How do you verify something outside your own mind?

How do you verify something outside your own mind when verification is an act of the mind?

My biggest problem with all religions and most belief systems is summed up in the implications of that question. If someone asked me to write a history of what's happened in the city where I live during the last year, I could only speak about what I've experienced directly. Since I couldn't do a decent job of doing such a simple task concerning what's happening directly around me, how can I speak about things that are far outside of my experience?

Do you want to assume that you know what "God" is? I'm a big believer in extrasensory ability, but I think everyone realizes that people tend to constantly make mistakes in everything they do. Do you think you can know what "God" is by using the perceptive abilities you have? It's possible you can but please don't try to convince others that your personal truth applies to anyone but you. People who claim that their personal truth applies to anyone but themselves are rescinding other people's right to have different personal truths.

Is there verification outside of the mind? I don't think so. Even in the case of ESP, the only way you know you're right is if you verify what you sensed with your mind (one way or another).

a reply to: Profusion

Common sense?

a reply to: Profusion

Well our scientific instruments are useful for recording things where the human mind might fail with anything physical. If you are looking for confirmation of the supernatural? Many people are searching for that.

In a spiritual or religious sense then it's my belief that such relationships are supposed to be personal ones, nobody should dictate including one's self.

Sharing is caring but will you still care when your gods are being mocked?

Keep it personal, it's easier that way

Mind can play tricks, every person has own common sense, sensation such as vision, smell, taste, hearing and touch also can be decisive. Faith and your own sixth sense can tell you when you are achieving upper limits. there are also fanatics which will try to convince you that they are correct, but only you can be certain.
Lord, I ask not about miracles, and not the mirages, and the strength of each day. Teach me the art of small steps.
Make me an observant and resourceful, that the diversity of everyday life in time to stop on discoveries and experiences that made me excited. Teach me how to properly dispose of time in my life. Give me a subtle flair to distinguish primary from the secondary. I ask about the power of restraint and measures that I have on life fluttered and slid, and intelligently planned throughout the day, could see the tops and gave, and at least sometimes would find time to enjoy art.Help me to understand that dreams can not be a help. No dreams of the past or dreams of the future. Help me to be here and now and accept that moment as the most important. Protect me from a naive belief that everything in life should be smooth.Give me a clear consciousness that the complexity of defeat, the fall and failure are just a natural part of life, through which we grow and Remind me that the heart is often argues with reason. Send me the right time for someone who has the courage to tell me the truth, but tell her loving!I know that many problems can be solved if we do nothing, so teach me patience. You know how much we need the friendship. Let me be worthy of the most beautiful and tender gift of Yours.Give me a rich imagination to the right time, at the right time, right place, silent or speaking,give someone the necessary heat. Do me as a man who knows how to reach those who really "down". Protect me from fear to miss something in life.Let me not what I myself wish, but what I really need.
Teach me the art of small steps.


Antoine de Saint-Exupery.

originally posted by: Profusion
How do you verify something outside your own mind when verification is an act of the mind?

Can't be done. The whole universe is inside your mind. There's nothing outside your mind. This is the first of the 7 mystical laws of occult. All is mind.

Because of this, you are able to "understand" everything going on in the universe. The great mystery of how two people are able to communicate, and understand one another, is solved, by requiring just one mind. The two people share that one mind. So, their intentions are perceived.

We don't always know what's going on inside our mind. But, we can become aware of those things if we learn how to direct our attention to them. This is the whole path of the yogi.

According to Jesus, if you have faith, you can control everything in the universe, bend all things to your will, control all the other beings and animals around you, and "nothing will be impossible to you." [Matthew 17:20]

Of course, takes a great deal of faith.

Essentially, then you become one with the architect of the universe, the great "UNION" with god.

a reply to: Profusion

Is there verification outside of the mind? I don't think so. Even in the case of ESP, the only way you know you're right is if you verify what you saw with your mind (one way or another).

What about being told something by someone you trust over a long distance? If my mother sent me a letter stating how many pictures of me are on her refrigerator, my mind would justify their existence as if I had actually seen them.

Would the letter serve as physical verification because I believe her? Do the pictures of me verify what they display if I can also remember the moment they were taken?

Our perception can only verify what we can define and attach values to. If those values change, we must take notice or risk miscalculation, ending in failure. Death by lack of understanding verifies the need to stay alive.

a reply to: Profusion

First you have to verify that there is a mind in order to assert that we cannot verify out of it. That's a tasks solipsists can never seem to accomplish, and they are always left begging the question.

Second one has the verify what, if anything, is trying to verify outside that mind. Something like a little man? Maybe another "mind"? Nonetheless, always another word. Then what tries to verify out that mind? And so on to infinity—the homunculus fallacy, another error of solipsism.

We verify because we can, because we are the kind of organism that does so, using the capacities we are physically endowed with.

We are our hands, our senses, our skin, and all bodily functions and properties; and we can come into contact with the outer world only because we are a part of it.

Rather, it appears that it isn't a question of not being able to verify outside of the mind, but that one doesn't want to, because he is consistantly hindered by that myth. So in your terms, one has to already be outside the mind in order to verify outside of the mind.

Beware those who confuse their mind with the world. They will never value anything but their mind. Solipsism is a self-seeking and mistaken doctrine.

This makes no sense. You can't verify anything inside your own mind. It's just you. Verification can in fact only happen outside of mind. Language relies on verification with consistent meaning of word between speaker and listener. Social systems rely on verification of rule and law.

We use instruments, scales, and mathematics to verify by agreed upon standards.

I think this line of reasoning is backwards. You can't verify anything with certainty in your mind you must interact with the world.

Descartes told us "I think therefore I am. That is to say that the only thing we know is that because we know we ourselves are thinking, that we must ourselves exist. It says nothing of that hallucination beside you which is auditorially claiming that it's thinking, nor of the senses that deceive you into believing that there's anything else in all of existence.

Now lets take it a step further and mix in some David Hume. Now my senses may be lying to me, but they're all I've got, so how about we call any direct sensory input a "simple idea" and assume they must always be true (thus presuming the existence of our reality and that we ourselves interact with it.) So I've got red, I've got sweet, tangy, fibrous, crisp, soft, smooth, rough, ect. and from these tactile sensations I choose to create a "complex idea" as defined as a accumulation of simple ideas. In this case that complex idea is an "apple". Now lets oversimplify and say that because an apple always has these traits, and is itself observed through my senses (Lump any extra-sensory sensory-input here. If you're observing it be it psychically, or through that microscope-eyes then it counts.) that it could also be considered to be a "simple idea". After all crisp can be broken into countless graduations of crispness thus driving us mad if each need be individually cataloged to form an overarching complex idea of crispness. No apple will henceforth be considered a simple idea.

Now lets say that I combine two of these simple ideas like horse and human and create the complex idea of a centaur? It's a composite of tactile sensations, but as it happens, complex ideas don't need to be real! That is to say you can freely mix and match any simple ideas in your mind thus imagining infinite variation and while these mental concoctions may be real, they may also not. This got Hume in trouble with the church as angels fit into complex ideas here, but lets set that aside. Now we've just classified a multilayered system that tells you what exists for sure, what exists if you assume your senses are trustworthy, and a whole general categorization of things you just made up that may or may not be real like capitalism, philosophy, that other country you never visited, or the aliens that live in your neighbor's skin suit who may or may not secretly control the world via a clever mix of abstract theology/economics and the occasional anal probing through which, according to this particular complex idea which you're indulging for instructional purposes, gives them accurate and precise data regarding the veritable success of their operations and what adjustments they should make.

You've now entered the wonderful world of existentialism, that is the philosophical study of what might or might not exist!

Mind you, if I imagine a man who's thinking that because he's thinking he exists, then he still exists, just within the realm of my imagination, thus at its base level you could still be an imaginary being who exists only within the mind of some entity, lets call this entity that by its thoughts alone controls the entirety of your existence "god". Just one of countless ways you can run with this. Just remember to have fun and not to get too depressed over it. If you convince yourself that nothing's real and that death's an illusion you may die and then it's anyone's guess if you were ultimately right or not, but you're dead, so I'm just gonna assume that your consciousness will disappear from the reality I perceive which might not be a good thing. I'm sucking at making this end on a cheery note, so just don't get too bummed over it, some folks do.

Interesting

I came to the same question twenty odd years ago and resolved it in my own way, but I took it further beyond verification.

I'll give some context for you.

Background

I grew up in an odd setting, a haunted house with paranormal happenings, a family who were Dutch Orthodox, Catholic, Theosophists, people who dragged children along to Indian gurus in the seventies,

Untill twenty years ago, I had a huge occult, Theosophical and Rosicrucian library. Was ecyclopedic in what I "knew" and were a long term Rosicrucian (AMORC).

I could also See and work on the inner planes.

About twenty years ago, I set about dividing what I "knew" into two catagoories.

* Personal experience. True knowledge.

* Everything else. (Book-learning and hear-say) Pseudo knowledge.

Once that actually sunk in, it was quiet devastating to one's sense of self. Very depressing for some time.

So setting out with just my own self, I started over with no presumptions what so ever and discarding everything I "knew" that wasn't personal experience. That included all the thinking that goes with the newage/religeous/occult worlds.

Oddly enough the inner plane organisations then started a very determined recruitment program (rejected). I have since learnt that some things like "we are all" is very deceptive. Really, a great many spiritual occult teachings lie by omission.

If we think "we are all", it follows that everything beyond us does not exist. A thought fence to keep humans caged methinks .

I also began meeting spirits and made new friends who began to show me things (embraced).

So that's the background.

Verification

I now just take what I experience at face value first, and judge for myself how trustworthy or untrustworthy the siutuation is.

If I see a spirit in the landscape, I trust my eyes and feelings untill proven otherwise.

Sometimes I will ask another seer for a second opinion.

Sometimes I'll ask entity friends what they see and we look together.

On ATS, I will read a thread and look into interesting things and compare that to what I see.

One learns for oneself this way.

But one needs to learn to be street-smart.

Now I just take everything on face value as an experience and act accordingly in the same way as one would do in the street.

If I hear voices, I treat them the same as if I heard a voice on the street.

If I meet an entity, human or otherwise, I treat them the same as if I met them in the street.

I just judge them on their merit and not on position or affiliation with a group.

Within the discipline, one cannot consider rank or position, only merit in action. I find it a wonderful way of equality. But the downside is that humans have this thing with power structures and authority. The humans out there can be really nasty if they don't get the respect they think they deserve.

It is a very hard life to live and not many survive doing it.

That aside, the philosophies and ideologies, to me at least, seem to be container structures of beliefs and power. The faithful seem to prosper within them.

But in the end, perhaps one just has to live within a certain uncertainty that is only verified by the results of one's own actions, choices and the consequences.

Hope this gives a bit of an alternative view.

"Profusion" is arguing for epistemological solipsism. Unfortunately, this denies the existence of all other minds other than that of the solipsist. If verification outside one's own mind were always impossible, all of science would crumble into a long series of subjective statements that could only be proved by those who actually made them. Solipsism opposes all forms of realism, one of the presuppositions of science. This position is absurdly and self-evidently wrong. I don't need YOUR experiences to confirm your statements; I only need similar experience (sets of data acquired by measurement and observation). The very fact that such analogous sets of experiences exist, allowing the existence of a concensus reality explainable by science, invalidates solipsism.

That independent minds can arrive at the same scientific conclusions despite having different experiences is evidence that the universe exists independently of the observer and is not purely a mental artifact. It can of course be argued that "it is all in the mind" and that I only ever know what ultimately needs my mind to recognise it. But it does not follow from this that nothing exists outside my mind. The solipsist fails to distinguish between knowledge, which is a mental representation, and the object described by that representation. He does not want to recognise that anything but he exists. So he conflates the two conceptual categories. That's why the philosophical position of "Profusion" is false.

originally posted by: micpsi
"Profusion" is arguing for epistemological solipsism. Unfortunately, this denies the existence of all other minds other than that of the solipsist. If verification outside one's own mind were always impossible, all of science would crumble into a long series of subjective statements that could only be proved by those who actually made them. Solipsism opposes all forms of realism, one of the presuppositions of science. This position is absurdly and self-evidently wrong. I don't need YOUR experiences to confirm your statements; I only need similar experience (sets of data acquired by measurement and observation). The very fact that such analogous sets of experiences exist, allowing the existence of a concensus reality explainable by science, invalidates solipsism.

That independent minds can arrive at the same scientific conclusions despite having different experiences is evidence that the universe exists independently of the observer and is not purely a mental artifact. It can of course be argued that "it is all in the mind" and that I only ever know what ultimately needs my mind to recognise it. But it does not follow from this that nothing exists outside my mind. The solipsist fails to distinguish between knowledge, which is a mental representation, and the object described by that representation. He does not want to recognise that anything but he exists. So he conflates the two conceptual categories. That's why the philosophical position of "Profusion" is false.

Epistemological solipsism is not as problematic as you make it out to be.

Firstly, you actually do need my experiences to confirm my statements — as long as those statements are made by me, they involve my interpretation. Even for a simple action such as me pointing to the sky during the day and proclaiming "The sky is blue." Even if you do the same thing and we agree on our experience, there is no direct way to confirm we are seeing the exact same colour, or even interpreting what I said in the same way. Also, consensus is hardly evidence of anything. Multiple people can, and plenty of times have, been wrong about their seemingly shared experiences.

The universe may exist independently of the observer, but it is impossible to measure or confirm this without the observer. Many people incorrectly assume that "observer" on refers to a living being that has sentience, but observer actually refers to any type of person or object/instrument that is capable of observing.

The question, which is continuously deflected away from and misrepresented is this: can one confirm the existence of anything outside their own mind? The answer is no. Therefore, I conclude that solipsism is not faulty after all, and is probably closer to the truth (if we can understand truth that is) than what we are led to believe by mainstream science.

a reply to: Profusion

Questioning the subjective view trying to find objective flaw. Find the pattern that is similar in several experiences so that you get more measuring points.

Lets assume that the way information exchange (telepathy) happen between any two spirits is by entanglement and that the transfer is 100% successful on a quantum level. The information can then be allowed to surface to the conscious awareness and depending on subjective view it might be degraded. Lets also assume that there are ways to measure in real time specific frequencies like you do with an FM/AM radio.

If you in real time measure the quantum body state of several people and make the measure the same frequencies then you can get information on how subjectivity degrades/changes the information.



You can discuss energetic body states (Kundalini awareness and Reiki and see the similarities in experiences even if the experiences are on different levels and intensity.

I can make theories on Empath abilities logically even if I do not want to experience it myself.

It has for a long time been my inner conviction that the only thing I can assert is that "I AM", and that all other matters may be false. I'm not a materialist as you probably understand - nor a religious man.

-MM

originally posted by: Profusion

Do you want to assume that you know what "God" is?

Clearly you do not accept the notion that we are an extension of God (a mini-ME of God as it were). If you did , you would not write this post

Is there verification outside of the mind? I don't think so. Even in the case of ESP, the only way you know you're right is if you verify what you sensed with your mind (one way or another).

A basic technique is to rise above mind and see everything not through mind. Yet another generally accepted notion in the esoteric world.

Seems you are very rational and too empirical and practical for your own good.

a reply to: Dark Ghost

but observer actually refers to any type of person or object/instrument that is capable of observing.

In its mystical usage (if I may use the term) , the observer is referring to the subject, the perceiver of the mind and body instrument and its senses. YOU. The object or instrument isn't capable of observing anything. The human eye doesn't observe anything, nor does the brain. YOU, the perceiver, the sentient one, is the only one who observes. The observer is not a person, because the person itself is observed. The observer is not any object of perception like the body or mind, because that too is observed by the perceiver which is you. The instrument is not capable of observing anything whatsoever. Like a microscope for example, it is an instrument through which observing is possible, but it itself, is not the observer. YOU are. No thyself first.

a reply to: LesMisanthrope

We are our hands, our senses, our skin, and all bodily functions and properties; and we can come into contact with the outer world only because we are a part of it.

Greetings LesMisantrhope, allow me to offer my opinion on this matter. Please do not take offense to what i say, instead consider my proposition ..
You say "We are OUR....." ...you've already created a contradiction. That is duality speaking and it is false. You are not fundamentally 'your' anything. If you were, you wouldn't precede object with a possessive term. "Your" infers a subject which is the owner of said things. The Hands, senses, skin, and everything else you claim is 'yours' (possessive), including whatever properties you attribute as yours, infers there is a subject that is NONE of those things but those things belong to IT. Who or what is this "it" you keep referring to? THAT is what you fundamentally are. We know what is yours but WHO or WHAT ARE YOU? The essential and fundamental subject is you, not what Belongs to it. And if you can discern any "properties" to this subject which is the perceiver of all the phenomenon you experience and call life, you will be the first person in human history to do so.

You have NO direct contact with the outer world whatsoever. All the phenonenon you experience is generated by your brain from your sense organs. Beyond that, you have no idea what is happening outside your skull or even inside your own body. You have no ability to directly experience anything outside of the phenomenon generated by your mind/body instrument.

a reply to: crowdedskies

Clearly you do not accept the notion that we are an extension of God (a mini-ME of God as it were). If you did , you would not write this post

Lots of people don't accept the notion. Why should they?

Is it a bad thing to not accept someone's notion?

Personally, I have come across more then one almighty god on the inner who have picked fights with me because I don't accept their notions to bow down to them.

Seems you are very rational and too empirical and practical for your own good.

Being rational and too empiracal and practical was what enabled me to see through those gods and beat them up after they tried to smite me.

originally posted by: Whatsthisthen

Lots of people don't accept the notion. Why should they?

They don't have to but not a bad idea to accept the notion that you are a reflection of the strongest that can be conceived. No need to define who or what just enough to know that nothing is higher than you by virtue of that link and that you bow to no one (especially not to yourself)

Personally, I have come across more then one almighty god on the inner who have picked fights with me because I don't accept their notions to bow down to them.

There would be no fight if you accepted you were higher. They would bow to you.

Sadly people forget that we function on four cylinders (I dare not mention the unutterable 4 -letter word). Entities do not; they function one one cylinder most times.

Being rational and too empiracal and practical was what enabled me to see through those gods and beat them up after they tried to smite me.

I was only stressing the need for balance between passion and rationality ; between empirical thinking and intuition/emotion. There is always danger that we may lean one way. You need to balance both polarities to achieve success.