The contention is made that having a perceptual experience is a kind of epistemic activity depending on sensation and presupposing understanding. The statement is then made that what we experience depends upon what we know or at least believe.
An experience that is perceptual is an experience involving conscious observation that produces a mental image. Such an image is produced by physical sensation--touch, sight, hearing, smell, taste, or a combination of two or more at one time.
An experience is an episode or instance of a given phenomena. In this case, the experience is perceptual and depends first on sensation. It is identified as an epistemic activity meaning that it involves cognition, that it is of or related to knowledge.
An epistemic activity presupposes understanding, or supposes beforehand that the sensation experience will be understood and so will lead to knowledge. When we have a perceptual experience that leads to knowledge, we would need to understand the experience in order to attain that knowledge. However, the statement made above, that what we experience depends upon what we know or at least believe, is dependent on the first statement being true. It is not true in all cases but only in instances of perceptual experience that lead to knowledge. A perceptual experience that does lead to knowledge is one of a subset of epistemic activities, but a perceptual experience need not be an epistemic activity. First, a perceptual experience might not lead to knowledge because it would not involve understanding. Furthermore, when we state that understanding is dependent on what we know or believe, we are explaining the course of events that takes place but not assuring the outcome. That is, we cannot assure that the experience leads to knowledge whether it depends on what we know or on what we believe. Knowledge here must mean more than what we think we know. Knowledge implies validity, and if it i...