There is nothing outside of my consciousness, but is there someone else's consciousness, or is there none? Does life exist outside of me? Am I writing to the void now?

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  1. I can comment according to the Buddhist tradition. Existence is determined by the combination of several groups of elements. The first group is the material elements. What the body is made of. The second group consists of elements for recognizing pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral sensations. The third group consists of elements of constructing perception: forms, sounds, smells, tastes, bodily sensations, and ideas. The fourth group is the elements of forming volitional acts, making decisions based on experience. The fifth group includes elements of reasonableness, consciousness, and coherence of individual instantaneous states of consciousness in a whole process.

    Accordingly, existence occurs when the elements of existence are collected in these aggregates. Therefore, existence is an interdependent relationship of these elements. If these relationships are considered in space-time, they form a causal process. That is, consciousness is an existence that depends on cause and effect.

    If you agree with this definition of consciousness, then it is very easy to check for the presence of something external to your consciousness. You just need to find out the consequences of phenomena that your consciousness is not the cause of. For example, you can ask a question online and get someone else's answer. If there is something new and surprising in this answer, which is unusual for consciousness, then its reasons lie outside of your consciousness. That is, there is something else in the space of existence that forms the causes. Other groups of aggregates of elements are other consciousnesses.

  2. “Outside”, “inside” – it doesn't really matter. It is important how you divide the existence available to your consciousness into elements and what logical relations between these elements you assume.�

    And what elements are intuitively clearly divided into being? First, it's your mindset. Second, it is the flow of perception. These are obviously different things, because your thinking does not directly control this flow (only indirectly, through the activity of changing the world), it is a given with which we are dealing. And your thinking of the surrounding reality is also inaccessible directly, but only mediated, again, through your actions.

    And further, the model in which we attribute the property “are in my mind” to these two phenomena is no different from the model where we do not do this and continue to consider these phenomena different.

    Personally, I am of the opinion that adding the prefix “illusory” to all the phenomena I perceive only creates unnecessary complications, without changing anything in essence.

  3. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, the First Vice – President of India in 1952-1962 and the Second President of India in 1962-1967, gave an excellent answer to this question in his two – volume book entitled Indian Philosophy.

    As it is better, because I know this question is not answered, I am happy for all those wishing to understand this question, I draw these two volumes, as the question is not simple and any quick response is just a parody of knowledge which you can purchase after reading these beautiful and inspiring books on Indian philosophy, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan…

  4. there is a collective unconscious, there is the cultural code with which you were born (this is the mentality), if you lived in another country – you are fed with additional information signs and symbols, there are anthropological features of your origin, there is the environment in which you grew up, all this is layered on your perception consciously and unconsciously, according to which you do certain things, it is not entirely correct to separate

  5. There is nothing outside of my consciousness, but is there someone else's consciousness, or is there none? Does life exist outside of me? Am I writing to the void now?

    The English proverb “The proof is in the pudding “is translated as”The proof of the existence of a pudding is in eating it”. The answers to some seemingly complex mental questions lie not in the theoretical, but in the practical plane.

    Attempts to answer questions about consciousness based only on consciousness (especially only from “my consciousness”) drive such a thinker into a “fork” between the seemingly quite reliable, but frustratingly unproductive solipsism and the unprovable theoretical image, but still leading the subject to the external world, recognition of other people and other consciousnesses (perceived in this situation more as strangers than just others).

    However, this question is neither the first nor the last question of consciousness – neither its awakening and birth, nor its summing up and final evaluation conclusion. In less versatile and more prosaic, in the not so profound, but much more oriented to the interests of the life form, “my mind” has already revealed itself in a number of “other minds” and it is using more or less effective practical cooperation with them and prove yourself, your reality, power, and objective reality (see 9 th thesis of Marx on Feuerbach), and “other minds”.

    The infant, without thinking about its own consciousness (and even without having it in a developed form), reacts reflexively to the consciousness of its parents addressed to it, learns to perceive it, distinguishing it from the surrounding diversity of the world as an essential factor of its well-being. A teenager, testing his own ability to benefit from the world, manipulates the consciousness of parents and other adults with his behavior and sets limits to the flexibility/rigidity of his own and someone else's consciousness. An adult, calculating the effect and risks of his conscious actions, not only takes into account, but also mobilizes/exploits the consciousness of other people and participates (with varying degrees of consciousness) in other people's activities. The development of both the individual (life) and humanity (history) is a proof of consciousness – not always direct, unambiguous and virtuous, but indubitable.

    The question is, to what extent can this consciousness be understood as “mine” – that is, partial and private? Is it not in this claim of individual consciousness to the self that the source of its” tragic loneliness ” is revealed in the question? Karl Marx defined consciousness as “social consciousness” and it is not a trivial “consciousness of society”. However, that's another question…:)

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