Experience

Corresponding to the two notions of Consciousness are two differing common usages of 'Experience'. One means to 'undergo' and to 'observe', and, so, is often classified as a 'passive' notion. But, when, for example, one is asked whether or not one is an 'experienced' surgeon, one is not being asked whether or not one has observed oneself performing surgery, but rather whether or not one has performed surgery. So, this notion can be classified as an 'active' one. But the value of this active sense of 'experience' is not as an alternative to one that is surely a prevalent connotation. Rather, it brings to light the unequivocal essence of Experience. The 'active' notion does not reject that Experience is observational, just that it is merely observational. A surgeon surely observes what (s)he is doing, but such observation is integrated with the moving of hands, fingers, eyes, etc. So, Experience, in at least the 'active' sense, would seem, paradoxically, to combine both 'activity' and 'passivity'. But the seeming paradox is a consequence of an inappropriate use of 'passive' to begin with. As Dewey has argued, even the observation that is the quintessential 'experience' in Platonism, the Contemplation of Beauty, is not merely 'passive'. For, as he analyzes, the contemplation of a painting entails not merely passive looking, but an active reconstruction of the work, perhaps even a reconstruction that accurately repeats the artist's initial construction itself. That such reconstruction takes place in the imagination does not undermine the point that it is no less 'active' than the movements of the surgeon's hands, just as the surgeon's observation of those movements is no less undergone than a observer's being affected by the colors on a canvas.