Can You Describe How You Feel?

In order to announce to the world that one feels “happy” (sad, angry, etc.) one must perceive how one presently feels in relation to some other feeling. Otherwise, one would generally lack the means to verbally describe how one feels.

Rather than sensing how one’s feelings change moment-by-moment, one senses the relation between one’s present feeling and a generally invariant reference feeling designated herein as one’s Sense-of-Self. A set comprising the distinctions between one’s present feeling and one’s Sense-of-Self serves as an index to and activates a corresponding portion of one’s semantic memory. In turn, the activated semantic memory indicates the set of distinctions. Note that the activated semantic memory indicates neither one?s present feeling, nor one’s Sense-of-Self, but rather just the set comprising the distinctions between the two!

When one genuinely declares, “I feel angry“, the differences between one’s present feeling and one’s Sense-of-Self comprise a set of distinctions. This set maps to and excites a portion of one’s semantic memory, and most specifically the lexical entry “angry” itself! The word “angry” doesn’t describe how one feels presently, instead it describes the difference between how one is feeling and the feeling that is one?s Sense-of-Self. The activation of the differences that comprise such a set results in the activation of the word “angry.”

It would seem that we lack the lexicon to describe our immediate experience. There exist no words to describe how one genuinely feels at any given moment, including those fleeting moments during which one senses one’s own Sense-of-Self. One’s present feelings and Sense-of-Self are beyond words and as such, we are limited to speaking about the differences between how we presently feel and our Sense-of-Self.

When one states “I feel angry” one is identifying the distinctions between how one feels in the moment and one’s Sense-of-Self. In the moment that one recognizes the distinctions, in that moment, one is not attending to both feeling and thinking. Rather, one is thinking ABOUT how one feels, thereby encapsulating one’s feelings with their own thought.

In such a moment, the set of distinctions between how one is currently feeling and one’s Sense-of-Self is the object of one’s attention. Such a thought about how one feels is subjective in nature, as is any accompanying description of how one feels.