experience

In order to develop and articulate his philosophical system, Dewey first needed to expose what he regarded as the flaws of the existing tradition. He believed that the distinguishing feature of Western philosophy was its assumption that true being—that which is fully real or…

…can never be objects of experience, such as God, freedom, and immortality. Kant maintained, however, that the mind has no such power and that the vaunted metaphysics is thus a sham.

…of action over doctrine, of experience over fixed principles, and it holds that ideas borrow their meanings from their consequences and their truths from their verification. Thus, ideas are essentially instruments and plans of action.

…emphasizing the priority of actual experience over fixed principles and a priori (nonexperiential) reasoning in critical investigation. For James this meant that the pragmatist

…which stressed the role of experience in the genesis of knowledge—and particularly their analyses of belief as being intimately tied in with action and, indeed, as definable in terms of one’s disposition and motive to act. The work of the 18th-century empirical idealist George Berkeley, which presented a theory of…

experience of consciousness, bodily sensation, and behaviour that reflects the personal significance of a thing, an event, or a state of affairs.

Most people, of course, experience both sorts of moods and emotions, though individuals also seem to have a more or less fixed biological predisposition to be happy or to be anxious. Even after good fortune or bad fortune, people eventually tend to return to their typical daily moods. (There…

The concept of emotional experience, accordingly, has been considerably enriched to include not only physical sensations of what is going on in one’s body but also perceptual experiences of what is going on the world. In the study of emotion, of course, that perspective is an emotional perspective, “coloured”…

…only physical sensations but the experience of an object and its environment through the unique perspective provided by that emotion. The experience of being angry at Smith, for example, consists to a large extent in the experience of Smith from a certain perspective—e.g., as being offensive, hateful, or deserving of…

…of actual or possible perceptual experiences. Realists argue that one does have such experiences, or under certain circumstances would have them, because there is an object out there that exists independently and is their source. Phenomenalism, they contend, implies that if no perceivers existed, then the world would contain no…

…internal and external worlds through experience. This includes the ability to apply previously learned information to new or wholly unrelated situations.