Bear in mind that my idea is entirely hacky and unreliable, first off. :)

I'll try and restate it in clearer terms. Take a typical brain. The left side is primarily deductive and reasoning, the right side is primarily sentivive and feeling. The ability to deduce as opposed to feel is a common trait among more intelligent orgamisms (larger cerebrums as opposed to early life, which had a larger cerebellum.) Early (unintelligent) life was based primarily on sensation as opposed to deduction, so they could appreciate sensation but not understand or describe it. Though the nature of the brain evolved throughout time and became more quantifying and analytical (in humans' case at least) the ability to describe and quantify feeling never arose because is was an integral part of what we evolved from (if early life developed analysis of emotion it wouldn't be able to process it due to lack of cerebral power and would also lack the "intuitive" approach to feeling (you can't have both, really) effectively rendering the organism useless)

I'm not a biologist by any stretch of the imagination, so everything I just wrote is a guess. But I think it's potentially interesting. Maybe feeling isn't inherently indescribable, it is just inherently indescribable by us. It could be different, maybe.

• Yes, that makes it clear - paulm - June 23, 2001 - 17:19 UTC
  • Consciousness - stormcrow - June 23, 2001 - 22:25 UTC
    • Yet more on consciousness - paulm - June 24, 2001 - 00:28 UTC
      • How do you know it's a radio and not a CD player? - stormcrow - June 24, 2001 - 01:51 UTC
        • I get current news without inserting a new CD - paulm - June 24, 2001 - 05:09 UTC
          • Be back soon - stormcrow - June 24, 2001 - 10:41 UTC
            • OK But please start a new thread when you get back (NT) - paulm - June 24, 2001 - 21:44 UTC