Experience
Experience refers to conscious events in general. More specifically to perceptions, or to the practical knowledge and familiarity that is produced by these conscious processes. It is a conscious event in the widest sense, and it involves a subject to which various items are presented.
Important to realize that in this sense, seeing a yellow bird on a branch presents the subject with the objects “bird” and “branch”, the relation between them and the property “yellow”. In a more restricted sense, only sensory consciousness counts as experience.
Perception
In this sense, the term identified with perception and contrasted with other types of conscious events, like thinking or imagining.
Practical knowledge and familiarity
In a slightly different sense, it refers not to the conscious events themselves but to the practical knowledge and familiarity they produce for example familiar feelings.
In addition to this in this sense, it is important that direct perceptual contact with the external world is the source of knowledge. An experienced hiker is someone who actually lived through many hikes, not someone who merely read many books about hiking.
This associated both with recurrent past acquaintance and abilities or behaviour, which learned through them.
Definitions
1. Experiences are (the process of getting) knowledge or skill from doing, seeing, or feeling things:
- Do you have any experience of working with kids? (= Have you ever worked with them?)
- I know from experience that Tony never keeps his promises.
- In my experience, people generally smile back if you smile at them.
2. Something that happens to you that affects how you feel:
- I had a pretty unpleasant experience at the dentist’s.
- It was interesting hearing about his experiences as a policeman.
3. The way that something happens and how it makes you feel:
- They go out of their way to make sure you have a great dining experience.
- A spokesman for the company said that it was committed to improving the customer experience.