Consider the statement: "I can know nothing except that I experience it." This statement is so fundamental that it is either grammatically flawed, false or so tautological that it is meaningless. But yet it is the gate into what I call the Idealist Dilemma. Any Philosophy which combines Epistemology with Ontology and takes the self as its starting point, faces this dilemma. Either what is, is independent of my experience and I have no knowledge of it in itself, or everything is experiential (part of my experience), so that the only thing that is, is in my experience. On the one hand reality is beyond me, but I have no knowledge of it (skepticism), while on the other hand reality is confined to the phenomena I experience (phenomenalism). The dilemma arises in the choice between these two possibilities. On the one hand what is real, true and existent is independent of my consciousness of it and I cannot without experience know it, because its independence prevents me from having experiences which verify it. It must be an assumption that there are things independent of my experience.
On the other hand, that of which I am conscious, is precisely the only reality that I have and by extension the only reality there is. Considering the difference between 'is' and 'appears', on this assumption I can only know appearances. What appears is what is and there is no difference between the two.
But how can I verify this? If all is experience and I cannot have an experience of anything which is beyond myself (solipsism), can I answer the question "what is real?" with anything other than myself and my experience. So my dilemma is that either I accept the fact that there is nothing except my own experience, and since I realize that I am experiencing my self, or I assume there is something "out there" which is independent of me, but since it is not in my phenomenal field (my experience), I cannot really know anything about it, except how it appears to me. If I ask some other person, I assume is also such that he/she is experiencing, how it appears to him/her, all I have is my experience of what he/she gives as the answer to my query.
Consider the statement: "A fact is whatever is the case." I can assert that a fact is either an elemental datum of my experience, or is some real event independent of me, but I cannot perceive or verify its externality. Suppose I also add to this statement about a fact that "A proposition expresses a fact," and "A statement expresses a proposition." One might in a common sense natural attitude believe that this commits me to the independence of objects from my conscious experience. But does it? If a fact is an elemental datum of experience, it is in some way in my experience (a part of my experience). Leaving aside questions of what it might mean to be a part of experience or "in" experience, for the moment, we are left with a kind of skepticism about the possibility of knowing anything but facts, elemental data of experience are the only objects I can speak about through statements is a hopeless phenomenalism which yields a solipsism. But since I also simultaneously have no method of verification of that solipsist condition, and it is not a datum of my experience, I have no certainty of it, so I am left in a hopeless skepticism. All reality may be nothing but illusions, and I cannot confirm or disconfirm that they are anything at all other than illusions, let alone independent of me.
In order to escape the dilemma some Philosophers have proposed a causal theory where what is real causes me to have experiences that I have. In other words, some real independent existent causes my consciousness to have an experience of it. But this is a poor escape, since it can easily be turned into a phenomenalism, because the causality of the phenomena are not themselves phenomena, and hence not able to be captured by a consciousness. Since what is in my experience is in some sense mental and what is an independent existent thing is in some sense physical, it is difficult to see how a physical event can cause a mental one. How a physical phenomenon (event) is captured by the mental (consciousness) is unverifiable outside consciousness. I cannot know anything other than I experience it, is a fact that I experience, and there are no facts except that I experience them. So without an experience of a physical event causally effecting a mental event, I cannot know that causal connection to be the case.
Other Philosophers have tried to escape this Idealist dilemma by asserting that is it the very nature of consciousness that it be intentional. That is consciousness is always "of something" or directed to something, yet this does not completely solve the dilemma unless what that something is, is by its very nature other than my consciousness of it. The being that a consciousness is directed towards must be independent of the consciousness which experiences it, in order to escape the dilemma. It might very well be the case that what the intentionality of consciousness is directed towards, is itself a part of my consciousness. In which case I am stuck in an Idealism; without some ontology of otherness and independence which allows for the directedness of a conscious act to capture it. In other words we need an ontology which separates the object of consciousness from the act of consciousness. We require an ontology of events besides an ontology of objects, unless, of course, we assert that the objects which consciousness intend are themselves events. The event must be a primitive of our ontology, where things are not objects but objects in relation, or events. Objects of consciousness whether independent of us or not are required to be in relation, not the least of which a relation to consciousness of the event. Logically a single place predicate must also be a relation, in order for this to work. The formula (∃x) Fx, must express a relation, a relation between x and F. Being or "is" in its many senses by this is always relational, or an event. 'Is' by this has one of several senses, either a lambda sense of having the property of (x = λyFy) or membership (x ∊ [y|y = F]), or identity (x =⌝yFy).
Given that consciousness is always of something, it would be the relations described above that consciousness is directed towards. The question remains whether the relations are relations in my phenomenal field, or relations where the variable x and y are objects outside me. Is there a real world is always a question, until there is an assertion that what is real is actually independent. For the idealist claim is that what is real is facts, which are nothing more that the relations between objects of my consciousness. The realist will claim that the relations are relations of things outside my phenomenal field which have a real existence independent of that field. But the rejoinder from the Idealist is simply the "how do you know that" question. Here for the Idealist or the Realist, Epistemology is the decider as to whether an ontology reflects actual independent existents or mere parts and parcels of my experience. Truth for the Idealist is not an adequation of reality to thought, or a correspondence between a proposition and the independent reality expressed by that proposition. Truth is a matter of coherence between the proposition and all other propositions about events that make up my phenomenal field. For the realist the truth of a proposition is a correspondence between independent events and the consciousness which experiences them. Truth is an adequation of the proposition to the independent (out there) reality for the consciousness which asserts the proposition and makes the adequation.
Now from the practical point of view, I do not live in my phenomenal world, but I do, and this is the paradox. I live in the world of my experience, but I do not live in that world at the same time. I do not stand on my experience of the floor, I do not walk down the street in my phenomenal world; I walk down a real street of which I am conscious, when I am walking down it. I see the cars parked there, I stumble on the cracks in the pavement. But I experience those cars and I experience myself stumbling on the pavement, not a pavement in my phenomenal field. Yet my stumbling is a part of my phenomenal field, i.e. it is a relation in my phenomenal field.
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