- I have a feeling I may not exist.
- Are you kidding?
- No seriously, I feel like I'm not here. I feel like I'm not anywhere.
- Well if it's just a feeling then it will probably pass.
- Maybe, but when I think about it, what proof is there?
- Proof?
- Yeah, I mean I may just be in a dream believing I'm real but no more real than anything anyone dreams. I mean, what's the proof I exist at all?
- I don't know, why do you need proof?
- Well, I think I'd like to be sure of something as important as whether I exist or not, wouldn't you?
- I guess not, I've never needed it before. It just seems unnecessary.
- Oh, so you think it's unnecessary to know whether or not you exist?
- Mmm, yeah. I mean, think of it this way, is there any proof you don't exist?
- Hm, I guess I couldn't prove that either...
- Right, so lack of proof that you exist doesn't necessarily mean you don't exist. It just means that maybe it's something you can't logically prove either way, and perhaps existence is proven because, paradoxically, it's not subject to proof.
- Hold on, that doesn't sound right. So you're saying absence of proof may be the proof I'm looking for that I exist?
- Well, no, not the proof you're looking for, but it just may be the indication that your existence is unique, and not subject to the rules of logic and reason and truth and certainty, at least not in the way that you think. Perhaps the fact that you're always inescapably at the center of your whole experience of life, a center which you can never extricate yourself from so as to see yourself with objective certainty the way you may think you see all else, perhaps that is the greatest indicator that there is someone who experiences the world, and that that vantage point from which it is experienced can only be you and nothing else. In other words, there must be someone, a subject, for there to be any experience at all. A tree can stand in the place of a house, a dog can stand in the place of a cat, a mountain may be where once was a river, but you and only you can be where the world is experienced, where the world exists all around you, and of which you are an inextricable part. So like I said, the fact that you can't stand outside your experience or your being to verify objectively your existence is itself all the proof you need, though like I said, it's not exactly the factual and empirical kind of proof that you're looking for.
- Then what good is it? What good is it if the dearest and most precious thing on earth, my, our, existence, cannot be proven, cannot be demonstrated as empirical fact, cannot be known for sure?
- Why's that such a big deal? Even if you're just a figment of some strange God or devil's imagination, that doesn't mean your life doesn't have any meaning. I mean, you, we, live as if there were meaning, as if we and the things we live amongst, this world we inhabit, were all real, all meaningful, right? There seems to be logical and temporal consistency to our lives, certain set patterns, rules of cause and effect, interwoven events connected through what has been, things that everyone can agree exist outside of us because they are shaped by all of us... events, memories, language. We can agree that that's a road, this is a bridge, that's the Empire State Building, and this language we communicate through is English. Everything seems to point to a world inhabited by you and others.
- Yes but that could just mean that the dreaming demon has conjured a very elaborate and perfectly constructed dream world of consistency in which each and every one of us has the illusion that we exist, a world in which all those memories, that language, those things we see, the roads we drive on, the laws of causation and physics, all of it may only have been plotted and planned out in an elaborate way to give the semblance of an organic and intricate wholeness, that is really just a world constructed within a mind of which we are mere figments of imagination, simulacra...
- You seem to overestimate the powers of one mind. A mind creates all the illusion of all the languages, all the stars and phenomena of the universe, right down to the quantum level, all the memories and events and histories that form the foundation for our existence... a mind creates all that? What kind of being could do that?
- God, obviously. Or a Godlike demon who wants to trick us. Perhaps a malicious God who's toying with us?
- But if this Godlike being were trying to trick us by not offering the requisite logical proof that we exist, wouldn't it actually be tricking itself? If anything, the joke would be on the God, not you. If the God has set out to create the perfect illusion that you exist but then fails to offer the necessary logical foundation that can prove that existence, isn't the God imperfect? I mean, God would be imperfect either in the sense that it created an imperfect world without logical proof of existence, or it created an imperfect world without the ability to enable its creation -- you and I -- to be logically tricked into the certainty of the creation. So either way you look at it, such a God must be imperfect. Yet you cannot imagine an imperfect God, because God is by definition perfect, therefore such a God is not God. And if only a God can create the sort of imaginary world you and I inhabit as simulacra, then it seems nothing has created such a world, or ever could create such a world, so therefore, the world is actually there, albeit still imperfect, but that's fine now, because once God is out of the equation, perfection is no longer an issue. It is an imperfect world with no proof of our existence, because proof is reliant on a sense of perfection -- in this case, the perfection of understanding the logical foundations of our existence -- and so in an imperfect world, it's precisely the lack of proof itself that is what "proves" our admittedly imperfect existence.
- Ok, that holds if we assume this illusory existence was the work of a God, but what if it were a malicious demon? A malicious demon bent on tricking us that we exist, toying with us?
- Well then maybe you could fall back on the Cartesian cogito: I think, therefore I am.
- Well, that doesn't work either. Something thinks, yes, because we can't deny there is a thought of our existence, but who's to say that thought is my thought? Who's to say it's not I who thinks I'm thinking, but is actually a malicious demon making me think I'm thinking, when really both I and my thought are thoughts conjured in the head of the demon?
- Well then there's an equivalence of value by which you would be proven to exist. Here's how, it's simple: You accept the thought is there, whether it be yours or the demon's, correct?
- Yes.
- Well if the thought is true, regardless of there still being doubt as to the origins of that thought, then it follows that if you consider a thought of the malicious and duplicitous demon to be true, you must then assume any thought of the demon must have an equivalent chance of being true -- after all, the demon is tricky and trying constantly to fool you. Therefore, if the thought "one thinks therefore one is" is true in the duplicitous demon's mind which you inhabit, then it's just as likely that "I think, therefore I am" is also true, as this statement also is conjured in the same demon's mind. If there is an absolute equivalence of meaning, and if some thinking thing must exist because there's no doubt that the thought of existing exists, then it follows that there is as likely a chance that you exist as does the demon. So which of the two seems more likely then to exist? You, whom I see here before me, thinking and speaking, or some demon? I will pick you.
- Ok, but that still doesn't prove I exist, there's still doubt, right? It could, logically, still be the demon that thinks and exists. It's improbable, sure, but not impossible.
- Yeah, but it's also not impossible that you are a unicorn in human disguise. But do you doubt you are a human based on the slim possibility that you may be a unicorn in human disguise?
- I guess not, no, but it still doesn't satisfy me that I can't prove I exist. I think I think, therefore I think I must exist, but what if another thinks instead and tricks me into thinking it is I who thinks?
- Well then think of it this way: you will never prove your existence, nor should you try. You cannot stand outside of yourself and the world and say, from an objective standpoint, "There I am, I see me there, I must exist". But you can see yourself in the world, in existence, in and amongst the things that have meaning for you, entangled with all around you, with other thinking beings, entangled through experiences, communication and shared lives. So you can choose instead to revert it and say: I am, therefore I think. Without your existence, there would be no thought.
- I am, therefore I think. Not much proof to it, but I guess it'll do.
- It does do, and you don't know it. It does for all of us. It may not be subject to a process of rational, objective proof, but look around you, who actually doubts their existence?
- Well, me.
- Then think of it this way: what is the worst that can happen to you in life?
- I could die.
- Yes, death. If lack of proof of your existence bothers you so much, then just take comfort in the fact that death is also an illusion.
- But it's cold comfort to say death is an illusion to someone who suspects they never were alive in the first place.
- I guess so. But I wouldn't worry about it if I were you.
- Why not?
- Because you're just a figment of my imagination.
