Comments | lhynard: On the Purpose of Emotions

lhynard

On the Purpose of Emotions

Aug 14, 2009 08:15

I don't usually like to just post large quotes from other sources here in place of blogging, but I'll make an exception here, since the writer's reference to bodiless "brains" connects with my previous entry, and emotions are, in part, at one level, a physiological production, almost a type of sense.
A teenage boy's first philosophizing about ( Read more... )

body, purpose, senses, soul, books, emotions, vanauken

Comments 3

pelliondance August 18 2009, 05:27:49 UTC

I must read it again. I remember being deeply moved by it, even though I thought the pact they made never to experience anything the other couldn't was a strange piece of personal fanaticism. I wonder what Chesterton would have thought of it. He was a defender of rash vows.

lhynard August 18 2009, 23:00:19 UTC

I rather liked his pact, but I don't think it was so extreme that they would not experience anything the other couldn't. I thought the idea was more of sharing it, so that the other could at least understand what it was the one enjoyed about it.

My wife and I have similar "pact" actually. If there is anything in my life past or present that is a great enjoyment, I share it with her. This does not mean she will enjoy it also, only that she will have a chance to see why I enjoy it. For example, I love backpacking. She does not. A month ago, we set up my tent inside our house and slept in it one night, in part so I could share it with her. She still does not want to go sleep in the wilderness, but she now understands a little bit more about me since she now understands a little bit more about why I like to tent.

pelliondance August 20 2009, 13:53:29 UTC

As I say, I must read it again; I think it's been 10 or 15 years since I last did so, and my memory of it is very rusty. Your wife and backpacking sounds like my wife and folk festivals. Sandra has attended our local one every New Year for several years, but she is always in charge of the registration tent, well away from the music. Last New Year we went to a different festival, where I was a guest performer, and she will not be resuming the job at our own festival this coming New Year.

Backpacking. In New Zealand, we would use the term to refer to travelling around, staying at backpackers - like youth hostels. I'm not sure about the written morphology. One person who does this is a backpacker, two are backpackers. A place where they stay is a backpackers (singular verb if the subject of the sentence), plural also backpackers. Possibly there should be an apostrophe after the s, but I don't know what the missing noun would be-backpackers' hostel, perhaps ( ... )