China is a country that than which nothing greater can be conceived.
The country so conceived must necessarily exist in . . . oh, never mind.
Silly me. I guess I just assumed the OP said what he meant.
There may be an answer yet! In 1997 a made-for-TV movie entitled Does China Exist? was produced. I have not seen this move, but if anyone has then they might be able to settle this question. But something tells me that the aledged proof that China exists is nothing more than an elaborately concocted soundstage in Anaheim, Califorinia and sophisticated GCI wizardry.
mswas
There are many peope who assert the world is flat. Can you prove them wrong.
There are many piople who firmly believe the orbits and landings on the moon were the result of trick cinemaphotography. Can you prove them right or wrong.
All the worlds goods being shipped into the US in boxes marked “Made in China” is actually made in various nations. This is a conspiricy to fool you? Right?
AFQDAFA!
See the thing that annoys me about this board is when people argue theory and PRETEND they are arguing reality, and then get on other people’s cases for arguing theory.
See, I’ve never verified with 100% certainty that China exists, so I am accepting it on faith that the data I have thus far received is accurate, but no matter how much data I have to support my faith, lack of experiential verification means that it is still faith.
In FACT China does not exist. The landmass that is categorized as China most certainly exists, but the state of being that is “Chinese” is an abstract metaphysical construct. If you want to argue reality, then we can take upon ourselves a grand quest, we’ll go to China, and you’ll show me exactly where the border of China is, being that is exists with 100% certainty, it shouldn’t be difficult to find. It should be there plain as day when we arrive at it. However, until the day we do this, we’ll just have to content ourselves with arguing theory.
I think the type of person who has a problem with theoretical arguments is being disingenuous and hypocritical, not that they aren’t arguing theory like everyone else.
Erek
You skimmed the rest of the thread didn’t you?
Some people still think the Sun doesn’t orbit the Earth, and yes I can prove them wrong. If you use the Earth as your reference point, then it becomes matter orbiting around a fixed pole. So if there is a fixed pole in the center and the earth “Rotates” then the Earth doesn’t actually rotate, it is orbited by other objects that have physical effects upon the matter that we identify as being “The Earth”.
In short there are many things people have told me is absolutely true, that is not necessarily the only way to look at it. This thread wasn’t about the actual existence of China. Some people understood that, others didn’t.
Erek
That is total BS. China is not a metaphysical abstraction, nor is it a “state of being” – it is a politically defined geographical region with an active government and a huge population.
And playing this game of “go there and point at the border” is like saying we should be able to hang our hats on the north pole. It’s cartoon logic.
This boundary game is very easy to play in lots of arenas. Boundaries are often fuzzy, but that doesn’t make the entity vanish. You can’t point to the boundary between our atmosphere and outer space, but our atmosphere is real and outer space is real. Some desert nations in the near east do not have clearly defined boundaries in some areas – but so what?
In my experience, folks who argue along these lines will never accept the challenge to consider – as I have suggested before – the real-world consequences of the alternatives they are suggesting.
For China not to be real (regardless of where its boundaries may be or who has or hasn’t been there) there would have to be an immense conspiracy, involving hundreds of thousands of people at all levels of Western society, to trump up history books, atlases, news stories, etc etc etc 24 hours a day. This conspiracy would have to be so vast and powerful that no one ever managed to challenge it – not even a peep – for centuries.
It’s absurd, ridiculous, impossible. At least, in the real world. Of course, in your little world, you don’t have to consider this. You can keep your blinders on and focus very narrowly on the evidence immediately in front of you without considering any connections or implications or what the real-world consequences would be.
You can pee in my ear, friend, but don’t try to tell me it’s raining. The only chance – no matter how small – that China doesn’t exist or that leprechauns do is on paper or in the mind of someone who refuses to think about it critically. In reality, where I live, China’s real, leprechauns ain’t, and there’s zero chance otherwise.
The claim that we have 2 choices – experience and faith – is nonsense. Especially since experiences can be deceptive.
Suppose we went to China. What would that prove, according to your sort of logic? Perhaps what we see is all a sham, put on by the conspirators, like one of Stalin’s show-trials.
Wake up and smell the coffee.
Yep, you definitely skimmed the thread. The thread was about the value of anecdotal evidence, not whether or not China actually exists.
However let me clear something up for you. “China” is not a physical thing. It cannot be touched, it cannot be seen, it cannot be tasted, smelled or heard. It is an abstract concept. Without the people who are “Chinese” China would have no meaning whatsoever. It is not therefore an ‘objective’ truth. It is the aggregate of many SUBJECTIVE interpretations. There are people in China, those can be touched. There are rocks in China those can be touched. But China itself, cannot be touched. It is not a concrete thing, it is an abstract concept.
In short I must conform to public opinion in order to believe that China exists. It exists because we have voted on it’s existance. We all agree that it exists therefore it does.
I know it might be hard for you to understand, but there was once a time when the idea of a nation-state was incredibly hard for people to wrap their minds around. In the future, it may very well be again difficult to understand why people would cling to such a foolish notion as countries with borders.
You’re not arguing fact anymore than anyone else. You’re just really arrogant about your arguing of theory.
Again, I don’t dispute that China exists, I am willing to accept that it does, but please don’t hold it against me that you have trouble understanding things may be less rigidly defined than perhaps you wish they were.
Erek
Those guys in Taiwan sure are getting exercised over nothing, then. 
That’s right. China’s just the example you were using. So please don’t yank my leash for using it, too, ok?
All this junk about the evolution of the nation-state is a steaming plate of red herring. So is your Houdini act with the definition of “China”.
Your point earlier in the thread clearly was that you can’t be 100% sure that China – however you want to define it – exists because you only have “anecdotal” evidence. Only direct immediate experience, you claim, provides certainty. Therefore, there’s room to doubt the reality of the nation of China. Not much room, but some. Well that’s just bunk and someone needs to say so.
The reason I get bulldogish about this is that I see this same sort of tactics used to bamboozle people about science, medicine, politics, etc. Ignore the points you don’t care to deal with (you’ve yet to engage my primary argument, which is directly related to the OP), snipe on the examples as if they were the main point, drag in irrelevancies, change the subject when it suits you, and accuse those who persist in pointing out the BS in your argument of being “arrogant” when they won’t let you off the hook.
So I reckon it’s time for me to bow out. I’ve had my say, and there’s no more I can add. Let others be the judges.
Well, your point is either so unclear I didn’t see it, or you are merely trying to aggressively force your opinion on me. I’ll go with the second.
It’s funny how you completely tossed out any “science” from your method, yet claim to be defending it. No true man of science would ever expect me to just accept something because they said so, which is more or less what you are telling me to do.
For some reason my post made you angry. Why is it that you see alternative viewpoints to your own as being ‘bamboozled’? Shifting your view to accomodate mine enough to give you a hope of understanding it would not obliterate your world. Your world would still be there, all those concrete ‘facts’ you cling to would still exist.
In short you are asking me to accept based upon faith, what you accept based upon faith. As I do accept that China exists, and it’s existance is something I find rather intriguing, we are not in disagreement about that. However, your pet peeve on this board hit upon my pet peeve.
Basically, I accuse you of not having a rational argument. Your premise is based entirely upon faith, but you are masquerading as though it is in the best interests of science. You believe China exists. If you have been there, then that is very strong proof that it exists, FOR YOU. However, I maintain doubt that China exists, as I have no experiential proof, my doubt is fairly minimal, but I will always maintain doubt.
The idea that “experience can be deceiving” is the ultimate tactic of the deceiver. Trying to tell someone that their sensual interpretation of something might not be the way things actually are, is a way that people throughout history have tried to impose their own perception onto others. Our senses sometimes do not interpret the whole truth, but it is not our perceptions that deceive us, it is our filtering of those perceptions after the fact that can add artifacts to our understanding that don’t necessarily apply to the thing being observed.
In the end I will always trust myself more than I will trust the perception of another human being, and no matter how hard you may try to say that your evidence is based upon more than your own perception, it is not.
Again I reiterate, a nation-state is an abstract construct. It has no size and shape, no color, no odor.
I don’t know why it peeves you so much that I might question the existence of China, but from my point of view, you are only TELLING me I MUST accept it, you are not drawing any other conclusions outside of it to prove to me that it exists.
If Quanta changes merely by being observed, how can anything be so static as you wish it to be? If the very matter that the Universe is made of is manipulated by information, then ideas such as “China” are far more mutable than ideas such as “a rock”. I do not fear that the framework of our society will disappear by my questioning of it, but I also know that it is by sheer force of will that it retains it’s shape and form from one viewing to the next.
So yes, only direct experience provides certainty. Though I am RELATIVELY certain that China exists.
Philosophical skepticism - a philosophical position in which people choose to critically examine whether the knowledge and perceptions that they have are actually true, and whether or not one can ever be said to have absolutely true knowledge; or
Scientific skepticism - a scientific, or practical, position in which one questions the veracity of claims, and seeks to prove or disprove them using the scientific method.
My question is this: If experience can sometimes be deceiving, then how do you know that the thing that disproved your original experience wasn’t the deception?
Erek
Do you know how many times I’ve heard the conspiracy argument (from both the sides of believers and non-believers) about theology? (That’s a rhetorical question.) I don’t, but I’m pretty sure I’ve heard of it being used on both sides. If I were so inclined, I could probably find sites on the net that invoked the conspiracy suggestion that both God exists and that He doesn’t. Since it’s not too much of a stretch (for me at least) to imagine some people who believe in their position rather vehemently attempting to accuse the other side of indulging in such an argument, it seems like a waste of my time, since my point is hardly worth whatever time it would take to locate said citations. But you get what I’m trying to say, right?
Sample_the_Dog: I think I have figured out where your issue is that I haven’t addressed what you are saying.
Yes I have thought about many of the arguments you’ve postulated as to why China would or would not exist, and that is why I believe in China. However, I was not ACTUALLY trying to prove whether or not China exists, and was more interested in discussing what kind of evidence is useful in determining whether or not China exists.
I think “Prove it” is as often a copout as it is useful. Oftentimes people will move into “High School Debate” mode, and shout for cites believing they can outargue their opponent and ‘win’ rather than come to a common understanding. What this accomplishes is that the besieged trying to improve their understanding of a particular take on an issue bows out of the argument due to social pressure, when they might have had a valid point.
In short, I think there is a strong tendency on this board to perpetuate a particular brand of ignorance that is confident in it’s ability to outdebate an ‘opponent’ rather than try to understand their point of view. It comes across as a pack of dogs guarding their intellectual turf.
When this board went pay, I didn’t come back to it for quite a while, because I didn’t feel confident enough in my debate skills, and was too easily flustered. Now I am more confident and I get much more enjoyment from these boards than I used to. However, while many of my past assertions were rightfully shot down, I haven’t completely abandoned the things I believed then, I have only improved my ability to communicate them. I happen to know there were a lot of interesting people chased off by the rabid pack of dogs masquerading as the ‘custodians of logic’ when there was nothing logical or rational about their arguments.
Erek
Ok, mwas… I came back to unsub, but before I do… I can’t let you hurl those accusations at me and just say nothing.
My central point is clearly related to the crux of the OP – Can certainty be reached from “anecdotal” evidence? – and not merely the example of China. Here it is again:
Rather than deal with this point – that certainty can be reached on the basis of “anecdotal” evidence if the proposition’s negation, when fully considered, (a) lacks any evidence to support it and (b) leads to absurdities – you have ignored it entirely, claimed it was somehow unclear, and grossly distorted other statements I have made in an attempt to paint me as illogical and unreasonable.
You say I claim to be defending science. I made no such claim.
You claim I’m asking you to accept something just because I say so. When in fact, I have asked you to consider an approach to the issue at hand which you refuse to even acknowledge. I am merely asking that you look beyond the immediate data and consider also the full implications and consequences of the data.
Then you call for me to find common ground with you, and insist that I haven’t tried to understand your position. I understand your position quite clearly, and I believe you’re wrong about some important points. This invitation to somehow meet in the middle is simply a smokescreen to make me seem unreasonable.
You accuse me of “[seeing] alternative viewpoints to [my] own as being ‘bamboozled’.” Rather, I used this word to describe my objection to the type of tactics you are using in responding to my posts. Again, I feel it is important to publicly call a person on the carpet when s/he uses such tactics, because they are so commonly used these days to make unreasonable positions seem rational.
You imply that I attempted to dismiss experiential evidence on the grounds that it can be deceptive. Here’s what I said, in context:
My purpose for pointing out the fact that experience can be deceiving was to debunk the false dichotomy you had proposed (which painted me as arguing from faith rather than reason), not to dismiss experiential evidence.
You accuse me of sophistry, of trying to avoid the real issue and instead “win the debate”, so to speak, by rhetorical subterfuge. I hope this post does something to dispel that notion.
I am glad you feel more confident in your debating skills. I urge you to continue improving. However, I feel obliged to point out that your discussion of quantum physics is gobbledegook. It sounds like a mishmash of pop physics of the kind found in books like “The Dancing Wu Li Masters” or the works of Depak Chopra. Knowing your stuff and reading reliable sources is the first step to effective debate.
So to sum up my position:
It is indeed possible to obtain certainty from the type of evidence you describe in the OP, given the conditions I describe in this post and demonstrate in various permutations of the China example in previous posts. Probability that China exists, based on anecdotal evidence at hand = 1 (100%). Probability that it does not = 0.
On the other hand, direct experience is not in itself sufficient to achieve certainty. Context, interconnections, implications, consequences, and consideration of alternative positions must be combined with experience.
Btw, it is not acceptable to argue from a position of willful ignorance. Therefore, I have assumed, when taking up the example which you proposed in the OP, that the “anecdotal evidence” includes exposure to primary school textbooks, national chain stores, popular press, the general population, maps, libraries, etc.
Now I’m really done.
*The word “direct”, an obvious error from the cited post, has been removed.
mswas, I think you’re playing some pretty icky semantic games. So before we continue, I think you need to explain what exactly you mean by “China” when you ask, “Does China exist?”
Since you didn’t clarify your question in the OP, it’s perfectly reasonable that most of us assumed you were referring to the common definition of China, i.e., the nation-state in Asia, consisting of a landmass, its people, its government, its ecosystems, and the various cultures contained within its borders. IF you want to refer to something else, it’s immensely unfair for you to hold back your definition until later in the thread.
Daniel
As some have pointed out, while China is a real physical place (a place that I have visited, so can offer anecdsotal evidence myself), it is also an abstract concept. So there is a way in which China could cease to exist. At one time, the statement “The Soviet Union exists” was tru, but now it is false, even though you can still visit the place that was the Soviet Union. (I don’t offer my own evidence for that, but I’m basing this on what I’ve heard and read from others, so perhaps I should offer a better example…) I used (about 50 years ago) to live in a place called the West Riding of Yorkshire. I recently revisited places that were in the West Riding of Yorkshire, and those placese do still exist, by the West Riding of Yorkshire no longer exists. (For those who don’t know about the area, it was split into twio new counties called South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire.)
So, 10,000 years ago, China did not exist, though the geographic area called China did exist, and there were people living there. Ten years ago, I visited a place which was not part of China (Hong Kong), though I believe it is now part of China. And in 10,000 years time China probably will not exist. So evidence for its existence is partly evidence that there is a place physically in existence, and partly that people call it “China” in the English language. (And of course they call it something else in the local language: I know, since I saw its name on the money, on the stamps and on some of the buildings).
Peceptions deceive us? That is ascribing motivations to purely physical processes. Our perceptions have developed as survival tools in a narrow range of environments. Once outside of that range the accuracy drops off dramatically.
This is just wrong. We have mutually agreed standards for evidence designed to minimize the influence of anyone’s perception. When I state a temperature as evidence it is a measured value, open to verification by others. I don’t just claim to perceive. I supposed you could argue that I only perceive my measurement but that path leads to Nihilism.
Then we’ve just made this easy. We’ve defined China as an abstract construct, existing as an idea. It needs nothing else to exist.
Direct experience doesn’t provide certainty, nothing does. Certainty exists as a concept but finding certainty for any real world phenomena is beyond our abilities.
We don’t know for sure. I rely on statistical likelyhood to determine my accuracy. I’ll illustrate with a real life example to bring this back to from the realm of pure speculation. I thought I saw a cat in my room the other morning, closer examination showed there to be no cat present. Now I could have missed a cat in my search, or the rules of space and time as I know them could have changed to teleport the cat out of my room but since either of those choices aren’t very likely, I concluded that I was mistaken when I first thought I saw a cat in my room.
Maybe if all of them jumped from their chairs at the same time… 
Of course China is a abstract concept, as well as being a physical reality. If you ask, “Does Ireland exist?” then the reply might be, “Which Ireland? The island or the republic?”
In the case of Ireland, the island has existed as long as there’s been an Irish Sea (before then, it was a peninsula off Britain and Europe), while the republic has only existed since 1921. Before 1921, there was another Ireland, a kingdom within the United Kingdom, roughly the same extent as the island.
In the case of China, there are again at least two currently existent Chinas: the territory currently governed from Beijing (including places like Hong Kong and Tibet which have now always been governed from there), and the territory which the Chinese government believes it ought to be ruling (including the island Taiwan). (The people governing in Taiwan think that’s the China they ought to be governing too, so it’s not a really crazy conceot of China)
Does China exist?
“they who tell do not know; they who know do not tell.” Lao Tzu