Experience

As experience two things is signified in a particular case a particular experience of human beings through one experienced by himself and thus self-perceived event, or in general - and then in terms of " life experience " - the totality of experiences that has ever had a person ( possibly including its more or less realistic adequate processing).

In science one speaks instead of usually more personal intentioned experience of " empiricism ". Because for scientific statements it is required that they come on the basis of systematic and intersubjectively confirmed observations about, which may include, for example, methodological strictly controlled measurements or experiments. Studies on such a methodically ordered basis are called to distinguish it from accidental individually or personal expertise to the right to higher reliability empirical sciences or empirical sciences.

• 2.1 Latter-day philosophy
• 2.2 Immanuel Kant and positivism
• 2.3 The task of clarifying the inner experience

• 3.1 experience, Oskar Negt

General

Definitions

In everyday life experience generally referred to the gained over a lifetime tested and proven knowledge. Experience means someone practiced long a particular activity, lay down - faced with many different situations that had to be mastered - a wide-ranging knowledge.

Under experience is meant mostly mutual learning. Positive / negative and good / bad experiences normally represents the effect of left behind before experienced in the past that you subsequently interpreted and evaluated for his life.

One also speaks of religious experiences (→ Transcendental experience!) Than in the broadest sense, the encounter of man with the transcendent, continue to the experienced in the form of contemplations impressions, such as the mystical experience.

In education, a distinction between primary and secondary experience experience. Primary experiences are direct experiences that are made in direct contact with fellow human beings or an object. Experiences that one takes over from the perception of others, are secondary experiences. These can include experiences that are mediated by the media.

In developmental psychology, the experience is stored in the brain event, without which learning processes and the total human development inconceivable (or possible) are. The opposite of the situation associated with events is the monotony out of the usually no beneficial effects ( for learning ). Monotony of working or prevents development progress ( in humans, in mammals ). In this respect, experience is a prerequisite for developmental progress.

Generally, a distinction is an internal experience of external experience. Outer experience refers to the experience of " outer ", ie: taking place in the world events, while inner experiences can be played completely in the notion of thinking or feeling (→ self-awareness ).

Immediacy and mediation of experience

In the theory of knowledge, a number of the concept of experience related or part of more commonly used terms are available. So experience of phenomena such as knowledge, skills, beliefs and opinions or even to the formation of individual and cultural worldviews may be significantly involved. The concept of experience emphasizes, in contrast to other possible forms of knowledge that this has come through direct, personal experience about. Experience is always only on a particular subject to move in, which in the limit can be but also the whole of humanity.

Knowledge, skills and abilities may be based both on personal experience and on the experience of others who share their experiences through narratives, reports, lessons or even mass media. They are then for the recipient of knowledge is no experience in the strict sense anymore, but " mere, abstract knowledge ". Each himself and immediately gained knowledge of a person, however, is accompanied by an experience in processes going right training of emotions, motivations and voluntary decisions. If other forms of knowledge, as it " entsubjektiviert ", " value-free " - as certain theories, systems of knowledge, skills - so this is never the case with the experience.

Experience and empiricism in science

The level of experience plays a central role in science. In particular, the natural sciences, but also humanities relating to the legitimacy of their statements on tangible, sensuous, sometimes measurable quantities, in contrast, say, to philosophy. In science, however, is the term empiricism customary to refer to the experience-based knowledge production. This was primarily the scientific method, which strictly controlled viewing and measuring of objects of investigation or it controls re- arrangement heard in the experiment. " Experience- based " " empirically ", is a science when its results are verified at all times and verifiable or falsifzierbar by third parties and their own experience.

While a number of studies as empirical science and thus be understood as based on experience, the notion of experience plays explicitly only in some flows, in particular in pragmatism, such as Wilhelm Dilthey or John Dewey, a central role.

Philosophical approaches

Generalizing, it can be stated that the concept of experience in philosophy is not clearly used. It allows for both materialistic as well as idealistic conclusions and needs in specific contexts of use of a unique scientific and philosophical clarification. The very vagueness of the concept of experience is one of the reasons both for the many divergent definitions as well as for the numerous philosophical-historical use and interpretation methods. History of philosophy, the discussion of the experience issue is largely parallel to the problem of knowledge. Rudolf Eisler distinguishes three traditions:

Following Immanuel Kant, one can as a former posteriori, the second as a priori, the third call dualistic traditions.

Modern philosophy

Although you can extend this way of looking at the reflections of ancient and medieval philosophy, should be mentioned here only some philosophical approaches of modern times. Empirical approaches set experience with perception more or less the same and consider them generally as a central category of their philosophical systems. Francis Bacon emphasized first, in view of the emergence of modern science, the value of methodically guided experience to bear on the everyday experience. Thomas Hobbes regarded the sensory perception as a source of ideas that comes from all the knowledge and strictly separates the sensation of thinking from. John Locke assumes that all knowledge came from outer or inner experience, the mind only the connection, disconnection, and generalization of the experienced minister, and the soul is a " tabula rasa " Nothing is in the intellect that was not previously in the senses. George Berkeley and David Hume used the ideas of Locke to derive their empiricist systems. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz extends this view: There is nothing in the intellect that was not previously in the senses - except the intellect itself He points thus already dualistic and even dialectical ways out.

Rationalist approaches, especially those of the classical objective idealism, see the experience the Apriori - downstream (either native or mentally vorerarbeiteten ) ideas and thoughts. René Descartes and Spinoza see in reason, the primary source of knowledge, although they accept the fact of experience making quite. Especially Descartes ' idea of the " innate ideas " ( ideae innatae ) has a major influence to the modern era (for example, Noam Chomsky ). Spruce considered the system of our ideas than experience. According to Hegel, the experience of the provisions of pure thought is independent. Schelling can be in addition to the ordinary experience as a certainty that we receive from external objects and their nature through the senses, also disclosed Paranormal and divine are considered " higher" empiricism. Arthur Schopenhauer considered experience as everything that can happen in the empirical consciousness. Many neo-Kantians are also more likely to rationalist positions, so Otto Liebmann, Hermann Cohen and Paul Natorp.

Immanuel Kant and the positivism

The most important source of dualistic approaches is the completely new experience understanding that introduced Immanuel Kant in philosophy. Kant used the term first, in an extremely wide, the knowledge in the broadest sense comprehensive understanding. Experience refers to both the object and the method of knowledge, the thinking legal context of all functions of the knowledge of him: the product of the senses and the mind. In the whole of possible experience lie all our findings. Secondly, however, differentiated and he structured this concept of experience deep. On one hand, experience it is the realization of the objects by perceptions, a synthesis of perceptions, thus means a constantly progressive cognitive process and provides empirical, objectively valid knowledge results.

However, this is nothing less than an empiricist access. Because the other hand, he states clearly that the mind by its terms ( ie the categories) himself the author of the experience is that the intellectual principles that anticipate as synthetic a priori knowledge, the experience. Third, so experience is inserted into the interplay of the a priori and a posteriori and found remains today a valid question: To what extent is the sensory perception and cognitive processing of what is perceived by existing - phylogenetically or ontogenetically or socially acquired - determined mechanisms and of the receptor configurations the possibilities and limitations of neural self- organization can be traced to the socially prescribed knowledge, attitudes and ratings?

The positivism of such diverse thinkers such as John Stuart Mill, Auguste Comte, Karl Eugen Dühring, Richard Avenarius, Joseph Petzold, Ernst Mach, and many others builds on the classical empiricism and tried in different ways turn the ( made ​​absolute, pure ) experience for all source true knowledge to determine.

The task of clarifying the inner experience

As task remains to be clarified, among other things, to find evidence of an extended inner experience, so this is not only in terms of relative a priori. Thus, in the context of self- organization theory, especially here Autopoiesistheorie of Humberto Maturana, pointed to the emergence of new spiritual without any input from the environment.

Sociological approaches

Experience, Oskar Negt

The Marxist sociologist Oskar Negt used in the early 1960s a concept of experience, which was centrally among other things, the Trade union education work. He developed his position in Sociological imagination and exemplary learning of 1964 and in the book -written with Alexander Kluge, Public Sphere and Experience of 1972. Experiences are by Negt one hand, specific forms of production to the processing of reality, on the other hand, active response to this reality. Although experiences have " through the heads of individuals " go individually, they are " moments mediated by concepts and language confrontation with reality, with the society."

For the workers' education, this means that this must focus on the collective experience of the workers. An education that emanate from collective experiences, run less risk to mediate half-education. To date, we speak in the Trade Union education from the " experience " approach.