Nope. The blind could still be aware of objects through other senses. And the blind people would be aware of themselves anyway.


It's tempting to say "prove it" here, but I refrain...

Well you couldn't, because in criminal law, the commission of a crime only needs to be proved beyond reasonable doubt. But you're right, and I'm sure the reason for that standard of proof in law is the problem of proving something outright. Maybe I'm a bit skeptical, but you get that way working in science, where nothing is predictable and easy.

On the tree falling example - it's possible, but extremely unlikely, for all the molecules in the tree and the earth below it to be arranged and vibrating in such a way so that energy would be completely absorbed and not transmitted by sound.

Saying that the blind are not aware of objects, was a bit of a stretch, but I was implying that those who are blind are less acquainted with everything, while others who are not blind can tell them exactly what it is due to their sense of sight. Since the theory states that if one can't see the object, then it must not be real, I wasn't thinking about the other senses such as touch, which can also direct the blind to tell what something is, but if one would want to get technical, they might not know what it looks like or what it is considering they might have been blind since birth and can't tell you the shape, size, color, structure of the person or object...if that makes any sense.

But they would still be aware of the existence of the object, which is the point.

Even blind people stub their toes...

I always find idea such as this very odd. Becuase scientists are constantly finding new species of animals, insects etc but by theorys such as this they wouldn't exist, so would never be found.

How do you know they existed before they were found?

Becuase by this theory people would need to be aware of the animals that are going to be discovered for them to be discovered, if no one is knows of the animals then they would never be discovered. So they must exist before hand becuase people dont know the animals yet they are found. (Unless there is a consipiricy with scientists making up animals and then the public making them real...)

how can something "exist" if you cant word it? if something cannot be named so what would be... nothing?... in the other hand, if something is physically there, then, it exists... common sense

I don't follow your logic. Why must they exist beforehand? This is the entire topic of the thread, and you have to prove it, not just say they must exist before they are found BECAUSE the animals are found. It's a philosophical question, not a guessing game.

Honestly, that is equivalent to asking that which came first, the egg or the chicken. I think this belongs in the tavern rather than here.

It's simple, really - how can you discover something that has to be perceived in order to exist?

Don't know exactly how it may enhance the thread, but I recently heard a very cool theory regarding existence. It says, basically that the world is a product of the mind. Nothing really exists, past, present, future, people, objects, etc. The theory also says that your body doesn't exist either. Your thoughts exist in some sort of limbo and the mind simply creates the world you are living in. Everyone lives in a different world surrounded by it's own thoughts, and isolated from other minds. It sounds fake, but I think it's a good theme for discussion, so here you go.

It sounds like it was cocked up by a neo-hippie feebly trying to describe the nonsensical signals his brain was receiving from his chaotically nonsensical salvia trip.

Long ago, people probably never knew cells existed, so...cells never existed?

That's just idealism. One question to ask an idealist is: where did minds come from in the first place? Did they just pop into existence? Of course not - they came about by way of evolution; meaning at one time they did not exist in a complex enough form to do anything like "make up the world". So it would seem that there must have been some reality prior to minds, and thus a reality not constituted by the activity of a mind. (Of course, the famous idealist George Berkeley argued that, prior to the existence of animal minds, it was the mind of God which kept everything in existence by observing all things - but, even if one believes in God, it is odd to claim that God is required to make sense of the commonsense idea that the world existed before animal minds.) The idealist can weaken his claim to respond to this: he can say that there is "something" out there which exists independently of us, though it is like a meaningless "blob" (if we can call it anything at all) which does not contain objects of any kind - it is the activity of the mind that interacts with the "blob" and creates objects. Then the idealist starts to sound like an anti-realist, a view which is less radical. However, after awhile all of this just seems to be headed in the wrong direct. It's attractive to many people who first hear it, because it's so radical and on its face seems to have some intuitive support, but after extended philosophical reflection, it becomes hopelessly implausible. Objects DO exist out in the world. The mind certainly plays a role in the story, but we need to see minds as but another physical part of the universe, a universe which largely exists independently of us.

I find the unquestioning acceptance of the hypothesis of external reality to be quite unjustified so far. The fact is that you cannot have cognitive access to evidence that proves that objects exist that are independent of your mind by virtue of the fact that any such evidence would have to be processed through your mind and, therefore, cannot be completely reliable. This forms the basis for epistemic skepticism which, although it is not always the most influential school of thought, is nonetheless very difficult to refute.

For instance, McCannFan would have us think that the very existence of our mind is proof of some objective reality because our mind must have an external cause. However, this involves a dangerous assumption because the only evidence we have for the necessity of causes is empirical. This is just to say that we cannot clearly identify any cause for our own thoughts outside of our own minds; if I am angry, it is not a sufficient explanation for me to say that I am angry because someone else has wronged me because it's conceivable that I could have reacted differently. Thus, any 'effect' within our own consciousness must, at least in part, be explained by reference to an internal cause, that is, by the mind acting upon itself.

McCannFan's belief in the principle of causation is, in fact, rooted in the principle of induction, which is itself unprovable. The reason we tend to explain events as series of causes and effects is because we have seen that things tend to happen in certain patterns. However, no matter how many times we've seen something happen a certain way, assuming that that number is finite, it is not definitive proof that it will happen that way again because there is no provable relationship between past events and future events that is not self-referential. Hence, McCannFan's argument against epistemic skepticism is inadequate.

The fact is that idealism precludes McCannFan's argument because it points out that our understanding of events is clearly dependent on categories of perception, as Kant argued. Nochielo's representation is not exactly accurate, since the argument doesn't presuppose that we produce everything that we see. Rather, the argument presupposes that our minds determine the way we experience reality, as in McCannFan's 'blob' example. However, from that premise, it has been demonstrated that there is no way to prove that there is an objective reality and/or that we are not fabricating all of our experiences, in short because our perception is not demonstrably reliable.

How, then, should we respond to the skeptic's challenge? It seems that there can be no true response to the challenge other than to point out that, if we are in fact the victims of a complex hallucination that we believe to be reality and are completely separated from reality, we still can't seem to will ourselves (or, should I say, I can't seem to will myself) out of that hallucination. Thus, the idea can be treated as completely irrelevant since, even if it's true, we're probably better off just making the best of our own 'dreams.'

If you want to make the idealist tell you where minds came from (assuming they're not eternal), the realist should be forced to tell us where the first particle of physical substance came from. That is, if at one point there was nothing, what caused there to be something? Does the realist really stand on firmer footing wrt this issue? Either physical substance just "popped into existence" or it has always been. Same for minds.



It sounds to me like some sort of Kantianism (the "blob" is comprised of things in themselves) and, further, idealism is anti-realism.



Sorry, but that's not an argument. You have to say why it's hopelessly implausible, why objects DO exist independently of minds, etc.

Good.....we have some philosophically educated people here.



Yes, it is. In fact, I do not believe the skeptic can be "answered". Some believe externalism (reliabilism) refutes the skeptic, but I disagree (given a normal understanding of "refutes"), for, on externalism, even if a certain cognitive process is reliable, we don't have to know that it is in order to have knowledge...and I suggest that simply claiming that a process might be reliable, even if we cannot tell whether or not it is, doesn't really answer the skeptic.



Not "proof". I should have been more clear about this. I merely intended to present a "picture" - this is why it is vague (consider my claim that the mind "plays some role" - that's vague). It certainly isn't something I would present at a philosophical conference. Since I didn't make that clear, you are certainly right to call me out.



This is just mad-dog empiricism; Hume warmed over. And one can certainly take that route. As for myself, I think I am epistemically justified in inferring from past experience that the sun will rise tomorrow. Or that when I preform a chemistry experiment, I will get the predicted result every time provided the experiment is properly conducted. Can I justify these inferences to the satisfaction of the skeptic? Nah. But they seem solid. Indeed, the first inference (about the sun rising) is one which I believe most human beings in the history of the world have had the same intuition about. That doesn't make it correct of course. But after awhile one wants to pat Hume on the head and say "hell of a problem you thought up here, but I think I am justified in believing that tomorrow the sun will rise".

If Hume is right, neither common sense, nor science, gets us much knowledge (or even epistemically justified belief!) about the world. I would almost take this to be a reductio of his position.

And, Hume himself relies heavily on induction when discussing miracles. He says that evidence from past experience in support of a law of nature provides evidence for the view that events covered by law are due to natural processes, thus making evidence against any miracle claim very strong. Doh, David. A diehard could of course claim that Hume was simply wrong to claim this. But when the man who thought up the problem of induction makes a slip like this, it demonstrates how fundamental inductive inferences are to us. If we have knowledge at all, it is based upon some types of inductive inference, and, since it seems like we have at least some knowledge, then some inductive inferences must be epistemically justified.



You're right. But do you really think we are fabricating all of our experiences? There is just no reason to think so, in my opinion.



A good old pramatic approach.

Yes. The realist says that minds came about as a product of evolution, and how things ultimately started are still a mystery. The idealist says only that how things started are a mystery. Which explanation is better? The former, of course, because it fills more gaps in the understanding - insight+mystery is better than mystery alone.



Precisely.



Antirealism claims that nothing "exists" (as we take things to exist when we're perceiving or thinking of them) when we are not perceiving or thinking of them. Idealism is the more radical view that there is nothing but what we perceive. Kant, for example, was not an idealist - reality consists of something "out there", but also something contributed by the mind.



Quite so. I addressed this in the reply to the above poster.

McCannFan, it looks like we're generally on the same page. I just wanted to comment on one thing, though:


I understand what you're saying here, but I would tend to resist calling this a reductio of Hume's position. While I don't agree with everything Hume said, particularly with his use of induction elsewhere, I think that the fact that we can't prove the principle of induction means that we don't have knowledge of whether or not the sun will rise tomorrow. I feel pretty justified in believing so and I think that it's reasonable to believe so, but I don't claim to know that's true. In the sense of 'justified true belief' or some other account of knowledge, I don't believe that I'm 'justified' in believing so, but I doubt that's what you mean by 'justified.'

Also, I don't believe that the fact that the skeptical account virtually never allows for any knowledge provides reason to believe that it is based on misunderstanding of knowledge, as some epistemologists do. Rather, I would point out that the concept of knowledge is pretty well-defined and is intrinsically very strict. If there is any way I can be more justified in a given belief than I already am, then it seems to follow that I don't know that premise to be true; only absolute certainty really seems to qualify as knowledge. That said, I don't really object if we use the term more loosely in practical contexts.

Of course, now I'm going off on a little bit of a tangent. You may, in fact, agree with what I've said so far. I just wanted to bring that nested issue into the open.

Anthropic Principle

If the universe were constructed in any other way than it currently is, we would not be able to exist to observe it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle

We can think of justification in two different ways - "biological" and "epistemic". Hume would not deny that we are biologically justified in reasoning inductively - we can't help the way nature pushes our buttons, because all of that is due to our biology, something we can't control. What Hume would object to is the idea that we are epistemically justified in reasoning inductively - there is no reason at all to think induction could in principle lead us to knowledge. And it seems that you are echoing Hume here. Yes?

I myself would go further and claim that, in some cases, induction leads us to knowledge. Meaning I think we are epistemically justified in believing at least some things based on inductive inference, and that those things are true. So we have knowledge (in the most robust sense of the word) in some cases. For instance, we are certainly justified in believing that the core of evolution is true, and I think we can go further and say the theory is actually true. And this would constitute knowledge. Of course someone could claim that this is just hubris on my part - perhaps in the future the core of evolution will be shown to be false, and so the belief that it was true never qualified as knowledge. But I'm willing to make the jump from "very well justified" to "actually true", at least in a few cases. And because I am willing to make this jump and claim that in some cases we actually have knowledge (with this serving as my starting point), I therefore conclude that Hume's claim that induction is epistemically illegitimate cannot be correct, for his view leads to the conclusion (which I strongly oppose) that we cannot have any knowledge as a result of induction. Some are not willing to make the jump I have made, and so will side with Hume. Which view one takes depends on very basic intuitions about reasoning and reality. I don't think either are unreasonable, for there are intuitions pulling us in both directions - on the one hand, we don't want to ignore any loose ends; we want to have covered all relevant angles, and this leads us to want to say that, since we can't know whether or not we've covered all angles, we should be modest and claim that we don't truely know. On the other hand, there is the intuition that of course we know some things (again, in the most robust sense of the word) - reality seems to be a certain way, and it seems that in many cases our beliefs match up with reality beautifully, and so are true.



I agree that knowledge is an all-or-nothing affair. No matter how justified you are in believing something, if it isn't true, you don't know it. But I don't think certainty is required. For instance, let us say that there are 100 possible excellent reasons in support of a true claim A, and that S is aware of 95 of them. S of course is not aware of 5 of them - he has not considered objections to those 5 reasons. So in that sense, he isn't "certain". However, I still want to say that he has knowledge (remember, claim A is actually true). There is "plenty" of justification there. And this is why I'm willing to make the jump I made above. There seem to be at least a few cases in which our evidence is so strong that we want to say we have knowledge. The natural reply is that, in the envisaged case, we have stipulated that there are 100 excellent reasons. But in real life, we can never know such a thing, so we can ultimately not know how justified we are, because there could always be a plethora of other considerations to which we haven't attended. And to this I would reply simply that, again, in some cases, our evidence seems to be strong enough to warrant the jump. An example of this would be the claim that, say, the earth is round. I simply cannot imagine a scenario in which this is shown to be false. And so, since we are certainly justified in believing it, I think we know it. And that seems to be where we disagree.

Yeah, what I'm saying is pretty similar to what Hume is saying; I just tend to use more Kantian terminology.


I would argue that knowing something isn't related to the number of reasons S that one has for believing A. Rather, I would claim that it is dependent on the sufficiency of given reasons. Thus, s1 may not be a sufficient reason, and people who hold A to be true solely on the basis of s1 don't know A (even if A is true). However, if s2 is a sufficient reason for believing A and you believe A on the basis of s2, then even if you're not aware of any other reason to believe A you know A. Of course, it gets even more complicated if we decide to introduce relationships between claims because it may be that s1 and s2 together form a sufficient reason for A but, separately, they are insufficient. In other words, any reason sX for believing A is unnecessary for knowledge as long as it does not contribute to a sufficient justification for A.

Thus, my (and Hume's) argument is that no inductive reasoning can ever constitute sufficiency without an additional non-inductive reason. Furthermore, all empirical arguments depend on induction. Therefore, there cannot exist any union of exclusively empirical arguments such that they grant knowledge of any claim A.


I would revise this paragraph by saying that, since the only way we can imagine the world being flat is if a vast number of other claims we hold to be true are false, then we can reason that we have a very strong conditional argument for the truth of the statement: "the world is round." We may not know that the world is round, but we do know: if p, then q (where p is the union of all inductive/empirical reasons we have for believing q and q is "the world is round"). This may seem trivial or as though I'm nit-picking, but I'd argue that, since "if p, then q" can be stated as r, we do actually know something. We should resist claiming, though, that since we know r, we must know q, which I think is a common tendency.

I don't disagree with any of this as a standard for knowledge from an internalist perspective. I was a bit sloppy with the 100 reasons stuff (it was partly a nod to metal-archives for their having a 100-point review scale, which is wonderful ). A lot of reasons, by themselves, clearly aren't enough in all cases, for there could be a case in which all the reasons aren't that good, and so don't constitute a sufficient case even when combined....the other reason I used such a high number was to try to illustrate what sufficiency would look like in the first place (95 out of 100 = sufficient). But you expressed things much better. We are not in disagreement about this.





As you may guess, I would claim that we know the antecedent of the conditional is true (I'm assuming that p represents claims such as "my senses are, on the whole, reliable", as well as the standard reasons someone might cite).

Perhaps I can better lay out my thinking like this: I have a very strong intuition that induction is, in some cases, epistemically justified (as I have said). That intuition is stronger than any reasons (that I've heard) that are offered to undermine the idea that induction can get us knowledge in at least some cases. Alternatively, my confidence in induction is not dependent upon actually producing an argument for it, or refuting/rebutting arguments that I've heard offered against it. I take an inability to do so to be a demonstration of the limits of argument - how we can know some things even if we can't explicitly form very strong arguments to defend them. They are "primitively compelling", to use Peacocke's phrase. To the skeptic, this is just fist-pounding and foot-stomping, but oh well. And I actually think that most philosophers of science, for instance, approach things this way, and then attempt to justify induction in an attempt to vindicate this prior commitment in a philosophically respectable way. We find various attempts to defend induction - use of Bayes' theorem, naturalism, pragmatic justifications, etc. - and my sense is that most of those who attempt to respond to Hume's challenge do not really think he's right (though this is just my hunch - and Popper would be one big exception). Now, of course, someone who finds Hume's challenge particularly compelling (as you do) would say among other things that your intuition that Hume is really onto something outweighs your intuition that in some cases we have knowledge as a result of inductive inference. And this is an interesting view and needs to be taken seriously.

Just out of curiosity - what do you think we can be aware of knowing? (which is different than citing a standard like the one you cited above). You claim that we can know that conditionals are true in some cases. What would you think of a view like Quine's, which is that all claims, including the claims of logic and mathematics, are empirical and subject to revision in the light of experience? If Quine is right (and I'm not sure he is), then that would seem to produce a dilemma for you - either you are an unmitigated skeptic (all knowledge claims are based on experience, and we can't trust experience because induction isn't legit), or you accept that we know some things a priori (such as logic), and that can be an uncomfortable view too. What do you think?

I think you've really explained the dilemma pretty well here. As you rightly pointed out, I'm a pretty strict internalist, so I tend to resist any claim that, intuitively, it seems we know anything like the antecedent in my conditional. At a certain point, it seems we run the risk of running the argument in circles, so I think it's best to leave this issue aside for now since it does seem to hinge on intuition.


When it comes to metaphysics and epistemology, I'm a pretty traditional Kantian, so I think that we can know some things a priori. Furthermore, I think that, in order to know something, we must be able to 'know that we know,' which is to say that the truth of the premise must be directly cognitively accessible. It seems to me that Quine's objection misses the point that I've been making - Quine denies that there is any difference between empirical and a priori knowledge even though he recognizes the concept of "collateral information," which seems to me to be completely contradictory. It seems obvious that there exist claims which require absolutely no 'collateral information' because I can conceive of it, even if, because of problems of language, I can never communicate any such claim.

To refute common objections to a priori knowledge, I must demonstrate how a priori facts are cognitively accessible in a way that a posteriori, or empirical, premises are not. This is relatively easy, I think, because abstract knowledge is true by definition. The classic example, "all unmarried men are bachelors," cannot be false unless the definitions of the terms are other than what we understand them to be. Similarly, mathematical knowledge constructs truth on the basis of given premises and definitions. The fact that one must know the definitions should not, by the way, be seen as a critique of the account because the account is intended to deal with concepts and any problems with defining terms occur only if two different people are defining terms differently. Hence, it is not relevant to the account since it is obvious to anyone conscious that he/she can conceive of ideas separate from words or, at least, can create his/her own vocabulary.

The difference, then, between a priori and empirical premises is that, in the former case, the person thinking has the ability to perfectly define and refer to all the subjects of the premises that are relevant to the premises' truth or falsity. Even if somebody taught you how to write logical arguments, if you've learned anything at all, then you structure those arguments in accordance with concepts present in your mind. Thus, you can know your conclusions are true as such, since any logical proof is, in fact, a proof by definition, no matter how complicated.

Of course, this means that we can only know statements that are somehow conditional/true by definition. This doesn't seem to me to be a problem as I've explained in my last post, although I do think that most people have trouble accepting it. The objection is that all knowledge we have is, then, 'trivial.' To this, I respond, first, that this doesn't mean that we can have any 'non-trivial' knowledge and, second, that to have knowledge is to hold a premise that seems trivial. Consider, for example, an omniscient god. That god would know everything about empirical claims as well as a priori claims, which would mean that he had cognitive access to every event that ever occurred or will occur.

Assuming what we believe to be true about the universe is true, then all events are, in fact, continuous in time and space and, therefore, that god's knowledge would seem trivial since every event transpired as a result of some cause that would, to him, seem inseparable from the event itself. Thus, all existence would be self-justifying. (Even if we assumed some sort of quantum uncertainty, it would follow that the god would know everything about every possible reality and each would seem self-justifying.) Therefore, we must conclude that it is a fundamental characteristic of knowledge to be circular.

The latter paragraph of your post is very true and one sentiment I have echoed endlessly in the face of the dreaded [edgy] super-skeptics. But at some point, we must acknowledge that, to our perception of the universe, there must exist some layer of reality which is separable and independent of our own hallucinations, even if this reality we currently perceive is merely illusory. There's no defeating that.

Skepticism is understandable, especially when considering nihilism is a part of one's natural mental development, but at one point enters the realm of absurdity. This is an important question to ask, surely, but not one to be dwelled upon heavily. In my understanding (and acceptance) of metaphysics, there is a 'law of reality', which states that we do exist empirically, and even if this reality is false, there must at some point be a realm independent of us, and we may as well live this hallucination, if it is such, as though it were real, et cetera. This is a cornerstone of metaphysics as I understand them, and a pillar upon which the rest of my philosophy is at least partially derived. And beyond skepticism, there are far more important and realistically addressable philosophical questions.

A debate in which there is little argument at all! A surprisingly welcome novelty.

existence and awareness of its existence are different things.
I would say yes it exists even if no one is aware of it.

They didn't know cells existed, so that's a good point. By some of the logic here, it would appear that cells only existed after they were discovered,a dn how were they discovered if they weren't there to begin with. And of course, how did our bodies work before cells were discovered.

None of you have ever actually met me, does that mean I don't exist?



No it's not, that question is simpler to answer, it all depends on whether a chicken egg is defined by an egg containing a chicken, or an egg layed by a chicken.

I found something interesting (and relevant):



And existence exists because... (something Noobot hinted at earlier):

Logic is a subject dear to me, so I feel like commenting on this in particular ATM, although, I imagine I'll return to this conversation later.

First, we must distinguish between logic as a formal system and a logic as a description of the workings of the world. I.e., I don't think it's proper to ask "in classical propositional logic, is modus ponens subject to revision based on empirical observation?" The answer is clearly that it is not, since it is a valid inference in the propositional calculus. The correct question is: does the world obey the rules for system of logic x? This is equivalent to asking "is the world a model/structure for system of logic x?" I see this as very much an open question in every case, since it is intellectual hubris to believe that the world must obey some set of axioms that strike us as intuitively plausible.

I point towards non-Euclidean geometry to illustrate this point. The theorems of Euclidean geometry and the non-Euclidean geometries are not subject to empirical revision (you don't need to know physics to do geometry). Rather, we must ask ourselves which set of axioms does the world actually obey. As we know, those who were ever so confident that space followed the laws of Euclidean geometry (the science of space, supposedly) were incorrect.

What I'm claiming is that even if I knew you very well, that would not constitute proof of your existence. The proof of existence only goes so far as to encompass the self and, even if I argue that my existence implies some external reality, I cannot know that my experience accurately or even remotely represents that reality. This doesn't mean that you don't exist, it only means that I can never know that you exist. Noobbot's reasoning is correct; there's no defeating it, but there's not much reason to worry about it, either.

Scorpio: Excellent post you have there. I agree with you completely; it follows from my argument, I think, that there's no way to know the exact laws that govern external reality which, as you point out, means that we cannot reason about it reliably. However, Quine goes a little further than that by stating that we cannot reason about, for example, Geometry because our knowledge of even abstract subjects is based on empirical evidence. (That's why I described how arguments can be made lacking any empirical premises.) His objection applies not only to 'knowledge' about the world, but also to knowledge of one's own mind. How would you respond to that?

That is a useful distinction to draw. And it seems to me that you are essentially throwing in with Quine. For the whole idea of a priori knowledge is knowledge that is apprehended independently of experience and yet gives us information about the world. Euclidean geometry was thought for a long time to be known a priori (and, a fortiori true), but it was discovered to be false, as you say. And since it isn't even true, it certainly wasn't "known" a priori. Those who say that we know certain systems a priori are basically saying that we know that the world DOES obey the system (as in, we cannot imagine a scenario in which one object + one object = three objects). So, if that is the attitude people took toward Euclidean geometry, there is a sense in which they revised the notion of that geometry in the light of experience (from 'applicable to the world' to 'not applicable to the world'), though they didn't revise any of the rules of the system itself. I say that you seem to be siding with Quine because you say that it is an open (presumably empirical) question in every case whether a given system matches up with the world, which seems to be just Quine's view, and his main argument against the existence of a priori knowledge. Thoughts?

Of course it does. Anyone who would say it doesn't is a complete fucking retard. I mean seriously.

The same idea is for the question asked in the OP.

Let's say that there was some object that I had for many years and only I knew it about its existence. If I were to die and never tell anyone about my object, would that mean that object doesn't exist anymore? Of course not.



Another mysterious question that no one will ever know the answer to right? Wrong. It's a retarded question. Neither of them came "first", birds evolved over time to become into chickens. Chickens didn't always exist, but they weren't the first type of bird. So I guess if you wanted to be technical about it then the egg came first. You'd have to officially declare that one specific bird that was born from an egg was the first chicken or something.

By what I said I meant that the answer to this question depends merely on the definition of "existence", and hence it's a rather pointless question.

No, it depends on the definition of egg. Or do you mean the Original question for the topic?

Nobody was aware of atoms during the caveman age. Doesn't mean that they didn't exist.

Actually, aren't atoms just a theory anyway? I don't know much when it comes to things like that, but I thought it was just a theory.

Proof?



Proof?

I mean really, if you're not going to back up your opinions with anything, why post at all?

One of the main things about this is that you cant prove it.