You could just say it's not fear if it's not uncomfortable,
by definiton, and that gets rid of all my lawyerly counterexamples. So you would need to first define fear:
a
n unpleasant experience that involves x, y and z ... (according to the scientific dictates of your theory, your available lab equipment and the parameters of the grant for which you are applying)
But more basic ... I think there are problems with the idea of a
phenomenal field, although I'm not sure what a PF is exactly ... despite the diagram, what I remember is you said it is real but you aren't sure
where it is ... ? And from the question above, what I make is:
Do two similar sets of physiologies having two similar experiences - experience the same thing? Again, if you are a materialist, then it depends on how similar - if you assume everything is encoded in the pattern of neurons, then it seems they would have to ... but in the real world, I would think no two organisms are similar enough at that level (for many reasons) to be very much alike in every situation (and if you bring up twin studies, I'm going to have to bring up something I read very recently that discounts that) ... very small differences could be writ large here - Jack Smith is ophidiphobic, his twin John walks around with a python draped around his neck at all times ... but even then, if Jack and John walked out of a duplicating machine, they would immediately begin to diverge
physiologically ... wouldn't they?
In
Seeing Things in Merlau Ponty that
@Constance posted above, Sean (D) Kelly writes of visiting the set of a Western movie. When he first walks through he thinks "this is just like a real town!" But then as he explores and goes into a bar and sees it's not a bar, it's just a facade and inside is a space with some equipment for a movie shoot ... same with the bank, etc ... then when he goes back outside and sees the exact same thing (he even stipulates thay the light rays on the retina are identical) this time he sees a facade and the town doesn't look real at all - let's have a look in ...
(que flashback music: deedullly deedulllly deeedulllly)
"Imagine visiting an old western movie set. When you first arrive you might be
amazed at how realistic everything looks. As you walk down the street it really seems as
though buildings rise up on either side. The bank really looks like it is a bank; the saloon
really looks like it is a saloon; it really seems as though you’ve stepped into the Old
West. Movie sets are constructed to fool you this way.
But they are movie sets after all, and a little bit of exploration reveals the fact.
Walking through the saloon doors is nothing like walking into a saloon. The anticipation
of a cool sarsaparilla, and even the anticipation of a room with chairs in it and a bar, is
immediately frustrated in the movie set saloon. When you walk through the doors you
see nothing but the supporting apparatus for the saloon façade and perhaps some stage
materials hidden away. The same for what earlier looked to be a bank. It is revealed
instead as a very convincing face supported by some two-by-fours and bags of sand. And
so on for every structure on the street.
If you explore the set enough in this way, then an amazing thing can happen.
Now as you walk down the street it doesn’t look realistic at all. Instead of buildings on
either side, it looks as if there are mere façades. Instead of feeling as if you’re in the Old
West, it feels as if you’re on an old west movie set. And this is not because you can see
through the doors to their empty backsides, or indeed because you “see” anything
different at all (at least in one very limited sense of “to see”).
Let us stipulate, in fact,
that every light ray cast onto your retina is exactly the same as it was when you first
arrived on the set.
Still, your experience of the set can change, a gestalt shift can occur,
so that the whole thing looks like a set full of façades instead of like an old west town.
This is the phenomenon I have in mind.
Three other points are subsidiary to the phenomenology, but worth mentioning anyway.
First the thing
I’m looking at need not
be a façade in order for me to experience it as one. When I leave the set, for
instance, and I’m walking down the street of a real town, I can experience its buildings as façades even if
they’re not. Again, with enough exploration – opening the door to the bank and seeing a real bank inside,
for instance – I will come to see these buildings as the real thing. But whether they are real buildings is not
conclusive in determining whether I will experience them to be so.
Second, my
knowledge that something
is a façade or a real building is neither necessary nor sufficient for me to experience it as such. I knew the
structures on the movie set were façades when I first walked in, but that didn’t make me experience them as
façades; only exploring them had that effect. So knowing that something is a façade is not sufficient for
experiencing it as one; we can be fooled. Likewise, knowing that something is a façade is not necessary for
experiencing it as one. Indeed, when I walk through the real town after visiting the movie set I might know
-5-
Husserl was the first to identify this phenomenon as a central problem for
philosophical theories of perception. Given that the only information projected onto the
retina is information in (roughly) two dimensions, the fact that there is a difference
between experiencing something as
having only two dimensions (a façade) and
experiencing it as
having three (an object) is a puzzle. In order to do justice to this
phenomenological distinction, Husserl argued, we must admit that the features of
perceptual experience are not limited to those of the sense-data occasioned by the
object’s front.
8 Indeed, Husserl claimed, we need to give some account of the way in
which the
hidden aspects of an experienced object – the backside it is experienced to
have, for instance – are present to me in my experience of it. Without such an account,
we have no resources to distinguish between the case in which the thing looks to be a
façade and the case in which it looks to be an object.
and lots on You Tube, you can pretty much watch Ideology on Youtube, one piece at a time.
