Nonsense about “Feeling”

Rewriting “to be is to be perceived” — “Dasein is sensation.” Human beings from beginning to end are a convergence of sensations. Sensation (the senses, perception) does not, in essence, have a distinction between “inside” and “outside”; on the contrary, the distinction between “inside” and “outside,” just like “hot and cold,” “light and dark,” “high and low,” “strong and weak,” and so on, is a differentiation that arises from sensation. What is special, however, is that the distinction between “inside” and “outside” comes from “sensation of sensation,” that is, “self-consciousness.” This capacity is generally considered uniquely human, or at least something at which human beings are especially adept.

The concrete manifestation of this human aptitude is often said to be reason or technology. Roughly speaking, reason is in fact the extension of sensation “inward,” while technology is the extension of sensation “outward.”

Sensation is always a sensation of some kind of change, and cannot sense anything completely still. We notice that many animals have no or poor vision for still objects, and only when an object moves before their eyes can they take notice of it. So why can we still “see” motionless things? I am reminded of a joke about a cheap, good, and electricity-free “automatic toothbrush”: when brushing your teeth, you do not need to move your hands; you only need to shake your head. The principle here is much the same: if one wants to sense an object while it is not moving, then one can rely only on being “automatic.”

For example, when reading an article, one must read it line by line; no matter how much one may be able to take in at a glance, one still has to spend time reading it sequentially. Seeing a motionless object likewise requires spending time distinguishing it from the background in which it stands, and this process always involves “movement”; a completely motionless sensation is impossible. Thus sensation is always temporal, though “temporality” may still not be quite the right term here, because what appears here is only “change,” while the “before and after” of change, that is, the directional character of time, has not yet been determined; just as when we distinguish an object from within our field of vision, “space” has not yet truly appeared. This differentiation merely separates the object from its background, but the “relation” between them remains obscure and undefined. Only when the direction of “change” (before and after) has been confirmed, and when the relations among objects (up, down, left, right, front, back, inside, outside, and so on) have been confirmed, do time and space then present themselves.

Sensation of sensation brings forth time and space. “Inside and outside” are spatial; distinguishing the inside and outside of the “senses” is just like distinguishing the inside and outside of a box, and in both cases the distinction is made through the senses. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to define sensation of sensation as “inner sensation.”

Sensation of sensation is also simply sensation of sensation; how is that possible? First, sensation requires some change, and this is easy to satisfy, because sensation itself of course is also changing. Second, sensing some “object” means distinguishing that “object” from its background. What is this “background”? It is still “sensation.” Self-awareness or self-consciousness is nothing other than drawing a thread or a region out of the confused and variegated field of sensation. It is rather like facing a disorderly starry sky and casually partitioning it, until one has actually divided it into countless “constellations.” Dividing the stars into constellations makes the starry sky appear orderly, but does that order belong to the starry sky itself?

By the way, later people came to know the order of the starry sky in an entirely new way through telescopes and other astronomical technologies. Yet in any case, these orders, like the division into constellations, are still obtained through sensation’s own cutting and organizing of itself. Technology is the extension of the organs, just as eyeglasses can enhance vision but cannot alter the essence of sight. No matter how advanced human perception of the world may be, in essence it is always sensation.

As for the capacity of reason, it generally manifests as internal organization, abstraction, and synthesis of sensation. Fundamentally, these capacities are still applications of sensation—the process of distinguishing an object from its background may also be said to be a kind of “abstraction.” Afterwards, through “sensation of sensation,” we establish the order within that particular act of sensation: “I see this object”; only then can we “leave an impression” of this object. And in another act of sensation, we can recognize this object again in different contexts; this can then be said to mean: we remember it.

The essence of “memory” still seems obscure, but the evocation of memory is undoubtedly also the “reappearance” of sensation: we have once seen a cup, and we have also once heard someone say the word “cup,” and often we hear someone point at a cup and say “cup” at the same time as we see the cup; after such repeated “training,” when something similar appears in our field of vision again, the sensations from previously “seeing” the cup (vision) and previously hearing the sound “cup” (hearing) will both emerge at the same time, and then we will also point at the cup and say “cup.” As for the question of why the cup seen before and after are “different” cups, how is it that we are nevertheless able to regard them as the same kind? This capacity is still something that sensation itself contains; even when one is “seeing” the same cup, that cup is already “changing,” for completely motionless things cannot be seen. We can regard “some aggregate of changing multiplicity” as a cup, and of course we can also regard several cups as one kind of cup. In fact, the distinction between “one and many” is also brought forth by sensation; only by partitioning objects and establishing order through sensation do we obtain the distinction between one and many.

Some say that each time we see a cup we only see one of its sides, yet we say that we see “a” cup; thus it should be said that, in sensation, the cup as a whole is prior. This is not wrong. However, the problem is that here “whole” and “prior” are respectively spatial and temporal distinctions; these perhaps become clear only when brought forth by “sensation of sensation.” And in the process of bare sensation, if we point at a cup and say “cup,” it is because the past sensation of seeing the cup and the sensation of hearing “cup” reappear simultaneously. What exactly is the prior condition here can only be obtained through further reflection, and which comes first and which comes later is established by sensation itself, through the ordering it creates, just as in the division into constellations; it is not something essential. If what we say while pointing at the cup is “a complete cup,” then the matter is somewhat different, because the sensory impressions of our concepts of “one” and “complete” have also emerged simultaneously. Of course, not all sensations can be sensed. Here, the sensations that are re-enacted are too brief and vague, so we are often lacking self-consciousness about them; but it is certain that without training to establish impressions of concepts such as “one” and “whole,” we could not point at a cup and say “a complete cup.”

What is special about this passage is that, by the time I wrote it here, I still had not “figured it out.” Normally I think while I write, and once an article is finished I have basically finished thinking it through as well, but this piece is an exception. So I only dare call it “nonsense.”

January 23, 2008

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“What is being?” — In Western philosophy, this question is rather special. “Being” may also be translated as “is”; this question is thus, “What is ‘is’?” So some people say that when one asks this question, one has already used “is,” and moreover has presupposed that “is” is some kind of “what” (that is, some kind of thing) — when asked in a Western language, the question takes the form “What is ‘being’?” Before “being,” both “what” and “be” have already appeared. But this prejudice caused by the form of the question can be entirely avoided. Why must one ask it this way? We can just as well say: “Being?” Or, more clearly, “Hmm? Being?” Through some changes in intonation or modulation of tone, the question is posed. Nor is there any need, in answering, to say “‘Being’ is …”; one only needs to say: “Being: …” and by means of a pause one expresses its delimitation. In fact, this is precisely the way explanation is commonly expressed in ancient Chinese texts: we use “A, B也” to express “A is B,” with “也” being nothing more than a modal particle. The questioning of “Be” gave rise to the emergence and development of the entire history of Western philosophy, but Chinese cannot ask that sort of question. Otherwise, shall we ask: “What is ‘也’?” The linguistic form of Chinese determines that it is very difficult for it to ask the “great” question of “what is being.” Yet it provides the answer to this question: the word “be” has no essential specialness whatsoever; its status is roughly the same as a modal particle, a change of tone, or a pause.

Because of the prejudice of language, Westerners easily take “being” to be the first attribute universally possessed by every thing (every being): anything first “is,” and only then can it “be what.” But Chinese language does not buy that — why not say instead that the first attribute of anything is “tone” or “intonation”? Some say: that’s not right; tone and intonation are at most properties of the word itself, or merely accidental states in some specific use of a word, rather than properties of “the thing itself.” But what is meant by a property of the thing itself? According to this line of thought, isn’t “being” also a property of the word rather than of the thing itself? Further, how can the “white” in “snow is white” possibly be a property of “snow itself”? Is it not rather a property of the word “snow”? Or is it merely a property assigned to the word “snow” in some specific use?

“Property” is nothing more than a word as well. One only ever turns in circles within concepts and can never reach “the thing in itself”; the “thing in itself” has no “properties.”

Chinese grammar hints at the secret of “property” — Western languages say “A is B,” “A is B’s,” “A has the property of B,” and so on, so B seems to belong to A as one of its properties. But Chinese says: “A: B,” “A, B也,” “B哉，A” … it is nothing more than placing the words A and B side by side and enumerating them together. In fact, the relation between A and B in “A is B’s” is nothing other than this juxtaposition. “Snow is white” means that the sensation corresponding to the word “snow” — that is, the sensation evoked by this sound, or the sensation that can evoke this sound — is connected to the sensation corresponding to the word “white”; the former always tends to bring forth the latter. For example, in “to see a plum relieves thirst,” hearing the sound “plum” evokes various sensations of plum, including the taste sensation of “sour.” Here, the sound “snow” often evokes a visual impression of “white,” and the visual impression of “white” in turn always evokes the auditory impression of the word “white”; thus the concept of “white” appears right after “snow,” and we say: “snow is white.”

When you want to say that something “is what,” the real precondition is that you must “ask.” This “asking” does not have to be spoken aloud; it can also be a silent self-questioning, that is, thinking with concepts. Of course, it does not have to be thinking with concepts; one can also think with “images.” The former refers to one sound after another emerging and thereby mobilizing all sorts of other sensations; the latter refers to one scene after another emerging and thereby mobilizing all sorts of other sensations. In short, in both cases one is using “sensation.”

In fact, when we “ask” what something is, this can refer to such a situation: “I have noticed it.” I have sensed my sensation of it; I have distinguished it from my confused field of sensations, and further linked it to my other sensations (for example, the background of it that I have seen, similar things I have seen before, certain concepts I have heard, and so on). That is to say, to “ask” about a being is also to “discover” it; asking about the being of some being means that I have “discovered” its being.

If one says that “to be is to be perceived” or “to be is to be discovered,” does that mean denying the external world, denying the thing in itself? No. But “being” is only a word. To say “to be is to be perceived” is merely to play with the relations between concepts and concepts; one never steps outside of concepts. Being is not a property of the “thing in itself,” so one can neither say that the “thing in itself” exists nor that it does not exist. Just as one can neither say that a cup is brave nor that a cup is not brave. Of course, this prohibition is still relative to the context; in certain metaphors it may make sense to say that a cup is brave. But under the “system of thought” I am about to provide, it is meaningless either way to say whether the thing in itself exists.

Like Kant, I “never doubt the reality of the external world.” What is the reality of the external world? Let us talk about that slowly later. The key point in Kant is this: the reality of the external world is one thing, while the world’s “order” is another. Kant emphasizes that “order,” that is, natural law, is conferred by human beings.

Earlier I mentioned how the ancients established “order” in the disorderly starry sky by dividing it into constellations. Here the starry sky itself is truly real, and these orders are also definite and valid. The reliability of order may perhaps depend on the stability of the starry sky, but the establishment of order itself comes from human “division.” Human beings divide out some things from a chaotic abundance, and thus the world acquires layers and order.

In this passage I have not proposed much that is new; I have merely expressed certain things in my own language. Realizing that if I continued this wild line of thought I might go off the deep end, I’d better stop here for the moment and go back to reading books~

January 25, 2008

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• Gu…

  2008-01-25 14:43:33 Anonymous 125.34.40.67

  There is another question: what are “feelings” and “emotions”? Could it be that rationality is, in essence, feeling, while feeling is not? Although this point is still not very clear, and I do not intend to reduce everything and anything to feeling, what can be pointed out is that emotion is also one of the elements of feeling itself. Heidegger says that all “perception” must necessarily come with “emotion”; even calm contemplation carries the emotion of calmness, and perception without emotion is impossible. Here, we should not understand feeling as merely a function that can be realized through external organs alone (such as glasses and ears). The distinction between inner and outer, and the distinction between emotion and reason, are all originally contained within feeling itself; only the self-awareness of feeling can distinguish them.

Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.