experience
{{otheruses|Experience (disambiguation)}}{{Expert-subject|Philosophy|date=November 2008}}{{Wiktionary}}
Experience as a general concept comprises
knowledge of or skill in or
observation of some thing or some event gained through involvement in or
exposure to that thing or event. The history of the word
experience aligns it closely with the concept of
experiment.The concept of experience generally refers to
know-how or
procedural knowledge, rather than
propositional knowledge. Philosophers dub knowledge based on experience "
empirical knowledge" or "
a posteriori knowledge".The interrogation of experience has a long tradition in continental philosophy. The German term
Erfahrung, often translated into English as "experience" has a slightly different implication, connoting the coherency of
life's experiences.A person with considerable experience in a certain field can gain a reputation as an
expert. Certain
religious traditions (such as types of
Buddhism,
Surat Shabd Yoga and
mysticism) and educational
paradigms with, for example, the
conditioning of
boot camps, stress the experiential nature of human
epistemology. This stands in
contrast to alternatives: traditions of
dogma,
logic or
reasoning. Activities such as
tourism,
extreme sports and
recreational drug use also tend to stress the importance of experience.
Types of experience
The word "experience" may refer, somewhat ambiguously, both to
mentally unprocessed immediately-perceived events as well as to the purported
wisdom gained in subsequent
reflection on those events or
interpretation of them.Most wisdom-experience accumulates over a period of
time{{Fact|date=November 2008}}, though one can also experience (and gain general wisdom-experience from) a single specific momentary event. One may also
differentiate between
physical,
mental,
emotional and
spiritual experience(s).
Immediacy of experience
Someone able to recount an event they witnessed or took part in has "
first hand experience". First hand experience of the "you had to be there" variety can seem especially valuable and privileged, but it often remains potentially subject to errors in
sense-
perception and in personal
interpretation.
Second-hand experience can offer richer resources: recorded and/or summarised from first-hand observers or experiencers or from instruments, and potentially expressing multiple
points of view..Third-hand experience, based on indirect and possibly unreliable
rumour or
hearsay, can (even given reliable accounts) potentially stray perilously close to blind honouring of
authority.
Subjective experience
Subjective experience can involve a state of
individual subjectivity,
perception on which one builds one's own state of
reality; a reality based on one’s
interaction with one's environment. The
subjective experience depends on one’s
individual ability to process
data, to store and
internalize it. For example: our senses collect data, which we then process according to
biological programming (genetics),
neurological network relationships and other variables such as
relativity etc., all of which affect our individual experience of any given situation in such a way as to render it subjective.
Alternatives to experience
Immanuel Kant contrasted experience with
reason: "Nothing, indeed, can be more harmful or more unworthy of the philosopher, than the vulgar appeal to so-called experience. Such experience would never have existed at all, if at the proper time, those institutions had been established in accordance with ideas."
(1) Games
Role-playing games treat "experience" (and its acquisition) as an important and valuable commodity. See
experience point.
Writing
The American author
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote an essay entitled "
Experience" (published in 1844), in which he asks readers to disregard
emotions that could alienate them from the divine; it provides a somewhat
pessimistic representation of the
Transcendentalism associated with Emerson.
Art
In 2005 the art group
Monochrom organized a series of
happenings that ironically took up the implications of the term "experience":
Experience the Experience See also
References
-
[BOOK, Kant, Immanuel, Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason, 1781, Book 1, Section 1, ]
External links
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