As someone who likes a lengthy argument with many different points put across and many points shot down in the process, I was posed with this question which has made me struggle so far. My friend said to me: "Prove something exists." I have managed to prove I exist however I cannot prove anything else exists. His argument went something along the lines of the theory that our mind just sends us inputs, whether they be visual or pain or audio or even psychological, he thinks that we could just be a mind located somewhere else.
My points against this have all been shot down, they go as follows:
- Dogs see 2 base colours, blue and yellow. They cannot see a red ball in green grass but can easily spot a blue ball in the grass. We see three and therefore we can see things that they cannot. Mantis shrimps see 16 base colours, and they can spot things out much more easily than we can. That means the colours they see exist and our minds cannot comprehend them, meaning that our mind can not have thought of them. However, he just said "what if your mind is just telling you how the shrimp behaves to make you think that it can see more colours than we can?" Which I had no response to.
- I then said that we need food to restore our energy and that energy can't just come out of nowhere so there must be something giving us the energy, which is the food. The food therefore exists, however he just said "What if your mind is just telling you to feel the effects of fatigue or tiredness?" which again I had no response to.
- My third and latest full argument was that mirrors show us things that previously we could not see. If you were to place a button on your back that electrocutes you, you would not know where it was until you saw it in a mirror, which must mean you exist because the mirror can see something that you have previously established does create an effect on you. You can use the mirror to see something that you previously could not see. That means the image in the mirror must exist, however he disregarded this by saying "what if your mind is telling you you can see it in the mirror and is creating that image to fool you into thinking it's there."
My next thoughts are those that there three options when the body dies:
- The mind leaves the body, but this would mean that people who have a near death experience or are clinically dead (Such as Fabrice Muamba was for 78 minutes.) do not have a mind when they come back to life.
- The mind dies when the body does, but this would have the same effect.
- The mind stays with the body. This is the only logical explanation, so what would this mean?