Ma`rifat Falsafi

Considering the fact that any mind, in the first place and directly, contacts just with its individual world, how has human mind believed that there is an external world independent of our consciousness? To answer this question, Walter Stace investigates the stages of logical development of the mind, beginning with empirical data, and concludes that a belief in the existence of an independent external world must be a mental construct and an expression of sensory representations that various minds have cooperated to create in order to have a common and simpler world. In the present article, it will be clarified that, first, Stace clearly ignores some instances of mind's direct knowledge (which are starting points in the logical development of the mind); secondly, he is not bound to the principles he himself has specified; and, thirdly, he pays no attention to some methods of argumentation such as reasoning through the best explanation.