DIMENSIONS OF REALITY
1.4
Reality – the Phenomenal
Another position understands reality as an immediate experience.
So far, we learned about reality as the objective. However, advocates of this physicalist position can be challenged with a simple question: How can you justify that your notion of “objective” reality is not merely your very private and, therefore, highly subjective content of your mind?”.
According to Bischof, we can (theoretically) never be fully sure if something exists outside our mind:
Everything anyone ever encounters directly is, after all, content of consciousness – that is a mere appearance or phenomenon. This includes even the scientific instruments that we use for measurement as well as the other observers with whom we would communicate intersubjectively. In theory, it is still possible that all of this is nothing more than a product of our imagination.1
Following this argument, it would be consistent to reverse the behaviorist position and consider only the immediate experience (the phenomenal) itself, only that which can be directly experienced, as being real. The world beyond our subjective experience, however, remains forever hidden from each of us.
This line of thought introduces a second sense of reality, often referred to as “idealistic perspective.” According to this perspective, only the immediate – the phenomenon, or the world of appearances experienced by the individual – is “real.” Anything that transcends this immediate experiential reality is relegated either to be unreal or to the realm of unknowable.
Second Sense of Reality: The Phenomenal
| real2 | unreal2 |
|---|---|
| phenomenal | transcendent |
In psychology, the idealist perspective was most prominently reflected in the work of Wilhelm Wundt, often regarded as the father of experimental psychology. Through systematic introspection, Wundt and his students sought to break down conscious experience into basic sensory and affective elements, aiming to study the structure of the mind by analyzing conscious experience. Their introspectionist method emphasized that reality, as experienced, is inherently tied to subjective phenomena. Wundt argued that the content of consciousness is the only reality directly accessible to the observer:
Psychology is the science of immediate experience.
The task of psychology is to investigate the connection of conscious processes according to the laws of experience.
Wilhelm Wundt, 1896
However, the Kantian idea that we construct our own world has continued to have an impact right up to the present day. A modern incarnation of such is known as radical constructivism (a radical form of constructivism), with representatives like Paul Watzlawick arguing that reality is nothing more than a subjective construction.
Author: Fabian Müller
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Translated from Bischof, p. 86. ↩