So, how did George Berkeley prove that everything we see is imagination?

[Bird Larry]

I'm still in the process of reading his book. I knew that this premise was right from the start. But I could never prove it, nor see how it was true. I'm reading this book because I heard Berkeley "proved" it, or at least, was able to explain why the world is an imagination. It's fairly simple to know that everything we see isn't reality itself: only, an interpretation of reality from our senses. But how to explain not only that everything we see is not reality, but also an imagination? 

This seems difficult. If you have read Berkeley, can you explain. 

[RMQualtrough]

Even high school science class is enough.

Light -> surface -> eyes -> brain -> image.

You only ever see the image, which is a representation inside your own mind.

Same for every thing you ever know or interact with. Your entire life from birth to now has played out inside your own mind. As such, nothing you've ever interacted with has ever had any substance at all. It's imaginary. Every event in your entire life is happening in the mind.

[Bird Larry]

I dont get the brain --> image part

How is it the computer i am typing in.... how is my hand, this keyboard simply an image?

Edited August 2, 2022 by Bird Larry

[Someone here]

Imaginary is just another word for conceptual.  You don't appreciate how much of your reality is actually fantasy and imagination vs actual. 

. It's impossible to prove an objective external world outside of your imagination due to the nature of conscious experience only having the ability to exist as experience. Consciousness is all you have to prove a world. So you are always using consciousness as the actual substance of inquiry and you cannot step outside of consciousness to verify is something outside of consciousness. 

When you give your back to the world your mind assumes there is a world behind you.. You do this because you need to create reality.. Because If you don't create it.. It doesn't exist. If you stop assuming anything on top of what is "actual".. You would see the only actual thing is nothing.     You think the phone that you are holding is actual.. It's not.. There is no phone.. Each moment there is a changing appearance but your mind comes in and create out of this groundless flow an illusion of "object". There are no objects. Each moment you are holding a new phone.  

[RMQualtrough]

2 hours ago, Bird Larry said:

I dont get the brain --> image part

How is it the computer i am typing in.... how is my hand, this keyboard simply an image?

Well, light hits the keyboard, bounces up into your eyes, the signals go to the brain, a picture of a keyboard is imagined. The picture is the only element ever known to you.

I think you mean you think there's a keyboard "thing" outside of the picture of it in your head. You remove thingness from it as soon as you remove the perception of it, though... Any shape you imagine it being like "out there", could never possibly be what's really out there because the shape "things" you imagine are entirely made of seeing. You mentioned this briefly in the first post.

When sense perceptions are removed there's no possibility for it to look like any shape. If you're blind it then looks like nothing, not even black. That nothing is what's really out there.

You reduce things to math (etc) without perception, can only describe a circle in terms of pi etc. And mathematics is not made of a physical substance.

[Breakingthewall]

saying that reality is a dream is something I don't understand. reality is reality, and it is all there is. there is not a dreamer and a dream. the dreamer is the dream, the dream is the dreamer. there is no conductor of the orchestra. it is the orchestra conducting itself. and calling it imaginary is meaningless as there is nothing else to compare it to

[Bird Larry]

@RMQualtrough Okay. I see how the sensory perceptions all occur in the immaterial. So is it in "my mind"? Or is it just "mind"? 

May I define anything immaterial: mind? 

And maybe I can't say "my mind' or "your mind". There is no such thing as my mind or your mind. It's simply mind. Right? 

Edited August 3, 2022 by Bird Larry

[Mulky]

Everything you see is in your mind.  There's this other weird thing that happens, you know your mind from like the first person perspective, that's the closest you know  your mind.  But within what you see, is this brain thing.  So within your mind you experience something that you take to be synonymous with the mind. How often do you hear people say "your brain" when they are really talking about the mind.  Because the brain is seen as an object in the mind, regardless of how much they line up to be connected, they are not the exact same thing. The real mind you don't know as an object like that, and because you don't have any reason to assume that it completely exists in this physical reality, and don't fully know what it is, by thinking of the mind  you are experiencing as the brain, an object within a reality the mind perceives, you put a limiter on the mind.  The mind can now only do what you believe a brain can do.  This, at the very least, makes you dumber, it literally puts your mind in a box.

[Bird Larry]

@Breakingthewall Read about Chuang Tzu's dream. The butterfly dream. You'll instantly understand that maybe your reality is a dream. 

Nothing sentimental. Just a fact of life. After we understand or realize it, we can go on with our lives, do our work... etc. 

Edited August 3, 2022 by Bird Larry

[RMQualtrough]

6 hours ago, Bird Larry said:

@RMQualtrough Okay. I see how the sensory perceptions all occur in the immaterial. So is it in "my mind"? Or is it just "mind"? 

May I define anything immaterial: mind? 

And maybe I can't say "my mind' or "your mind". There is no such thing as my mind or your mind. It's simply mind. Right? 

Hmmm maybe don't call it that because it's confusing? Perhaps mind and matter are bad words to use because they create a divide between the substance of a personal vs consensus reality?

[Razard86]

18 hours ago, Bird Larry said:

I dont get the brain --> image part

How is it the computer i am typing in.... how is my hand, this keyboard simply an image?

I'll explain to make it a little easier. If you were a blind man, there would be no images, so with sight you are just seeing images. So what makes the image feel real? The sensation of touch. If you grabbed at cup and didn't feel anything you would instantly know it was fake, or if your hand went through it. 

Science has shown that all things we touch are empty space. 

https://interestingengineering.com/science/due-to-the-space-inside-atoms-you-are-mostly-made-up-of-empty-space

So Science shows you are made of nothingness, also we know atoms are just more image also but I digress.

So its the resistance between the charge between two objects that makes something FEEL physical. So notice this...if you lost sight, physical touch, emotional feelings, smell, and hearing, even if I saw you in my room for you....you wouldn't be anywhere. Now let me take away your last sensation, the feeling of awareness itself from which all things stem forth. This happens when you are in deep sleep. So in deep sleep you have none of those things listed above....so do you exist when in deep sleep? No you do not. 

Understand that to exist you must first have awareness, then all the other senses give you a reality. Your reality is just sight, physical touch/feeling, emotional feeling, smells, and hearing. 

That's it. You see when you deconstruct how simple it is?

Edited August 3, 2022 by Razard86

[SOUL]

People confuse the fact that all of our experience is known through the perception of imagination in the mind with thinking that makes everything imaginary.

It's an inability to distinguish the difference between the field of perception that is generated in the mind's imagination which allows us to perceive what is actually in the physical manifest reality from the things that only exist in the imagination, so are imaginary.

Not only are things like mystical and spiritual experience often transferred from something imaginary to trusted ideas so are believed to be true there are also things some have as self perceptions and aspects of memories they believe to be true but are only imaginary.

This doesn't mean all mystical and spiritual experience are imaginary so are not to be believed but similarly we shouldn't believe all mystical and spiritual experience to be true. Mystical and spiritual experience is useful if it brings us well being not that it's 'truth'.

Again to clarify, just because it is a fact of the natural world that all our perceptions of experience happens in the mind's imagination doesn't mean that everything is only imaginary.

Although, I haven't read that book so am not trying to explain it to you. I'm just discussing the erroneous conflation of imagination and imaginary as being the exact same thing and some of the consequences of this.

Edited August 3, 2022 by SOUL