Because of the order in which I read my mail I responded to Carol
somewhat along the lines that Donal does here. (It's always nice to find
oneself on the side of truth and beauty.)
I have a quibble though. 'I feel that this is a contradiction…etc.' can
be expressed as 'I believe that this is a contradiction…etc.,' while
such a substitution doesn't really work in 'I feel numb…' or 'I feel
insulted.' Not too much can be infered about the ontology of feeling
from the accidents of grammar.
Robert Paul The Reed Institute
Donal McEvoy wrote:
Wrong I feel. A doctor says "Do you have any feeling in your left leg?"; we
say we are feeling numb with cold, tingly with a cough etc. "Sensory imput"
or sensory experience is commonly described in terms of feelings. So are
states ['I am feeling tired'], that are not obviously sensory experience in
the 'sight-smell-touch-hearing-taste' sense and not obviously emotional
states in the 'sad-anxious-angry' sense, described in terms of feelings. So
also are 'cognitive dispositions' or the attitudes we express towards given
propositions - 'I feel that is a contradiction/implausible/exaggerated' etc.
We might say the whole of the phenomenal world of our experience can be described in terms of 'feelings', even if these are of different sorts.
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