‘Experience’, ordinary and philosophical: A corpus study

Sytsma, Justin and Fischer, Eugen ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2088-1610 (2023) ‘Experience’, ordinary and philosophical: A corpus study. Synthese. ISSN 0039-7857 (In Press)

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Abstract

Common arguments for realism about phenomenal consciousness contend that this is a folk concept, with proponents expecting it to be lexicalised in ordinary language. In English, the word ‘experience’ is typically regarded as the best candidate. This predicts that ‘experience’ will be used to refer to mental states and episodes, not only in philosophical but also in ordinary discourse. We conduct a corpus study in order to assess this claim and to understand the actual use of the word in non-academic, academic, and philosophical discourse. In non-academic discourse, uses that refer to knowledge or sources of knowledge, and to public events, are found to dominate. Uses that refer to mental states or episodes dominate only in the philosophy of mind (and not even in philosophy at large).

Item Type:	Article
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Politics, Philosophy, Language and Communication Studies University of East Anglia Research Groups/Centres > Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Philosophy
Related URLs:	http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/22086/
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	04 May 2023 09:30
Last Modified:	11 May 2023 14:30
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/91993
DOI:

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