Two Categories Of Experience

All knowledge involves logic and all knowledge involves experience, as I have explained elsewhere [1].  Since experience is intrinsically necessary in order to have knowledge, I want to draw attention to the two primary types of experience.  With logic added, this means that there are three general sources of knowledge, but this post will concentrate mainly on the two forms of experience.

The two major categories of experience are introspection, which brings awareness of the contents of one's mind, and sensory perception, which reports perceptions of stimuli in the external world.  Can someone name a single unit of knowledge that does not reduce down to one of these two types of experience?  No.  Of course, one could divide each one into smaller categories--for instance, there are different things for introspection to recognize within the mind and there are multiple distinct senses--but all knowledge involves both logic and one of these two forms of experience.

Reflecting on emotional states, recalling memories, using deductive reasoning--all of these things require introspection.  To introspect is to gaze not at an external object but within one's own consciousness, to look within one's spirit.  Introspection is present in all thinking and in all reasoning (including immediate awareness of the three laws of logic).  This process appears in all facets of our knowledge, as all knowing by necessity requires a conscious mind, without which there could be no perceiving, no thinking, and no awareness of anything at all.

The only type of experience that one could have that does not exclusively involve introspection is use of the senses to perceive external objects.  Although knowledge of sensory perceptions can never amount to anything more than awareness of one's sensory perceptions and that there is some sort of external world, much human activity incorporates the senses in some way.  An important thing to note is that all knowledge requires a form of introspection, but not all knowledge involves the senses.  By their very nature the senses only perceive what is outside of themselves and cannot by themselves grasp logic or think.

Some of the three categories I have mentioned here (logic, introspection, and sensory perceptions) regularly overlap.  As I've pointed out, to exercise my ability to use logic I must focus on my own mental activity, which means I must use introspection to some degree.  When I focus on my sensory perceptions, I simultaneously use logic to distinguish one external object from another.  When a person experiences sensory perceptions, introspection is involved, for that person realizes that there is a conscious self that is doing the perceiving and that his or her mind is experiencing particular sensory perceptions.  But, again, whereas all knowledge involves introspection, not all knowledge involves the senses.  Logic and introspection do not rely on the senses in any way, but intelligible sensory experiences inherently rely on logic and introspection.

Again, all knowledge inescapably relies on some type of experience.  Admitting the universal necessity of experience to knowledge does not oppose rationalism in any way; it is reason itself that proves this.  As you can see, there is no such thing as knowledge that does not involve varying degrees of either introspection or experiencing sensory perceptions.  Experience is omnipresent in knowledge just as reason is.


[1].  See here:
A.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/07/the-reliability-of-experience.html
B.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/09/the-necessity-of-experience-to-knowledge.html