Is it a common belief among philosophers that the external world does not exist independently of consciousness? That consciousness creates the material world rather than the other way around? How can anyone believe this?

It makes sense to me that there should be nothing rather than anything. I find this issue rather mind boggling because obviously there is something. Fortunately I'm able to dismiss this issue and go on to other things. My only hope is that if there is an afterlife, and there are orientation sessions I will ask the lecturer (an angel?) about it. I'm just afraid that his reply will be a board with a bunch of incomprehensible formulae. My question is do philosophers deal with this issue or has it already been dismissed as undealable.

To what extent is the virtual world in "The Matrix" not real? Those who live in the Matrix without knowledge of its true nature go through life identically to those who live in our presumably "real" world today, without any difference at all, meaningful or not. So why isn't the Matrix real? Why aren't virtual worlds, to some primitive degree, also real? Or could they be so, and if so, what would they need to do to become reality?

Recently I was watching the famous "Powers of Ten" video which starts with a couple at a picnic and moves out to the far edges of the universe, moving ten times further out each second. After this the camera goes back to the couple and enters the hand of the man at the picnic, moving through layers of skin, blood cells, molecules, atoms and finally a haze of interacting subatomic particles. What struck me about this part of the video is that if the camera was to move beyond the boundaries of the man's hand we wouldn't be able to tell. There is no demarcation between the subatomic particles which make up the man's hand and the subatomic particles which make up the surrounding air. So, in what sense do seperate entities exist? Is seperateness an illusion inherent to the experience of beings at a macroscopic scale, similar to our illusion that objects are "solid" when in reality an atom is comprised mostly of empty space?

Why is there a universe, rather than nothing at all? Is this a question that shall never be answered by science?

Do all things exist? Nonexistence is the absence of existence, by definition. So, nonexistence does not exist. Therefore there is no such thing as nonexistence. To say that something does not exist thus seems to be a fallacy, since NOTHING does not exist. Everything, therefore, must exist. Is this right? If not, what is wrong with the argument?

How do novels, plays, or works of music exist? Consider the Iliad. The original copy of the Iliad was lost long, long ago, yet the Iliad continues to exist through its copies. If all original-language versions of the Iliad were to disappear, leaving only translations, one would assume the Iliad would continue to exist. What if all copies of the Iliad in any language and in any material form were destroyed, and we were left with nothing but the memory of the Iliad? Would it then cease to exist, until someone (presumably with photographic memory) decided to write it down again? What if all memory and knowledge of the Iliad were erased, but copies still existed, lying around in old boxes where nobody remembered them? Would it still exist if this were the case? How can we conceptualize the existence of things, like an ancient epic poem, which exist in physical form yet are not dependent on these forms?

Hi; Rene Descartes concluded "cogito, ergo sum", but this only raises a deeper question in my mind as to why do I exist? Is this a legitimate Philosophical question, and if so how does one go about answering it? cheers Pasquale

I have been a bit curious about the notion of the use of “possible worlds” as a way of communicating whether a proposition is either empirically or rationally true. When a proposition is said to be necessarily true (e.g. Circles are round) it is said that there is no possible world in which circles exist and are not round; circularity and roundness are inherently tied together by their nature. However, it seems upon further reflection that the use of the quantifier “all possible worlds” could only suggest all possible worlds in which ideas or abstract objects like circles and the concept of roundness are like our actual world; or, in a related sense, where there exist beings whose deductive logical “systems” are like ours. If this is true is it possible that our invoking the use of the phrase “all possible worlds” should really indicate “all possible worlds like our own”? While it may be nonsensical to state that there are square circles in some possible world, does it follow that this cannot be true in all possible worlds. Is it logically possible that that which we cannot conceive could be nonetheless true in some other possible world?

What is an abstract concept, exactly? Is there any consensus regarding their definition among philosophers? What would be an example of a non-abstract concept then? And why? Thanks for your time (Juan J.).