is specifically us – we are a conglomeration of parts, from heads, legs, arms down to sub-atomic particles clustered together that could scatter and become something else at any time. That which thinks is just a lot of things – not one entity. 4/. Solipsism – Could You Be A Figment Of Someone Else’s Imagination? The king dreams he is a butterfly, or the butterfly dreams he is a king. Someone dreams of you and they could wake up any instant. 5/. Past, Present, Future - Now is simply a transition from past to future, so thin that even saying now instantly slams it into the past. Now is so thin it could be said to simply be meaningless. You were, you will be, but right now, you are not for the now has already gone, Arthur Chappell