Experience

CURIE: gmeow:Experience
IRI: https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/Experience
Category: class
Defined by: gmeow:slices/mentation

The phenomenally-conscious, qualia-bearing subset of gmeow:MentalProcess — a mental occurrence there is something it is like to undergo: a perception-as-experienced, a felt emotion-episode, a dream. Distinguished from sub-personal mental processing that carries no first-person character. The one genuine subclass in this slice; finer kinds remain gmeow:mentalProcessType values.

Structure

Subclass of: gmeow:MentalProcess

Practical Pattern

Use gmeow:Experience as a specialized kind of gmeow:MentalProcess. Add statement metadata or a standpoint when the assertion needs provenance, confidence, or vantage.

Example Snippets

These snippets are generated from canonical slice examples and trimmed to the Turtle blocks where this term appears.

Mental Timeline

Source: slices/core/mentation/examples/mental-timeline.ttl
Examples catalog: open in catalog#example-slices-core-mentation-examples-mental-timeline

@prefix gmeow: <https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/> .
@prefix ex:    <https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/examples/mentation/> .
@prefix rdfs:  <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#> .
@prefix xsd:   <http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#> .



# SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2026 Blackcat Informatics® Inc. <paudley@blackcatinformatics.ca>
# SPDX-License-Identifier: CC-BY-4.0
#
# Worked example — a small mental timeline for one agent.
#
# Three mental occurrents illustrate the mentation slice's core idioms:
#   1. A gmeow:MentalProcess of type processPerception — Ada notices morning light.
#      Carries a temporal frame the same way gmeow:Event takes one (events idiom,
#      gmeow:eventTime + gmeow:eventTemporalFrame), and links back to a perceptual
#      claim via gmeow:realizesMoment (open-range bridge).
#   2. A gmeow:MentalProcess of type processReasoning — Ada works through a proof.
#      gmeow:realizesMoment points at ex:beliefQEDholds, a placeholder node that will
#      be typed gmeow:MentalMoment once slice kernel/cognition  lands; open-range
#      at this tier is deliberate and documented in the slice.
#   3. A gmeow:Experience (the phenomenal subset of MentalProcess) of type
#      processDreaming — Ada's dream last night. gmeow:Experience is used because
#      there is something it is like to undergo a dream (the qualia-bearing subset).
#
# All three are borne by exactly one experiencer (gmeow:experiencer is functional);
# gmeow:mentalProcessType is non-functional, so a process can carry multiple types.

# --------------------------------------------------------------------------- #
# 3. Last night's dream — a gmeow:Experience (the phenomenal subset)
# --------------------------------------------------------------------------- #

Common Companion Terms

gmeow:MentalProcess

Usage Advice

Use when

Use for the phenomenally-conscious, qualia-bearing subset of mental processing — an episode there is something it is like to undergo (a felt perception, an emotion-episode, a dream) — when the first-person character is what distinguishes it.

Avoid when

Avoid it for sub-personal processing that carries no first-person character (type that plain gmeow:MentalProcess) and avoid subclassing Experience to mark a finer kind; the kind stays a gmeow:mentalProcessType value (Principle 9).

How to use

Type the episode gmeow:Experience (it inherits gmeow:experiencer and gmeow:mentalProcessType from gmeow:MentalProcess), tag its kind with gmeow:mentalProcessType, and reserve the type for occurrences with genuine phenomenal character.

Examples

ex:theDream a gmeow:Experience; gmeow:experiencer ex:lillith; gmeow:mentalProcessType gmeow:processDreaming.