From: Kenneth Van Oost (kennethvanoost@belgacom.net)
Date: Thu 05 May 2005 - 19:36:07 GMT
From: Kate Distin <memes@distin.co.uk>
> Even within cultures there is a question about whether we perceive
> sensations in the same way as each other. Philosophers talk about
> "qualia": the subjective qualities of our conscious experiences - e.g.
> the way chocolate tastes, the way it feels to cut your knee. The
> problem with qualia is that other people's are inaccessible. So how do
> we know that your chocolate-tasting quale is the same as mine? There is
> a spectrum of liking for the tastes of certain foods: does one of us
> tolerate, another loathe and a third love the taste of brussels sprouts
> because each is reacting to the *same* tasting experience in a different
> way - or because sprouts actually taste different to each of us?
Kate, same excuse as the one I gave Scott, I work too much...
But here is my reply to the above,
A certain depth you can reach, but the problem is that you never can
or will know if people are telling the truth or just damn lie.
They are accessible, but Jean- Luc Marion, a French philosopher,
argues that if people ' a priori ' don 't believe that one other truly loves
him and says him so, there is no love in the first place !
I think that this can be applied to words, discourses too .
In a sense we don 't perceive sensations in the same way others do,
although a ' common feeling ' we all can know, but it is more what
the sensation does with us that is important; what kinds of e(a)ffects
it brings down/ produces, or in your case, what they ( could/ would)
represent.
Reading a book or telling a joke/ story can in the case of the former
give a great sensation if we identify ourselves with the characters, and
in the latter case the specific words/ gestures choosen can represent
certain
elements of our personal interior.
We all know, it is not up to everybody to tell a joke so that an audience
will laugh !
A joke, a story, a discours are never ending stories_ there is always
something added or left out by somebody, somewhere in the summer-
time. In the end we can only hope that the one we talked to understood
what I 've told him or vice versa that I got a sufficient representative
framework in my mind to understand what is said to me.
There is something strange going on, words/ discourses can ' touch'
is, but in the other way round we can only touch/ feel ( abstractive)
what they represent. We can touch books/ cars/ houses and love
them, but only in the way they e(a)ffects us....
Regards,
Kenneth
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