If a tree falls and there is no one around to hear, does it make a sound? If the Universe is present and there is no sentient life to perceive the Universe, does it exist?
All of it exists! In general, I think people need to not be so egocentric. Nothing has to exist for people. Existence is not dependent on perception or measurability.
In order for the object to exist there has to be a subject. This is a very commonly held principle in philosophy. So, before you go off on your miniature sophomoric tirades think slightly abstractly. If there is no consciousness in the universe, thus nothing to perceive its existence, where does it exist?
Thanks you malevolent douche bag, I was referring to any sentient being existing in the universe, which, as a collection, is quite important.
We only exist because we exist. Things happened and it led to this. Thats all. Yes the universe would still exist if sentient beings diddn't exist. Non-sentients sensory organs would still pick things up and process them. And no no one hears the tree because sound is a preception. Sound is purely waves moving through the air. Humans just detect that with their ears which we experience as sound. If nothing was their to pick up the waves they would never be converted to sound, they would stay as waves of energy.
By subject do you mean observer? Why? It exists in reality. I see no way around this. If we define 'sound' as the observer's perception of the sound waves then I agree, the tree doesn't make a sound without an observer. But it still produces the sound waves...
Because the Universe exists, we exist. No universe, no us unless you figure out a way to live beyond a universe.
I realize your point and it makes solid sense, but some people believe there is no "real universe" just a perception. In fact, there are many people, including Descartes, who proposed that it may all be some sort of illusion. I'm not saying I endorse this opinion, but there is always another side.
Well, then to them then, the non-real "universe" that is the apparent seeming universe is just The Mind at Large, or a manifestation of Mind at Large. I am drawn to believe this, but I know that the perception needs something to be perceived in order to perceive. So, perception cannot be indepedent from what is being perceived. Some sort of sensual packets of information have to be sent to your mind in order to perceive and without those sensual packets of information, the universe wouldn't knowingly exist, but it'd still lie in the potential of existence thus existing. And this only brings me into saying that nothing can exist without non-existing and existing at the same time, or in order for something to exist, it must both exist and non-exist. The reason this is has to do with timelessness. I exist because I am present here typing, but at the same time I am non-existing, faded into the whole of consciousness. There is no "I" in this whole, there is only one, the whole, the great totality. Interdependence, interconnectedness, nothing exists alone.
Well there are two nothings if you think about it, and there are two everythings. One nothing being a void in essence, the other nothing being literally no-thing. (One everything being generally all that springs out of the void including the void itself, and the other everything being literally every-thing.) If you are saying that the void, the emptiness, the nothingness exists, then you are right because that is where everything is sprung forth from and then is sprung back into. If you are saying literally no-thing exists, then where is your statement? How is it that I am able to read it?
No it produces waves that our ears convert to sound. The tree sends waves through the ground to, "vibrations".