Experiential knowledge is

knowledge Knowledge is an Declarative knowledge, awareness of facts, a Knowledge by acquaintance, familiarity with individuals and situations, or a Procedural knowledge, practical skill. Knowledge of facts, also called propositional knowledge, is oft ...

gained through

experience Experience refers to Consciousness, conscious events in general, more specifically to perceptions, or to the practical knowledge and familiarity that is produced by these processes. Understood as a conscious event in the widest sense, experience i ...

, as opposed to

a priori ('from the earlier') and ('from the later') are Latin phrases used in philosophy to distinguish types of knowledge, Justification (epistemology), justification, or argument by their reliance on experience. knowledge is independent from any ...

(before experience) knowledge: it can also be contrasted both with propositional (textbook) knowledge, and with practical knowledge. Experiential knowledge is cognate to

Michael Polanyi Michael Polanyi ( ; ; 11 March 1891 – 22 February 1976) was a Hungarian-British polymath, who made important theoretical contributions to physical chemistry, economics, and philosophy. He argued that positivism is a false account of knowle ...

's personal knowledge, as well as to

Bertrand Russell Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, and public intellectual. He had influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, and various areas of analytic ...

's contrast of Knowledge by Acquaintance and by Description.

A posteriori

In the

philosophy of mind Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of the mind and its relation to the Body (biology), body and the Reality, external world. The mind–body problem is a paradigmatic issue in philosophy of mind, although a ...

, the phrase often refers to knowledge that can ''only'' be acquired through experience, such as, for example, the knowledge of what it is like to see

colour Color (or colour in Commonwealth English; see spelling differences) is the visual perception based on the electromagnetic spectrum. Though color is not an inherent property of matter, color perception is related to an object's light absorp ...

s, which could not be explained to someone born blind: the necessity of experiential knowledge becomes clear if one was asked to explain to a blind person a colour like blue. The question of a posteriori knowledge might be formulated as: can Adam or Eve know what water feels like on their skin prior to touching it for the first time?

Religion

Zen Zen (; from Chinese: ''Chán''; in Korean: ''Sŏn'', and Vietnamese: ''Thiền'') is a Mahayana Buddhist tradition that developed in China during the Tang dynasty by blending Indian Mahayana Buddhism, particularly Yogacara and Madhyamaka phil ...

emphasises the importance of the experiential element in religious experience, as opposed to what it sees as the trap of conceptualization: as D. T. Suzuki put it, "fire. Mere talking of it will not make the mouth burn". Experiential knowledge has also been used in the

philosophy of religion Philosophy of religion is "the philosophical examination of the central themes and concepts involved in religious traditions". Philosophical discussions on such topics date from ancient times, and appear in the earliest known Text (literary theo ...

as an argument against God's

omniscience Omniscience is the property of possessing maximal knowledge. In Hinduism, Sikhism and the Abrahamic religions, it is often attributed to a divine being or an all-knowing spirit, entity or person. In Jainism, omniscience is an attribute that any ...

, questioning whether God could genuinely know everything, since he (supposedly) cannot know what it is like to

sin In religious context, sin is a transgression against divine law or a law of the deities. Each culture has its own interpretation of what it means to commit a sin. While sins are generally considered actions, any thought, word, or act considered ...

. Commenting on the distinction between experiential knowledge and

propositional knowledge Declarative knowledge is an awareness of facts that can be expressed using declarative sentences. It is also called theoretical knowledge, descriptive knowledge, propositional knowledge, and knowledge-that. It is not restricted to one specific ...

, analytic philosopher and theologian

William Lane Craig William Lane Craig (; born August 23, 1949) is an American Analytic philosophy, analytic philosopher, Christian apologetics, Christian apologist, author, and theologian. He is a professor of philosophy at Houston Christian University and at the T ...

has stated in an interview with

Robert Lawrence Kuhn Robert Lawrence Kuhn (born November 6, 1944) is an American public intellectual and investment banker. He is also an author, TV-producer, columnist and commentator, especially on topics related to China. Kuhn is the creator of the PBS series ''C ...

for the PBS series '' Closer to Truth'' that because experiential knowledge is appropriate to the

mind The mind is that which thinks, feels, perceives, imagines, remembers, and wills. It covers the totality of mental phenomena, including both conscious processes, through which an individual is aware of external and internal circumstances ...

which does the knowing, in order for omniscience to be a cognitive perfection God's omniscience must entail God know only and all propositional truths and have only appropriate experiential knowledge.

Ecology

Writer Barry Lopez writes about experiential knowledge and how it relates back to the environment, arguing that without experiencing nature, one cannot fully "know" and understand the relationships within ecosystems.

Therapy

Carl Rogers Carl Ransom Rogers (January 8, 1902 – February 4, 1987) was an American psychologist who was one of the founders of humanistic psychology and was known especially for his person-centered psychotherapy. Rogers is widely considered one of the f ...

stressed the importance of experiential knowledge both for the therapist formulating his or her theories, and for the client in therapy – both things with which most counsellors would agree. As defined by Thomasina Borkman (Emeritus Professor of Sociology, George Mason University) experiential knowledge is the cornerstone of therapy in self-help groups, as opposed to both lay (general) and professional knowledge. Sharing in such groups is the narration of significant life experiences in a process through which the knowledge derived thereof is validated by the group and transformed into a corpus that becomes their fundamental resource and product. Neville Symington has argued that one of the central features of the narcissist is a shying away from experiential knowledge, in favour of adopting wholesale a ready-made way of living drawn from other people's experience.

Culture

Helen Vendler has characterised

Seamus Heaney Seamus Justin Heaney (13 April 1939 – 30 August 2013) was an Irish Irish poetry, poet, playwright and translator. He received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. Among his best-known works is ''Death of a Naturalist'' (1966), his first m ...

's art as, in one respect, recording an experiential learning curve: "we are earthworms of the earth, and all that / has gone through us is what will be our trace".Heaney, quoted in H. Bloom ed., ''Seamus Heaney'' (1986) p. 174

References