my final question about it is;
how can we hypothesize about external reality if everything we imagine etc is internal.
for example when you imagine another person's feelings you imagine yourself having those feelings.
when you imagine an empty room you imagine yourself looking at it.
et cetera.

How about thinking of this question;

How is imagining about a 1 tonne concrete block falling on your head different from the image you acquire from an external 1 tonne block landing on your head?

idk but it still seems wrong to believe in external reality
even tho i considered the analogy

asdfjkl wrote:idk but it still seems wrong to believe in external reality
even tho i considered the analogy

hmmmmm...... There just seems to be too much information about for it all to be confined to my own mind.

asdfjkl wrote:idk but it still seems wrong to believe in external reality
even tho i considered the analogy

How about it beats the alternatives. It works. Every time you test it, reality wins. And by reality I mean external reality.

The internal reality is the ability to notice. What you don't notice CAN kill you. Like the difference between imagining a one tonne block landing on your head and the actual reality.

asdfjkl wrote:my final question about it is;
how can we hypothesize about external reality if everything we imagine etc is internal.
for example when you imagine another person's feelings you imagine yourself having those feelings.
when you imagine an empty room you imagine yourself looking at it.
et cetera.

so in other words what if we do not feel the same way as others.

when you imagine something it is possible that it is not real.

asdfjkl wrote:
for example when you imagine another person's feelings you imagine yourself having those feelings.

This is a worthwhile watch;

asdfjkl wrote:my final question about it is;
how can we hypothesize about external reality if everything we imagine etc is internal.

The same way we can hypothesize about anything else.

for example when you imagine another person's feelings you imagine yourself having those feelings.

When you imagine another person being in a room, you can imagine yourself being in a room. There, you've twice imagined (hypothesized even) an external reality of rooms occupied by people.

when you imagine an empty room you imagine yourself looking at it.

Yes, very good. You've just imagined a person looking at a room. You can imagine that person having a body and moving into that room and running into walls. Do enough of these imagination exercises and soon you build up an entire world.

Now this is going to get a little freaky. Part of that imagined world can be that the person who is walking into walls and such has an imagination too. That person can have a model of the room in his imagination. You can then imagine that person making hypotheses about his world, aka the room.

Here's the big step. Hang on tightly. You can hypothesize that you are like the person hypothesizing about his room when you hypothesize about a room that you are (hypothetically) in.

Weee. That was fun.

but is it reasonable to say for example there is another consciousness.
you can conceive of consciousness for example
but only your consciousness not someone elses.

asdfjkl wrote:but is it reasonable to say for example there is another consciousness.
you can conceive of consciousness for example
but only your consciousness not someone elses.

Hey now! That's a different question. You said "how can we hypothesize about external reality if everything we imagine etc is internal" was your final question and that's the one I answered.

Its the same idea.

asdfjkl wrote:Its the same idea.

Then it's the same answer.

asdfjkl wrote:idk but it still seems wrong to believe in external reality

So your strong belief overules all counterarguments.

My point is you can't imagine anything without being an observer of it.

asdfjkl wrote:My point is you can't imagine anything without being an observer of it.

Can you point out the unicorn? I never really saw one - only imagined it.

What's in the mind is because of everything else.

External reality determines everything in/of the mind, from the original shaping of the brain itself to what is percieved as feelings or what might be imagined or created.

campermon wrote:

asdfjkl wrote:
for example when you imagine another person's feelings you imagine yourself having those feelings.

This is a worthwhile watch;

The mirror neuron system (described above by Ramachandran) enables us to make good guesses about what is happening in other people's brains, so we can predict them with fair accuracy, which is very useful in social life. But when I'm doing this, I don't think "I'm guessing what is happening in that person's brain", I think: "That person is conscious". I think we only make a distinction between an external world and internal awareness, because we use mirror neurons and empathy when socializing. If we were not social animals, I don't think we would make a distinction between the external world and thoughts. For that reason, I think that external reality is an artefact of empathy.

I would say that neuroscience suggests the same conclusion: there's no essential distinction between thoughts and the external world. Our thoughts follow events in our brains, and the events in our brains follow the laws of physics and chemistry, not laws of reason. If scanners enabled us to follow exactly what is going on in other people's brains, instead of having to guess by using mirror neurons and empathy, then I think that we would cease to make a division between thoughts on the one hand and external reality on the other.

asdfjkl wrote:
how can we hypothesize about external reality if everything we imagine etc is internal.

External or internal to what, exactly?

for example when you imagine another person's feelings you imagine yourself having those feelings.

You may. I don't. I can easily imagine another bod's feelings without imagining myself having those feelings.

when you imagine an empty room you imagine yourself looking at it.

Well, no. That's just wrong. When I imagine an empty room the answer to the question What are you imagining ? is An empty room: it is not Myself looking at an empty room. The latter would be an answer to the question Whom are you imagining looking at an empty room?


I'm going to make a guess here: you are running a version of Berkeley's Master Argument.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/berkeley/#2.2.1

Yes.
So is it reasonable to believe in a material external reality?

one other idea that often scares me is that there is no past/future and i just perpetually experience the present moment which doesn't change
i know is is unreasonable in many ways but it sort of works because when you think of past and future you think of perceiving it as present.