Can we understand the pain and happiness of others?
Whenever faced with the problem of "empathy", I will think of Mr. Lu Xun's sentence that "human sorrow and joy are not connected", and many people use this sentence to express the barrier and alienation between people who are difficult to understand each other's feelings. However, Mr. Lu Xun also wrote that "infinite distances, countless people, are related to me", "about" is actually a kind of empathy, people can feel each other's suffering through this connection, and respond. After all, if we can't empathize, why can the "most bitter people" in the epidemic flow arouse our deep concern? In the face of teenagers who have suffered from Internet violence, we will also feel anger and pain?
We can use the philosophical problem of "other minds" to think about the empathy between people. "Feeling" is something mysterious and difficult to describe in detail. It's like when one person says pear acid, can other people really feel the same acid? Does everyone feel the same acid? His mind problem is the most common problem in our lives and one of the most important subjects for thinking about relationships with others. Philosopher Chen Jiaying in his recent thinking masterpiece "Perception, Rational Knowledge, And Self-Knowledge" discussed the problem of his mind, is it "people with this heart" or "people's hearts are separated from their stomachs"? By understanding the unsolved case of his mind problem, we can also better understand the world in which we live and the complex relationships between people.
Can we understand the feelings of others?
Excerpt from Chen Jiaying's "Perception, Knowledge, Self-Awareness"
01.
Feelings are different from beetles
For example, I can tell you that the clarinet's voice is full and round, and I admit that the full and rounded does not say much, but more or less says a little. Similarly, I'm telling you pear sour, which is also describing its taste. I can describe to you a beetle, shape, size, color, spots. Generally speaking, visual impressions can be described in great detail, and taste and hearing are more difficult to describe. You say this coffee is very fragrant, how to incense? You say it's fragrant, and it still seems that it is still far from being clear. We think that this is because our visual vocabulary is extraordinarily rich, the taste vocabulary is too poor, and if we create more taste vocabulary, we can describe taste as we describe vision. Just as we can't tell what 6.4 is with integers, we invent decimals and we can make it clear.
Wittgenstein gave three unspeakable examples, and then asked: So why don't we invent more words? I think he meant that he was biased in thinking about it. Can you make up more words to say it? I will explain later that words are not created to correspond to everything in the world, that there are endless objects and objects in the world, but our language cannot accommodate too many words, and if we have a hundred million words, this language will not work. This is an assertion, I did not make an argument, of course, can be argued, the argument is quite interesting, but we do not have time to do every point to do the argument. Yes, the perception is very rich, even if it is a bite of pear and a sip of red wine, not to mention the experience of going to jail, it is extremely rich in detail. But we do not deal with this richness by inventing more words, but by expressing themselves in an infinite combination of finite words. This is tantamount to saying that we express perceptual content at the level of reason.
The problem here is not how many words are made, the problem is that describing the sound of the clarinet is fundamentally different from describing the beetle. We've said that when we talk about what we see, we're usually not talking about sensations, and in other senses it's hard to describe what you feel without feeling itself. You say pear sour, is this describing feelings? Or are you describing the nature of the object of pears? It seems to be both. Anyway, this is different from saying that this pear weighs half a pound, or Mont Blanc is 4810 meters high, acid is the nature of the pear, but this property you have to know through personal perception, this property is always connected to your perception.
When you describe a beetle, you are not describing feelings, "describing feelings" refers to describing the taste of pears, the sound of clarinets, and so on, and when you say acid, when you talk about timbre, you say things that are connected to your feelings. You can't describe the acid itself out of perception — unless you're talking about chemistry. No matter how many details I tell you about the prison, you still can't seem to really appreciate what it's like to be in prison, and no amount of detail seems to change that.
The problem is not to invent more vocabulary, not to describe them in detail. I can tell you pear acid, you say, yes, pear acid, but what kind of acid is that, then I will go on to tell you that the acid of fruit acid, not the acid of acetic acid, and then I can describe it in more detail. Besides, you said that Mont Blanc is 4810 meters high, ah, you did not tell me a fraction, maybe Mont Blanc is 4810.154 meters high, after which you can also measure microns, nano. Things seem to be the opposite, you say it in more detail, tell me what the acidity of the pear is, but it is farther away from the feeling. You become objective, but you move further away from feeling. You describe what the beetle looks like, just as you describe the box as square, you are describing what you perceive, not your feelings, so to speak, you are describing the object of sensation, not your feelings. You ask: Can feelings be conveyed? You're really asking if language can convey feelings, not whether it can describe what is perceived.
So, can language convey feelings? We might think that since I know what my feelings are like, I can describe it, just as I could describe what a beetle looks like if I knew what it looks like. But you may also follow Wittgenstein and say, no, feelings are not objects — you can't describe the beetle in your box, you can open the box and take it out to show me, but you can't describe the feelings in your heart, you can't open your heart and show me the feelings. The so-called digging out the nest of the heart and opening the heart still relies on words.
And what I'm saying is that verbal feelings and verbal beetles are two very different language games. The beetle is there, we look, we describe, whether it is carefully read carefully or not, whether it is properly described or not, it has nothing to do with whose beetle it is. The beetle is an external object, the external object is not connected to anyone, but the feeling is always your feelings, my feelings, to bring out your feelings, no matter how, including the use of language, it becomes like an object, there is no special connection with you. No matter how you describe it, you can only describe it as what, so what you perceive is also formed on the level of knowledge. What you can describe is always a rationalized feeling. So, you can't say the feeling as a feeling.
It's as if the feeling is rooted in your heart, and once you say it, you pull the feeling out, and you don't say that relevance, and if you want to say the feeling itself, the thatness, you may be very frustrated, no matter how much you say it, there is always a taste in your heart. When we talk about the richness and the physicality of the senses, if we were to speak only of these two things, I would say that it is not the richness that is in question, but the physicality. The world is also infinitely rich, but only when you want to talk about the feelings in your heart, there is a feeling that there is a full meaning and the meaning is infinite, and there is no time to talk about the world.
Wittgenstein said that he didn't feel like a beetle, which was very right and very important. But there are two things here, one is that feelings are not objects, and the other thing is that if you describe feelings, you can only describe them as you describe objects. Because there is a contradiction here, as a result, no matter how you describe it, no matter how detailed you describe it, I still can't seem to catch your feelings.
02.
We can understand how others feel
So, will we never be able to understand how others feel? It's not so evil. You say you have stomach pains, I know you have stomach pains, and I know roughly what the stomach pain you feel looks like. You stand on the ten-meter jumping platform and say, I am so scared, I know that you are afraid, not only on the level of knowledge I know the fact that you are afraid, but also roughly know what it feels like to be afraid. How do you know? Quite simply, because I was scared when I stood there. The clarinet's voice is full and round, which doesn't tell you much, but you have to listen to the clarinet often, and you know it as soon as he says it. You tell me how you feel in jail, and I say, oh, I know your feelings so well. When do you believe me the most? I've been in jail, and I've felt similarly. The other side of the phrase "you don't really know what it's like to be in jail without going through it" is that if you've been in jail, you'll understand how I feel. I say pear sour, you see, you've eaten sour pears, or sour apricots or whatever, and if you haven't eaten anything like this, I say pear sour, and you still don't understand because you don't have your own perception.
You say you feel sad, I understand your sadness, that's because I'm a similar person to you, and if your whole thoughts and feelings are different from mine, I can't understand your sadness. It's not hard to understand the mental activity of a young man who resembles you, but it's hard to understand how the Shang Dynasty people felt about the world. Of course, it's harder to know how lions perceive the world, or how bats perceive the world. Negel's famous article asks what the world of bat perception is like, this question is not the first time ThatGel has raised it, it is an ancient question, Keiko asked Zhuangzi whether the carp can perceive happiness on the haoliang, but Neigel has raised it in the context of some contemporary issues and has become a topic of concern.
The two of us see a bat, I can imagine that you see similar to me, but I can't imagine the world in the eyes of bats, so to speak, no matter how different you are from me, we both look with our eyes, and bats look at it with ultrasound, what is the world that ultrasound "sees"? How to use ultrasound to determine the distance and shape? We can't imagine that. Of course, you can't push it backwards from here, if you can't understand how bats perceive the world, you can't understand how I perceive the world, so his mental problem will always become a suspense case.
There is a so-called "intellectual argument" in the philosophy of mind: you have learned all the non-psychological aspects of the itch, and you still don't know what kind of itch it feels like. There is a Mary, who grew up in a sealed house, this room is black and white, there is no other color, she has mastered all the knowledge of physics, she knows how many optical frequencies the red color is, how much the green color is how much optical frequency, propositional knowledge she knows all. Finally one day, the door opened, and she went outside and saw the flowers red and willow green, could she recognize that it was red?
Knowing all the physical formulas in the world, this setting is a bit exaggerated, in fact, the problem is very common: you have not eaten acid, people describe to you what it tastes like to be sour, can you know what acid is? Some say yes, some say no, you stop and think about which side you're on, Yes or No? No matter which side you stand on, you can find some reasons, and the predecessors have provided many reasons to support you.
Whether computer people can finally feel and be conscious is facing the same problem. We need to introduce one or two other perspectives to get this straight. But I tell you which side I'm on, and I'll say: You've got to taste the acid, and someone else tells you the pear sour, so you know how to make an acid. Physical formulas can't teach you feelings. I know how you feel, because I've felt it myself, and I know you're similar to me. How do I know you're similar to me? Yeah, think for yourself, how do you know that a person doesn't look like you? Of course, I know it from his demeanor, and I know it from his words, including what he says about his feelings. I know that the other guy is very different from me, and that's how I know it.
You can hear that what I'm talking about here is an old topic—his mind problem. Can I know what's in the other person's heart? People are fighting over this, one side says, no, people's hearts are separated from the stomach, I can never know that your stomach hurts, at most it is guessing that your stomach hurts; the other side says, yes, you cover your stomach and grin, this kind of manifestation is your stomach pain. It seems to me that both sides of the argument have made the same mistake of simply dividing the world into me and everything else other than me. You may be able to talk about the transcendental self like this, but the empirical self is not like this. There is no dialogue outside the entanglement of the self, until there is self-awareness, people become lonely people, before self-awareness, people are not lonely.
The other is not one-sided, you are different from him, you and I are the interlocutor, not the complete other. Knowing how another person feels is different from knowing how a bat feels. The feeling of your hunger is roughly the feeling of my hunger, and the feeling of my kitten's skin being hungry may be a little different, but it is not much different. But I don't know much about what it's like to be hungry — bats don't really resemble me much. But it also depends on what you have to say, the minnows swim freely in the water, and as soon as you stomp their feet they are immediately startled, and you know the difference between them feeling free and being frightened. I may be messing around, but to sum it up, how do I know that the acid I feel is the acid you feel? First, I must have sensed acid; second, you and I are similar in every way.
03.
You need to feel it yourself first
Then connect with the man who knows how he feels
But here's a problem: if you and I feel the same on the ten-meter jump, then there's no need for you to say anything, and I know you're afraid. Aren't words superfluous, then? I saw you crashing into the stone prism, the blood flowing, grinning your teeth, you don't have to say anything, I naturally know you hurt.
This is true most of the time. However, people are not the same, maybe you have always been bold, maybe you are a diving veteran, I am afraid, you are not necessarily afraid, so I want to ask you, you said afraid, I think, the original diving veteran will also be afraid, you said not afraid, I think, diving veteran is not afraid. I'm a diving veteran and I'm not afraid at all, but I know you'll be scared because I used to be scared to come too. Of course, I may also forget the feelings of that year, and see the young man passionately striving for the ideal, completely incomprehensible, perhaps, on the intellectual level can know, and even predict how he will act, but can not feel what the young man feels in his heart. We will forget, just don't forget the essence.
As we said earlier, perception has a kind of personality, that is, perception is inextricably linked to the perceiver. We hear people say that his feelings are always connected to the person who feels them. Feelings are always your feelings, my feelings, so to understand your description of your feelings, I need to know not only this feeling, but also know how you feel, what kind of person you are. Two people love, and what they feel may be very different; both people are distressed, one is distressed by government corruption, the other is distressed by the fact that he has not gained benefits, and the texture of distress will be very different.
Conveying feelings in the heart and describing an object are two different language games. When we learn languages as children, we have learned to distinguish between these two types of language games. You understand another person's feelings by comparing your heart to your heart, and you have to have this feeling yourself, or some kind of similar feeling—"similar" is, of course, a slippery word, which leads to the problem of imagination, but let's leave it alone for the time being. You have to feel that way, and then you have to know what kind of person that person is.
I can't go straight to your feelings through your complaints of distress, I understand your feelings from you as a person, your words are more like an auxiliary means, guiding me to understand your feelings, the word "sadness" does not portray sorrow, you say you are sad, but how can you get a sad word? It's a bit like a sign in a mall, indicating where the elevator is, and you stand opposite the sign and complain that the elevator doesn't look like this, then you're stupid. In the same way, the phrase that pears are sour doesn't say what acid tastes like, it's like a bridge that connects the acid you feel with the acid I feel. If we are talking about more complex feelings, it depends on the skill of the narrator, and the skilled author can make people who have no experience in prison more or less experience the taste of prison.
His mental problem is a big topic, including many branching problems, one of the core questions is, I say pear acid, you also say pear acid, but how do we know that the acid I feel is the acid you feel? Perhaps it is more clear to ask: How do I know that the feeling you call "acid" is the same feeling as the feeling I call "acid"? Of course, I can't deal with such a profound question, but when you hear this, you vaguely know what I would think if I came to think about this kind of problem.
This question bothers the philosopher, but it does not seem to bother the child, who seems to "naturally" believe that the acid you say is the acid he feels. When he began to learn the language, he learned the word "acid", which was no different from the word "apple", and it did not seem to be particularly difficult. Mom told him to eat an apple and picked up an apple instead of picking up a pear for him. He was scratched by the glass, and his mother asked him if he hurt; when he was bitten by a mosquito, his mother asked him if he was itchy and did not ask him if he hurt. He then knew that pain was the kind of feeling after being scratched by glass, and the kind of feeling after itching was bitten by a mosquito. After all, the mother pointed to the apple to teach the child the apple, and she naturally believed that what he saw was an apple, not an elephant, although she did not go deep into the child's perception to check what his visual image looked like.
But how can a mother conclude that a person who has been bitten by a mosquito has the same feeling? She did believe this, but it wasn't entirely a priori. It may not be possible for you to simply advocate that people share this heart and mind. Because obviously, as we just said, two people will have different feelings in the face of the same thing, to me is Xi Shi Yu Ji, to you is the mother-in-law Night Fork. I saw Xi Shi Huan Sha, bent on getting to Xi Shi's side, and pretending to wash a sweatshirt or something, but the fish and geese, when I saw Xi Shi coming, I was scared away. Of course, I also know a little bit about their feelings, and I see that's what the giant spirit god feels. Such examples are all over the place, so I will not cite them. Let's just say sour, you may not feel sour, I feel sour to the teeth.
But on other things, Mom had a good reason to believe that everyone felt the same way. Since people have to eat when they are hungry, it seems that people will have a similar feeling when they are bitten by mosquitoes, which seems to be nothing particularly peculiar. And not only that, the toddler will be tickled by mosquitoes, and he is willing to let you tickle for him; when he is scratched by glass, he does not scratch, but cries, and if you go to scratch his wounds, he is not only unhappy, but also cries even more fiercely. He was scratched by the glass, did not cry, did not cry, indifferent, his mother touched the wound he did not care, the mother should feel strange, three times twice, to suspect that the child suffered from pain deficiency.
Of course, I'm not saying that we can usually know his heart, from knowing that the child's wound hurts to knowing Ah Qing's sister-in-law's mind, the road is long. "The heart of the human heart is separated from the belly" and "the most unpredictable of these" are roughly true. On the one hand, blind people who open their eyes and open their eyes cannot automatically recognize red and green; but people who have not been in prison may know what it is like to be in prison, and you can more or less know what a thief is without having to be a thief. On the other hand, you listen to Odyssey talk about his travels and you can feel his feelings, but not exactly as vividly as you experienced it yourself.
Excerpt/Typography: Nine Tubes
Illustrations and cover image Source: Manchester by the Sea
"Joker", "One Eleven", "Terrorist"
Perception, Knowledge, And Self-Awareness