Calm down.
That's precisely what my point was. Sometimes words cannot properly, accurately, or correctly convey what an experience is like. But you are setting up a false dilemma, saying that if words cannot then the only way to know is through experience of that thing.
Essentially this discussion has morphed into a strange variation on
Mary's Room.
I have not set up any false dilemma.
Now to amplify what I have previously said.
Knowledge is to be "aware." "Fire produces heat," is to be aware of 1. fire and what it is and 2. it produces heat (this also requires one to be aware, of course, of the concepts used to represent objects. The word "fire" after all is a man made term used to describe and represent some object in our world). This is knowledge. However, imagine someone who has never seen, heard, or read about fire, and never felt heat, and you explain to them "fire produces heat." What if, however, he then asks what is "heat"? You can tell him heat is energy, it is the opposite of cold, it is warmth. You have given him knowledge of heat but having never experienced it, or anything akin to it, he does not know how it "feels" and you cannot impart this upon him by merely describing it. I do not think he can have knowledge, be aware, of how heat feels by use of words in my example.
So it seems to me, then, it is at least possible there are some situations one must experience to acquire knowledge about the situation, at least in terms of a sensory information.
But there mere experience of fire and heat is not sufficient to constitute as knowledge, which is to say mere experience alone is not enough to qualify as knowledge. As I stated previously, knowledge is to be 'aware' and if from your experience you do not become 'aware' of something, then the experience did not constitute as knowledge.I'd like to use the phrase,
"Your brain made the connection." In my example above, the man has to make the mental connection he feels something when being around a fire, and the something he feels is "heat." His brain made a connection.
Let's use an example, or exmaples.
1. Let's suppose a person has a very short memory, so short he forgets everything after 5 minutes. So, one day, he is walking on a very cold day and comes across what we call a "fire." He observes through his senses it gives off heat. So, he decides to stay by the fire through the night. The next day, he awakes, the fire is out, and he is now walking again in the cold. He is freezing. He has now spent 1 hour out in the cold since he has awakened. He observes, once again, what we call a "fire." However, having forgotten the fire he encountered last night gave off heat, and not making the mental connection heat produces fire, what I called, "Your brain made the connection," then he continues to walk on and eventually dies of hypothermia.
Or, let's suppose we do not have a brain. Let's further suppose the brain is not needed for the sense to operate, for us to "feel, see, hear or smell," anything. So, we have individual Y. He detects an odor, what we call "gas," coming from a source, say a hole in the ground. He observes someone lighting a match and the hole in the ground catching on fire. He never 'mentally' makes the connectionn because he has no brain to do so and so he goes home, detects the same odor of "gas" in his home, but having never made the "mental connection" he decides to light a cigarette and obliterates his own home in doing so; his lacking a brain to make a mental connection between what he smelled as being flammable.
It is similar placing your hand over fire, observing flesh burns, and it is painful, but then doing it again at a later point, the brain either not making the connection between fire burning flesh, and how painful it is, or such a connection was made but forgotten, thereby allowing the person to repeat the same painful experience again.
From this I deduce the following about knowledge.
1. The brain makes a mental connection and
2. One is aware of it or remains aware of it (it being the mental connection).
