Another position understands reality as immediate experience.

So far, we learned about reality as the objective. Advocates of this physicalist position, however, can be challenged with a simple question: How can you be sure that what you consider “objective” reality is not merely a private and therefore highly subjective construction of your own mind?

We can—at least theoretically—never be entirely certain that anything exists outside our own minds:

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. (Translated from Bischof, p. 86)

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, known as the phenomenalist perspective. According to this perspective, only immediate experience—the phenomena, or the world of appearances experienced by the individual—is real. Anything that transcends this experiential reality is regarded as either unreal or unknowable.

Second Sense of Reality: The Phenomenal

Authors: Fabian Mueller & William Palmer