![](/static/be9a2c79/assets/icons/icon-96x96.png)
They’re just categorically different, there isn’t an “inside” or an “outside” in the sense of spatial structure as that is something derived a posteriori as part of thought.
I’m not sure what it would even mean to say reality is “thought”. If I try my best to stop thinking about things does experiential reality just disappear? Not for me it doesn’t. Maybe for you.
Objects are in the category of thought but not in some spatial “realm” or “world” of thought. It is definitional, linguistic, not a statement about ontology.
From an a priori standpoint there is no material, there is just reality. Our understanding of material reality comes from an a posteriori standpoint of investing it, learning about it, forming laws etc, and we do come to understand thought from an a posteriori lens as something that can be observed and implemented in other systems.
Usually thought itself is not even considered as part of the so-called “hard problem” as that’s categorized into the “easy problem.”
They say existence is “mind” which includes both thought and experience which they both argue are products of the mind, and so if we start off with thought and experience as the foundations of philosophy then we’re never able to leave the mind. That’s how idealism works, the “thought” part of basically the “easy” problem and the “experience” part is what entails the “hard” problem since even idealists would concede that it is not difficult to conceive of constructing an intelligent machine that can reason, potentially even as good as humans can.