William wrote: "Feeling and reasoning are connected. Feeling arises from bodily sensations and is a necessary part of "thinking". I'm getting at the position that denies the possibility of non-epistemic thinking or consciousness. WC"
To which Luc responded: 'I certainly never said, wrote, thought that thinking was non-epistemic - nor is the result of the process of consciousness. What is not clear (for me) is the status of a non-conscious experience. Is a non-conscious experience just a sensation? "My point was exclusively about the sensorial process. As you say, "feeling arises from bodily sensations" making sensations non-epistemic and feelings part of the perceptual process = epistemic. Luc" I claim that mere verbal misunderstanding continues to prevail for all of us. Luc makes it usefully clear that by 'epistemic' he means at least "conscious". (I.e. he -- and I -- are skipping "unconscious" here.) William appears to make a distinction between what he calls "feeling" and what he calls "sensation". What he calls "feeling" is, he says, a necessary part of "thinking". (I'm not sure what he has in mind with 'thinking', but, hopedly, that's resolved by some clarification between us.) I myself would term raw smells, loud sounds, and a pain in my stomach "sensations" AND I'd call them feelings. I'd say the likes of, "The feeling in my stomach is a pain-sensation," or, "The sensation in my stomach is a feeling of pain." The biggest word-use differences between Luc and me here seem to be with "awareness", "consciousness", "sensation" and "feeling". I also would use 'sensation' and 'sense data' interchangeably, and I'd say I can be acutely "aware" of a pain-sensation. I don't believe Luc would say I'm not aware of the pain, so I conjecture he would say pain is not a sensation but, rather, a post-processing entity he calls "feeling". I would call certain "feelings" sensations -- e.g. pain, hunger -- but I'm aware of other feelings -- fright, anxiety, jealousy -- that do indeed seem like post-processing notion. I confess I'll hang in there, and continue to say I'm "conscious" of raw sense data. And whether or not we should call the popping of the sense data into what I call "awareness" "sensorial" or post-data "perceiving" seems totally a verbal matter. --- ************** New MapQuest Local shows what's happening at your destination. Dining, Movies, Events, News & more. Try it out (http://local.mapquest.com/?ncid=emlcntnew00000002)
