Oh man, I actually agree with you!!!
(L)

If they are created from within you, then it follows precisely that your experience bears no relationship at all with reality, which is nonsense. — Agustino

I don't see how that follows, I said that external things affect the experience which is created by my internal being. How does it follow that my experience has no relationship to reality? There is no logic to that kind of nonsense. Why do you bother saying something like that without thinking about it first?

Human beings create all kinds of things, buildings, cars, trains, planes, computers etc.. All of these things came from within the minds of human beings, they had absolutely no existence prior to being created by human minds. Would you argue that these things are not real because they were created by the minds of human beings? Why do you insist that the human experience could not be real if it's created by the human mind? That is what is nonsense.

I'm just speaking from my experience, that's how I imagine such a thing. I picture in my mind, a person with a saw, going and cutting a tree. Then I tell myself seventy times. And to imagine this, seventy times, I try to picture 70 in relation to other numbers like 60 and 50, but this seems somewhat vague. So I picture seven in relation to one by counting in my mind, and tell myself ten times that. Then I picture ten as two groups of five. Now I can imagine ten groups of seven, and this is the number of times that the person cuts trees. In this way I can avoid picturing the person cutting a tree seventy times. — Metaphysician Undercover

What in the fluck?! It must take you like 37 years to read a single book haha.

What in the fluck?! It must take you like 37 years to read a single book haha. — dukkha

It usually doesn't take long for me to imagine things. Most novels are quite simple and the scenarios generally come to my mind as fast as I can read them, though I have to stop and go back over things once in a while. Some things like "70 trees" I would imagine in a vague way. Non-fiction is much more difficult for me, sometimes requiring a good deal of effort to understand. Some philosophy I have to read over and over, and yes, I have been reading some of the same books of philosophy for about 37 years. If that's what it takes, and your interested, why not? I guess some people learn faster than others. I'm hoping that someone can teach me the trick.

What is the world independent of us? — Marchesk

Sorry I'm late to this party, been busy trying to write philosophy :)

I'm with TGW and Agostino, as far as I can see...there is no simple answer to such a question. I've been fretting about 'the world' lately. The idea that we can talk about 'the world' in some univocal way is often assumed without argument. But it's just a metaphysics, argued for alike by some monotheists or by believers in fundamentalism about particles. (An unholy alliance, as it were) As Landru used to argue on the old forum, there are many discourses and no single one of them seems exhaustive.

None of this stops us calling certain phenomena or concepts 'real' in some contexts, but the -ism tag is awfully constricting. An -ism gives a certain shape to your beliefs in discussing them with other people, but it also leaves you arguing for some nitpicking detail you're secretly not quite sure about.

Funny how the crooked system (cause the system is always crooked) hasn't informed me of your agreement, nor of the any other replies I received in this thread >:O

I don't see how that follows, I said that external things affect the experience which is created by my internal being. — Metaphysician Undercover

Except that it's the other way around. The mind merely structures the data received from outside - it doesn't CREATE anything.

Human beings create all kinds of things, buildings, cars, trains, planes, computers etc.. All of these things came from within the minds of human beings, they had absolutely no existence prior to being created by human minds. Would you argue that these things are not real because they were created by the minds of human beings? Why do you insist that the human experience could not be real if it's created by the human mind? That is what is nonsense. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is a wrong analogy. The buildings created by human beings don't stand in the same relationship to human minds as their perception does.

Except that it's the other way around. The mind merely structures the data received from outside - it doesn't CREATE anything. — Agustino

Right, just like human beings merely structure the elements around us, they don't actually create any trains or cars or computers. Your answer is a farce.

This is a wrong analogy. The buildings created by human beings don't stand in the same relationship to human minds as their perception does. — Agustino

No, you're refusing to face the facts, human beings create things. Your claim that there is a significant difference between creating something material with your hands, and creating something immaterial in your mind is unjustified and untenable. Look at the architect, or the engineer, the idea is drawn up in the mind, put on paper, then produced with material. The initiating aspect is the work of the mind. The mind is what creates, not the hands. As I said, your claim that the mind doesn't create anything, is a farce.

The engineer creates something in his thought which doesn't exist in reality and then he later constructs it in reality. Does your mind create sense data which doesn't exist in experience and then constructs it in your experience?! If so then sorry to tell you, but you're hallucinating.

And I never said the mind doesn't create anything - just that it doesn't create sense perception.

I don't see your point. When the engineer creates something in thought, sense data is used. When my mind creates my experience sense data is used. Where's the difference?

Does your mind create sense data which doesn't exist in experience and then constructs it in your experience?! If so then sorry to tell you, but you're hallucinating. — Agustino

I didn't say that the mind creates the sense data which it uses to construct the experience. Why do you think that it is necessary for the thing which creates, to create the material which it uses in the creation? That's not the way we create things, we take existing materials, and construct something out of them, that's what creating is. Sense data is the material element, the mind takes that and creates the experience.

Look, there is sense data, and there is experience. These are two distinct things. The existence of sense data does not necessitate an experience, something must take the sense data and cause the experience to occur. This is the mind. Therefore the mind creates the experience, by collecting sense data and causing an experience to occur. Why is that so difficult to comprehend? If you're so certain that the mind doesn't create the experience, then what do you think does?

"What is the world independent of us?"

Independent. =