Do You Feel Lucky?

(and feel free to comment! My older posts are certainly no less relevant to the burning concerns of the day.)

Friday, June 29, 2012

Existence: Keep It Real

I only concede that a person is real if they have a corporeal form, a sentient mind, and free will.

However, as a caveat - I'm not so inflexible in my standards as that makes me sound! If anyone ever tries to claim that they do not possess one of these things, I don't automatically assume they're a figment of my subconscious (or worse, my imagination!). I treat their claim with extreme prejudice, extreme skepticism. I put the burden on them to prove their incorporeality, or their nonsentience, or their status as a deterministic automaton. I don't credit every whinge and wheedle of the disaffected existentialist fringe!

There. A straightforward answer to the problem! Assuming there ever was one.

3 comments:

VEG said...

I have, on several occasions in the past, suffered from sleep paralysis and have seen things that most certainly weren't real but most certainly LOOKED real. And sounded real. And were totally evil. And my brain just can't make sense of such things. But then my brain isn't built for sense... so if I had any idea what I'm talking about right now I'd either concur or nod knowingly at this entry but I now forget entirely what my plan was....

dogimo said...

I have had sleep paralysis! CREEPY STUFF. One time though it messed up, because I was sleep-paralyzed in a former house, and when I fully woke up I was in the current one. That was a slip-up on somebody's part!

dogimo said...

Another time there was a circle of colored lights, each color its own symbol, rotating on the ceiling and I couldn't move. It was oddly terrifying!