Is your felt experience valid data?
Philippe Beaudoin · May 9, 2026
As individuals, the only thing we can do is travel the world while feeling it. We can touch it, we can look at it, we can lick a weird rock and think “I bet this would improve my fish stew!”
Then, thanks to language, we can report what we felt.
“I took some of my blood, looked in this microscope, and saw a weird blob eating smaller blobs. Maybe it’s what keeps us healthy?”
“You should stop licking these weird mushrooms, Ben.”
Is Ben’s felt experience data or is it something we should help Ben forget about?
It depends.
It doesn’t depend on a big wig scientist saying “Ben is right”. It depends on the fact that more than one of us took a look at the microscope and saw the blob. That some of us did not lick the mushroom. That we had different biases, different beliefs, but that, after looking in the microscope, we all reported “I saw a weird blob eating a smaller blob.”
Before others get to expetience them too, our feelings are all there is. Even Bob’s “I saw” was a shortcut for “I felt I saw”.
We drop the “I feel” to make language simpler. When I say “I see a small plane over there,” I mean two things:
“I feel I see a small plane over there.” And “I believe if you look you will see it too.”
We’re reporting both our felt experience and the fact that we believe it is receivable data.
Contrast this with something Bob, an amateur sommelier might say: “I feel I taste strawberry in this Pinot Noir”. Here, Bob is giving an honest report of his felt experience while warning us he’s not sure it’s receivable as data. When his teacher tries it and say “Yes, I taste strawberry too,” Bob’s eyes light up because he knows he’s getting closer to being able to report data. He’s getting closer to a state in which he’ll feel honest dropping the “I feel” and saying “I taste strawberry, a hint of mutmeg and… what is this lingering on the palate… Aaah! Roasted seaweed! Delicious!”
At some point we even drop the “I see” or the “I taste”. When we say “the sky is blue” we actually mean a few things:
“I feel I see blueness throughout the sky.” And “I believe everyone would feel it too if they looked.”
This is how we build knowledge. This is how we distinguish “facts” from “illusions”. It starts with one person reporting their felt experience, as honestly and precisely as possible, followed by more and more people saying “yes, I feel it too”. All the way to us dropping all these subjective verbs and saying “X is Y”.
This “is” is the closest we can get to objective reality.
Now this construction may look complete and solid to you, but it hides one very important detail.
Who is this other person telling Ben he’s wrong? Who’s that teacher validating Bob?
From our own little individualistic perspective, how can we get to a point where we say “the felt experience this other thing reports is validating mine”?
That is the most fascinating question, which unfortunately this post is too short to answer. 😉