While on the surface I agree with this article, I want to delve deeper into these ideas. How can one be certain that anything outside of one's own being is real? Perhaps consciousness is all that exists and everything is fabricated atop that. We can agree to call something a chair, but does that make it realer than that which we agree to call money?
According to A Course in Miracles, "Nothing I see means anything… I have given what I see all the meaning it has for me… I do not understand anything I see… These thoughts do not mean anything." (ACIM, WfS, Lesson 51)
Even that which we agree can be reasoned through science depends on our faith that reality operates on cause and effect. But, this fundamental principle could just as easily be the first spell consciousness casts to make unreality seem all the more real. Thoughts?
That's solipsism. It's a hyper self-centered hyper-skeptical ego-centric irrational doubt. Have you ever studied objectivism? It will resolve that delusion of believing you are all that exists. I don't see how anyone would even consider it valid, apart from being infected with that idea by believing in the authority of the one giving it credibility. Why are you even waiting for an answer if you're just talking to yourself? LMAO. Doubt is good, but not this ridiculous hyper-doubt about everything to the point of self-delusion and fooling yourself about how reality functions. It's full of contradictions that are not being addressed in favor of the "wonder" and "awe" that this idea allows you to believe about your "power" to be all there is or literally "create" all of reality. There are so many variations to this theme and how it infatuates the ego-identity aspect of consciousness. Or are you just being a devil's advocate for a ridiculous position?
Start from the basics, and develop from the grounding of reality/existence: https://steemit.com/existence/@krnel/philosophy-101-existence-consciousness-and-axioms-of-truth
Here's a quick starter: for consciousness to exist, necessitates the existence of existence first. The above link mentions that. Please study more on this and clean your consciousness of this poisonous mind virus that you most likely got from New Agers, like ACIM.
Peace.
If I understand correctly, solipsism is the idea that only I, my ego, exist. I'm suggesting—and indeed playing devil's advocate for—the idea that consciousness is all that exists. Everything else is constructed by consciousness, for consciousness, from consciousness. Space-time, light, energy, individual egos, all of it could be as illusionary as the Matrix. Demonstrable reality could be an internally consistent illusion and unreal imagined beliefs either internally inconsistent illusion or illusion of untested consistency.
Unless (real) existence is consciousness.
I was awaiting your response because, like most, I believe, or have been conditioned to believe, that we are separate entities. This has no bearing on whether or not it is objectively true. Your article even talks about how people act according to what they have come to believe rather than what is objectively true. Why are you surprised to see it in the wild? Rather than tell me that my argument is "full of contradictions that are not being addressed," why don't we discuss what those are?
Your first response is disappointingly littered with antipathy. I was rather hoping for a civil discussion from someone who obviously knows his stuff.