> This kind of argument applies first of all to time and possibly to something else by analogy.
I think you'll find that your argument that time does not exist also applies to literally everything else. Space does not exist. Matter does not exist. People do not exist. There is no clearly defined moment of birth or death, or boundary between a person and the rest of the world; thus "people" don't exist. To use your words:
If you say that you experience seeing distinct people. Well. That's how neural networks work - they categorize the events/impulses which happened to the network into distinct objects that didn't exist in the events/impulses themselves.
> But if in some hypothetical universe, you realise by arguments, that nothing exists - what's the reason of "giving back the word" which in this hypothetical universe has no meaning? I don't follow this logic.
If you define a word such that it never applies, you're communicating badly. By the above arguments, nothing exists. And by the definition of the word "exists" that you're using, that's correct: nothing exists.
But that's a dumb way to define "exists". It's a perfectly useful word. And you should give it a more reasonable definition such that time, space, and people exist.
What the parent says is take your argument for time not existing:
"If you say that you experience time. Well. That's how neural network works - they are shaped by events/impulses which happened to the network and accessing this information gives you illusion of a past - but this information encoded in your brain exists now."
By the same logic, matter doesn't exist either.
Our brains [1] perceive a material world, but it's only a as thoughts an impressions they do so. There doesn't need (nor do we have of there existing) an actual material world. A neural network as complex as our brain that gets the same weights and is fed the same events/impulses as raw information (e.g. digits of input) would see the same "material" world.
No more reason for the material world to exist, than there's for time.
In fact, perhaps it's just my own brain, alone, as perhaps I'm the only actual person in the universe. What proof do I have that anybody else is not a "non playing character"?
No. I'm saying about technical aspect of neural networks which are shaped by experienced signals - which in other words is encoding information about what we call past. That's why we can tell what happen before - because we have encoded information about it in our brain - but before doesn't exist any more as it mutated to different state and there is nowhere to travel. You can bring back previous state, but it's not travelling in time in a way like Hollywood shows. I'm not going any further here into claiming that everything is an illusion. Not because of limitations of your brain you will not pass through walls. There's not the same logic here as you're saying.
About Solipsism - for sure in the universe you're living in you're the only one, as your perception is unique. We all have our own universes of thoughts. There's no proof for the question, that's why you should accept such possibility.
I think you'll find that your argument that time does not exist also applies to literally everything else. Space does not exist. Matter does not exist. People do not exist. There is no clearly defined moment of birth or death, or boundary between a person and the rest of the world; thus "people" don't exist. To use your words:
If you say that you experience seeing distinct people. Well. That's how neural networks work - they categorize the events/impulses which happened to the network into distinct objects that didn't exist in the events/impulses themselves.
> But if in some hypothetical universe, you realise by arguments, that nothing exists - what's the reason of "giving back the word" which in this hypothetical universe has no meaning? I don't follow this logic.
If you define a word such that it never applies, you're communicating badly. By the above arguments, nothing exists. And by the definition of the word "exists" that you're using, that's correct: nothing exists.
But that's a dumb way to define "exists". It's a perfectly useful word. And you should give it a more reasonable definition such that time, space, and people exist.