ABSTRACT
Experience is perhaps the most miraculous phenomenon we know of; but it is also the easiest to overlook. In this chapter, it is argued that theorising has all too often been limited by a default flat ontology, and this misdiagnoses experience as a direct form of apprehension – a form of actualism prone to the epistemic fallacy. Building on these insights, I develop instead a depth ontology of experience as the human capacity for cognitive conscious and nonconscious, i.e., thought and unthought, knowledge, gained through interaction with our environment. To the extent that experience is central to all human activity, this realist theory is not just relevant to that set of activities grouped together under the labels of “aesthetic” or “the arts”, but is of central significance to the practices of science and, indeed, philosophy, more generally.
