To get back to the issue: if unicorns and mermaids do not exist, doesn't that show that it is not true that everything exists?

While your statement is 'logically correct' (in and of itself, in isolation) if I accept your 'if', it demonstrates the severe limitations of logic based on unexamined and unsupported assumptions.
Nor do your 'discriminations' reach beyond a subset of the complete and UNREFUTED and UNREFUTABLE fact that everything exists in it's context. This has been repeated as nauseum and you refuse to understand the siple concept due, no doubt, to your 'belief' in your own 'subset', making that, for oyu, the 'complete set', which it is not. This isn't about 'beliefs' and ego, it is the most simple of logic. But, as we keep going round and round the same conversation, i'm just going to duck out. What is the point of my repeating myself if you refuse to understand the simple concept.
Get back to me if you ever find any 'refutation' to what I have offered as the complete set. I'd wager that it will never happen! And repeating your subset is no refutation to the complete set of 'everything exists in/as context'!
It gets so tiresome... 'mermaids' and 'unicorns' exist in sculpture, your imagination, your 'argument', literature, your thoughts, in song... They exist in all sorts of contexts.
That there are 'other' contexts in which they appear to not exist is trivial, irrelevent, as, ultimately, all context is one.
I can't make it simpler to understand or more clear than that.
Not everyone can digest the food for thought that I offer. That's fine, but constant repetition gets boring. So...
happy trails...

It is of course true that there are songs about mermaids, and sculptures of mermaids, and I can imagine mermaids, and I can argue about mermaids, and so on. But, of course that doesn't mean that there are any mermaids. Statues of mermaids are not mermaids, nor is what I imagine when I imagine mermaids itself a mermaid. There are no mermaids, but if there were, mermaids would be creatures with a woman's upper body, and the lower body of a fish. There are no such creatures, of course, but there are statues of such creatures, and painting of such creatures. But you don't really believe, do you, that the statue of a mermaid is a mermaid, or that the picture of a mermaid is a mermaid? Do you? Do you? Even my grandchildren can distinguish between pictures and statues of something, and that something. And they are quite young.

I'm sorry, but we're going around in circles.
It seems obvious that you do not, cannot, or will not understand the concept of 'context'.
If you did, you would understand the simple irrefutable 'truth' of what i'm saying, and this 'go-round' would be at an end.
I guess that I cannot help your understanding after all.
Perhaps there'll be an 'epiphany' sometime...
It really doesn't matter, anyway.
peace
nameless out

If there were mermaids (suppose) then a statue of a mermaid would not be a mermaid.

So, why if there are no mermaids, would a statue of a mermaid be a mermaid?

It makes no sense.

Yes it would, it would be a 'mermaid' of the 'statue' subset. The sum-total of all subsets comprise the complete set of 'mermaids (that) exist'.

A mermaid...

I don't know whether you are 'deliberately' refusing to understand what i am saying, or the concept is just so alien to you that there is no point of commonality upon which to craft an understanding.
If you ever actually achieve understanding, you needn't 'adopt' or 'believe' what you simply 'understand'.
It is said that "if you don't understand (and able to 'defend') at least three different interpretations/theories/Perspectives of your 'field', that you haven't any understanding worth mentioning".
You don't have to understand.
You don't have to 'believe'.
It's all been said, and I'm all out of words.
You've worn me out.
The seeds are planted and I'd love to be the fly on the wall when they sprout and bear fruit.
Peace
nameless out

The answer is obvious. Everything. Of course, as someone added, we need to get down to details. There are "ships, and sails, and sealing wax, and cabbages, and kings". But everything exists, and nothing does not exist.

Sounds like some of the break down in earlier discussion is happening over the definition of existence.

Does the mere concept of an object (a mermaid in a dream) establish the object's existence? i.e. Does anything that can be imagined exist?

The answers would solve the "everything/nothing exists" disagreement, right? Feel free to comment.

I don't think it is the case that most people believe the world is flat, do you? Certainly not people who have had any education. But, even if that were true, that does not mean that they should stick with that belief. And I wrote not that they do have that belief, but even if they do, they ought not to have that belief, since it has been shown to be false. Just glance at satellite picture of Earth, for one piece of evidence.

One frame of thought is that everything that exists is always changing so at the same time it does not exist. Clever the way the universe works. Love the paradoxes it poses.


Most people agree that the earth is round, and that is not true either. I think it is rather irregular shaped with slightly flattened out areas. Or whatever. What do most people really believe and does it matter? I guess it matters, maybe, if you like to be with the majority.

Rich

From the proposition that something is always changing, it does not follow that it does not exist. Indeed, if it did not exist, then how could it also change? So, although I am sorry to disappoint you, there is no paradox.

When people say that Earth is round they are, of course, speaking loosely, and in a certain context. Just as people say that Italy is shaped like a boot, and that France is hexagonal. And, of course given the context all three propositions are true. Just not, exactly true. Just as when I ask someone how tall he is, and he says, five feet and nine inches, and he is a 20th of an inch over that, his answer is true, given the context.

What exists if it is no longer there the moment you observe it. It has changed into something else. Sort of a play on the Heisenberg principle. You may say I exist. But what is it that you say exists. I've just changed into something else. Well, you may say, something is there. But what? The Dao De Jing says, that that which is the Dao (everything) cannot be named. Makes sense to me. Everything else is in flux and exists and does not exist, in the same instance, because of this.

Not exactly true? Now we are getting somewhere.

You say it is this, and I say it is that. You say it is "me", but you have changed into something else, so me is kind of me, but a little different. What existed instantaneously changed into something different. It is constantly changing.

Approximately true. Not exactly true. I like the ring of that. Everything that is true is kind of true.

Rich

Not at all. The pear I had yesterday, and the pear I have today, are the very same pear although the one I have today is riper than the one I had yesterday.

What would make you think it is a different pear?

And I am the very same person as the person in that photograph taken three years ago.

As I pointed out in the earlier post, something could not change unless it remained the same, for then, there would be nothing that changed.

Yes, there are approximate truths, but then, there are also exact truths. Indeed, since "approximate truth" means, "not exact truth" how could there even be approximate truths unless there were exact truths.

Just as there is counterfeit money, but unless there is genuine money, how could there be counterfeit money?

Do you see the contradiction/paradox? Same and different in the same sentence.






There are Truths for you which are not True for me. Both exist simultaneously. I say there are no Truths and you say there are. You see, it is all there, both sides.

Something can be both true and NOT TRUE