What is the world outside of our consciousness. German classical philosophy

Everything that we call real is made up of things that cannot be considered real. If quantum mechanics has not completely shocked you yet, you do not understand it well.

Double slit experiment

Could reality be an illusion created by our consciousness? Does consciousness create the material world?

Before answering these questions, it is important to note that “reality” is not just made up of tiny physical pieces. Molecules are made of atoms, atoms are made of subatomic particles like proton and electron, which are 99.99999% empty space. These, in turn, are made up of quarks, which appear to be part of a superstring field, which is made up of vibrating strings of energy.

We interact with the world of physical objects, but in reality these are just electrical signals that our brain interprets. In the smallest limits and on the fundamental scales of nature, the idea of \u200b\u200b"physical reality" does not exist.

As the Nobel laureate, the father of quantum mechanics, Niels Bohr said, “Everything that we call real consists of things that cannot be regarded as real. If quantum mechanics has not completely shocked you yet, you do not understand it well. ".

When you clap your hands, in fact, empty space just touches even more empty space, with a touch of energy spin of tiny particles. The particles that make up the substance have absolutely no physical structure.

This is important to understand, because if we think of the world of quantum physics as the world of bowling balls and planets, the idea that consciousness creates reality makes no sense. But if we understand that reality is a cosmic soup of non-localized energy and simple space, it becomes obvious that our thoughts and signals that the brain registers have the same properties on their scales.

Consciousness is one of the most difficult tasks of science. There is no way to explain how something like material, chemical and physical processes lead to something as immaterial as experience. There is no explanation as to why subjective experience exists at all and why sensitivity has developed. Nature will feel just as good without subjectivity, and when we begin to scientifically investigate the origin and physics of consciousness, we come to the conclusion that perhaps consciousness and reality are not separated as much as the science of matter suggests.

Here are some principles of quantum mechanics from The Self-Aware Universe, written by former professor of theoretical physics who taught for 30 years at the University of Oregon, Dr. Amit Gozwami:

• A quantum object (like an electron) can be in more than one place at a time. It can be measured as a wave spread out in space and can be located at several different points throughout the wave. This is called the property of the wave.
• A quantum object ceases to exist here and spontaneously appears there without moving in space. This is known as quantum transition. In fact, it is a teleport.
• The manifestation of one quantum object, caused by our observations, spontaneously affects the associated twin object, regardless of how far away it is. Knock an electron and a proton out of the atom. Whatever happens to the electron, the same will happen to the proton. This is called "quantum action at a distance."
• A quantum object cannot manifest itself in ordinary space-time until we observe it as a particle. Consciousness destroys the wave function of the particle.

The last point is interesting in that without a conscious observer who makes the wave collapse, it will remain without physical manifestation.

Observation not only disturbs the measured object, it produces an effect. This was verified by the so-called double-slit experiment, where the presence of a conscious observer changes the behavior of an electron, transforming it from a wave to a particle. The so-called observer effect completely overwhelms what we know about the real world.

The results of this experiment were published in the journal Nature. Basically, it all comes down to the fact that the measurement system that is used to detect the activity of a particle determines the behavior of that particle.

As scientist Dean Radin noted, “we force the electron to take a certain position. We make the measurement results ourselves. " Now it is believed that "it is not we who measure the electron, but the machine that stands behind the observation." But the car just complements our consciousness. It's like saying "it's not me who's looking at the one who swims across the lake, it's binoculars." The machine itself sees no more than a computer that can "listen" to songs by interpreting the sound signal.

Some scientists suggest that without consciousness, the universe will exist indefinitely, like a sea of \u200b\u200bquantum potential. In other words, physical reality cannot exist without subjectivity... Without consciousness there is no physical matter. This observation is known as the "anthropic principle" and was first derived by physicist John Wheeler. In fact, any possible universe that we can imagine without a conscious observer will already be with him. Consciousness is the basis of being in this case and existed, possibly, before the physical universe. Consciousness literally creates the physical world.

These findings guarantee enormous implications for how we understand our relationship with the outside world, and what kind of relationship we might have with the universe.

As living beings, we have direct access to everything and the foundation of everything physically existing. Consciousness allows us to do this.

“We create reality” means in this context that our thoughts create a perspective of what we are in our world, but if you look at it, it is important for us to accurately understand this process.

We create the physical universe with our subjectivity. The fabric of the universe is consciousness, and we are just ripples on the sea of \u200b\u200bthe universe.

It turns out we are lucky to experience the miracle of such a life, and the Universe continues to pour into us a part of its self-consciousness.

Mikhail Igorevich Khasminsky

Every potential suicide believes in the possibility of the cessation of consciousness and the onset of some kind of non-existence, emptiness. Suicides dream of this emptiness as peace, tranquility, absence of pain.

It is clear that it is beneficial to believe in the loss of consciousness of a suicide. Because if Consciousness continues life after death, religious ideas about heaven, hell and eternal and very difficult torments of this very consciousness turn out to be real, in which all major religions agree. And this is absolutely not included in the calculations of a suicide.

Therefore, if you are a thinking person, you, of course, want to assess the likelihood of success of your enterprise. The answer to the question of what Consciousness is and whether it can be turned off like a light bulb is of enormous importance for you.

We will analyze this question from the point of view of science: where is Consciousness in our body and can it end its life?

What is Consciousness?

First, about what Consciousness is in general. People have been thinking about this question throughout the history of mankind, but still cannot come to a final decision. We know only some properties, possibilities of consciousness. Consciousness is awareness of oneself, one's personality, it is a great analyzer of all our feelings, emotions, desires, plans. Consciousness is what sets us apart, what makes us feel ourselves not as objects, but as individuals. In other words, Consciousness miraculously reveals our fundamental existence. Consciousness is our awareness of our "I", but at the same time Consciousness is a great mystery. Consciousness has no dimensions, no form, no color, no smell, no taste, it cannot be touched or turned in the hands. Despite the fact that we know very little about consciousness, we know with absolute certainty that we have it.

One of the main questions of humanity is the question of the nature of this very Consciousness (soul, "I", ego). Materialism and idealism have diametrically opposed views on this issue. From the point of view of materialism, human Consciousness is a substrate of the brain, a product of matter, a product of biochemical processes, a special fusion of nerve cells. From the point of view of idealism, Consciousness is - the ego, "I", spirit, soul - an immaterial, invisible spiritualizing body, eternally existing, not dying energy. The subject always participates in the acts of consciousness, who, in fact, is aware of everything.

If you are interested in purely religious ideas about the soul, then religion will not give any evidence of the existence of the soul. The doctrine of the soul is a dogma and is not subject to scientific proof.

There are absolutely no explanations, let alone evidence from materialists, who believe that they are impartial scientists (although this is far from the case).

But what about the majority of people who are equally far from religion, from philosophy, and from science too, imagine this Consciousness, soul, "I"? Let's ask ourselves the question, what is your “I”? Since I often ask this question in consultations, I can tell how people usually answer it.

Gender, name, profession and other role functions

The first thing that most comes to mind: "I am a man", "I am a woman (man)", "I am a businessman (turner, baker)", "I am Tanya (Katya, Alexey)", "I am a wife ( husband, daughter) ", etc. These are, of course, amusing answers. Your individual, unique "I" cannot be defined by general concepts. There are a huge number of people in the world with the same characteristics, but they are not your "I". Half of them are women (men), but they are also not "I", people with the same professions seem to have their own, and not your "I", the same can be said about wives (husbands), people of different professions, social status, nationalities, religions, etc. No belonging to any group will explain to you what your individual "I" represents, because Consciousness is always personal. I am not qualities, qualities only belong to our “I”, because the qualities of one and the same person can change, but his “I” will remain unchanged.

Mental and physiological characteristics

Some say that their "I" is their reflexes, their behavior, their individual ideas and preferences, their psychological characteristics, etc.

In fact, it cannot be the core of the personality, which is called "I" Why? Because throughout life, behavior and perceptions and addictions, and even more so psychological characteristics, change. It cannot be said that if earlier these features were different, then it was not my "I".

Realizing this, some make the following argument: "I am my individual body." This is more interesting. Let us examine this assumption as well.

Everyone else knows from the school course of anatomy that the cells of our body are gradually renewed during life. The old ones die (apoptosis) and the new ones are born. Some cells (epithelium of the gastrointestinal tract) are completely renewed almost every day, but there are cells that go through their life cycle much longer. On average, all cells of the body are renewed every 5 years. If we consider "I" as a simple collection of human cells, then the result is absurd. It turns out that if a person lives, for example, 70 years. During this time, at least 10 times in a person, all the cells in his body will change (i.e. 10 generations). Could this mean that not one person, but 10 different people lived their 70-year life? Isn't that pretty silly? We conclude that "I" cannot be a body, because the body is not permanent, but "I" is permanent.

This means that "I" can be neither the qualities of cells, nor their totality.

But here the erudite ones cite a counterargument: “Well, with bones and muscles it is clear, it really cannot be“ I ”, but there are nerve cells! And they are alone for life. Maybe "I" is the sum of nerve cells? "

Let's reflect on this issue together ...

Does consciousness consist of nerve cells?

Materialism is accustomed to decomposing the entire multidimensional world into mechanical components, “testing harmony with algebra” (AS Pushkin). The most naive fallacy of militant materialism in relation to personality is the idea that personality is a set of biological qualities. However, the combination of impersonal objects, whether they be atoms or neurons, cannot give rise to a personality and its core - "I".

How can this most complex “I”, feeling, capable of experiencing, love, be simply the sum of specific cells of the body together with the ongoing biochemical and bioelectric processes? How can these processes form "I" ???

Provided that nerve cells made up our "I", then we would lose part of our "I" every day. With each dead cell, with each neuron, the "I" would become smaller and smaller. With the restoration of cells, it would increase in size.

Scientific research carried out in different countries of the world proves that nerve cells, like all other cells of the human body, are capable of regeneration (restoration). This is what the most serious international biological journal Nature writes: “Employees of the Californian Institute for Biological Research. Salk found that fully functional young cells are born in the brains of adult mammals that function on par with pre-existing neurons. Professor Frederick Gage and his colleagues also concluded that brain tissue regenerates the fastest in physically active animals. "

This is confirmed by a publication in another biological journal - Science: “Over the past two years, researchers have established that nerve and brain cells are renewed, like the rest in the human body. The body is able to repair the disorders related to the nervous tract itself, ”says scientist Helen M. Blon.

Thus, even with a complete change of all (including nerve) cells of the body, the “I” of a person remains the same, therefore, it does not belong to a constantly changing material body.

For some reason, in our time, it is so difficult to prove what was obvious and understandable to the ancients. The Roman Neo-Platonist philosopher Plotinus, who still lived in the 3rd century, wrote: “It is absurd to assume that since none of the parts has life, life can be created by their aggregate, .. besides, it is absolutely impossible that life produces a heap of parts the mind gave rise to that which is devoid of mind. If someone objects that this is not so, but in fact the soul is formed by atoms that come together, that is, indivisible bodies into parts, then he will be refuted by the fact that the atoms themselves only lie next to one another, not forming a living whole, for unity and joint feeling cannot come from bodies that are insensitive and incapable of uniting; but the soul feels itself "

“I” is the unchanging core of the personality, which includes many variables, but is not itself variable.

The skeptic might come up with one last desperate argument: "Could I be the brain?"

Is Consciousness a product of brain activity? What does science say?

Many people have heard the tale about the fact that our Consciousness is the activity of the brain. An unusually widespread idea is that the brain is, in fact, a person with his “I”. Most people think that it is the brain that perceives information from the outside world, processes it and decides how to act in each specific case, think that it is the brain that makes us alive, gives us personality. And the body is nothing more than a spacesuit that ensures the activity of the central nervous system.

But this tale has nothing to do with science. The brain is now deeply studied. The chemical composition, parts of the brain, the connections of these parts with human functions have been well studied for a long time. The brain organization of perception, attention, memory, speech has been studied. The functional blocks of the brain have been studied. A huge number of clinics and research centers have been studying the human brain for more than a hundred years, for which costly and efficient equipment has been developed. But, having opened any textbook, monographs, scientific journals on neurophysiology or neuropsychology, you will not come across scientific data on the connection between the brain and Consciousness.

For people far from this area of \u200b\u200bknowledge, this seems surprising. In fact, there is nothing surprising in this. It's just that no one has ever discovered the connection between the brain and the very center of our personality, our "I". Of course, material scientists have always wanted this. Thousands of studies have been carried out, millions of experiments, billions of dollars spent. The efforts of scientists were not in vain. The parts of the brain were discovered and studied, their connection with physiological processes was established, much was done to understand many neurophysiological processes and phenomena, but the most important thing was not done. Could not find in the brain the place that is our "I". It was not even possible, despite the extremely active work in this direction, to make a serious assumption about how the brain can be connected with our Consciousness.

Where did the assumption that Consciousness is in the brain come from? One of the first to put forward such an assumption in the mid-19th century was the greatest electrophysiologist Dubois-Reymond (1818-1896). In his outlook, Dubois-Reymond was one of the brightest representatives of the mechanistic trend. In one of his letters to his friend, he wrote that “exclusively physical and chemical laws operate in the organism; if not everything can be explained with their help, then it is necessary, using physical and mathematical methods, either to find a way of their action, or to accept that there are new forces of matter, equal in value to physicochemical forces. "

But another outstanding physiologist Karl Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig (Ludwig, 1816-1895), who in 1869-1895 headed the new Physiological Institute in Leipzig, which became the world's largest center in the field of experimental physiology, did not agree with him, who lived at the same time as Reimon. The founder of the scientific school, Ludwig wrote that none of the existing theories of nervous activity, including Dubois-Reymond's electrical theory of nerve currents, can say anything about how acts of sensation become possible due to the activity of nerves. Note that here we are not even talking about the most complex acts of consciousness, but about much simpler sensations. If there is no consciousness, then we cannot feel and sense anything.

Another major physiologist of the 19th century, the outstanding English neurophysiologist Sir Charles Scott Sherrington, Nobel laureate, said that if it is not clear how the psyche arises from the activity of the brain, then, naturally, it is just as little understood how it can exert any influence. on the behavior of a living being, which is controlled by the nervous system.

As a result, Dubois-Reymond himself came to the following conclusion: “As we are aware - we do not know and will never know. And no matter how we delve into the jungle of intracerebral neurodynamics, we will not throw a bridge to the kingdom of consciousness. " Raymond came to a conclusion, disappointing for determinism, that it is impossible to explain Consciousness by material reasons. He admitted that "here the human mind comes across a 'world riddle' that it can never solve."

A professor at Moscow University, a philosopher in 1914 formulated the law of "the absence of objective signs of animation." The meaning of this law is that the role of the psyche in the system of material processes of regulation of behavior is absolutely elusive and there is no conceivable bridge between the activity of the brain and the field of mental or mental phenomena, including Consciousness.

The largest experts in neurophysiology, Nobel Prize winners David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel recognized that in order to be able to assert the connection between the brain and Consciousness, it is necessary to understand that it reads and decodes information that comes from the senses. Scientists have acknowledged that this cannot be done.

The great scientist, professor of Moscow State University Nikolai Kobozev showed in his monograph that neither cells, nor molecules, nor even atoms can be responsible for the processes of thinking and memory.

There is evidence of the absence of a connection between Consciousness and the work of the brain, understandable even to people who are far from science. Here it is.

Suppose that "I" (Consciousness) is the result of the work of the brain. As neurophysiologists know exactly, a person can even live with one hemisphere of the brain. Moreover, he has Consciousness. A person who lives only with the right hemisphere of the brain certainly has "I" (Consciousness). Accordingly, we can conclude that the "I" is not in the left, absent, hemisphere. A person with a single functioning left hemisphere also has an “I”, therefore “I” is not in the right hemisphere, which the given person does not have. Consciousness remains regardless of which hemisphere is removed. This means that a person does not have a brain region responsible for Consciousness, neither in the left nor in the right hemisphere of the brain. We have to conclude that the presence of consciousness in a person is not associated with certain areas of the brain.

Maybe Consciousness is divisible and with the loss of a part of the brain, it does not die, but only gets damaged? Scientific facts do not confirm this assumption either.

Professor, MD Voino-Yasenetsky describes: “In a young wounded man, I opened a huge abscess (about 50 cubic cm, pus), which undoubtedly destroyed the entire left frontal lobe, and I did not observe any mental defects after this operation. I can say the same about another patient who was operated on for a huge cyst of the meninges. With a wide opening of the skull, I was surprised to see that almost all of the right half of it was empty, and the entire left hemisphere of the brain was compressed, almost impossible to distinguish it.

In 1940, Dr. Augustin Iturrica made a sensational statement at the Anthropological Society in Sucre, Bolivia. He and Dr. Ortiz took a long time to study the medical history of a 14-year-old boy, a patient at Dr. Ortiz's clinic. The teenager was there with a diagnosis of a brain tumor. The young man retained Consciousness until his death, complaining only of a headache. When, after his death, an autopsy was performed, the doctors were amazed: the entire brain mass was completely separated from the inner cavity of the cranium. A large abscess invaded the cerebellum and part of the brain. It remained completely incomprehensible how the sick boy's thinking was preserved.

The fact that consciousness exists independently of the brain is also supported by recent studies by Dutch physiologists under the direction of Pim van Lommel. The results of a large-scale experiment were published in the authoritative biological journal "The Lancet". “Consciousness exists even after the brain has ceased to function. In other words, Consciousness "lives" by itself, absolutely independently. As for the brain, it is not thinking matter at all, but an organ, like any other, that performs strictly defined functions. It may well be that thinking matter, even in principle, does not exist, said the head of the study, the famous scientist Pim van Lommel. "

Another argument that is understandable for non-specialists is given by Professor V.F. Voino-Yasenetsky: "In the wars of ants that do not have a brain, deliberation is clearly revealed, and therefore rationality, which is no different from human." This is a truly amazing fact. Ants solve rather difficult problems of survival, building housing, providing themselves with food, i.e. have some intelligence, but have no brain at all. Makes you wonder, doesn't it?

Neurophysiology does not stand still, but is one of the most dynamically developing sciences. Methods and scope of research speaks about the success of studying the brain. The functions, parts of the brain are being studied, its composition is being clarified in more and more detail. Despite the titanic work on the study of the brain, world science today is just as far from understanding what creativity, thinking, memory are and what is their connection with the brain itself.

So, science has definitely established that Consciousness is not a product of brain activity.

What is the nature of Consciousness?

Having come to the understanding that there is no Consciousness inside the body, science makes natural conclusions about the immaterial nature of consciousness.

Academician P.K. Anokhin: “None of the 'mental' operations that we attribute to 'reason' have so far been directly connected with any part of the brain. If, in principle, we cannot understand how the mental arises as a result of the activity of the brain, then is it not more logical to think that the psyche is not in its essence a function of the brain, but represents the manifestation of some other - non-material spiritual forces? "

At the end of the 20th century, the creator of quantum mechanics, Nobel Prize laureate E. Schrödinger wrote that the nature of the connection of some physical processes with subjective events (to which Consciousness belongs) lies “aside from science and beyond human understanding”.

The largest modern neurophysiologist, Nobel Prize winner in medicine J. Eccles developed the idea that it is impossible to find out the origin of mental phenomena on the basis of the analysis of brain activity, and this fact can be easily interpreted in the sense that the psyche is not a function of the brain at all. According to Eccles, neither physiology nor the theory of evolution can shed light on the origin and nature of consciousness, which is absolutely alien to all material processes in the universe. The spiritual world of a person and the world of physical realities, including the activity of the brain, are completely independent independent worlds that only interact and, to some extent, affect each other. He is echoed by such prominent specialists as Carl Lashley (American scientist, director of the Primate Biology Laboratory in Orange Park (Florida), who studied the mechanisms of the brain) and Harvard University doctor Edward Tolman.

With his colleague, the founder of modern neurosurgery, Wilder Penfield, who has performed over 10,000 brain operations, Eccles wrote the book The Mystery of Man. In it, the authors explicitly state that "there is no doubt that a person is controlled by SOMETHING outside of his body." “I can experimentally confirm,” Eccles writes, “that the workings of consciousness cannot be explained by the functioning of the brain. Consciousness exists independently of it from the outside. "

Eccles is deeply convinced that consciousness cannot be the subject of scientific research. In his opinion, the emergence of consciousness, as well as the emergence of life, is the highest religious secret. In his report, the Nobel laureate relied on the conclusions of the book "Personality and the Brain", written jointly with the American philosopher and sociologist Karl Popper.

Wilder Penfield, as a result of many years of studying the activity of the brain, also came to the conclusion that "the energy of the mind is different from the energy of the brain's neural impulses."

Academician of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the Russian Federation, Director of the Scientific Research Institute of the Brain (RAMS of the Russian Federation), a neurophysiologist with a worldwide reputation, Doctor of Medical Sciences. Natalya Petrovna Bekhtereva: “The hypothesis that the human brain only perceives thoughts from somewhere outside, I first heard from the lips of the Nobel laureate, Professor John Eccles. Of course, then it seemed absurd to me. But then research carried out in our St. Petersburg Research Institute of the Brain confirmed that we cannot explain the mechanics of the creative process. The brain can generate only the simplest thoughts, such as how to turn the pages of a book being read or stir up sugar in a glass. And the creative process is a manifestation of a completely new quality. As a believer, I admit the participation of the Almighty in managing the thought process. "

Science comes to the conclusion that the brain is not the source of thought and consciousness, but at the most - their relay.

Professor S. Grof says about it this way: “Imagine that your TV set is broken and you have called a TV technician who, having twisted different knobs, tuned it up. It doesn't occur to you that all these stations are in this box. "

Already in 1956, the outstanding outstanding scientist-surgeon, Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor V.F. Voino-Yasenetsky believed that our brain is not only not connected with Consciousness, but that it is not even capable of thinking independently, since the mental process is outside of it. In his book, Valentin Feliksovich argues that "the brain is not an organ of thought, feeling", and that "Spirit goes beyond the brain, determining its activity, and our whole being, when the brain works as a transmitter, receiving signals and transmitting them to the organs of the body." ...

The same conclusions were reached by British researchers Peter Fenwick from the London Institute of Psychiatry and Sam Parnia from Southampton Central Hospital. They examined patients who came back to life after cardiac arrest, and found that some of them accurately recounted the content of conversations that the medical staff had while they were in a state of clinical death. Others gave an accurate description of the events that occurred during this time period. Sam Parnia argues that the brain, like any other organ in the human body, is made up of cells and is unable to think. However, it can function as a thought-detecting device, i.e. as an antenna with which it becomes possible to receive a signal from the outside. Scientists suggested that during clinical death, Consciousness acting independently of the brain uses it as a screen. Like a television receiver, which first receives the waves entering it, and then converts them into sound and image.

If we turn off the radio, this does not mean that the radio station stops broadcasting. That is, after the death of the physical body, Consciousness continues to live.

The fact of the continuation of the life of Consciousness after the death of the body is confirmed by the academician of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, director of the Research Institute of the Human Brain, a world-renowned neurophysiologist N.P. Bekhterev in his book "The Magic of the Brain and the Labyrinths of Life." In addition to discussing purely scientific issues, in this book the author also gives his personal experience of encountering posthumous phenomena.

Natalya Bekhtereva, talking about her meeting with the Bulgarian clairvoyant Vanga Dimitrova, quite definitely speaks about this in one of her interviews: “Vanga's example absolutely convinced me that there is a phenomenon of contact with the dead”, and another quote from her book: “ I can't help but believe what I have heard and seen myself. A scientist has no right to reject facts (if he is a scientist!) Just because they do not fit into a dogma, a worldview. "

The first consistent description of posthumous life based on scientific observation was given by the Swedish scientist and naturalist Emmanuel Swedenborg. Then this problem was seriously studied by the famous psychiatrist Elizabeth Kubler Ross, the equally famous psychiatrist Raymond Moody, conscientious scientists academicians Oliver Lodge, William Crookes, Alfred Wallace, Alexander Butlerov, Professor Friedrich Myers, American pediatrician Melvin Morse. Among the serious and systematic researchers of the issue of dying, one should mention the professor of medicine at Emory University and the staff doctor at the Veterans' Hospital in Atlanta, Dr. Michael Sabom, the systematic study of the psychiatrist Kenneth Ring is also very valuable, the doctor of medicine, intensive care physician Moritz Roolings was studying this problem , our contemporary, thanatopsychologist A.A. Nalchajyan. The famous Soviet scientist, a prominent specialist in the field of thermodynamic processes, academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Belarus Albert Veinik worked a lot on understanding this problem from the point of view of physics. A significant contribution to the study of the near-death experience was made by the world famous American psychologist of Czech origin, the founder of the transpersonal school of psychology, Dr. Stanislav Grof.

The variety of facts accumulated by science indisputably proves that after physical death, each of those living today inherits a different reality, preserving his Consciousness.

Despite the limitations of our ability to cognize this reality with the help of material means, today there are a number of its characteristics obtained through experiments and observations of scientists studying this problem.

These characteristics were listed by A.V. Mikheev, a researcher of the St. Petersburg State Electrotechnical University in his report at the international symposium "Life after death: from faith to knowledge" which was held on April 8-9, 2005 in St. Petersburg:

"1. There is a so-called "subtle body", which is the bearer of self-awareness, memory, emotions and "inner life" of a person. This body exists ... after physical death, being its "parallel component" for the duration of the existence of the physical body, providing the above processes. The physical body is only a mediator for their manifestation on the physical (earthly) level.

2. The life of an individual does not end with current earthly death. Survival after death is a natural law for humans.

3. The next reality is divided into a large number of levels, differing in the frequency characteristics of their components.

4. The place of destination of a person during the posthumous transition is determined by his adjustment to a certain level, which is the sum total of his thoughts, feelings and actions during his life on Earth. Just as the spectrum of electromagnetic radiation emitted by a chemical depends on its composition, in the same way a person's posthumous destination is determined by the “composite characteristic” of his inner life.

5. The concepts of "Heaven and Hell" reflect two polarities, possible posthumous states.

6. In addition to such polar states, there are a number of intermediate ones. The choice of an adequate state is automatically determined by the mental and emotional "pattern" formed by a person during his earthly life. That is why negative emotions, violence, desire for destruction and fanaticism, whatever they may be externally justified, in this respect are extremely destructive for the future fate of a person. This is a solid foundation for personal responsibility and ethical adherence. "

And again about suicide

The majority of suicides believe that their Consciousness will cease to exist after death, that it will be peace, a rest from life. We got acquainted with the conclusion of world science about what Consciousness is and about the absence of a connection between it and the brain, as well as the fact that after the death of the body, a person will begin another, post-death life. Moreover, Consciousness retains its qualities, memory, and its post-death life is a natural continuation of earthly life.

This means that if here, in earthly life, Consciousness was struck by some kind of pain, illness, grief, liberation from the body will not be liberation from this illness. In the afterlife life, the fate of a sick consciousness is even more sad than in earthly life, because in earthly life we \u200b\u200bcan change everything or almost everything - with the participation of our will, the help of other people, new knowledge, a change in life situation, in another world such opportunities are absent, and therefore the state of Consciousness is more stable.

That is, suicide is the preservation of a painful, unbearable state of one's Consciousness for an indefinite period. It is quite possible - forever. And the lack of hope for improving one's condition greatly increases the painfulness of any torment.

If we really want rest and pleasant peaceful rest, then our Consciousness should reach such a state even in earthly life, then after natural death it will preserve it.

After reading the material, the author would like you to independently try to find the truth, double-check the data presented in this article, read the relevant literature from the field of medicine, psychology and neurophysiology. I hope that having learned more about this area, you will abandon the attempt at suicide or commit it only if you are sure that with the help of it you can really get rid of Consciousness.

Even Plato argued that the world is a single whole - a holon. Such a whole is not reduced to the sum of its parts, but generates them by itself. A phenomenon can also be a holon - an organic whole that develops according to the corresponding laws (art, for example). The likelihood of the coincidence of all the conditions leading to the existence of the universe as we know it is so small that it cannot be taken into account in a rigorous theory.

It is no accident that the inquisitive thought of scientists has always looked for evidence of the existence of a given evolution program. And not without success. An example of this is the attempts of the Russian paleobotanist S.V. Meyen to derive a table of forms of living things, similar to the periodic table.

Today, in the light of recent discoveries, the existence of the world as a universal consciousness that manifests itself in various ways is a scientific reality. Hence the inevitability of the synthesis of science, philosophy and religion.

Now about the person. He is not ready now for new technologies and energies. A huge amount of spiritual moonshine is splashed on people. Everyone understands the danger posed to health by material moonshine. But spiritual moonshine has an immeasurably great destructive power. It is necessary - and urgently - a law on the psycho-protection of the population. This is a national security issue. We are now in a rapid flow of evolution, which we are only partially aware of. There is an urgent need to change to keep up with this flow. If we do not change, the new energies coming to the Earth will burn us.

The world is a colossal hologram. Each point of it has the completeness of information about the world as a whole. The basis of the world is consciousness, which is carried by spin-torsion fields. Words and thoughts are torsion bars that create the phenomena of the world. A thought is born - and the whole world immediately knows about it. A person is projected onto the Universe in proportions that cannot be compared with the size of his physical body. Realizing this, a monstrous responsibility falls upon a person. The field of consciousness generates everything, and our consciousness is a part of it.

Question: Have you witnessed a miracle?

Answer: And I'm not alone. Our world is a miracle. The constant speed of light in all frames of reference is a miracle. All speeds are relative, and this - why is it always constant - is a miracle.

Question: Aren't you afraid that new sects will arise on the basis of your discoveries?

Answer: People can make a toy, and often a very dangerous one, from any great discovery. They open fire and turn it into a toy. They open the atom and turn it into a toy. Today's meeting is for this purpose, so that the opening of the torsion fields does not become another toy. It's all about us and how we will change, receiving this knowledge.

Question: What do you think about intuition?

Answer: Intuition is given to us so that we can experience the existence of God.

A. Moskovsky,
presenter n. international employee
institute of Theoretical and Applied Physics, Moscow

Our understanding of the objectivity and primacy of the material (external) world is illusory, in a certain sense even meaningless due to the nature of consciousness itself. Or in other words - ALL IS CONSCIOUSNESS! From which it follows that matter, the external world is also our consciousness. And if so, then they, like everything else, are subjective, not objective.
everything is consciousness
Can we, in this case, know and reliably talk about the existence of objective reality, matter and the external world as something outside our consciousness and independent of consciousness? Definitely not! We simply cannot know! There is still no answer to this question! Therefore, all our talk about the primacy of matter or consciousness, as well as about the objective and subjective reality of the external world, is nothing more than a figment of our imagination, fantasy. For everything is consciousness! Everything is subjective! Or, more precisely, we simply do not know if there is something other than our consciousness, beyond our consciousness and objectively (independently) of our consciousness. This is an indisputable fact! We think to ourselves that it is so, we believe in it, we want it. But thinking, faith and will are also consciousness, forms of its manifestation!
This is the main paradox of philosophy and one of the most important principles of spiritual teaching. Because thanks to him, consciousness itself should be recognized as an important tool for cognizing the world, reality.
Let me explain briefly what all this means.
We receive all information about the world around us with the help of 5 main senses that provide us with sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell. Therefore, the world around us is known to us only to the extent that our eyes saw it, our ears heard it, our skin, tongue and nose felt. The reality of color and shape is just what our eyes and vision have seen. The reality of sounds is what is perceived by our ears, hearing. The reality of taste is what we perceived with our tongue, taste. The reality of smell is what we smell with our nose, our sense of smell. The reality of the hardness or softness of objects, or their other properties, is what our skin felt (touch) when in contact with them. We cognize and accept the world as these 5 senses perceive it.
How does this happen? Like everything in the body, the sense organs are made up of cells, including special perceiving and nerve cells (neurons). In contact with the outside world, the perceiving cells react to external influences, during which biochemical and physical changes occur in them. Further, interaction with nerve cells is carried out. Thanks to this, a nerve impulse arises, which is transmitted through the nerve bundles (processes) to the brain. There he reaches the nerve cells responsible for receiving and converting (decoding) nerve impulses. As a result, a feeling, or an image, or a thought is born in the brain. And then the brain decides what to do with it next. Ultimately, we either react (act) in some way or we don't. In any case, after receiving information, something inside us changes, even with visible external inaction.
This is how the eastern sage Osho says about it.
"Indeed, scientifically, when you walk through the forest and hear the sound of a waterfall, there is no sense, but there is sound. You will be surprised to learn the scientific interpretation: this sound is there only because you are there; without your there is no sound either. So it will be amazing for you: if there is no one around the waterfall, then there is no sound, because sound requires ears. In the same way, there is light - at the moment when we all left, there is no light, therefore that light requires eyes. Without eyes, there is no light. When you leave your room, do you think things remain the same? Blue remains blue and red remains red? Forget all this nonsense. The moment you leave the room, all the colors disappear ... It's a very magical world - you close the room and all the paints are gone, because paints need eyes. Without eyes, color cannot exist. Look through the keyhole ... they return. This miracle happens every day. in fact, even if you sit in your room and close eyes, all colors disappear. Do not try to peep out of the corner of your eye if they are gone or are still there - they will return immediately! "
(Excerpt from the book by Osho Bhagwan Shri Rajneesh "Master. Reflections on the transformation of an intellectual into an enlightened one")
Thus, everything that we see, hear, touch and somehow feel, all images and all events in our life that we observe and experience, are actually seen, felt and experienced inside our brain. All this is limited by the space of the brain and is located in it. Even the idea of \u200b\u200bwhat the brain is and how it happens in it does not go beyond the images and thoughts formed inside the brain. Thus, everything that we perceive as the external world and objective reality is in fact nothing more than electro-biochemical signals and processes in the sense organs, the nervous system, and ultimately the neurons of the brain, which are transformed into feelings, images and thoughts. Even our understanding of these processes is an electro-biochemical process in neurons, as a result of which perception, images and thoughts are formed. What are image and thought? Science today has no answer to this question.
It is important to note that throughout life, the brain does not have direct contact with the original matter and the outside world. This contact is made through specific structures called the senses. If you cut off the flow of signals to the brain, for example, cut the nerve bundles from the sensory organs, then it will be helpless in displaying external reality. He simply will not have information and the outside world.
It is very important to understand that the brain receives an electrical version (copy) of external reality, which is decoded in the brain and on the basis of which images and thoughts arise. There is no truly material correspondence to this. And here the most interesting question arises: who and on what grounds said that the electric copy is analogous to the external world and real matter, objectively existing outside of us? And does the external world exist outside of us at all? We cannot answer these questions. Because the only reality that is given to us in sensation is the world of our own perceptions, which exists only in our consciousness. Everything is consciousness!
The famous philosopher George Barkley wrote on this subject: “We believe in the existence of objects only because we see and feel them as our brain reflects them. However, our perception is only thoughts existing in our brain. If all these are just thoughts in ours consciousness, then to imagine the universe and matter as realities existing outside of our consciousness, we fall into a big mistake. " (Quote from the book by Georg Politzor "Fundamental Principles of Philosophy." 1976) And now the paradox. The sensations we receive may come from some artificial source. For example, if the nerve conductive bundles are somehow connected to a computer and, based on its program, enter certain information, thus forming a kind of virtual, imaginary world. The brain will not be able to realize this, will take it for a real, external, objective world and will "live" in it, and in fact in a virtual, illusory reality. Hallucinations, dreams, meditation are analogous to this. Deeply immersing and dwelling in them, a person is totally captured by their reality and experiences it as if in reality, unable to distinguish where the reality is and where the illusion is. Only after leaving these states and facing the reality of wakefulness (contemplation of the external material world), one comes to the realization that it was just a dream or something "virtually" different. But who and on what grounds said that living in the external material world and experiencing it in reality, in a state of wakefulness, is an objective reality, and not another kind of subjective illusion? For example, in comparison with some other reality? There is no sure answer here. At least until the moment when there is awakening from the state of wakefulness and confronting the evidence of the reality of another, "higher" plane

INTRODUCTION

This book is a short introduction to philosophy for people completely unfamiliar with the subject. Usually people only study philosophy in college, and I assume that most of my readers will be college or older. But this has nothing to do with the essence of philosophy itself, and I would be very happy if my book aroused the interest of smart high school students who have a penchant for abstract thinking and theoretical arguments - if anyone of them reads it.

Our analytical skills often reach a high level of development even before we have time to master a vast knowledge of the world around us. And by the age of fourteen, many adolescents begin to independently reflect on purely philosophical problems: what really exists? can we know anything? is there really good and evil? does life have any meaning? does death mean the end of everything? These problems have been written about for thousands of years, but the source material for philosophizing is contained directly in the world itself and our attitude to it, and not at all in the works of thinkers of the past. That is why these problems arise over and over again in the minds of people who have never read anything about them.

This book introduces you directly to nine philosophical problems, each of which can be understood on its own, without reference to the history of thought. I am not going to discuss the great philosophical books of the past or the cultural context in which they were created. The semantic center of philosophy is made up of certain questions in which the reflective human consciousness sees a riddle and which confuse it. And to think about them directly is the best way to start learning philosophy. By taking this path, you can better understand and appreciate the efforts of those who have already tried to solve these same problems.

Philosophy is not like natural science or mathematics. Unlike the first, it cannot rely on observation and experiment, but only on thinking. Unlike the second, it has no formal methods of proof. Philosophical research is precisely the posing of questions and their comprehension, the formulation of ideas and the search for arguments to refute them, as well as the study of how our concepts and concepts actually work.

The main concern of philosophy is to critically examine and comprehend the most ordinary ideas that each of us, without hesitation, uses from day to day. The historian asks what happened at such and such a moment in the past, and the philosopher asks: "What is time?" The mathematician examines the relationship between numbers, and the philosopher asks: "What is a number?" The physicist is busy with the structure of the atom and the explanation of gravity, and the philosopher asks: "How do we know that anything exists outside of our consciousness?" A psychologist studies the process of language acquisition in children, and a philosopher asks: "What gives meaning to words?" Someone is worried about the question: is it permissible to slip into the cinema without a ticket? The philosopher asks: "What makes our actions right or wrong?"

We live, for the most part, without thinking about the concepts of time, number, knowledge, language, good and evil, considering all this to be something obvious, for granted. But philosophy examines these subjects in and of themselves, as such. Its goal is to advance at least a little in our understanding of the world and ourselves. Of course, it's not that easy. The more fundamental the concepts you are trying to comprehend, the less research tools you have at your disposal. Not much you may consider obvious or take on faith. So, philosophy is something very, very strange from the point of view of common sense, especially since only very few of its results remain uncontested for any length of time.

Since I am convinced that philosophy is best studied by reflecting on specific, characteristic questions, I will not expand on its general nature. We will look at the following nine philosophical issues:

Knowledge of the world that exists outside of our consciousness.

Knowledge about the consciousness of other people.

The relationship between mind and brain.

How is language possible?

Do we have free will?

The foundation of morality.

What inequality is unfair?

The essence of death.

Meaning of life.

This is just a select circle of problems - in addition to them, there are a great many others.

Everything I have said in this book reflects my personal view of these problems and does not necessarily coincide with the opinion of most philosophers. Yes, probably, the majority of philosophers and generally do not agree on these issues: philosophers are always arguing, and there are more than two opinions on every philosophical problem. My personal opinion is this: for the most part, these problems have not yet been resolved, and some of them may never be resolved. But I do not set myself the goal of giving answers here - even those that I myself think are correct. My task is to help you form the most general, preliminary understanding of these problems so that you can reflect on them yourself. Before plunging into the study of numerous philosophical teachings, it is very useful to feel the mysteriousness of the questions that they are trying to answer, to puzzle yourself over them. And the best way to do this is to look at some of the possible solutions and try to understand where they are unsatisfactory. I will try to keep the issues discussed open, but even if I express my own point of view, there is no need for you to trust it unless you find it convincing.

There are many wonderful books in the genre of introduction to philosophy, containing collections of extracts from the works of both the great thinkers of the past and modern philosophers. This little book cannot replace them, but still I hope that it gives a first glimpse of philosophy, doing it with the utmost clarity and simplicity. If, after reading it, you decide to tackle the next book on philosophy, you will see for yourself how much more can be said about these problems in addition to what I have just said.

WHERE DO WE KNOW ANYTHING AT ALL?

If you think about this question, it turns out that the content of your consciousness is the only thing that you can be sure of.

Whatever you are convinced of - the existence of the sun, moon, stars; the homes and areas in which you live; history, science, other people, finally, your own body - all this is based on your experiences and thoughts, feelings and sensory perceptions. That's all you deal with directly, whether you look at the book you are holding in your hands, whether you feel the floor under your feet, whether you remember that George Washington was the first president of the United States, or that water is H20. Everything else is farther from you than inner experiences and thoughts, and is given to you only through them.

Usually you don't doubt the existence of the floor under your feet, the tree outside the window, or your own teeth. In fact, most of the time you don’t think at all about the states of consciousness that convince you of the existence of these things: it seems to you that things are given to you directly. But how do you know that they really exist?

If you insist that the external physical world must exist, since it would be impossible to see buildings, people around, stars in the sky, if there were no things outside that reflect and send light to the retina of your eyes, thereby conditioning your visual perception, then the answer, obviously, will be: how do you know all this? Your statement is just another statement about the existence of the external world and your attitude towards it, based on the evidence of your feelings. But you can rely on this specific evidence of the causes of visual perceptions only if at all you can already rely on the content of your consciousness, which testifies to you about the existence of the external world. And this is exactly what needs to be proved. If you begin to prove the reliability of some of your perceptions by appealing to your other perceptions, you will find yourself in a vicious logical circle.

The world would look somehow different to you if in fact it existed only in your consciousness, if everything that you take for external reality would only be an endless dream or hallucination from which you can never wake up ? If this were the case, then, of course, you would not be able to wake up as you wake up from a dream, because that would mean that there is no "real" world in which to wake up. So, such a situation, strictly speaking, would be different from normal sleep and natural hallucinations. We usually imagine a dream as something that happens in the mind of a person who is actually lying in a real bed in a real house, even if in a dream he is headlong running away from a killer lawnmower through the streets of Kansas City. We also assume that normal sleep depends on the processes taking place in the sleeping person's brain.

But can't it turn out that all your perceptions are one endless dream, outside of which there is no real world? How do you know that this is not the case? If all your experience is a dream, outside of which there is nothing, then any arguments with the help of which you are trying to prove to yourself that the outside world exists will be just part of this dream. If you bang your fist on the table or pinch yourself, you will hear the sound of the punch or feel the pain of the pinch, but this will all be just another phenomenon in your mind - like everything else. This makes no sense: if you want to find out if what is inside your consciousness leads to something outside it, then you cannot start from how things are presented from inside your consciousness.

But what else can you start from? Everything that you know about anything is given to you only through your consciousness - be it in forms of perception, or information gleaned from books or from other people, or evidence of memory; and this is completely consistent with the thesis that in general everything of what you are aware of exists exclusively within your consciousness.

It is even possible that you do not have a body or a brain - after all, all your ideas about them arose only thanks to the evidence of your feelings. You have never seen your brain, you are simply convinced that everyone has it; but even if you saw it (or thought you saw it), it would be just another visual perception. It may happen that you, as a subject of perception, are the only thing in the world that exists, and there is no physical world at all - no stars, no globe, no other people. Maybe there isn't even any space.

The most radical conclusion that can be drawn from what has been said is this: your consciousness is the only thing that exists. This view is called solipsism. He stands alone and has very few supporters. As you can guess from this remark, I myself am not one of them. If I were a solipsist, I probably would not write this book - after all, I would not believe that there are readers. On the other hand, if I were a solipsist, I would probably still start writing it in order to make my inner life more diverse and interesting: it would be enriched with impressions of how the book would look when it came out of print, how it would be read and how they will speak about it, etc. I could even imagine my impression of receiving - if I'm lucky - also the royalties.

Perhaps you are the solipsist: in that case, you will see this book as a product of your own consciousness, coming into existence in the bosom of your experience as you read it. Of course, nothing that I can say about myself will prove to you that I actually exist or that this book exists as a physical object.

On the other hand, the conclusion that there is nothing and no one in the world but you is a stronger conclusion than the available evidence of consciousness allows. Based on the content of your consciousness, you cannot know that the external world does not exist. Probably, it would be more correct to draw a more modest conclusion: you do not know anything that would go beyond the limits of your impressions and experiences. The outside world may or may not exist; and if it does exist, then it may be completely different, and perhaps it is exactly as it appears to us - you have no way of saying anything definite on this score. This point of view on the existence of the outside world is called skepticism.

A stronger version of skepticism is also possible. Arguments similar to the above show that you know nothing even about your own existence in the past and about your past experience, since everything you are dealing with is the present content of your consciousness, including the impressions of memory. If you cannot be sure that the world outside your consciousness exists now, then how can you be sure that you yourself existed before, up to the present moment? How do you know that you did not begin to exist just a few minutes ago, and already along with all your memories? The only guarantee that you still could not have been born a couple of minutes ago are our ideas about how people are born and how their memories are formed; these views, in turn, are based on ideas about what happened in the past. But to refer to these ideas as proof of their existence in the past means to again find ourselves in a closed logical circle. You would have already proceeded from the reality of the past when proving this reality.

We seem to be at an impasse: you cannot be sure of anything, except for the content of your consciousness at the moment. And apparently, any steps that you try to take to get out of this difficulty will yield nothing: any your argument will be based on a premise, the validity of which you will try to prove, namely that there is a real world outside your consciousness.

Suppose, for example, that you say that the external world must exist, because it is incredible and inconceivable that there should not be something behind all our perceptions that admits at least some explanation in terms of external causes. In response to this, the skeptic can make two points. First, even if there are such reasons, how can you tell from the content of your experience what they are? After all, you have never directly observed any of them. Second, what is your belief that there must be some explanation for everything? Indeed, your natural, non-philosophical view of the world is based on the fact that the processes taking place in consciousness are caused - at least in part - by factors external to them. But you cannot accept this idea as true if you intend to get to the bottom of it and understand: how do you know anything at all about the world outside your consciousness. And the described principle cannot be proven simply by considering the inner content of your consciousness. This principle may seem very plausible to you, but what reason do you have for believing that it applies to the world?

Science will also not help us cope with this problem, no matter how it may seem that it is capable of it. Usually, scientific thinking is based on universal principles of explanation, moving from a picture of the state of affairs in the world visible at first glance to various concepts that describe the world as it really is. We try to explain phenomena in the language of a theory that describes the reality hidden behind them - a reality that we cannot observe directly. This is how physics and chemistry come to the conclusion that everything around is made up of tiny and invisible atoms. Can we argue that the universal belief in the existence of the external world has the same scientific background and justification as the belief in the existence of atoms?

The skeptic will answer that scientific thinking raises the same skeptical problem that we have already met: science is just as vulnerable to it as perception. How do we know that the world beyond our consciousness corresponds to our ideas about the correct theoretical explanation of the observed phenomena? If we cannot substantiate the reliability of our sensory perceptions in relation to the external world, then we also have no reason to think that we can rely on scientific theories.

But this problem can be approached in a completely different way. Some argue that such radical skepticism is nonsense, since the very idea of \u200b\u200bexternal reality is meaningless, with which no one can ever deal. From sleep, for example, you can wake up and find that you have just been asleep. A hallucination is something about which other people (and you yourself after some time) can make sure that the object in sight is in fact simply not there. Perceptions and appearances that do not correspond to reality will certainly come into conflict with other perceptions that do correspond to it, otherwise it makes no sense to talk about the discrepancy between appearance and reality.

From this point of view, a dream from which you can never wake up is not a dream at all: it will already be reality, the real world in which you live. Our view of things that exist is simply a view of what is observable. (This view is sometimes called verificationism.) Sometimes our observations are erroneous, but this only means that they can be corrected and refined with the help of other observations, as happens when you wake up or, for example, find that you have mistaken a shadow on grass. But if a correct idea of \u200b\u200bthings (for you or for someone else) is generally impossible, then the assertion that your impressions of the world are not true does not make sense.

If what we have said is true, then it turns out that the skeptic is in a mess. He deceives himself if he thinks he can imagine that his own consciousness is the only thing that exists at all. This is precisely self-deception, since the thesis that the physical world does not really exist cannot be true if someone cannot be convinced with their own eyes that it does not exist. And the skeptic is just trying to imagine that there is no one who could be convinced of this and in anything else, except, of course, the skeptic himself; and all that he can be a witness-observer is the content of his own consciousness. So solipsism is nonsense. He tries to "subtract" the external world from the totality of my impressions, but he fails, because in the absence of the external world they cease to be just impressions, but become perceptions of reality itself.

Does this argument against solipsism and skepticism have any strength? Not if we do not define reality as something accessible to our observation. But are we really incapable of understanding what the real world is and the facts of reality that no one can observe - neither man, nor any other creatures?

The skeptic will say: if the external world exists, the objects filling it must be observed precisely because they exist, but not vice versa: to exist is not the same as to be observed. And although we derive the idea of \u200b\u200bsleep and hallucinations from those cases where we ourselves think we can observe the opposition between our inner experience and reality, this idea, no doubt, applies to cases where reality is not observable.

If so, then it seems to follow that it is not so absurd to think that the world can consist only of the content of our consciousness - although neither you nor anyone else could be sure that this is so. actually. And if this is not nonsense, but an opportunity to be reckoned with, then, again, any attempts to prove it false will inevitably lead to a hopeless logical circle. So maybe there is no way out of the prison of your consciousness either. This situation is sometimes referred to as an egocentric dead end.

And nevertheless, even after all that has been said, I am forced to state: it is almost impossible to seriously believe that the things of the world around us may not really exist. Our acceptance and trust in the world are instinctive and domineering: we cannot give them up so simply, out of purely philosophical considerations. And we live and we do not act at all as if other people and objects existed: we are convinced that they really exist, even after we have carefully thought over and understood the arguments from which it would seem that we have no basis for such a belief. (We may have grounds for concrete confidence in the existence of specific things, for example, a mouse that climbed into a bread bin. But such confidence is justified by the general system of our ideas about the world. And this changes the matter - after all, such a system already presupposes the existence of an external world.)

If the belief in the existence of the world outside our consciousness arises in us in such a natural way, then, probably, there is no need to look for grounds for it. We can just lean on it in the hope of being right. In fact, this is what most of us do, abandoning attempts to substantiate this belief: even if we are not able to refute skepticism, we cannot live in harmony with it either. But this means that we continue to adhere to the most common ideas about the world, despite the fact that (a) they can be completely false and that (b) we have no reason to exclude such a possibility.

So we are left with the following three questions:

1. Is it reasonable to consider the possibility that the content of your consciousness is the only thing that exists; or that, even if the world outside your consciousness exists, it is completely different from how you imagine it?

2. If such a state of affairs is possible, then do you have any means to prove to yourself that things are not really so?

3. If you are unable to prove that anything exists outside of your consciousness, is it still permissible to continue to believe in the existence of the external world?

Questions to the text:

Thanks to what philosophical problems can be understood without referring to the history of thought?

How does Nagel see the difference between philosophy and natural science and mathematics?

What, according to Nagel, is the essence of philosophical research?

What is the difference between a philosophical and scientific way of asking questions?

Why “the more fundamental the concepts that you are trying to comprehend, the less research tools you have at your disposal”?

What solipsism? What is the essence of this philosophical position?

What skepticism? What is the position of skepticism about the existence of the outside world?

Why can't a belief in the existence of the external world have a scientific basis?

What argument does Nagel oppose to the point of view of radical skepticism?

What is position verificationism?

Why does the belief in the existence of the external world need not be justified?