Sensory experience is perceptual knowledge. It refers to people’s knowledge gained in social practice and through direct contact with objective external things through their senses. It is a preliminary understanding of the superficial phenomena and external connections of things, and the source and foundation of rational understanding. As for the source of experience, materialism and idealism think oppositely. Idealism denies the objective content and external sources of experience, regards it as a total subjective and self-generated experience, and denies that it originates from objective and external things. Machism and pragmatism in modern western philosophy describe experience as a “neutral element” to cover up its idealistic essence. The old materialism only regards experience as people’s negative and passive perception of the objective world, killing its trend of developing into dialectical and rational knowledge. Dialectical materialism advocates that experience comes from practice and is the reflection of objective things in human brain. It can develop into rational knowledge based on practice. Lenin pointed out: “There is no doubt that both the materialist and idealist… lines in philosophy may be concealed beneath the word ‘experience’.”..
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