Experiential knowledge

Experiential knowledge is knowledge gained through experience, as opposed to a priori (before experience) knowledge: it can also be contrasted both with propositional (textbook) knowledge, and with practical knowledge.

Experiential knowledge is cognate to Michael Polanyi's personal knowledge, as well as to Bertrand Russell's contrast of Knowledge by Acquaintance and by Description.

In the philosophy of mind, 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 colours, 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 color like blue.

The question of a priori 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?

Zen 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 as an argument against God's omniscience, questioning whether God could genuinely know everything, since he (supposedly) cannot know what it is like to sin. Commenting on the distinction between experiential knowledge and propositional knowledge, analytic philosopher and theologian William Lane Craig has stated in an interview with Robert Lawrence Kuhn for the PBS series Closer to Truth that because experiential knowledge is appropriate to the mind 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.

...
Wikipedia