When we ski, we have two main sources of knowledge: the sensible and the intelligible. Both sources cooperate to constitute our skiing experience.
Sensibility provides us with the basic experience of sliding. Reason also produces different forms of knowledge, which are generally linked to some kind of experience: one immediate, such as intuition; others mediated, such as reflection and deduction.
Skiing knowledge is the interaction between the desire to know and the object or thing to know. This knowledge is achieved through the representation of the thing, such as a sensory image in the case of sensory knowledge or a technical concept in the case of intelligible knowledge. Skiing knowledge is something we construct from active experiences, both sensible and intelligible.
Sensibility is the ability to perceive objects or apprehend them, and how they affect us in our daily skiing through representations or images. Without sensibility and understanding there will be no experience.
Without sensibility skiing would be nothing, and without understanding nothing could be skied. Aristotle emphasized that comprehending the world requires more than mere ideas, as “Nothing in comprehension has not first passed through the senses.” In skiing, knowledge of an action is initially sensible and then sensory memory.
When skiing, we are aware of the sensible knowledge we possess. We comprehend objects by sight, distinguish distinct snow types by the sounds of our skis scraping them, and perceive the hardness of the snowpack through touch. With our sensitive level of touch, we are already able to distinguish what causes us pleasure or distress.
However, what is meant by “snow”? We perceive its cold slippery essence and white color. Perceiving snow as a manifestation, appearance, or phenomenon of the real thing, it manifests itself as cold, slippery, and white. This is the first condition for a sensible thing to appear sensitive. For us skiers, it is not enough for the snow to be real, but for it to be sensible. Our sensibility is the determining principle of our perception of something.
According to Kantian logic, sensibility is the ability to receive impressions of how skiing affects us. Sensible intuition is the disposition of knowledge by which an object, in this case skiing, is given to us. The substance for skiing knowledge is the sensations, and the form is the spatio-temporal frame, that is, where these are situated.
As we are in a continuous state of becoming skiers and in constant change, our sensible knowledge when skiing is often ambiguous, fluctuating, and at times contradictory. So, at this point, what really is skiing knowledge? Is it simply sensory perception? No, because we cannot rely completely on our senses. So, is it purely mental? Neither, as that would prevent us from making mistakes.
Knowledge about skiing, or knowing how to ski, is about the interaction between what we perceive sensorially under the supervision of our mind, because sensible skiing is determined and partially guided or governed by our intellectual life. Through sensations, as sensible knowledge, we apprehend the actions of external objects on our senses.
On the mountains, we find ourselves surrounded by things, favorable and adverse, familiar and unusual, and coming across with things astonishes us. But we cannot limit ourselves to just being amazed by our surroundings; we are prevented from doing so by something: the need to glide.
In order to ski, we must establish a certain order among the impressions of what surrounds us and thus know how to navigate among these things. That is to say, skiing requires us to establish a proper sequence in order to anticipate the outcome. This pre-vision, or the visual anticipation of the to-be, is the root of that sequence of impressions we refer to as knowing skiing.
To know how to ski is, above all, to foresee, and this foresight is not a matter of simple intellectual curiosity; it has a utilitarian purpose. It is the only way to act on the elements and to modify, as far as possible, our trajectories according to the needs of our skiing.
In summary, it is possible to affirm that there is both physical skiing (sensible) and conceptual skiing (intelligible). Most people who learn skiing do so from an intelligible base, meaning they are aware of the concepts (the ideas), but they lack the sensitive experience that they will develop over time. Only a minority experience the opposite.
