English
Noun
external world (uncountable)
- (philosophy) The world consisting of all the objects and events which are experienceable or whose existence is accepted by the human mind, but which exist independently of the mind.
- 1882, Josiah Royce, "Mind and Reality," Mind, vol. 7, no. 25, p. 30:
- Human beings are able to form ideas that correspond in some way with a real world, outside of themselves. . . . [T]o each necessary relation a:b in human consciousness, there corresponds a relation A:B in the external world.
- 1954, Daniel Cory, "God or the External World," The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 51, no. 2, p. 61:
- Is not a vast "background" of experience what we all really mean by an external world, or God, according to the mood we are in?
- 2003, Ram Neta, "Contextualism and the Problem of the External World," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. 66, no. 1, p. 1:
- Skeptics . . . claim that our evidence can't support our beliefs about the external world.
Derived terms
- problem of the external world
See also