Realism, Idealism and Phenomenalism

Abstract

We may define “ experience “ provisionally as the sum-total of appearances, feelings, impulses, together with the thinking which seeks to find or create some sort of significant order in these. This suggests a distinction between data to be ordered and thought as ordering activity. What are the data? The usual answer is that they are sensations. But “ sensation “ may be used in two ways. (a) It may be used to mean “ sensa “, or sense data, as contents of awareness (e.g. colours, sounds, smells). This can be called the phenomenological meaning. (b) It may be used to mean processes of sensing. This can be called the physiological meaning. We shall see that the precise relation between “ sensations “ in these two meanings is not easy to determine; but at this point we are only concerned to distinguish them.