This forum is primarily dedicated to higher quality posts and discussions. Those are welcome from everyone but will be filtered by the moderators. In order to foster more discussion, we have decided to start a weekly stickied discussion thread for the subreddit. This discussion thread is a place for people to post things that are more casual regarding subjective idealism, and things that are more exploratory. Here is a place for individuals to propose ideas and ask questions and figure out subjective idealism.
I don’t believe this is the case at all. In SI you realize everything is volitional, so even if you relate to some experience as outside your particular perspective or outside the mind as a three-sided capacity, you still recognize that such relating is unreal. In other words, you’re not actually taking anything that’s produced by such volitional formation to be what it appears like. So if I see a tree outside my window and I relate to it as something outside my mind, from SI POV, I know it’s not really outside my mind. So my relating to it as something external is not genuine, but is only token, or nominal.
It would help to distinguish the mind from perspective. A mind is a singular three-sided capacity to know to will and to experience. So mind can be examined from the side of willing, from the side of knowing and from the side of experiencing, but it is really one singular capacity. Because willing is an indelible aspect of mind, all mental states are necessarily perspectival. And a perspective is a specific way for the mind to behave. Mind can find itself in any one of an infinity possible perspectives.
So something can be outside my perspective but not outside my mind. It’s necessary to recognize this difference.
In SI nothing is outside the mind in any way that matters (such that even if there were, those things would have no bearing on the way the mind operates, and that’s the whole point of SI – the mind is a sovereign of itself, a fundamental, necessary and sufficient feature of reality that can produce any experience). But there can be many ideas and experiences outside my perspective while still not being outside my mind.
I agree with this, but in this sentence “external” should refer “external to my perspective” and not “external to my mind.” If you think something is external to your mind in any way that has a bearing on your mental state and you think that seriously and genuinely, you’re no longer a subjective idealist.
Originally commented by u/mindseal on 2017-07-07 17:34:46 (djw67ec)
After our PM conversation I think internalist/externalist isn’t a good distinction. SI is all internalist. Better to refer to it as the continuum of how deeply things are buried in one’s othering subconscious, I think.
Originally commented by u/AesirAnatman on 2017-07-08 04:12:49 (djwvgx6)
I agree.
Originally commented by u/mindseal on 2017-07-08 06:57:15 (djx4tyj)