Reply #26: "I think, therefore everything is" is a pointer. [View All]

[GliderGuider]

It's a reminder that I only experience my thoughts, no matter what is represented in those thoughts. I cannot experience the universe directly, I have no way of experiencing anything except as neural impulses. The actual triggering source of those impulses doesn't matter - an impulse is the same whether it arises because of sensory stimulation or a completely internal, purely mental event. I have learned conventions to distinguish one from the other (as have we all), but these conventions are necessarily nebulous and incomplete.

Nonetheless, I think it's fair to say that my entire experience of the world is inside my own mind, so as far as I'm concerned, the world only exists because I think. I understand that this position looks much like solipsism, but I don't see it that way. There is a world "out there", but in a sense it exists for me only because I think it does.