Originally posted by inimalist
my mistake, I thought you brought that upnot to me you haven't. If you want to be as philosophical as possible, I don't trust my sensory systems, and would not be surprised at all if something I saw to be real was not.
However, you could run a large enough battery of tests, have it confirmed by other independent tests, and eventually convince me that something tree-like does exist.
no, you haven't even come close.
You have shown me a gerbil, then said there is no tree. You have proven nothing. Even if we assume that you are being truthful, I am relying on your ability to detect trees, and you aren't perfect, nor do I know that you have searched everywhere exhaustively.
you cannot "prove", using science or formal logic, that something does not exist.
so, to you, there is a time when scientists can say "We have looked hard enough and we now know what is 100% true"?
Okay then I will simplfy even further...
I smash your fash against the tree = tree exsist. No fuzzy wuzzy talk about perceptions or anything like that just a normal big brown thing with leaves.
Now if I smash your face against thin air and tell you there is no tree there, I have proven that there is no tree in that space. Or disproven that there is a tree there. Either way it comes out the same.
Tree or no tree. Not all that difficult really.