What, then, makes for the distinction between mere experience and an experience? First, there are the related issues of unity and closure. Mere experience, Dewey notes, is continuous, often ‘inchoate’, and characterized by ‘distraction and dispersion’ (p. 35). In mere experience, ‘we are not concerned with the connection of one incident with what went before and what comes after. Things happen, but they are neither definitely included nor decisively excluded; we drift’ (p. 40). .
