After discussing Intelligent Design and general theories as to the creation of the universe in my philosophy class, a question has arisen in my mind. It is I imagine a central question in ontology, which unfortunately we did not really get into in my Intro class. I'll hopefully learn more about it later in school but I figured I might as well bring it up here now anyway. So, here it is: what do we mean when we say something exists? Religious folk such as myself tend to speak of God "existing" outside of the universe and outside of spacetime. Similarly, scientific folk come up with ideas of multiple universes and the like existing outside of our own. However, how do we define the existence of something outside of this universe? Is it possible to even say that something "exists" if it does not exist in the universe?

Great questions. Related questions--what about ideas or concepts? If I'm in a relationship with someone, what does it mean to say that the relationship "exists?" Or that love exists? Or justice or freedom or peace or happiness?

This is where I think Plato was brilliant. For him, these ideas, which seemingly do not really "exist," are actually the full reality of existence. The idea of "happiness" exists in a more real way than the mere phenomenon of happiness that I experience in my every day life. American democracy is only a shadow of the true form of democracy which is again, more real.

Augustine and Aquinas tried then to match up these ideas with God, in the sense that God is the fulfillment of all of these things--freedom, love, the Good, the beautiful. Any beauty or freedom or love that we experience in reality, here on earth, are only a fragment of the full reality we will experience when we see God face to face.

Unfortunately, I think Plato was brilliantly mistaken. In the end, freedom and justice and peace are terms we use to make sense of the world around us--they do not exist as floating entities in space (or as pure forms that we are exposed to after death). Here I think Heidegger is useful: that which exists only exists in relation to something else--hot only exists in relation to cold, matter exists in relation to non-matter (or to space), existence exists in relation to non-existence. And ultimately, even the idea of "existence" is relational--it is dependent on that thing which calls into question the idea of existence itself--that thing being mankind.

In other words, without the rational human mind, the idea of existence would not even, well, exist.

I think it's hard to stay away from contradiction when we talk of existence external to the universe. Obviously, there may be difference from what we mean by "universe", but my basic interpretation of it would be the collection of all existence, which makes it at least difficult to talk of any external existence. Even if we use a Platonic world of Forms idealism, I could still see an argument for the inclusion of that within the definition of the universe, especially from the perspective of the relationship between the ideal and the corruptible sensible object.

While I'm not one to defend Platonic metaphysics, I think there's an argument in opposition to yours, psycholopher, that either the idea of existence must exist for the human mind to be able to coherently project it, or that by projecting the idea of existence by manipulating sense-datum and memory, we, to some degree, give it an existence, analogous to the way that by manipulating metal and plastic we could make a stapler.

Although not quite Plato's view, it shares the notion that particular ideas exist apart from the human mind--that they are out there for the human mind to find/discover/project. I can't say that this notion/belief is flat-out wrong (I can't prove it to be wrong)--I can only disagree.

Yes, there's a similarity there, but it moves more towards a Russellian world view, to my mind, or a coherence theory of truth perhaps, rather than Plato's which, if I'm deducing this correctly, is more a correspondance theory (to the forms). I know Russell adopted, at least temporarily, Platonic forms in modification, however it does seem to fit with concepts like relation.

Personally, I remain sceptical of any idealism, and I would agree with you in disagreeing - I was merely presenting a few alternatives we could postulate for Nevin's various enquiries. I'm still undecided about the most convincing way to conceive of existence - I've not read sufficiently into ontology, I confess.

(Just a note that as yet I haven't studied philosophy seriously, all I know, I know from various books and articles that I've read and basic theology classes, which are entirely a breed apart at times from philosophy proper. So do bear with me if I fall into the old traps and pitfalls.)

The last post in this topic was quite a while ago, but the topic is bumped to the top of the forum, so I'll reply.

I haven't done "research" on any of the philosophies having to do with this, so I don't know if there is a certain term for what I believe in. But as Neven mentioned, some people believe things exist outside our Universe, and I'm one of them. Infact I think there are other "universes" as well. The way I look at it is a solar system contains planets, a galaxy contains solar systems, and a universe contains galaxies, and existance contains universes.

That may sound stupid, but then again I'm 16. My beliefs of existance are just conclusions I've come to myself, since I have a sleeping problem and lots of times as I'm trying to sleep and I can't, existence is what I think of a lot, for hours on end. And thats just what makes sense to me.

Another one I came to is that there certainly is life outside our solar system. But I think any slightly educated person can (hopefully) come to that conclusion.
But one of my beliefs that I personally find most interesting is how I believe that there are, have been, and will be other "alien" races, that live on planets that are incomprehensible distances from us, that look and act just like our human race. And who also probably have similar languages. I have come to this conclusion from the fact that a planet needs to have very specific environment in order for life to be possible. Earth just happens to have that specific environment which makes it possible for humans to live here. But we look the way we do because of these environmental conditions.

So, considering the fact that I don't believe our Universe to be endless, but it is, as I said, an incomprehensible size, there is certainly a planet that has conditions almost exactly like Earth's, which would then of course mean that humans, like us, would also probably evolve. If a=b then b=a.

I actually don't know if that math term applies to what I just said, but I think it does, lol.
I'll post more about this later too. What is everyone else's thoughts?

Sleep problems is how I became a philosophy major.