Tag: experiences

Experiences

Experiences refers to conscious events in general, more specifically to perceptions, or to the practical knowledge and familiarity that is produced by these conscious processes. Understood as a conscious event in the widest sense, experience involves a subject to which various items are presented.

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”. When understood in a more restricted sense, only sensory consciousness counts as experience.

Perception

In this sense, experience is usually identified with perception and contrasted with other types of conscious events, like thinking or imagining.

Practical knowledge and familiarity

In a slightly different sense, experience refers not to the conscious events themselves but to the practical knowledge and familiarity they produce.

In this sense, it is important that direct perceptual contact with the external world is the source of knowledge. So an experienced hiker is someone who actually lived through many hikes, not someone who merely read many books about hiking.

This is associated both with recurrent past acquaintance and the abilities or behaviour, which learned through them.

Definitions

1. Experiences are (the process of getting) knowledge or skill from doing, seeing, or feeling things:

For example:

• Do you have any experience of working with kids? (= Have you ever worked with them?)
• The best way to learn is by experience (= by doing things).
• I know from experience that Tony never keeps his promises.
• I don’t think she has the experience for the job (= enough knowledge and skill for it).
• In my experience, people generally smile back if you smile at them.
• The experience of pain (= what pain feels like) varies from one person to another.

2.  Something that happens to you that affects how you feel:

For example:

• I had a pretty unpleasant experience at the dentist’s.
• It was interesting hearing about his experiences as a policeman.
• I did meet him once and it was an experience I shall never forget.

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.