Proof of an external world?

[r0ckyreed]

I have 2 examples that have made me doubt the claim that there is no external world.

1st example: I have ordered a book from Amazon.  The book is expected to be delivered to me tomorrow.  The book, package, and delivery driver are not just the same as my ideas of Santa Clause.  They actually seem to exist behind the scenes.  After all, me ordering a book from Amazon assumes that such a book and delivery driver exist outside of my own senses, perceptions, and thoughts.  There must be something beyond my own subjective mind, a world beyond my own mind.  If this is true, then it is a doubt to Solipsism as well.  For, Solipsism claims that the only thing that exists or that can be known to exist is yourself.  But how you live your life day to day assumes that solipsism and no external world is false.  What is the reality of a book, package, and delivery driver?  How is it that there are things that occur behind the scenes if there is no external world?  Maybe my subjective experience isn't all there is after all.

2nd Example:  Hearing your phone ring when your phone is not being perceived.  Getting a phone call and your phone is outside of your mind.  How is it that your phone can vibrate and make sounds when it is not held within your consciousness?  Of course, your phone (prior to it ringing) is an idea in your consciousness when you think about it.  But if you didn't have the idea of your phone and you didn't perceive it, it would seem like it would be the same as it not existing at all.  However, even if you don't perceive your phone nor have any thought about your phone, you could still hear it ring in another room.  Try this exercise, sit in your room with all doors closed and fully strip away all ideas about history, biology/science, religion, other rooms, other people, and an external world (stuff happening behind the scenes).  Now, you are basking in pure raw consciousness as it is.  But suddenly, you can perceive your phone ringing in the other room.  You didn't set an alarm, you assume it is someone else who has called you by basic logic, which already assumes that other people exist and an external world exists.  How is it that when you strip all ideas and perceptions of your phone, that your phone suddenly starts to ring? I mean that is totally possible. By basic logic, this would entail that someone else had to make the call, for the phone cannot ring completely by itself unless you set an alarm.  You can talk to people on the phone and they can come over to your house.  Now, how is this possible if only your pure subjective experience is all that exists?  Notice how your raw perceptions suggest that solipsism is true, but rationality seems to suggest that it isn't.  You can notice patterns in the world with your mind.  Be open to the idea that everyone has their own sovereign experience.  If other people have their own sovereign subjective experience, then you may wonder, where it is occurring?  Could it be occurring in an external world?  Could it be beyond my subjective imagination like the Amazon package?  If the Amazon package exists when I cannot perceive it, is it possible that there are aspects of consciousness hidden from itself as well?  If so, how would this work?  How can an object within my consciousness have consciousness?  But I would object that you cannot find consciousness anywhere in the brain because the brain is an object within consciousness.  

Sorry, I have a last short example and that is people claiming to see more colors than other people.  How is that possible if there are no other minds and no external world?  Just because I don't perceive something doesn't mean it doesn't exist.  I perceive only a small amount of colors compared to a genetic freak who can perceive many colors.  For me, I do not have access to the amount of colors that a genetic freak can perceive.  This suggests that there is more to reality than what is currently perceived in consciousness.

I know that I am thinking of this whole scenario, but I do actually have a package that I expect to be delivered from Amazon!   

The question is that what is the reality of the package and delivery driver if it is outside of my consciousness?  How is it possible for the package to be delivered to my house if there is no external world? 

Please note, I am merely trying to point out some doubts I have.  I am not awake/enlightened nor do I understand anything.  The existence of an external world for me is still something I have realized that I have not fully deconstructed because I still believe that my Amazon package exists beyond what I currently perceive.  Writing on this forum also seems to assume that solipsism and idealism (a.k.a  no external world) are false.

Thanks in advance for your time and insights,

Rocky  

 

Edited November 21, 2022 by r0ckyreed

[Razard86]

1. All of these things can be done in a video game. All of these things can be done in a virtual reality game. I can simulate in a VR game every single situation you just presented. In Fact Grand Theft Auto...does a pretty good job of already doing most of what you presented. 

2. Secondly....you could imagine right now in your mind....everything you just said. In fact....when someone reads what you just stated....they are actually visualizing the points you are making. So that means...they can completely render the scenario you just presented which means...it doesn't negate that your reality is YOUR MIND. Your mind, is just your imagination. You have never known anything OUTSIDE your imagination.

OTHERS are your imagination, your body is your imagination, sensory perception IS imagination. All knowledge, all direct experience, is just imagination. This cannot be disproven. WHY? Because you would have to USE imagination to try to disprove imagination. Imagination is the end point!!! Any attempts to entertain otherwise is just denying your imagination and pretending it is something else...which you have to USE imagination to do!!!!

[Leo Gura]

@r0ckyreed Have you ever murdered someone in your dreams, then you wake up and realize no one was actually killed?

The issue is that you're not taking the matter seriously enough. The illusion of an external world is not some simplistic thing like imagining Santa Claus, it's an extremely elaborate illusion such that you cannot easily deconstruct it, because if you knew how to deconstruct it you would have already done so, and you would not treat it as "real".

"Real" is what you call things that you have no idea yet how to deconstruct.

Edited November 21, 2022 by Leo Gura

[LastThursday]

@r0ckyreed everything in your experience is highly correlated. You ordering a book from Amazon is correlated to you receiving it tomorrow. Notice how you don't actually perceive the process of how it happens just the end results. What actually did happen if you didn't receive your book tomorrow? You have no idea, it's completely fuzzy. What you're calling logic is actually an "inference engine" that is constantly filling in missing information and guessing what happened. Nothing is 100% certain.

That inference engine of yours has to be trained over a lifetime. How does it get trained? It notices the same things happening over and over again. It then learns to extrapolate when there's missing information. It's a self re-enforcing system, so it only learns to notice the things that are actually correlated to each other and ignores those that are not. So reality "crystalises" out of a soup of random experience, by noticing correlated things in an ever increasing way.

Since reality is actually a unified whole everything has to be correlated with everything else without exception. It's like cutting a cheese in half, the left side is inversely correlated in shape with the right side, but the correlation occurs because it's all one cheese to begin with. Awareness itself cuts the cheese of reality and creates perception out of it, so all perceptions are correlated to each other. What you choose to correlate together with your inference engine ends up being "your perception" and "your reality". Do you think babies have any idea about Amazon deliveries? It's not part of their reality.

 

[Someone here]

@r0ckyreed

You are projecting the idea that what you are experiencing right now has a deeper independent reality to it. Which you call the external objective world. You Believe the world exists when you are not perceiving it. 

 recognize it’s a more of convoluted belief system that requires extra mind baggage.. that careful.. objective.. direct study of experience and reality does not need. In fact.. if you studied your direct experience long enough you’d notice all sensory perception has no solidity to it at all.. it’s just a fluid.. spacious.. fluctuating field of is-ness popping into and out of a void. the “objective” reality science thinks is out there is quite literally impossible if they knew what they were actually studying, which is perception. The thoughts that think there’s an objective layer are also popping into and out of this void. This  requires an extremely stable...mindful concentration of what is really happening vs what your mind thinks is happening. 

[Breakingthewall]

there are other arguments that make it difficult to accept that reality is only what is in your field of consciousness. For example, if the entire reality is your field of consciousness, it means that you are creating it. but you are not aware of creating it, so the fact that you are creating it is outside your field of consciousness, but it is something that is happening

[OBEler]

@Breakingthewall reality could be more broader defined. You could say about broader reality. 

Yes your reality is just whats in your field of consciousness. But you could also include energies (ukraine war) which are not in your field of your human consciousness right now to reality. This would be a broader description of reality 

[Breakingthewall]

2 minutes ago, OBEler said:

@Breakingthewall reality could be more broader defined. You could say about broader reality. 

Yes your reality is just whats in your field of consciousness. But you could also include energies (ukraine war) which are not in your field of your human consciousness right now to reality. This would be a broader description of reality 

we can say that the war in ukraine is just an idea in your mind. We can say that absolutely everything is imaginary, since it is impossible to prove otherwise, but if you are not aware of how you are imagining it, it is because there is something that is outside the field of your consciousness.

[OBEler]

@Breakingthewall so you say there exists something outside of my limited human consciousness field? 

Some solipsists say otherwise so this is a serious question 

[Breakingthewall]

5 minutes ago, OBEler said:

@Breakingthewall so you say there exists something outside of my limited human consciousness field? 

Some solipsists say otherwise so this is a serious question 

54 minutes ago, OBEler said:

@Breakingthewall 

i just ask: are you conciouss how and why are you creating this perfect illusion down to the smallest detail? Or maybe you are hiding this process from yourself? And if you're hiding it... maybe you're hiding too that you are me right now? and infinite other things ? because if you hide one you could hide more

[Godishere]

12 minutes ago, Breakingthewall said:

Or maybe you are hiding this process from yourself? And if you're hiding it... maybe you're hiding too that you are me right now? and infinite other things ? because if you hide one you could hide more

Pain, suffering and self referential thought make it seem real. 

 

[A_v_E]

whatever there "is"

 it cannot be spoken of really. I mean.. yes you could, and you will.

but the universe or what seems to be for "self" >>> only pure experience,

that phenomenology may keep talking. ( and even me describing anything is rape of what truly is )

because what truly is, is absolutely alien.

Every concepts, every models is just fantasy, game.

but ultimately there is only game, at least to my level of current experience.

and you'll keep constructing and building sandcastles.

but most people just really agree on sandcastles.

reality is only sandcastles, but they may be beautiful and some of them can be used to keep playing the game.
you can ground yourself in permanent not knowing. ( But even that could still be a religious dichotomy )

 

Also there is no problem with having faith/religion,

unless you want to create one <

 

maybe a practice :

you can be absolutely "free constructing"

just put black on the white paper,

throw at it things, build a thing or don't even try, what do you see ?
 

the biggest mindfuck is that, dichotomy can be very functional and story can be absolutely REAL.

 

ultimately I believe the nature of reality is a phenomenology unfolding infinitely ( an infinite movie ), the game of deconstructing is also just an happening, a little sandcastle story within the whole story.

 

Reality is a 5D movie happening to yourself ?

All of this is maybe not true

Edited November 21, 2022 by A_v_E

[r0ckyreed]

6 hours ago, Razard86 said:

1. All of these things can be done in a video game. All of these things can be done in a virtual reality game. I can simulate in a VR game every single situation you just presented. In Fact Grand Theft Auto...does a pretty good job of already doing most of what you presented. 

Yes.  I thought about the same thing with Skyrim, GTA, COD, and the most obvious, dreaming.  Like I stated in my other post Awakening Is A Dream, we cannot fully unravel The Dream Doubt.  

6 hours ago, Razard86 said:

2. Secondly....you could imagine right now in your mind....everything you just said. In fact....when someone reads what you just stated....they are actually visualizing the points you are making. So that means...they can completely render the scenario you just presented which means...it doesn't negate that your reality is YOUR MIND. Your mind, is just your imagination. You have never known anything OUTSIDE your imagination.

Of course.  Of course this whole scenario is something that is being imagined in my mind.  Of course I am imagining that I have an Amazon Package coming tomorrow.  Of course I am imagining someone else reading what I am writing right now.  However, my point still stands that there are many things that I am unaware of that still seem to exist.  I honestly don't know whether there is or is not an external world, but each of us live our lives as if the external world exists.  Every time you send a text message or call your friends or chat with others online assumes that there are other people that exist somewhere beyond your current perceptions, somewhere in the "world."  But I do get that the only "world" I have ever encountered has been my consciousness, perceptions, and ideas.  The issue is that how do I know that my consciousness, perceptions, and ideas are all there is.  You can imagine you are in a dream and that is fine.  But you might as well apply the same logic and question the assumption that life is nothing but a dream.  What if there is something beyond our perceptions?  After all, our perceptions from the point of view of being on Earth tell us that the sun appears to go across the sky, and our perceptions from the point of view from outer space tell us that the Earth is round and we go around the sun.  People knew of this before they ever had a direct experience of it.  So what if, there is something more to consciousness that we cannot perceive?  I honestly have no idea.  I am literally trying to question everything I assume to be true.  I don't want to believe that the external world exists or not, I want to know whether it does.  

I grant you that I have never known anything beyond my mind/consciousness.  Everything I have ever experienced has been within my consciousness, but it makes me wonder how the hell my phone rings out of nowhere?  I mean if all of a sudden, you had an unknown package arrive at your doorstep, your mind would suggest that it didn't just appear out of nowhere, it wasn't delivered by a deer nor an ant.  Some human delivered it and maybe if you are a deductive detective, you could figure out who delivered the package through inference.  Just because we can only infer the external world doesn't mean it doesn't exist.  If there was no external world, how is detective work even possible?  Detectives use their imagination to solve crimes, but their imagination points to a world that exists beyond it.  If it was just my mind constructing reality and that is it, then how is it that murder still happens when I am not there to perceive it or imagine it?  All of this has made me question such claims that there is no external world and reality is nothing but what you perceive because on the contrary, it appears otherwise.  In addition, you would assume there is something inside of the package as well.  Why wrap a package with nothing in it.  You don't know what is inside the package, but you can imagine opening the package and there being a book inside of it.  How is that book in there?  Did it appear there because you opened the package and perceived it or was it because someone wrote the book, sent it to publisher, and then the book was shipped to Amazon facility where it was wrapped and packaged?  The latter answer seems more logically the case.  Even though logic is based off of our perceptions, I find it that just trusting our perceptions alone leaves out a huge chunk of reality undiscovered. Logic tells me that an external world exists and my perceptions tell me that only what I perceive exists.  I am curious to what you have to say to my response here.

Thanks for your time and thoughtful insight here.

Edited November 21, 2022 by r0ckyreed

[r0ckyreed]

4 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

@r0ckyreed Have you ever murdered someone in your dreams, then you wake up and realize no one was actually killed?

The issue is that you're not taking the matter seriously enough. The illusion of an external world is not some simplistic thing like imagining Santa Claus, it's an extremely elaborate illusion such that you cannot easily deconstruct it, because if you knew how to deconstruct it you would have already done so, and you would not treat it as "real".

"Real" is what you call things that you have no idea yet how to deconstruct.

I have! I have also had a dream where I was lucid in the dream and then I woke up and told my mom about it.  But then I "actually" woke up and realized that I dreamt waking up and telling my mom.  Me waking up was a dream!!  It makes me wonder if being lucid was also part of the dream of a story I was dreaming up!  I have also had a dream where I posted a question on the Actualized.org Forum.  So I know that I cannot know for certain whether or not I am dreaming right now.  

What I mean by an external world is a world or any phenomenon that exists outside of my perceptions, ideas, and consciousness.  I know, it doesn't make any sense because anything I think that is beyond my consciousness is an idea held within consciousness.  But I truly think that my girlfriend and her house still exist right now even though I am not perceiving it at this moment.  I also believe that even when I am not seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, touching, or thinking about something, it can still exist.  I have bumped my head before on something behind me.  So that item must have existed beyond my perceptions, thoughts, and consciousness.  But right now, I am thinking of that incident, so it exists within my consciousness right now.  I am going to have to think through this more because I get that I am imagining my Amazon package right now, but at the same time, I still think there are things that happen behind my consciousness of them.  My mind is creating a story of the Amazon package right now and will create a story if/when I see the box tomorrow of a book being inside.  It just seems irrational to think that a package arrived out of nowhere.  The story I concoct is an illusion, but so is the story or lack of story that the package appeared out of nowhere.  If that were the case, then what are detectives investigating?  They are using their imagination to create a story of how a murder took place, but they can find the killer.  How is that possible if there is no external world?  I know I can imagine all of this inside of a dream, which is why I still have no position on the matter.  I can literally see how both sides have a point.  I cannot get past The Dream Doubt, but neither can I get past the doubt that it could be possible that there is more to reality than what I perceive and think about it.

[r0ckyreed]

4 hours ago, LastThursday said:

@r0ckyreed everything in your experience is highly correlated. You ordering a book from Amazon is correlated to you receiving it tomorrow. Notice how you don't actually perceive the process of how it happens just the end results. What actually did happen if you didn't receive your book tomorrow? You have no idea, it's completely fuzzy. What you're calling logic is actually an "inference engine" that is constantly filling in missing information and guessing what happened. Nothing is 100% certain.

That inference engine of yours has to be trained over a lifetime. How does it get trained? It notices the same things happening over and over again. It then learns to extrapolate when there's missing information. It's a self re-enforcing system, so it only learns to notice the things that are actually correlated to each other and ignores those that are not. So reality "crystalises" out of a soup of random experience, by noticing correlated things in an ever increasing way.

Since reality is actually a unified whole everything has to be correlated with everything else without exception. It's like cutting a cheese in half, the left side is inversely correlated in shape with the right side, but the correlation occurs because it's all one cheese to begin with. Awareness itself cuts the cheese of reality and creates perception out of it, so all perceptions are correlated to each other. What you choose to correlate together with your inference engine ends up being "your perception" and "your reality". Do you think babies have any idea about Amazon deliveries? It's not part of their reality.

 

That makes a lot more sense now.  The reason why I believe in external world is because of all the amount of training and construction of it.  Man, it is so convincing though that there is an external world, a world beyond my perceptions because after all, who am I writing to since all I perceive is my perceptions?

[r0ckyreed]

3 hours ago, Breakingthewall said:

we can say that the war in ukraine is just an idea in your mind. We can say that absolutely everything is imaginary, since it is impossible to prove otherwise, but if you are not aware of how you are imagining it, it is because there is something that is outside the field of your consciousness.

Yeah that is a better example!  If there is no external world, then what the hell is The War In Ukraine?  That point always stumps me.  Homelessness and child traffickers exist even though I have never directly experienced any of them. They are an idea in my head, and I believe that it is a real problem "in the world."  But I get that the only world I ever truly experience is my own experience.  Homelessness and racism are indirect ideas that I hold in my consciousness right now, but that doesn't mean that they don't exist.  I am not sure I fully understand the no external world argument anymore because I feel like I am strawmanning it.

[r0ckyreed]

I way overthought it with my examples.  The only example needed to illustrate my point is when you lose your keys.  You have an idea of keys and you assume they exist outside of your perception!!!  How is that!!? What are you really looking for?  Of course, your keys to your car are an idea, and you have an idea of them existing somewhere that you don't know.  Where is it that your keys exist if not perceived?  From your subjective experience, your car keys (prior to finding them and when you actually find them) are just an idea and visual, auditory, and tactile perceptions.  Your keys don't just disappear into a void.  They are out there somewhere out there waiting for your consciousness to be conscious of them.  Sometimes, they are right in front of your nose.  Also, a burglar could have stolen your keys and took your car away.  From your perspective, you may not know this.  How is it that stuff isn't happening behind the scenes?  I feel like there is knowledge about the world that our current subjective experience does not have full access to.  Even if you didn't witness your car being stolen, how do you explain it's disappearance?  There is an objective answer of where your car vanished to.     I am gonna keep contemplating this until I find an answer.  It is not so clear to me whether there is or isn't an external world.  I know my car keys and car are nothing but my ideas and perceptions, but if I find that if my perceptions of my car in the driveway cease to exist, I can infer using my ideas that my car was stolen and is somewhere out in the world of my consciousness.  I can then explore the world of my consciousness to find my car.  Am I missing something here?  I hope this makes sense.  Thanks for all of your helpful insights and feedback so far.  I am really trying to crack this big fat nut.

Edit: What does it even mean when you lose something? Doesn’t that imply that it is located outside of consciousness and can be find within your consciousness?

Thanks,

Rocky

Edited November 21, 2022 by r0ckyreed

[aurum]

45 minutes ago, r0ckyreed said:

I am really trying to crack this big fat nut.

Keep cracking, it is indeed a big one.

My recommendation would be to go more meta. From reading your responses, you’re still focusing too much on content. The content is irrelevant because it’s all still your experience happening in you. Space itself is consciousness.

[r0ckyreed]

13 hours ago, aurum said:

Keep cracking, it is indeed a big one.

My recommendation would be to go more meta. From reading your responses, you’re still focusing too much on content. The content is irrelevant because it’s all still your experience happening in you. Space itself is consciousness.

You are absolutely right.  I need to focus more on the structure and not so much of the content.

 I guess I am just not sure what is meant by consciousness then.  There are a lot of things that I am not aware of but that seem to exist.  Knowledge is an example of that.  Maybe knowledge is nothing more than consciousness being raised to a greater awareness of itself.  

Edited November 22, 2022 by r0ckyreed

[Vibroverse]

Don't think too much. Relax and meditate, and receive your answers from your inner intelligence that is far wiser and knowledgeable than your physical ego personality.