Do you believe spoons exist?

There is no spoon.

He saw an inverted reflection of himself in the metal. That means there is something concave and shiny in front of his eyes.
The true test of no spoon will be tomorrow morning when he can’t eat his Life Cereal.

It’s a bend spoon.
Sporks however, do also (not) exist.

The spoon exists. It may not be physical, it may be a simulation, it maybe a figment of your imagination, but the spoon exists in one form or another, just not necessarily in the way you expect it to.

I was waiting for Keanu to jump up, and with a wild look in his eye exclaim “Praise Jesus!!”

What spoon?

They didn’t used to but now they do.

Our senses are our means of gathering information about external reality. Our reasoning consciousness, our mind if you will, is our means of integrating sensory data into a knowable construct. If this is not an axiom, then either our senses and our mind do not exist, or they give us useless information and capriciously allow us to draw random and incorrect conclusions. If this is true, then there is no need whatsoever for us to look listen and learn. The sensory deprived and or victims of cortical brain damage have an equal chance at survival on their own individual efforts as the most enlightened. But this is clearly not true. If solipsism is true, then I have violated your private Fluther fantasy by responding to you. Proof you are wrong. At least proof that outside of you, there is also me.

That’s not a spoon, it’s a fork.

Penguin dust, bring me penguin dust!

I like to spoon. Therefore I am.

This question is too deep for me to frame a valid response.

Well the spoon exists somehow, especially if everything only exists in your own mind. Why would we be talking about spoons if they didn’t exist though? How would we even know what a spoon is, if there never was a spoon? Okay, that’s not right. I sure don’t believe in God and dragons, but they still exist as ideas, at least. Everything has some kind of source. How the hell does non existence even happen if it’s something we can describe? I mean, beyond it being something that might not exist, like flying pasta, or Megaman.
So I guess maybe the spoon as we know it doesn’t actually exist. Maybe we don’t own any, and it’s all in our minds. But that I can think about something, or delude myself into something exists, that makes it exist, in my mind, at least. So it exists like that.
If nothing at all exists, then how come we have minds to make stuff up? That mind exists, and something literally could never be, if things didn’t truly exist. Even if like, it’s all in our minds.
I denno. A sound must be perceived to be heard, right? Only then is it a sound. So I guess if a tree falls in the forest but nobody is around to hear it, it didn’t make a sound, scientifically speaking, since nothing was there to perceive the sound. But technically, it still made a sound…as far as my logic takes me, anyway. I mean, science says that before we were there, stuff existed. It didn’t need our confirmation for it to exist, and neither does a falling tree, and even if we created spoons, they don’t need our assertion either. But if they DO, check in your kitchen. You probably have spoons in your drawers. If the spoon ain’t real, then what are those? Figments of your imagination? Still, a figment is something, and therefore, the spoon exists, even if it’s just a figment. Think about a dragon, and there you go, the dragon exists, even if there actually aren’t any.
I have no idea what I’m trying to say. Solipsism is weird, but I don’t know anything about it to know if what it is actually has some source or reason for one’s mind to potentially be the only true thing. I’m not entirely sure if Wiki is a very good resource for me to learn about it. Not that I have much faith in The Matrix either…

So it kind of sucks that a spoon might only exist in your head because it isn’t actually real; yet your mind creates it as a figment or a delusion. I mean, that’s it? Why can’t I conjure dojos and go all Chuck Norris out of nowhere? Even when it might not actually exist, reality sucks.

I cannot disprove solipism because I cannot perceive your reality.
The physical manifestations of everyday objects are real in the sense that one can act on them and effect perception (through the senses) of the objects. But at the sub atomic level the physical laws seem to change. If one were able to perceive sub atomic sized strings, one could appreciate the vast distances between them, and matter would appear to become space, but since we are limited in out perception of reality by our very physicality we are left with the distinct impression of a spoon.
Perhaps after we take another step in human evolution and become capable of changing the vibrational frequency of ourselves and “matter” this will no longer hold true.
In the meantime, I recommend that you act on the spoon in a manner commensurate with its intended purpose and have some ice cream!

It might not be a spoon. It might be a shower cam.

You’re not bending the truth, you’re bending yourself.

That’s what politicians do as well. Regardless of their efforts, the truth doesn’t change and we need to make sure we don’t look at the bent spoon, but for the undistorted truth that is behind the bent politician.

Define spoon.

Define spoon in such a way that it is unequivocally distinct from all other entities.

Spoon: Small dish shaped utensil with handle, used for putting food into ones mouth. an eating implement invented after fingers, twigs in termite mounds and drinking out of animal bladders.

Well, this produced some interesting answers.

@WillWorkForChocolate & @MilkyWay Solipsists, hey? So there is no me either. What you are reading here is your own mental construct of what a being like me—that you invented—would say in response to your assertion that there is no spoon.

@LuckyGuy That’s really not a valid dismissal of solipsism. So far as I know, there is no philosophical disproof of it.

@rebbel Interestingly, the Buddha kid said, “Do not try to bend the spoon. That’s impossible.” I’ve got a bunch of cheap spoons in our silverware drawer for everyday use. They are actually quite easy to bend. I just can’t do it yet simply by looking at them. And as far as sporks go, they don’t exist in my silverware collection.

@ragingloli Excellent point. Even if the solipsists are right, the spoon still exists because the observer of it perceives it to exist.

@FutureMemory Now that would have made the Matrix a VERY different movie.

@flutherother A vote for the reality of reality. No, really!

@josie Would that it were that simple, _ If solipsism is true, then I have violated your private Fluther fantasy by responding to you. Proof you are wrong. At least proof that outside of you, there is also me._ Not really. You haven’t given me anything that proves conclusively that you and Fluther and what I think I read on it are not all figments of my own imagination. And may I note that I am not a solipsist. I am not asserting that philosophy is right—only that it cannot be proved wrong. The survival potential of the brain dead versus the highly intelligent isn’t relevant, as solipsism posits that all beings in the observed universe “could” be figments of a single mind’s imagination.

@Coloma, @Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard, @Adirondackwannabe, @Linda_Owl & @filmfann OK, The error is it’s not a spoon, it is either a fork, penguin dust, a cuddling position or a pond too deep to delve, or it’s a shower cam. Maybe.

@Symbeline Well though out answer. But you know, if solipsism turns out to be treu, that doesn’t really suck. It means you are alone, but you are God. And the moment you realize you are God, you needn’t be alone.

@Trillian You cannot disprove solipsism because if it is true then you ARE perceiving my reality—it doesn’t exist outside of you. No I’ll be the first to tell you I think my reality does exist separate of any of my Fluther friends, no matter how dear. And I am sure you all feel the same. So I chose to live my life as if there is a reality outside my own consciousness. And your recommended test of the spoon’s reality seems a imminently good idea to my reality! :-)

@whitenoise So that’s why I haven’t won election. I’ve yet to be able to see the spoon bend. Darned concern with truth. How inconvenient for political aspirations.

@Jeruba I’ll leave that up to competent authorities such as The OED, Merriam-Webster of The Urban Dictionary. Chose your reference based on what you want a spoon to be.

@Coloma Looks like your a Merriam Webster type. :-)

Bopular pelief says that they do.

@ucme I’m not normally a grammar Nazi, but having been under constant attack from new right-wingers here lately; I have to ask what “Bopular pelief” means. Does bopular pelief exist?

@ETpro Haha, actually no. That’s my own made up definition. :-p

@ETpro It’s a spoonerism, just a fun way of dealing with the question.

@ETpro No, no, no. You exist. But there is no spoon, because I went on a psychotic rampage one month and broke every spoon in existence. Now, there is no spoon.

I got too distracted by Keanu’s good looks to answer this.

@ucme Ah yes, Spoonerisms are a specialty of mine. Occasionally I blurt out one without thinking it through, and it gets me in trouble. As a kid, one of my family’s favorite restaurants was the Pine Tree Inn. As we were in the car going there, I announced we were going to eat at the Trine Pee Inn. Mom and dad somehow found that an unappetizing name for the establishment.

@WillWorkForChocolate Thanks for that. I was worried that I’d ceased to exists and it was the spoons denying my reality.

@Keep_on_running Ha! He did have a cool, gaunt handsomeness in that movie. Still does.

@Symbeline Regarding your thoughts on what if nothing exists—and whether that is even possible, I asked just that some time ago. I even speculated about what would happen if all things that exist to define nothingness between them disappeared. Could infinite nothingness then disappear? If it did, what would be left?

@ETpro True, that would make me a god…but what if I’m just a figment of someone’s imagination? Are you God, or am I God? I sure don’t feel like a god. Or does solipsism allow for each individual to be a god, and they never actually come in contact with anyone else? But then if there were several beings, that wouldn’t be solipsism, would it? I don’t even think anything is allowed to exist in its case. Or is there just one being out there, and we’re all their imagination? Maybe that’s what God is.
Man this complicated and almost makes no sense. How can only I exist and nothing else? (for example) What makes this happen, and why?
I also asked a question about nothing not too long ago…the subject really fascinates, yet confuses me. I’ll go and continue that in your question

@Symbeline Thanks. I totally enjoyed the discussions your question brought out.