Experience refers to conscious events in general, more specifically to perceptions, or to the practical knowledge and familiarity that is produced by these processes.
An important traditional discussion in this field concerns whether all knowledge is based on sensory experience, as empiricists claim, or not, as rationalists contend.
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.
"[1] 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.
This includes various types of experiences, such as perception, bodily awareness, memory, imagination, emotion, desire, action and thought.
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.
[15][18] Some alleged counterexamples to intentionalism involve pure sensory experiences, like pain, of which it is claimed that they lack representational components.
[21][23] The view that such a type of experience exists and plays an important role in epistemological issues has been termed the "myth of the given" by its opponents.
[3] This distinction could explain, for example, how various faulty perceptions, like perceptual illusions, arise: they are due to false interpretations, inferences or constructions by the subject but are not found on the most basic level.
Sense datum theorists, for example, hold that immediate experience only consists of basic sensations, like colors, shapes or noises.
[27][28][29] This immediate given is by itself a chaotic undifferentiated mass that is then ordered through various mental processes, like association, memory and language, into the normal everyday objects we perceive, like trees, cars or spoons.
On this view, the subject may be wrong about inferences drawn from the experience about external reality, for example, that there is a green tree outside the window.
[39][37] In some cases, the unreliability of a perception is already indicated within the experience itself, for example, when the perceiver fails to identify an object due to blurry vision.
[42][41] The problem with these different approaches is that neither of them is fully satisfying since each one seems to contradict some kind of introspective evidence concerning the fundamental features of perceptual experience.
[48] Imaginative experience involves a special form of representation in which objects are presented without aiming to show how things actually are.
[53] Despite its freedom and its lack of relation to actuality, imaginative experience can serve certain epistemological functions by representing what is possible or conceivable.
It is similar to memory and imagination in that the experience of thinking can arise internally without any stimulation of the sensory organs, in contrast to perception.
On this view, making a judgment in thought may happen non-linguistically but is associated with a disposition to linguistically affirm the judged proposition.
This happens either by following an algorithm, which guarantees success if followed correctly, or by using heuristics, which are more informal methods that tend to bring the thinker closer to a solution.
When understood in the widest sense, this includes not just sensory pleasures but any form of pleasant experience, such as engaging in an intellectually satisfying activity or the joy of playing a game.
[98][99][100] Out-of-body experiences involve the impression of being detached from one's material body and perceiving the external world from this different perspective.
This type of experience has various characteristic features, including a clear sense of the activity's goal, immediate feedback on how one is doing and a good balance between one's skills and the difficulty of the task.
[4][121] A great variety of experiences is investigated this way, including perception, memory, imagination, thought, desire, emotion and agency.
[125][126][127] Neurophenomenology, on the other hand, aims at bridging the gap between the first-person perspective of traditional phenomenology and the third-person approach favored by the natural sciences.
For example, some rationalists claim that humans either have innate or intuitive knowledge of mathematics that does not rest on generalizations based on sensory experiences.
But experience is usually understood as a private mental state, not as a publicly observable phenomenon, thereby putting its role as scientific evidence into question.
It is concerned with explaining why some physical events, like brain processes, are accompanied by conscious experience, i.e. that undergoing them feels a certain way to the subject.
[152][153][154] This is especially relevant from the perspective of the natural sciences since it seems to be possible, at least in principle, to explain human behavior and cognition without reference to experience.
[5] Logical empiricists, for example, have used this idea in an effort to reduce the content of all empirical propositions to protocol sentences recording nothing but the scientists' immediate experiences.
[3] Immanuel Kant, for example, defends a rationalist position by holding that experience requires certain concepts so basic that it would not be possible without them.