hi Sherelle, I was struck by your comment that "I am thrilled to know that I wasn't nuts!" re: synesthesia. I was reading the info on the link I sent to the list and I was interested to see this:
9. The Rejection Of Direct Experience 9.1 My usual response to those who ask if synesthesia is "real" is, "Real to whom? To you, or to those who experience it?" Questioning its reality without first having some technological confirmation shows how ready we are to reject any first-hand experience. We are addicted to the external and the rational. Our insistence on a third-person, "objective" understanding of the world has just about swept aside all other forms of knowledge. 9.2 In the course of studying MW, for example, we came to a point of using invasive and rather sophisticated technology when he became frightened, not that we might uncover some medical abnormality, but because a machine might prove that his synesthesia wasn't real. MW was ready to accept the judgement of a machine over his lifetime of first-hand experience. This is a remarkable commentary. 9.3 When we think of our brains, we usually think of a computer, a reasoning machine in our heads that runs things. This is consistent with the hierarchical model. But emotion - which word I use to include irrational, a-rational, and non-verbal knowledge and cognition - is what actually directs our thoughts and actions. Like the Wizard of Oz, it is our a-rational inner life that pulls the levers behind the curtain. Our inner knowledge behind the curtain is largely inaccessible to introspective language, which means that what we feel about something is more valid than what we think or say about that something. 9.4 Reason is just the endless paperwork of the mind. The heart of our creativity is our direct experience and the salience that our limbic brain gives it. Allowing it to be that does not stop us from overlaying rational considerations on it - after which we can talk, recount, explain, interpret, and analyze to our heart's content. from http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/v2/psyche-2-10-cytowic.html I think those of us on this list can see beyond "the external and the rational". I hope I can anyway. I mean, that stuff is great and truly essential, but I don't think it's everything. Mary People hurry by so quickly Don't they hear the melodies In the chiming and the clicking And the laughing harmonies - Joni Mitchell
