Primacy of the Personal Consciousness

This is the individualistic version of the primacy of the social consciousness, formulated prominently by Protagoras as: “Man” being “the measure of all things.” On this view, each man inhabits his own universe created by his own mind—there is only private reality, not reality for all.

Epistemologically, therefore, there are no standards or data of any kind to which a person must conform. There is only truth “for me” vs. truth “for you”—which truth is, for any individual, whatever he arbitrarily decrees it to be.¹