Experientialist Perspective

• Experientialist Perspective is a view that asserts lived experience and internal conscious dynamics fundamentally generate knowledge, meaning, and the structure of scientific theories.
• It emphasizes that measurement in quantum mechanics and participatory realism stem from active observer engagement, reshaping traditional views of objectivity.
• The perspective finds practical applications across AI, language grounding, education, and innovation, offering actionable insights into empirical methodologies and user experience.

The experientialist perspective centers on the thesis that knowledge, meaning, creativity, and even the structure of physical theory fundamentally arise through lived experience and the internal dynamics of conscious or agentive systems. Rather than treating cognition, language, or scientific observation as abstract, impersonal processes that merely encode or mirror the world, experientialist approaches emphasize the active, situated, and subjective construction of knowledge through ongoing engagement with the physical, social, or informational environment. This view appears in diverse domains: quantum foundations, AI, LLMing, education, neurocognitive science, organizational innovation, and even empirical methodology itself. Below, the major components and ramifications of the experientialist perspective are outlined, drawing exclusively on research and claims from peer-reviewed and arXiv-referenced sources.

1. Experience as Foundational: Quantum Mechanics, Reality, and the "Ultimate Subject"

In quantum theory, the experientialist perspective manifests as a critique of interpretations that attempt to describe reality solely in third-person, agent-independent terms. According to Bohr's reading (closely paralleling Kant's epistemology), all empirical knowledge is necessarily conditioned by a categorial apparatus that makes experience of the world possible and communicable. Objects of science are only accessible via measurement outcomes, which, by necessity, occur in the classical domain—i.e., the directly experienced, objectified world. The underlying quantum field (the "manifestation") is not directly accessible and should be understood as a set of potentialities or correlations realized through measurement (Mohrhoff, 2014).

In this framework, quantum mechanics is not a description of independent, hidden variables but rather a calculus for correlating experiential outcomes—pointer positions, detector clicks, macroscopic records. The so-called measurement problem dissolves when the superposition principle is recognized as governing the formation of correlations, while the definite outcomes belong to the structure of experience. The concept of "Being" (numerical identity of fundamental particles) further reinforces that what is individuated in space-time is not a collection of distinct entities but an undifferentiated, universal substratum that manifests as both the substance and the subject for which the world exists. Experience is thereby not merely a passive registration but the primary arena in which physical reality is realized and differentiated.

2. Participatory Realism and the Observer as Co-Creator

Participatory realism (Fuchs, 2016), with QBism as a representative paradigm, extends the experientialist perspective by insisting that scientific laws are not impersonal dictates, but frameworks that guide agents in their active engagements with nature. In this view, quantum probabilities (as per the Born rule) are not direct reflections of mind-independent properties but are normative guides that facilitate an agent's consistent and rational navigation of the world.

Each measurement is an act of "creation"—the agent's choice and intervention partially bring new facets of reality into existence. Rather than the universe being a fixed, inert structure, reality is continuously revised and made through acts of observer-participancy. This stance does not collapse into solipsism: the world kicks back unpredictably, ensuring that subjective probabilities are tethered to objective (non-deterministic) regularities. Reality, in the participatory sense, is richer than any third-person narrative could capture, and the observer's experience is not an extrinsic add-on, but central to the fabric of physical law.

3. Experientialism in Cognition, Creativity, and Learning

Creativity and learning are fundamentally experiential processes in this framework. The "self-made worldview" (SMW) reflects the continual transformation of an individual's internal model through direct experience and cultural encounter (Maland et al., 2018). Creative cognition is driven not by rote accumulation of facts but by perturbations—unanticipated experiences that introduce psychological entropy and prompt reorganization of mental associations. The SMW is dynamic, refined by chaining (streaming associations) and contextual focus (shifting between divergent and convergent thinking), grounded neurally in overlapping, content-addressable memory.

Learning science, via neurocognitive phenomics, situates learning styles as emergent from the interaction between genetic, epigenetic, neural, and environmental factors (Duch, 2021). Kolb's experiential learning model, for example, is mapped onto information flow and connectivity among sensory, central, and motor regions, with variable patterns accounting for individual learning preferences:

$N_{\text{states}} = 7 \times 12 = 84$

This reflects the diversity of brain activation states that structure experiential learning modes, with implications for educational design, assessment, and targeted intervention.

4. Grounding Language and Intelligence in Experience

Language meaning, according to the experientialist view, cannot be reduced to distributional statistics over text. Successful linguistic communication is only possible because utterances are grounded in shared physical, perceptual, and social experience (Bisk et al., 2020). Models that attempt to learn semantics using only textual co-occurrences lack the grounding necessary for robust communication and generalization. Instead, joint embeddings or multimodal representations are used:

$\mathbf{v}_w = \operatorname{Enc}(w, \mathbf{x})$

where $w$ is a word and $\mathbf{x}$ denotes associated perceptual or social context. This ensures that LLMs can "bind" abstract symbols to real-world referents and practical interactions, resulting in systems that demonstrate genuine understanding and context sensitivity.

In advanced RL systems, experiential explanations enhance interpretability by tying agent actions to tangible environmental experiences via influence predictors—auxiliary models that quantify the contribution of different reward sources (Alabdulkarim et al., 2022). This approach is empirically shown to improve human understanding and trust by explicitly connecting abstract value estimates to the agent's lived experience within the task environment.

5. Experiential Knowledge Creation in AI and Art

Experiential AI research (Hemment et al., 2019, Hemment et al., 2023) proposes integrating artistic methodologies with technical development to bridge the gap between algorithmic mechanisms and human understanding. Artistic interventions—through installations, performative works, or visualization of glitches—serve not only as explanatory tools but as platforms for reflexivity, critique, and social engagement with AI systems. The experiential learning process in AI is formalized as the dynamic interplay of Aspect (context), Algorithm (technical core), Affect (experiential engagement), and Apprehension (cognitive impact), potentially represented as:

$$\mathrm{Knowledge}_{\mathrm{AI}} = f(\mathrm{Aspect}, \mathrm{Algorithm}, \mathrm{Affect}, \mathrm{Apprehension})$$

Here, knowledge is not a static artifact of code or data, but a byproduct of iterative transformation through lived experiences across socio-technical settings.

In LLMs, experientialism is evident in how temporal cognition arises: LLMs develop internal reference points and represent time using a logarithmic compression analogous to the Weber–Fechner law, reflecting subjective temporal experience despite purely statistical training (Li et al., 21 Jul 2025):

$$d_{\text{ref}}(i,j) = |\log(|R-i|) \pm \log(|R-j|)|$$

This demonstrates the spontaneous emergence of internal "world models" that mirror experiential cognition.

6. Experiential Approaches in Organizational Innovation and Empirical Methodology

Innovation studies operationalize subjective experience (or perspective) using vector representations in conceptual space (Cao et al., 5 Jun 2025). The subjective perspective of an innovator is quantified as the difference between the current problem/task and their accumulated experiential background:

$V_{p,i} = V_{\text{task}} - V_{(i)}$

Perspective diversity (PD) within teams, measured via average pairwise cosine distance among $V_{p,i}$, consistently predicts higher-impact innovation, whereas excessive background diversity (differences in experience vectors) can inhibit effective synthesis and communication.

In empirical science methodology, Reflective Empiricism (Wittwer, 7 Apr 2025) advocates for systematic introspection, bias recognition, and the incorporation of Heureka moments—intuitive insights arising from direct subjective experience—as legitimate sources of scientific hypothesis generation. The approach posits premise-based logical-explorative modeling, beginning from consciously specified starting assumptions, logically expanded and empirically tested:

$P \implies M$

where $P$ is a set of premises and $M$ the derived provisional model.

7. Experientialism in Marketing, User Experience, and Virtual Environments

Experiential marketing strategy demonstrates empirical efficacy in driving demand by orchestrating sensory, affective, and cognitive experiences (Montalico, 22 Jun 2025):

$$\text{Tourism Demand} = 12.691 + 0.459 \times (\text{Sensory}) + 0.965 \times (\text{Affective}) + 1.162 \times (\text{Thought})$$

This aligns with the finding that thought-provoking and emotional engagement are primary determinants of consumer behavior.

User experience research leverages experiential approaches—real-time feedback, smart translation interfaces, and opportunity landscapes that bridge the gap between user needs and technological capabilities—to maximize engagement and learning (Diaz, 18 Jun 2025). In virtual environments, "virtual materiality" refers to the capacity of digital objects to actively shape user reflection and cognitive change, establishing that even in synthetic settings, entanglement with material affordances is central to experiential transformation (Arya et al., 22 Apr 2025).

Summary Table: Core Dimensions of the Experientialist Perspective

Domain	Core Mechanism/Construct	Key Claim
Quantum Foundations	Measurement as actualized experience	Reality is constituted in the act of manifest experience; Being is ultimate subject and substance
AI and Language	Experience-grounded representations	Meaning and generalization require grounding in perceptual/social context; explanations as narratives
Creativity & Learning	Self-made worldview, chaining, contextual focus	Creativity is dynamic reorganization of experience; learning styles are neurocognitively grounded
Organizational Innovation	Perspective diversity in vector space	Teams with high perspective diversity (but not excessive background disparity) achieve greatest impact
Methodology	Reflective empiricism, premise-based modeling	Systematic introspection and intuitive insights are crucial for robust hypothesis formation
Marketing & UX	Sensory/affective/cognitive orchestration	Consumer and user responses are strongest when experiences are meaningful and multi-dimensional

This comprehensive perspective positions experience—not as epiphenomenal, but as constitutive of reality, cognition, communication, innovation, and the very structure of physical and informational theory.