Would matter without any living individual also exist?

Question

Suppose that everything that is considered as living individual suddenly dies out. What would happen to matter if now there is nobody who can think about it?

Answer 1

Since one answer has provided the idealist perspective, I'm going to discuss its polar opposite: Logical Positivism. Before I do that, though, an important disclaimer is that despite logical positivism's status as the paradigm of natural sciences, it has long been dying in philosophy and is far from a popular position at the present. However, it is historically significant and a useful juxtaposition with idealism.

The primary principle of logical positivism is that apart from the fundamentals of mathematical and linguistic logic (hence "logical"), all truths must be derived from empirical observation.

Perhaps the biggest consequence of this is that to a logical positivist, if the answer to a question does not have any observable effect, then that question is meaningless. Thus, the question "does an inert metaphysical entity exist" is meaningless, because regardless of the answer our observations in the physical world will be precisely the same. The same physical observations means the same truths in logical positivism, so the answer to the aforementioned question becomes irrelevant.

In the same way, a logical positivist would call your question meaningless, because whether or not objects exist when nobody is around, they always exist when someone is observing (at least in our experience), so the answer has no bearing on empirical observation. In terms of logical positivism, it's pointless to ask whether an unobserved object exists or not, precisely for the reason that nobody is looking at it. Regardless of what happens when everybody is dead, our observations won't change by definition of the situation (we only observe things when not everybody is dead), and so the question becomes meaningless.

Of course, a big objection to all this is that these things should matter, and this is part of the reason logical positivism isn't doing so well. In some ways it dismisses ideas because "they don't affect me" when lots of philosophy is the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, regardless of practical implications. On the other hand, logical positivists generally take the hard-line that in truth these things are literally meaningless because truth depends fundamentally on empirical observation.

Answer 2

This thought experiment is called to be Berkeley's:

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

^{(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_a_tree_falls_in_a_forest)}

Philosopher George Berkeley, in his work, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710), proposes,

But, say you, surely there is nothing easier than for me to imagine trees, for instance, in a park [...] and nobody by to perceive them. [...] The objects of sense exist only when they are perceived; the trees therefore are in the garden [...] no longer than while there is somebody by to perceive them."

^{― A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, 1734. section 45.}

From this quote, it looks like he says that matter doesn't exist when it isn't perceived. Or, in Latin:

Ecce est percipi ― To be is to be perceived

However, then Berkeley wonders (paraphrased): how is it possible that when I go to work, and come back to my home in the evening, my house still exists? There must have been some moment nobody perceived it... That's the point that God enters Berkeley's philosophy: because God always perceives everything, matter can still exist even though there is no human being to perceive it.

Do keep in mind that this is just one opinion, and other philosophers may or may not think different.

Answer 3

For the overwhelming portion of the history of the universe as we understand it, there were no living organisms. However, now that we are around to perceive it, we can judge that physics carried on just fine before anyone was around to watch some tiny part of it. We should therefore assume that if we all die off, matter and physics and all will keep going just as it had.

(Note that philosophical questions of this sort were raised long before we had an understanding of the history of the universe, so historical answers were at times more creative than this.)

Answer 4

Suppose that everything that is considered as living individual suddenly dies out. What would happen to matter if now there is nobody who can think about it?

Under my pagadigm (A variant of positivism) it would still be around. Are you working from a paradigm that requires thought for something to exist?