Abstract

If Bradley is right that Reality is experience, then an analysis of our experience should help us to understand the general nature of Reality. I believe Bradley thought this was the case. Our experience is of two broad types: feelings or immediate experiences on the one hand, and thoughts and volitions on the other. This division marks the boundary between nonintentional and intentional mental states, and whatever passage is allowed between these two types, they are not the same and no experience can be both at once. Unfortunately, this renders our window on Reality rather opaque for Reality supposedly is similar to both without being identical to either. Reality has the type of nonrelational unity possessed by immediate experience, but is not immediate experience; and while it includes the objects of intentional states — what Bradley always called the “ideal objects” which constitute appearances — Reality is not the appearances themselves.