Raw Feels

Ok, we philosopher want something to chew on, right? So what is this "qualia" stuff? Is there a better word?

We know already, right? That pain is a private experience, except as we translate it into words, grimaces, wails, expenditures, dances.

And the love poems capture love? Or do they remind us? Inspire a vivid memory? Or a vivid fantasy?

"Why does he care?"

Because we are all already there. It's a low cost entertainment, to simply pay close attention to the sensual we are immersed in, but often neglect to notice.

Because science can offer us all sorts of technology, which is great, when we aren't destroying ourselves with it. But neither science nor theology nor abstract thought of any kind can replace sensation/emotion or even say much about it. It just is.

"I am what I am." A good line. But it doesn't apply to you-know-who unless we are to understand you-know-who to be this irreducible reality we are immersed in. And even if we were to view things this way, that would still be just an abstraction, and not touch emotion/sensation as experienced.

Obviously, technology seeks to increase our pleasure. Even if only by making us feel safer by increasing the threat to our enemies. Our conscious motives seem to trace back to emotion. We have words for these emotions which of course are not these emotions themselves. Or I personally can't see how they are the same thing.

"The real is rational" says Hegel. Well, the intelligible real is lingual. I will grant him, and others, that. But there is something we cannot directly communicate which is with us all the time, admitting that we can concentrate on our abstractions until the sense-emotion element is in the background of "consciousness."

By the way, what the hell is "consciousness"?

It's my feeling/thought that some of the most obvious aspects of our "existence" remain not only unexplained but unexplainable. Yes, I know that f = ma and e =mc^2 and various other equations and that there's this nifty little organ called the brain. But I also know that I experience all of these abstractions as merely one "layer" of my existence, and I suspect it's the same for all.

Keats said "oh for a life of sensations rather than thoughts." I always thought that was strange. I feel I am closer to understanding him. Not that I don't love thought, but perhaps he was more tuned in to his sensations and emotions than most.

Perhaps I think that many of us, and certainly myself at times, are richer than we realize. I am suggesting that advertisement (to mention just one factor) has us generally coveting abstractions, the mere symbols of status, at the expense of noticing the sensual wealth we are immersed in, especially if we are lucky enough to live in relative safety and comfort.

We crowd our museums with aesthetic treasures. These treasures are transported in armored cars. I love art, but I also see the danger in this kind of structure. Before long, we have an implication that beauty is one more commodity. One must at least travel to some secure building to gaze on official beauty. Because the commercials and the museums assure us that beauty is never free.

Religions tell us that the good consists in certain beliefs, duties, and abstinences. Science has little or nothing to say about beauty, so far as I can tell. The artist sends a mixed message. Because s/he produces and sells objects of beauty. Other artists might be interpreted as trying to "open our eyes" to the beauty all around us. I don't know if this is the intention of the color-field painters, but this is one possible message to take away from them.

Redness is. Warmth is. A smile is. Harmony is. Does Heidegger have anything to say about this?

To talk about "raw feels" is already to move away from them. "They" are what "they" are.