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Ever Deepening |
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Subjective RealitySubjective reality, conversely, consists of those phenomena that we believe we cannot present to another person as a basis for shared experience. Subjective reality consists largely of our emotional and intellectual response to experience. It includes the feelings that we have when we kiss, the apprehension we have of the geology of Yosemite Falls, and the memories that are evoked by a fire. Why do we believe that we cannot share these phenomena? I am going to assert later that we can come to share many subjective experiences. However, there are two things that make them unreliable as a basis for shared experience. First, we change. The first kiss of youth cannot be re-experienced with our later lovers. Our awakening to the apprehension of intimacy can never be repeated. Secondly, even identical twins will spend some time apart, having independent experiences. Those independent experiences establish a store of associations that affect our subjective responses. While there is conditions under which another's subjective responses can dominate our own (such as when we allow ourselves to be intimidated by anger), under most conditions our neural encoding will dominate the sympathetic response to our partner's. |
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