Abstract

1. The inference that the real is like the phenomenal is the only plausible inference. Since experience itself is the basis for inference, and since we have never experienced what is beyond experience, we have no basis within experience for assuming that what is beyond is unlike experience. The search for what is beyond experience is futile, for it can result only in other experiences. Each additional experience, including those in which we think about what is beyond experience, is still experience. The piling up of empirical evidence merely strengthens the argument, for it provides further evidence of uniformity. To obtain evidence that what is beyond experience is unlike experience, one would have to stop experiencing, which is impossible.