Question!

[conuly]

I had come up with this post last night, and then after I forgot it my philosophy class reminded me of it.

How do you know what you're feeling? What does it feel like? Do you think your physical responses to emotions are like other people's? Bonus question: Do you think it's possible that what you see as green, other people see as red? Or some color you can't see? I used to think that.

Comments

[joeymew.livejournal.com]

On the bonus question: I've sat around pondering that for a long long time now. I don't see any reason for why it isn't possible. It leads me to wonder if everyones favorite colour is really the same, but everyone knows it by different names. *shrugs*

[xmorningxrosex.livejournal.com]

I think I know what I'm feeling by comparison. If I compare one mood to something I've felt before, I can know it's more positive (ie. happy, giddy, excited) or negative (ie. depressed, sad, angry), and then kinda compare those moods to figure out what aspects it has. Like a negative mood could be somewhere on the sad side or on the angry side, so I know if I'm depressed or pissed feeling, and then just go with a word that somewhat describes it. I guess that's how it works somewhat, but not sure because I tend to go through so many emotions at once that it's hard to pin just one down (like when I need to use the mood function when updating!).

I've used to think about things like that about colors too. I had a bf that was color blind, and that was the first time I'd heard of the idea, so it kinda threw me for a loop and made me question things.

[staircase-wit.livejournal.com]

How to the machine know what tastee wheat tastes like?

[lasarus.livejournal.com]

You know, one of my neighbours was talking to me about something like this.

'How do you know you see the same colours as me? I might think that bush is green, 'cause I've got green eyes ... and you've got ... blue eyes, so you might think that it's blue. And that [white ]van there, it might look green to me.'

'And blue to me?'

'Yeah.'

I have strange neighbours :D

They're cool.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Hm... I know what I'm feeling because I have some internal way of categorizing or defining my feelings. My reactions to emotions probably are not like other peoples', though; just as my emotions probably aren't like other peoples'. Although everyone could say they feel "happiness" and they would define it similarily if asked for it ("absence of bad feelings", "joy", "feeling loved", that sort of thing), the actual emotion is individual. Or so I think. And reactions are even more different - even I don't always react the same to the (basically) same feelings.

Bonus: Yes. It's so even with things where everyone would say they have a colour, like tennis balls (which some people might see more as green and some people might see as yellow); then there are things that aren't usually associated with colours, like tastes or smells or whatever; there, of course, those who do associate colours with them, can differ even more. (I think chicken tastes purple. I don't know what others would say bout that.) And then there's studies about collective perception, that have whole peoples see colours differently from others. We have one term for red and one term for green (basically. Of course there are shades, like burgundy red, or teal green). A people living in a djungle environment might have several different terms for green (as in, different colour terms, not as in different shades of one colour terms) and only one for red. And so on, and so on.

[redlami.livejournal.com]

Sounds like some questions Hofstadter discussed in one of his books. Which I think I'd like to read again.

Anyway, I think "knowing" and "feeling" are different but interrelated and complementary ways of processing. "Knowing what I'm feeling" and "Feeling what I know" are internal feedback mechanisms that give me opportunities to make course corrections when I act based on one or the other.

I don't think my responses are exactly like anyone else's, but I think that, like language, they're close enough that I can learn to approximate an understanding of other people's emotional states. Of course I'm somewhat disabled in this sense as an aspie, but I still have some ability here. It's like I'll never enter the Tour de France, but I can ride a bike well enough to get to the store.

As for color... since two of my kids have red/green color blindness, I have to deal with this all the time. Like the time my wife made swiss chard, and my son pointed to the stems in disgust and asked what the orange stripes were. Again, color perception is relative but tends to be common enough that we have a shared palette, or vocabulary. But those who are further from the typical, like my kids, have a harder time of it and have to work harder to cognitively compensate for their disabilities. So for instance, my kids knows to read the labels on the crayons and use pink for skin because their skin is pink, not green.

[catsluvdmb.livejournal.com]

To the first, I know my angry or annoyed when my eye starts twitching uncontrollably and my temples are throbbing. That's a good physical reaction right there. When I'm scared it feels like I can't breath.

As to the second, there are several documented disorders that make it so you see colors differently from other people. Color blindness being the most obvious, there is also one where people process reds as blues (can't remember the name of it). I believe there's different variations on that disorder as well.

[catsluvdmb.livejournal.com]

Chicken tastes purple? Interesting...

As for the associating colors with different words, I view the question as people physically seeing different colors, not calling them by different names. Chemistry is what determines what color something is (light being absorbs or reflected) but there are various genetic disorders that cause you to physically not see certain colors or see one color as another.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

I view the question as people physically seeing different colors, not calling them by different names.
Well, I meant that, too. But they don't only "see some colour you don't see", they even have their own names for it. That's what I meant by that example.
And of course, you can never be sure that people see the same colour that you see, even within your own cultural circle. It's generally assumed that, I dunno, everyone looking at something yellow (let's say, FFFF00 yellow) sees the same yellow, but who knows whether they really are?

[goddess588.livejournal.com]

I think everyone's feelings and physical responses are much the same, though on a continuum and affected by environmental and internal factors. And there's not just the predominating emotion (mood) but the way it's put across (affect) too. eg: mood = happy, sad, angry etc - affect = blunted, expansive, restricted, congruent/incongruent to the mood.

Research shows that children under a certain age tend not to realise (for lack of a better word) that others are experiencing similar thoughts and feelings to themselves, and I clearly remember when that became apparent to me. I must have been so egocentric.

I'd agree that people see colours differently, I've had arguments with people over colour nuance - red vs orange etc. Also, the fact that we use the same names for each colour doesn't mean that we all see the same colour - 'blue' may be seen by others as a totally different colour/shade but we all know it's 'blue' because that's what we were told when we were learning how to talk. Who knows what each individual perceives - there's nothing to measure it against.

I had a dream once that there was another primary colour - now that was bizarre.

[joeymew.livejournal.com]

On the bonus question: I've sat around pondering that for a long long time now. I don't see any reason for why it isn't possible. It leads me to wonder if everyones favorite colour is really the same, but everyone knows it by different names. *shrugs*

[xmorningxrosex.livejournal.com]

I think I know what I'm feeling by comparison. If I compare one mood to something I've felt before, I can know it's more positive (ie. happy, giddy, excited) or negative (ie. depressed, sad, angry), and then kinda compare those moods to figure out what aspects it has. Like a negative mood could be somewhere on the sad side or on the angry side, so I know if I'm depressed or pissed feeling, and then just go with a word that somewhat describes it. I guess that's how it works somewhat, but not sure because I tend to go through so many emotions at once that it's hard to pin just one down (like when I need to use the mood function when updating!).

I've used to think about things like that about colors too. I had a bf that was color blind, and that was the first time I'd heard of the idea, so it kinda threw me for a loop and made me question things.

[staircase-wit.livejournal.com]

How to the machine know what tastee wheat tastes like?

[lasarus.livejournal.com]

You know, one of my neighbours was talking to me about something like this.

'How do you know you see the same colours as me? I might think that bush is green, 'cause I've got green eyes ... and you've got ... blue eyes, so you might think that it's blue. And that [white ]van there, it might look green to me.'

'And blue to me?'

'Yeah.'

I have strange neighbours :D

They're cool.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Hm... I know what I'm feeling because I have some internal way of categorizing or defining my feelings. My reactions to emotions probably are not like other peoples', though; just as my emotions probably aren't like other peoples'. Although everyone could say they feel "happiness" and they would define it similarily if asked for it ("absence of bad feelings", "joy", "feeling loved", that sort of thing), the actual emotion is individual. Or so I think. And reactions are even more different - even I don't always react the same to the (basically) same feelings.

Bonus: Yes. It's so even with things where everyone would say they have a colour, like tennis balls (which some people might see more as green and some people might see as yellow); then there are things that aren't usually associated with colours, like tastes or smells or whatever; there, of course, those who do associate colours with them, can differ even more. (I think chicken tastes purple. I don't know what others would say bout that.) And then there's studies about collective perception, that have whole peoples see colours differently from others. We have one term for red and one term for green (basically. Of course there are shades, like burgundy red, or teal green). A people living in a djungle environment might have several different terms for green (as in, different colour terms, not as in different shades of one colour terms) and only one for red. And so on, and so on.

[redlami.livejournal.com]

Sounds like some questions Hofstadter discussed in one of his books. Which I think I'd like to read again.

Anyway, I think "knowing" and "feeling" are different but interrelated and complementary ways of processing. "Knowing what I'm feeling" and "Feeling what I know" are internal feedback mechanisms that give me opportunities to make course corrections when I act based on one or the other.

I don't think my responses are exactly like anyone else's, but I think that, like language, they're close enough that I can learn to approximate an understanding of other people's emotional states. Of course I'm somewhat disabled in this sense as an aspie, but I still have some ability here. It's like I'll never enter the Tour de France, but I can ride a bike well enough to get to the store.

As for color... since two of my kids have red/green color blindness, I have to deal with this all the time. Like the time my wife made swiss chard, and my son pointed to the stems in disgust and asked what the orange stripes were. Again, color perception is relative but tends to be common enough that we have a shared palette, or vocabulary. But those who are further from the typical, like my kids, have a harder time of it and have to work harder to cognitively compensate for their disabilities. So for instance, my kids knows to read the labels on the crayons and use pink for skin because their skin is pink, not green.

[catsluvdmb.livejournal.com]

To the first, I know my angry or annoyed when my eye starts twitching uncontrollably and my temples are throbbing. That's a good physical reaction right there. When I'm scared it feels like I can't breath.

As to the second, there are several documented disorders that make it so you see colors differently from other people. Color blindness being the most obvious, there is also one where people process reds as blues (can't remember the name of it). I believe there's different variations on that disorder as well.

[catsluvdmb.livejournal.com]

Chicken tastes purple? Interesting...

As for the associating colors with different words, I view the question as people physically seeing different colors, not calling them by different names. Chemistry is what determines what color something is (light being absorbs or reflected) but there are various genetic disorders that cause you to physically not see certain colors or see one color as another.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

I view the question as people physically seeing different colors, not calling them by different names.
Well, I meant that, too. But they don't only "see some colour you don't see", they even have their own names for it. That's what I meant by that example.
And of course, you can never be sure that people see the same colour that you see, even within your own cultural circle. It's generally assumed that, I dunno, everyone looking at something yellow (let's say, FFFF00 yellow) sees the same yellow, but who knows whether they really are?

[goddess588.livejournal.com]

I think everyone's feelings and physical responses are much the same, though on a continuum and affected by environmental and internal factors. And there's not just the predominating emotion (mood) but the way it's put across (affect) too. eg: mood = happy, sad, angry etc - affect = blunted, expansive, restricted, congruent/incongruent to the mood.

Research shows that children under a certain age tend not to realise (for lack of a better word) that others are experiencing similar thoughts and feelings to themselves, and I clearly remember when that became apparent to me. I must have been so egocentric.

I'd agree that people see colours differently, I've had arguments with people over colour nuance - red vs orange etc. Also, the fact that we use the same names for each colour doesn't mean that we all see the same colour - 'blue' may be seen by others as a totally different colour/shade but we all know it's 'blue' because that's what we were told when we were learning how to talk. Who knows what each individual perceives - there's nothing to measure it against.

I had a dream once that there was another primary colour - now that was bizarre.