Your favorite ontological theory

[actmyname]

Since the dawn of the Off-topic board, we have asked such philosophically immobilizing questions like, "what is your favorite movie?" and "What are you listening to RIGHT NOW?"

Because we have been captivated by these higher-level thoughts, I figure it would be better if we transfixed ourselves upon some more innocuous questions, like for example: "What does it mean for something to exist? What is existence or how may we define it?"

[Mbitr]

Nice thought provoking question 
Personally I think there are 2 main theories for something to exist.
1. A thought process
Now this is very hard to define. As humans we are only used to our thought processes. But plants, animals , fungi, bacteria etc- all may think in a way we know nothing about and can comprehend ?
2. DNA and cell structure
I believe for something to exist on our planet , it must have DNA . But again, does a virus/ prion exist ? They aren’t alive as they certainly don’t fill all the criteria.

Anyway , I’m not sure if you wanted this thread to go in this direction? More questions than answers 

[franky1]

existence does not depend on DNA or consciousness. a football or a rock exists

some say for something to exist it needs to be observed. but no thats just registering a bureaucratic record of something. undocumented migrants exists. tree's blowing in the wind still blow in the wind when you dont look at them
pluto did exist before the 1920's

existence doesnt need to be physical. there is many things that are not physical that exist. gas, digital info exists

existence means its real. solving/finding/locating/observing it to prove it. is just bureocracy

[actmyname]

some say for something to exist it needs to be observed. but no thats just registering a bureaucratic record of something. undocumented migrants exists. tree's blowing in the wind still blow in the wind when you dont look at them

Ah, but that is actually not a certainty.

It is impossible to dictate whether something exists until you are aware of it, as far as most definitions would account for it - wouldn't you say? One could surmise, "some object exists," but would have no basis for creating such a conclusion without either a tautological redundancy or an empirical observation. Note that when we talk about the quantum mechanical 'observer' we don't mean an actual human observer, per se - the slit experiment's observer was with scientific instruments and measurements, not the naked eye. Though, one could argue that it required a consciousness/sentience to observe the data.

existence doesnt need to be physical. there is many things that are not physical that exist. gas, digital info exists

True! Though, it is also relevant to note that the only difference between gas and solids are temperature - the speed at which those particles are moving. One could also technically say that digital info is physical in the manifestation of waveforms - (i.e. how would we access information that does not exist?)

existence means its real. solving/finding/locating/observing it to prove it. is just bureocracy

Perhaps we go off different strains of the word "existence". Maybe you mean, "manifested in physical reality," but more in the context of the human perception?

[franky1]

you dont have to observe it to know it exists

i have a child. but did my child not exist before this post because you were unaware of it
this moves to the scope of what is reality

because my reality is that im british and the majority of people around me are too. my reality is that i have never seen felt or touched arizona so maybe arizona does not exist based on any real first person evidence of personal experience
other peoples reality could be homeless person for 30 years that has never learned what bitcoin is
so is it right to say bitcoin and arizona dont exist based on peoples lack of observing it

so when is something "real" or declared as existing?
is it only when all 7billion people have physically seen something for themselves.
is it when something is published in a book

the actual question of existence is not based on proof or registered log or personal experience
schroedingers experiment was to prove this
while some people STUPIDLY think something can exist and not exist at the same time.. or be alive or dead at the same time or be in different places at the same time.. thats not the case shroedinger proved that nonsense

a cat in a box with a random timer that releases poison at an unknown time.. still goes off at the time it happens and the cat dies at that time. just because the observer didnt see it happen and wont know that the poison killed the cat before the box is open to observe it. doesnt mean the cat didnt die earlier. doesnt mean the cat only died when the box was opened/observed.

its a flawed bureaucracy of logging the death 'legally' only based on an observation point. and not by guess
this bureaucratic paperwork did not cause the cat to die at the time of the log. because the cat actually died in the box way earlier.

proof is just paper work, existance is something else.
because in my reality i know when the timer was set to go off so my reality of when a cat would die would be different to yours. but we both can agree a cat died in the end even if we prove it different ways at different times from each other

not having the proof does not make the cat no longer exist. or some half imortal zombie hybrid

take the difference between gravity and antigravity
g=the pulling force that keeps the earth in orbit of the sun.
ag=the pushing force that puses the universe further apart

alot of people think ag is actually just kinetic force but just like poles of a magnet there are opposing forces. totally separate from kinetic force

so while a few hundred years ago gravity was not even a buzzword. did we suddenly float in space until someone wrote a white paper to explain gravity.
under 50 years ago we didnt think the universe was expanding so was the universe imploding due to gravity before anti-gravity was a white paper recorded observation..

no these things already existed before being observed/understood
yep the primordial ooze of the creation of life. before there were brains and eyes in the first living things. there was gravity and antigravity

yep even quantum physics where electrons are not physical hard shells but actually an ozone of energy waves of gaseous energy that can gravitate around and hold things in and orbit around others and move onto other things

atoms have existed and electrons have existed even before we could observe/understand/prove they were real
same with quarks and higs and muons

[franky1]

the things like schrodinger and the slit experiment is even when reading the actual experiment notes and understanding it. idiots then come to different conclusions

some idiots say that photons(light) change from either a wave and a particle
and that it chooses which form to be in when observed
no, wrong.
its not like something changes from a iceburg to a ocean on command.
its knowing an ocean is not one wave but a buildup of lots of individual water molecules with their own trajectories that change trajectory at impact of another
and then the observer choosing what to look at. either the general wideangle waves a ocean makes or the nanoscope close details movements of each water molecole

water doesnt change from molecule to wave. its jsut the observer looking for different things than before

its not a spooky science of converting particles to waves
its that sixtillion tiny particles are moving with their own trajectories per area the size of a water droplet

yep a dot of light the size of a drop of water has more than sextillion particles wide. which have their individual trajectories which appear as waves
so when they say 'a single photon' is pulsed out of the device.. its not a single photon at all its a wave of sixtillion photons just in a single pulse

even that slit is not a single photon wide. its bigger then a water drop width thus the same sixtillion photons wide waves per pulse

so sending the light out in pulses is just slowing down the waves per second. not sending only one particle

the slits are not made thinner to have less 'waves' per event they just slow down how many events that happen per second which means waiting more time to tally up the same result.

so the flaw is not in the particle changing. but just in the lack of understanding what is actually being observed

[Kamilaz]

Interesting question....
For me, existence is just that, existing. It's not the same as sentience tho, as sentience requires the ability to have a subjective experience. Only humans have sentience (although many animals do have subjective experience to varying degrees)