The so-called "world" is a value system that people gradually construct according to their needs. Any thing in this value system is something that people finally give a certain value after long-term exploration, practice and summary. Therefore, it can be said that in a specific historical period, there is a limit to the "things" that people can know. For example, in ancient times, there were no televisions, but from a chemical point of view, the materials used to make televisions have always existed. However, you can't ask the ancients to also know the television and think that it was a valuable thing.
From this point of view, Mr. Yang Ming's view that "there is nothing outside the mind" can be explained as follows: external objects that cannot be understood in the heart have no concept in the mind. If something has no concept in the mind, it cannot be considered a "thing", and the thing here refers to the valuable thing that human beings have recognized and formed a concept.
Although we cannot deny the existence of "pure objective matter" outside of human cognition, it cannot enter the human value system until man has established a concept of this matter, so it is correct to think that such a thing does not exist.
It's like a **, it's a world created artificially, and the value system of this virtual world can be different from the value system of the real world. What is useful in the real world can be useless in the virtual world, and vice versa.
The so-called world of human beings is itself a world constructed with a value system that can be understood by human beings, and compared with the purely objective world, the value system we construct is actually fictional. We build according to our life needs, and ants build according to the life needs of ants, so, ants have ant worlds, and we have our worlds. In the world of ants, a grain of rice is a huge wealth, and a piece of ** is just a roadblock that ants hate.
In Mr. Yang Ming's time, it was possible to understand and learn everything that human beings knew. In other words, people at that time could conceptualize all the valuable things and store them in their minds, just as we now store knowledge on hard drives.
The storage function of the mind is called memory. Like a hard drive, the more storage space you have, the more things you can remember, the more valuable it is. But the heart and the hard drive are not the same. Because the mind can not only be stored, but also use the stored knowledge to make judgments and ultimately make decisions, which is actually the function of the processor. So, the heart has both the functions of a hard disk and a processor.
Using the stored knowledge to make judgments and decisions, and not being affected by external objects, Mr. Yang Ming can achieve great success. Not being affected by external objects means not delaying, not hesitating, and making decisions quickly and correctly. The famous philosopher Mr. He Liang said: The strength of Yangming Mind lies in "internal judgment and repentance, and external restraint". To break doubt and regret internally is to solve difficult problems in the heart, reflect on previous mistakes and correct them; External containment means that there is no need to rely on external objects, and there is no need to refer to external objects. Isn't that what computers are like these days? The establishment of a database is to input a knowledge system, and the input program is to establish a solution to a problem. From this point of view, Yang Ming Mind Science already has the ability of computers. It's just that it is difficult for ordinary people to reach such a level, and they often even have an incorrect understanding, so they turn the study of mind into something else and become an unrealistic fantasy.
Mencius said: The official of the heart thinks. That is to say, the function of the mind is to think. Thinking is actually using knowledge to build a model to solve the doubts in the mind, and when the doubts are solved, there are answers, and with the answers, judgments and decisions can be made. So what Mencius said is the height that Mr. Yang Ming has reached.