Thursday, 21 April 2016
The taste of this tea, the knowing whether it is hot or cold is a kind of fact. I know how to respond to it, how to speak of it, relating this sensation to that, dismembering it and remembering it. That is what I am for, and pointing to me is at most tricky, but not impossible within this world of discourse. But the flavour itself, which serves no purpose and cannot be put into words, to whom does that belong? What cannot be spoken of isn't really there, yet here it is! There is no experiencer of this sensation since there is no room in it for a cut between say, subject and object, and even if there were why would that cut lie along the lines of one description rather than another. There must be hundreds of different grammars in which a hard problem must inevitably be posed, hundreds of different philosophies of mind, some pretty exciting and none true. We cannot say there is no cut in the sensation just as we cannot say there is one. There is awareness, it's going on all the time, and actually there's nothing else going on at all, but my awareness is a project and an act of faith, as much of art as the social currency of everyday life. It never needs to be cashed in, just passed along to make way, make a way, for the next in line.
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