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.Feeling, in the sense of finding out or discerning, the warmth of things is akind of perception, and a kind at which some people, like bakers andlaundry-girls, become better than other people; it is the product of an 352 COLLECTED PAPERS: VOLUME 2acquired skill; but feeling, in the sense of suffering pains, is not a kind ofperception, and there is no question of one victim being better or worsethan another at feeling toothaches.In this sense of feeling or sensation ,pains are not things the feeling of which is the product of an acquiredskill.So far from the feeling of warmth being merely a lower degree of thefeeling of pain, the two things are felt only in quite different senses ofthe word.They are not even species of one genus, as perhaps seeing andtasting are species of the one genus, perception.They belong to differentcategories from one another.The attempt to classify felt temperatureswith felt pains, and so to show that felt warmth is a state or reaction inourselves, as pain in some way is, was a logical mistake.We need, therefore, to distinguish the sense of feeling or sensation inwhich we call pains and tickles feelings or sensations from the entirelydifferent sense in which we say that we perceive some things not byseeing, hearing, smelling, or tasting, but by feeling the sense in whichwe say that a person whose feet or fingers are numb with cold has lostsensation or the power of feeling things with his fingers and toes.Let mejust remind you of some of the properties of external things which areperceived by feeling, as opposed to seeing, hearing, smelling or tasting.First, to detect how hot or cold something is, we have to feel it with thehands, or lips, or tongue, or, less efficiently, with other parts of our bodies.We cannot see, hear or smell how cold things are.Next, to detect theroughness, smoothness, slipperiness or stickiness of the surfaces of things,we normally have to handle them or finger them.Next, to detect whethersomething is vibrating, stiff, resilient, loose in its socket and so on, weusually have to touch it, and very likely also muscularly to manipulate it.Some people are much better than others at discrimination-tasks of thesekinds.Doctors can feel the pulses of patients which are too faint for you orme to detect and the trained driver can feel the car going into a skid longbefore the novice could have done so.We should notice that tactual and kinaesthetic detection is unlikeseeing, hearing, tasting, and smelling in one important respect.What Idetect by seeing, hearing, tasting, and smelling are, with extremely fewexceptions, properties or features of things and happenings outside me.What I detect tactually and kinaesthetically may be properties or features ofexternal though contiguous things and events; but they may be and quiteoften are properties or features of anatomically internal things and events.I can detect, sometimes, the beating of my own heart, the distension of my CHAPTER 26: SENSATION 353own stomach, the straining or relaxing of my own muscles, the creakingof my own joints, and the fishbone in my own throat.A doctor, I imagine,learns to detect by feeling the congestion of his own lungs.In this sense of feeling , feeling is a species of perception or perceptualdiscrimination.We have to learn to do it; we may be better or worse thanother people at doing it.There is room for care and carelessness in doingit; and there is always the possibility of making mistakes.To be able to feelthings, in this sense, is to have got a certain amount of a specific skill orfamily of skills, just as to be able to detect and discriminate things byseeing, hearing, tasting, and smelling is to have got a certain amount ofa specific skill or family of skills.In all cases alike there can be trainedor untrained observers.To detect or discriminate something, whether bysight or touch, is to achieve something, namely, to find something out bythe exercise of an acquired and perhaps deliberately trained skill.Thisshows how enormously different is the sense of the verb feel when usedto denote detection by touch from the sense of the verb feel when usedto denote the suffering of a pain or other discomfort.But different though these two concepts of feeling or sensation are,still both are quite untechnical concepts.The child has learned to useboth long before he has heard of any physiological, neurological orpsychological theories.So now we can ask whether it is true that all perceiving involves thehaving of sensations or the feeling of anything, in either of these senses.Well, to begin with, it is perfectly clear that usually when I see, hear,taste or smell anything, or detect something by touch, I do not suffer anydiscomfort or pain in my eyes, ears, tongue, nose or fingertips [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.Feeling, in the sense of finding out or discerning, the warmth of things is akind of perception, and a kind at which some people, like bakers andlaundry-girls, become better than other people; it is the product of an 352 COLLECTED PAPERS: VOLUME 2acquired skill; but feeling, in the sense of suffering pains, is not a kind ofperception, and there is no question of one victim being better or worsethan another at feeling toothaches.In this sense of feeling or sensation ,pains are not things the feeling of which is the product of an acquiredskill.So far from the feeling of warmth being merely a lower degree of thefeeling of pain, the two things are felt only in quite different senses ofthe word.They are not even species of one genus, as perhaps seeing andtasting are species of the one genus, perception.They belong to differentcategories from one another.The attempt to classify felt temperatureswith felt pains, and so to show that felt warmth is a state or reaction inourselves, as pain in some way is, was a logical mistake.We need, therefore, to distinguish the sense of feeling or sensation inwhich we call pains and tickles feelings or sensations from the entirelydifferent sense in which we say that we perceive some things not byseeing, hearing, smelling, or tasting, but by feeling the sense in whichwe say that a person whose feet or fingers are numb with cold has lostsensation or the power of feeling things with his fingers and toes.Let mejust remind you of some of the properties of external things which areperceived by feeling, as opposed to seeing, hearing, smelling or tasting.First, to detect how hot or cold something is, we have to feel it with thehands, or lips, or tongue, or, less efficiently, with other parts of our bodies.We cannot see, hear or smell how cold things are.Next, to detect theroughness, smoothness, slipperiness or stickiness of the surfaces of things,we normally have to handle them or finger them.Next, to detect whethersomething is vibrating, stiff, resilient, loose in its socket and so on, weusually have to touch it, and very likely also muscularly to manipulate it.Some people are much better than others at discrimination-tasks of thesekinds.Doctors can feel the pulses of patients which are too faint for you orme to detect and the trained driver can feel the car going into a skid longbefore the novice could have done so.We should notice that tactual and kinaesthetic detection is unlikeseeing, hearing, tasting, and smelling in one important respect.What Idetect by seeing, hearing, tasting, and smelling are, with extremely fewexceptions, properties or features of things and happenings outside me.What I detect tactually and kinaesthetically may be properties or features ofexternal though contiguous things and events; but they may be and quiteoften are properties or features of anatomically internal things and events.I can detect, sometimes, the beating of my own heart, the distension of my CHAPTER 26: SENSATION 353own stomach, the straining or relaxing of my own muscles, the creakingof my own joints, and the fishbone in my own throat.A doctor, I imagine,learns to detect by feeling the congestion of his own lungs.In this sense of feeling , feeling is a species of perception or perceptualdiscrimination.We have to learn to do it; we may be better or worse thanother people at doing it.There is room for care and carelessness in doingit; and there is always the possibility of making mistakes.To be able to feelthings, in this sense, is to have got a certain amount of a specific skill orfamily of skills, just as to be able to detect and discriminate things byseeing, hearing, tasting, and smelling is to have got a certain amount ofa specific skill or family of skills.In all cases alike there can be trainedor untrained observers.To detect or discriminate something, whether bysight or touch, is to achieve something, namely, to find something out bythe exercise of an acquired and perhaps deliberately trained skill.Thisshows how enormously different is the sense of the verb feel when usedto denote detection by touch from the sense of the verb feel when usedto denote the suffering of a pain or other discomfort.But different though these two concepts of feeling or sensation are,still both are quite untechnical concepts.The child has learned to useboth long before he has heard of any physiological, neurological orpsychological theories.So now we can ask whether it is true that all perceiving involves thehaving of sensations or the feeling of anything, in either of these senses.Well, to begin with, it is perfectly clear that usually when I see, hear,taste or smell anything, or detect something by touch, I do not suffer anydiscomfort or pain in my eyes, ears, tongue, nose or fingertips [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]