Editing Experience (section)

== Definition ==
According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the definition of the term "experience" can be stated as "a direct observation of or participation in events as a basis of knowledge."<ref>{{Cite web |date=24 March 2023 |title=Experience |url=https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/experience#:~:text=%3A%20the%20fact%20or%20state%20of,the%20length%20of%20such%20participation |access-date=28 March 2023 |website=Merriam-Webster Dictionary}}</ref> The term "experience" is associated with a variety of closely related meanings, which is why various different definitions of it are found in the academic literature.<ref name="Sandkühler"/> Experience is often understood as a [[consciousness|conscious]] event. This is sometimes restricted to certain types of consciousness, like [[perception]] or sensation, through which the subject attains knowledge of the world.<ref name="Borchert">{{cite book |last1=Borchert |first1=Donald |title=Macmillan Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2nd Edition |date=2006 |publisher=Macmillan |url=https://philpapers.org/rec/BORMEO |chapter=Experience}}</ref> But in a wider sense, experience includes other types of conscious events besides perception and sensation.<ref name="Smith">{{cite web |last1=Smith |first1=David Woodruff |title=Phenomenology: 1. What is Phenomenology? |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/phenomenology/#WhatPhen |website=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University |access-date=20 September 2021 |date=2018}}</ref><ref name="Gupta2012">{{cite journal |last1=Gupta |first1=Anil |title=An Account of Conscious Experience |journal=Analytic Philosophy |date=2012 |volume=53 |issue=1 |pages=1–29 |doi=10.1111/j.2153-960X.2012.00545.x |url=https://philpapers.org/rec/GUPAAO|url-access=subscription }}</ref> This is the case, for example, for the experience of thinking or the experience of dreaming.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Jorba |first1=Marta |title=Is There a Specific Experience of Thinking? |journal=Theoria: An International Journal for Theory, History and Foundations of Science |date=2010 |volume=25 |issue=2 |pages=187–196 |doi=10.1387/theoria.640 |s2cid=170300928 |url=https://philpapers.org/rec/JORITA-6|doi-access=free |hdl=10810/39432 |hdl-access=free }}</ref> In a different sense, "experience" refers not to conscious events themselves but to the [[knowledge]] and practical familiarity they bring with them.<ref name="Borchert"/><ref name="Masiello"/><ref>{{cite book |last1=Mittelstraß |first1=Jürgen |title=Enzyklopädie Philosophie und Wissenschaftstheorie |date=2005 |publisher=Metzler |url=https://www.springer.com/de/book/9783476021083 |chapter=Erfahrung |access-date=2021-10-01 |archive-date=2021-10-20 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211020080039/https://www.springer.com/de/book/9783476021083 |url-status=dead }}</ref> According to this meaning, a person with job experience or an experienced hiker is someone who has a good practical familiarity in the respective field. In this sense, experience refers not to a conscious process but to the result of this process.<ref name="Sandkühler"/>

The word "experience" shares a common [[Latin]] root with the word "[[experimentation]]".<ref>{{cite web |title=Experience |url=https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/experience |website=Merriam-Webster |access-date=16 July 2020}}</ref>

=== As conscious event ===
Experience is often understood as a conscious event in the widest sense. This includes various types of experiences, such as perception, bodily awareness, memory, imagination, emotion, desire, action and thought.<ref name="Smith"/> It usually refers to the experience a particular individual has, but it can also take the meaning of the experience had by a group of individuals, for example, of a nation, of a social class or during a particular historical epoch.<ref name="Sandkühler"/> [[Phenomenology (philosophy)|Phenomenology]] is the discipline that studies the subjective structures of experience, i.e. what it is like from the first-person perspective to experience different conscious events.<ref name="Smith"/>

When someone has an experience, they are presented with various items. These items may belong to diverse [[Ontology|ontological]] categories corresponding e.g. to objects, properties, relations or events.<ref name="Gupta2012"/><ref name="Sandkühler"/> Seeing a yellow bird on a branch, for example, presents the subject with the objects "bird" and "branch", the relation between them and the property "yellow". These items can include both familiar and unfamiliar items, which means that  it is possible to experience something without fully understanding it.<ref name="Gupta2012"/> When understood in its widest sense, the items present in experience can include unreal items. This is the case, for example, when experiencing illusions, hallucinations or dreams. In this sense, one can have the experience of a yellow bird on a branch even though there is no yellow bird on the branch.<ref name="Gupta2012"/> Experiences may include only real items, only unreal items, or a mix between the two. Phenomenologists have made various suggestions about what the basic features of experience are. The suggested features include spatial-temporal awareness, the difference in attention between foreground and background, the subject's awareness of itself, the sense of agency and purpose, bodily awareness and awareness of other people.<ref name="Smith"/>

When understood in a more restricted sense, only sensory consciousness counts as experience.<ref name="Honderich"/> In this sense, it is possible to experience something without understanding what it is. This would be the case, for example, if someone experienced a robbery without being aware of what exactly was happening. In this case, the sensations caused by the robbery constitute the experience of the robbery.<ref name="Honderich"/> This characterization excludes more abstract types of consciousness from experience. In this sense, it is sometimes held that experience and thought are two separate aspects of mental life.<ref name="Gupta2012"/> A similar distinction is sometimes drawn between experience and theory.<ref name="Sandkühler">{{cite book |last1=Sandkühler |first1=Hans Jörg |title=Enzyklopädie Philosophie |date=2010 |publisher=Meiner |url=https://meiner.de/enzyklopadie-philosophie-14071.html |chapter=Erfahrung}}</ref> But these views are not generally accepted. Critics often point out that experience involves various cognitive components that cannot be reduced to sensory consciousness.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Strawson |first1=Galen |title=Cognitive Phenomenology: Real Life |journal=Cognitive Phenomenology |date=2011 |pages=285–325 |url=https://philpapers.org/rec/STRCPR |publisher=Oxford University Press|doi=10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199579938.003.0013 |isbn=978-0-19-957993-8 |url-access=subscription }}</ref><ref name="Smith"/> Another approach is to distinguish between internal and external experience. So while sensory perception belongs to external experience, there may also be other types of experience, like remembering or imagining, which belong to internal experience.<ref name="Sandkühler"/>

=== As knowledge and practical familiarity ===
In another sense, experience refers not to the conscious events themselves but to the knowledge they produce.<ref name="Sandkühler"/> For this sense, it is important that the knowledge comes about through direct perceptual contact with the external world.<ref name="Honderich">{{cite book |last1=Honderich |first1=Ted |title=The Oxford Companion to Philosophy |date=2005 |publisher=Oxford University Press |url=https://philpapers.org/rec/HONTOC-2 |chapter=experience}}</ref> That the knowledge is direct means that it was obtained through immediate observation, i.e. without involving any inference. One may obtain all kinds of knowledge indirectly, for example, by reading books or watching movies about the topic. This type of knowledge does not constitute experience of the topic since the direct contact in question concerns only the books and movies but not the topic itself.<ref name="Honderich"/> The objects of this knowledge are often understood as public objects, which are open to observation by most regular people.<ref name="Borchert"/>

The meaning of the term "experience" in everyday language usually sees the knowledge in question not merely as theoretical know-that or descriptive knowledge. Instead, it includes some form of practical [[know-how]], i.e. familiarity with a certain practical matter. This familiarity rests on recurrent past acquaintance or performances.<ref name="Borchert"/><ref name="Sandkühler"/> It often involves having learned something by heart and being able to skillfully practice it rather than having a mere theoretical understanding. But the knowledge and skills obtained directly this way are normally limited to generalized rules-of-thumb. As such, they lack behind the scientific certainty that comes about through a methodological analysis by scientists that condenses the corresponding insights into laws of nature.<ref name="Borchert"/>