Research has linked the ability to visualize to a bewildering variety of human traits—how we experience trauma, hold grudges, and, above all, remember our lives.
Yeah that’s a really good way to describe it. Basically, it’s like a visual field, but not from the eyes, and my brain just kind of suppresses it. But practising focusing on it could help with making myself more attuned to paying direct attention to it. I really should try spend a bit of time on that.
It’s really fascinating to hear how other people’s mental processes work, it’s not something we tend to talk about. And it’s kind of easy to assume that other people’s minds work roughly like your own, but clearly there are some pretty big differences.
I am in perfect agreement! (that almost never happens)
For me I was taught that subjectivity (what’s inside) distorts and dillutes objectivity (what’s outside). Objectivity is reality. Subjectivity is fantasy, delusion, fake, a distraction, a waste of time, a matter for unserious people, and so on.
I somewhat resentfully accepted all that, until later I rejected that entire way of thinking.
I think I even had a few black and white dreams when little, and I quietly freaked out about it and started paying more attention to my dreams, which appeared in color, and I was like “I thank my lucky stars.” Boy I hated the idea of not having color.
As far as I remember there are like two halves or aspects of mine fighting. One is the pro-objectivity side and another is the pro-subjectivity side. I have been trying to tell myself it’s a false dichotomy, can’t all of me please get along now? It’s all valuable and valid, there is no need for me to rip myself in half. I was somewhat successful.
It didn’t help my pro-odjectivity side that I have low-key envied the visual arts people. Now there is more internal peace for me, and subjectivity is valid, valued, and needed, together with what we can call objectivity. I don’t have useless parts.
The way I like to look at it is that we build models of the world in our heads. Our subjectivity is basically our own distinct understanding of the world that we develop through our unique experience. It’s not the objective reality itself, but it’s how we represent it and make sense of it.
In order for me to look left, I must have a spatial concept internally before I fill in my space construct with some samples of information. That spatial concept is impossible to impart or teach. So what I call “the world” is a product of my own discipline, a melding of my imagination and some seemingly external content, more so than a reflection of something genuinely and absolutely external.
Even so, surprises happen, so there is definitely unconscious content. So internal/external framework is not necessarily 100% wrong, but more like 50% wrong, or too naive, oversimplified.
So I see subjectivity as the root context, within which objectivity is a special case partial representation and highlighting of a portion of that context.
Incidentally, I can highly recommend Consciousness Explained
by Dennett, it’s a really good dive into origin of internal experience, what purpose consciousness serves, and how it might work https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness_Explained
Yeah that’s a really good way to describe it. Basically, it’s like a visual field, but not from the eyes, and my brain just kind of suppresses it. But practising focusing on it could help with making myself more attuned to paying direct attention to it. I really should try spend a bit of time on that.
It’s really fascinating to hear how other people’s mental processes work, it’s not something we tend to talk about. And it’s kind of easy to assume that other people’s minds work roughly like your own, but clearly there are some pretty big differences.
I am in perfect agreement! (that almost never happens)
For me I was taught that subjectivity (what’s inside) distorts and dillutes objectivity (what’s outside). Objectivity is reality. Subjectivity is fantasy, delusion, fake, a distraction, a waste of time, a matter for unserious people, and so on.
I somewhat resentfully accepted all that, until later I rejected that entire way of thinking.
I think I even had a few black and white dreams when little, and I quietly freaked out about it and started paying more attention to my dreams, which appeared in color, and I was like “I thank my lucky stars.” Boy I hated the idea of not having color.
As far as I remember there are like two halves or aspects of mine fighting. One is the pro-objectivity side and another is the pro-subjectivity side. I have been trying to tell myself it’s a false dichotomy, can’t all of me please get along now? It’s all valuable and valid, there is no need for me to rip myself in half. I was somewhat successful.
It didn’t help my pro-odjectivity side that I have low-key envied the visual arts people. Now there is more internal peace for me, and subjectivity is valid, valued, and needed, together with what we can call objectivity. I don’t have useless parts.
The way I like to look at it is that we build models of the world in our heads. Our subjectivity is basically our own distinct understanding of the world that we develop through our unique experience. It’s not the objective reality itself, but it’s how we represent it and make sense of it.
In order for me to look left, I must have a spatial concept internally before I fill in my space construct with some samples of information. That spatial concept is impossible to impart or teach. So what I call “the world” is a product of my own discipline, a melding of my imagination and some seemingly external content, more so than a reflection of something genuinely and absolutely external.
Even so, surprises happen, so there is definitely unconscious content. So internal/external framework is not necessarily 100% wrong, but more like 50% wrong, or too naive, oversimplified.
So I see subjectivity as the root context, within which objectivity is a special case partial representation and highlighting of a portion of that context.
Incidentally, I can highly recommend Consciousness Explained by Dennett, it’s a really good dive into origin of internal experience, what purpose consciousness serves, and how it might work https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness_Explained