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Experientia Est: Name One Thing That Is Not a Subset of Experience

Sergent, Brandon
PhilArchive · Papers
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philosophy
Experiential Empiricism has demonstrated through multiple converging arguments that externalism is unjustified, circular, and logically impossible. This paper introduces a distinct and stronger move: a direct challenge to produce a single instance of a non-experiential thing. Not to prove such a thing exists, but merely to describe one. The challenge cannot be met. Every candidate, from physical objects to abstract structures to fictional entities to logical relations, unpacks entirely into experiential content. The non-experiential label, when applied, floats free of any actual content it can carry. This is not a new argument against externalism as a claim. It is the identification of a new kind of wrongness, one in which the opposing position cannot be instantiated even in imagination without immediately instantiating its own denial. A careful examination of language shows why this is so: experiential vocabulary is not a catch-all umbrella category but the semantic substrate from which all description, at every level, is built. To demonstrate this rigorously, this paper constructs a steelmanned rival framework, Stuffian Empiricism, and shows exactly where and why it collapses. The result is a reframing of all prior logical attacks on externalism as downstream consequences of a more fundamental structural point: the category outside experience is not merely unoccupied but unconstructible.
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