According to his phenomenalism, the external stimulus and the physiological stimulus are both parallels of the same psychical process; the external body, as well as my body, is merely an object abstracted from an idea of my experience; and what is really known in every case is a unitary experience; divisible, but not separable, into body and soul, physical and psychical factors of one and the same unitary experience.
Agnosticism, Phenomenalism, Rationalism, Materialism all manifest the positivist spirit, denying what may be succinctly described as the metempirical.
Among derivative terms are "Phenomenalism" and "Phenomenology."
At the same time, in spite of his sympathy with the whole development of idealism since Kant, which leads him to reject the thing in itself, to modify a priorism, and to stop at transcendent " ideals," without postulates of practical reason, he nevertheless has so much sympathy with Kant's Kritik as on its theories of sense and understanding to build up a system of phenomenalism, according to which knowledge begins and ends with ideas, and finally on its theory of pure reason to accord to reason a power of logically forming an " ideal " of God as ground of the moral " ideal " of humanity - though without any power of logically inferring any corresponding reality.
But his metaphysics is an interesting example of a phenomenalist, sympathizing with noumenalists so different as Hegel and Fechner, and yet maintaining his phenomenalism.
But to make such a conversion from phenomenalism plausible, it is necessary to be silent about his whole psychology, logic, and epistemology, and the consequent limitation of knowledge to experience, and of reason to ideas and " ideals," without any power of inferring corresponding things.
Extravagant as this noumenalism is, it was a healthy fantidote to the phenomenalism of the day.
For his phenomenalism prevents him from consistently saying the truth inferred by reason - that there is a world beyond experience, a world of Nature, and a will of God, real as well as ideal.
He was obliged by his phenomenalism to say that it is only one feeling causing another in me.
Hence come the different varieties of a so-called phenomenalism.
His limitation of theological knowledge to the bounds of human need might, if logically pressed, run perilously near phenomenalism; and his epistemology ("we only know things in their activities") does not cover this weakness.
His main sympathies are with the Neo-Kantians, and especially with Lange in modifying the a priori, and in extending the power of reason beyond phenomena to an ideal world; and yet the cry of his phenomenalism is not " back to Kant," but " beyond Kant."
His phenomenalism also compelled him to give a more modified adhesion to Fechner's " outer psychophysics."
In Great Britain Mach's scepticism was welcomed by Karl Pearson to support an idealistic phenomenalism derived from Hume, and by Ward to support a noumenal idealism derived from Lotze.
In philosophy he began with a strong predilection for the physical side of psychology, and at an early age he came to the conclusion that all existence is sensation, and, after a lapse into noiimenalism under the influence of Fechner's Psychophysics, finally adopted a universal physical phenomenalism.
In this feature the phenomenalism of Lewes is the English parallel to the German phenomenalism of Wundt.
It is not necessary for him to follow Schopenhauer, Hartmann and Fechner in endowing the material universe with will or any other mental operation, because his phenomenalism already reduces inorganic nature to mere objects of experiencing subjects.
It was about this time also that he began his study of Berkeley and Coleridge, and deserted his early phenomenalism for the conception of a spiritual will as the universal cause.
Lewes (q.v.), starting from the phenomenalism of Hume, fell under the spell of Kant and his successors, and produced a compromise between G.H.Lewes.
Nevertheless, as he believes all the time that everything knowable throughout the whole world of evolution is phenomena in the sense of subjective affections of consciousness, and as he applies Hume's distinction of impressions and ideas as a distinction of vivid and faint states of consciousness to the distinction of ego and non-ego, spirit and matter, inner and outer phenomena, his philosophy of the world as knowable remains within the limits of phenomenalism.
On the whole, his voluntarism, though like that of Schopenhauer and Hartmann, is not the same; not Schopenhauer's, because the ideating will of Wundt's philosophy is not a universal irrational will; and not Hartmann's, because, although ideating will, according to Wundt's phenomenalism, is supposed to extend through the world of organisms, the whole inorganic world remains a mere object of unitary experience.
Phenomenalism is either (I) the doctrine that there can be no knowledge except by phenomena, i.e.
The " antirealism," which takes the lion's share in " transfigured realism," is simply a development of the phenomenalism of Hume.
The conclusion that reason in transcending experience can show no more than the necessity of " ideals " is the only conclusion which could follow from Wundt's phenomenalism in psychology, logic, and epistemology.
The former accounts for his acceptance of Kant's phenomenalism, combined with rejection of the thing in itself.
The predominant influence, on the whole, has been the phenomenalism of Hume, with its slender store of sensations, ideas and associations, and its conclusion that all we know is sensations without any known thinkers or any other known things.
The relativism or phenomenalism which Hamilton afterwards adopted from Kant and sought to engraft upon Scottish philosophy is wholly absent from the original Scottish doctrine.
Their point is to stretch Hume's phenomenalism so as to embrace all science, by contending that mechanism is not at the bottom of phenomena, but is only the conceptual shorthand by aid of which men of 'science can briefly describe phenomena, and that all science is description and not explanation.
Ward on the whole follows this triple scheme, but modifies it by new arguments founded on later German phenomenalism.
What a pity it is that Wundt had committed himself by his psychology to phenomenalism, to unitary experience, and to the limitation of judgment and reason to ideas and ideals!
Wundt, however, has satisfied himself, like Fechner, that there is no real opposition of body and soul, and concludes, in accordance with his own phenomenalism, that his body is only an object abstracted from his unitary experience, which is all that really is of him.