According to Wundt, what is immediate experience?

Immediate experience, according to Wundt, refers to the direct awareness or perception of an external event as it occurs. Wundt emphasized the importance of immediate experience in understanding psychological processes. It is the raw data of consciousness, representing how individuals perceive and react to their environment in real-time, without the filtration or interference of memory or complex cognitive processing.

Wundt distinguished immediate experience from mediate experience, which involves interpretation and reflection on past experiences, abstract reasoning, or subconscious processes. Thus, immediate experience is foundational to Wundt's approach, focusing on direct sensory and perceptual experiences rather than thoughts, memories, or subconscious content. This focus informs much of Wundt's experimental psychology, where he aimed to study consciousness through empirical methods, striving to understand the sensations and feelings present in the moment.