That sounds to me like you are setting up moat-and-bailey, where you sometimes want to speak about a type of knowledge and sometimes about a way to acquire knowledge but don’t have a clear distinction between the two.
Knowledge vs. Phenomenon is the basic distinction. Now we need to do a sorting exercise. Where would I put sensations? Broadly under phenomena. Where would I put experience? Broadly under knowledge. There is more to be said about what we consider as experience and what as knowledge. But I’m not equipped to do that.
If I have experience playing the violin, I have some knowledge of it. It also helps me in acquiring new knowledge, like playing the cello.
The distinction you are talking about becomes important when we are talking about “knowing that” or “declarative knowledge”. The theory of thermodynamics is distinct from the methods of acquiring that theory, like experiments, equations etc. But when we talk of experience, we are not beholden to that distinction. The knowledge of cycling and the means of acquiring it are logically distinguishable but not empirically separable.
The knowledge of cycling and the means of acquiring it are logically distinguishable but not empirically separable.
The Boltzman brain that floats around space can have all the neurons wired in a way so that it has knowledge of cycling but it didn’t went through the process of cycling.
The claim that going through the process of cycling is the only way to acquire the neurological patterns that represent the experience of cycling is wrong.
Additionally, different people who learn to cycle have quite different experiences of cycling and it’s not clear that those share a common core that can’t be learned without engaging in cycling.
To add another test case:
Do you think a person who remembers being sexually molested as a child because of the suggestions of a therapist has an “experience of sexual molestation”?
The only problem is these examples render the very idea of experience superfluous.
And your test case about molestation is such a morally charged issue that I would not hazard logic chopping on it yet. (Hint: if the victim has some way of making sense of the event, it is an experience. If the victim has not emerged from the shock of it, then it is a trauma, a raw event, and not an experience).
That sounds to me like you are setting up moat-and-bailey, where you sometimes want to speak about a type of knowledge and sometimes about a way to acquire knowledge but don’t have a clear distinction between the two.
Knowledge vs. Phenomenon is the basic distinction. Now we need to do a sorting exercise. Where would I put sensations? Broadly under phenomena. Where would I put experience? Broadly under knowledge. There is more to be said about what we consider as experience and what as knowledge. But I’m not equipped to do that.
If I have experience playing the violin, I have some knowledge of it. It also helps me in acquiring new knowledge, like playing the cello.
The distinction you are talking about becomes important when we are talking about “knowing that” or “declarative knowledge”. The theory of thermodynamics is distinct from the methods of acquiring that theory, like experiments, equations etc. But when we talk of experience, we are not beholden to that distinction. The knowledge of cycling and the means of acquiring it are logically distinguishable but not empirically separable.
The Boltzman brain that floats around space can have all the neurons wired in a way so that it has knowledge of cycling but it didn’t went through the process of cycling.
The claim that going through the process of cycling is the only way to acquire the neurological patterns that represent the experience of cycling is wrong.
Additionally, different people who learn to cycle have quite different experiences of cycling and it’s not clear that those share a common core that can’t be learned without engaging in cycling.
To add another test case:
Do you think a person who remembers being sexually molested as a child because of the suggestions of a therapist has an “experience of sexual molestation”?
The only problem is these examples render the very idea of experience superfluous.
And your test case about molestation is such a morally charged issue that I would not hazard logic chopping on it yet. (Hint: if the victim has some way of making sense of the event, it is an experience. If the victim has not emerged from the shock of it, then it is a trauma, a raw event, and not an experience).