In the revolt against idealism, the ambiguities of the word experience have been perceived, with the result th... — Bertrand Russell

In the revolt against idealism, the ambiguities of the word experience have been perceived, with the result that realists have more and more avoided the word.

Author: Bertrand Russell

Insight: When we talk about "experience," we usually mean something real and solid—what actually happened to us, what we lived through. But Russell points out that the word wobbles between two very different meanings: experience as the raw stuff of life itself, and experience as our interpretation of it. A realist, trying to describe the world as it actually is, gets tangled up in this mess. So they started avoiding the word altogether, preferring more precise language about facts, observations, or sensations instead. This still matters because we do the same thing in everyday arguments. Someone says "I experienced discrimination" and another person hears only "you felt something," as if feeling settles the question of what really happened. Or we conflate "I have years of experience in this field" with "I know the objective truth about how things work." The word bridges too much territory, letting us slip between the personal and the universal without noticing. The deeper point is that clarity requires us to be suspicious of our own words—especially the comfortable ones. When something feels simple and obvious, like "experience," it might be doing too much work in the background. Getting specific about what we actually mean, rather than hiding behind familiar language, is harder but usually worth it.

Source: The Problems of Philosophy, p. 51, 1912