We will move forward with the stance of realism and take a closer look at how our perception works.

Let’s briefly recap where we are on our journey. We began with two fundamental perspectives on reality: first, reality as the objective – external, measurable, and independent of the observer. Then we explored reality as the phenomenal – the idea that only what appears in subjective consciousness is truly real.

For psychology, neither the purely objectivist (physicalism) nor the purely subjectivist (idealism) stance alone is enough. We need a framework that integrates both perspectives, allowing us to switch between them as required; an approach that takes seriously both the structure of the world and the subjective experiences through which it becomes meaningful to us.

This epistemological position is known as realism and accepts two kinds of reality: the physical, experience-independent world and the phenomenal, subjective world that it represents. This is the epistemological position we adopt moving forward in our course.

But what does the term “representation” actually mean? Let’s take a closer look in the following video, and explore the understanding of reality as the perceivable.