Quote Originally Posted by dragonrider
Philosophers go around in circles on this topic all the time. I konw I have gone around in circles on this topic many times on these boards. It is a very intereting question.

The fact is, you are right, you cannot PROVE an external objective reality. I've decided it's an interesting exercise from a philosophical point of view, but it doesn't matter very much from a practical point of view. My BELIEF is that an external reality does exist, my senses detect it in a limited way, and my mind makes an incomplete model of it.

I understand what you are saying and honestly half of me agrees with exactly what you believe, I am mostly arguing with you to develop my own understanding a little better, because a healthy discussion/argument is defiantly the best way to expand your mind.......besides of course the perception altering qualities of psychedelics, which is just as mind expanding.

I just can't help but notice the similarities in the ideas of existance being dependant on your mind and the product of causation with the the ideas of the ancient Buddhist teachings that say everything is relative and existance in inherently empty.

To me it seems more logical but at the same time more ridiculous that existence is not independent of the mind. My current reasoning leads me to assume that this is just because it is so hard to comprehend because our very sanity lies in the idea that the world exists independent of us.


Quote Originally Posted by dragonrider
That seems pretty much consistent with most of what I have read (although, I may have just made those books up in a totally imaginary world that is just a product of my pure, unnattached, independent mind, which floats alone in a vast nothingness).
haha, maybe you did.