ABSTRACT
Within the reflexive model the physical world as-experienced is part of the contents of consciousness. The contents of consciousness are not in some separate place or space ‘in the mind’ or ‘in the brain’. That is, no phenomenal distinction can be drawn between what we normally think of as the ‘physical world’ and the ‘world as-experienced’. With our eyes open the ‘physical world’ is what we experience. This provides a completely different view of the mind/body relationship.16 Suffice it to say that once experienced physical reality is included within this extended view of psychological reality it no longer makes sense to split experienced physical reality from psychological reality (in the ways shown in Figure 3.1). Some aspects of psychological reality (such as thoughts) have no clear phenomenological extension or location in space and appear to be relatively insubstantial. However, much of psychological reality (the experienced external world) does seem to have spatial location and extension and is experienced to have substantial properties such as hardness and weight. The way such properties are experienced depends on the perceptual systems of the observer, as well as on the properties of the observed. The phenomenal world constructed by the mind or brain from information detected by the sense organs is, at once, psychological and physical.
