It’s time for more links, along with my brief comments.
Hot and Cold Cognitive Empathy – Ozy distinguishes between hot cognitive empathy, which is intuitively felt, and cold cognitive empathy, which is deliberate. Ozy observes that many autistic people develop the latter, and comments of the advantages and disadvantages. I am not autistic, and experience hot cognitive empathy, but I find it fascinating how different people have different private experiences, and develop different mental processes to fulfill the same function.
Aphantasia: How it feels to be blind in your mind – Blake Ross, cofounder of Firefox, explains a revelation he had: “Picture it in your mind’s eye” is a literal expression for most people, but not for him.
This is another case in point. Many people have different private experiences, but it can go under the radar for a long time because so much of our language describes only the function of our private experiences, rather than the experiences themselves. And yet, contra Wittgenstein, comparing private experiences is at least possible. This makes me wonder if I have other private experiences which are atypical. For example, I suspect that fish doesn’t taste the same way to me as it does to other people. Also, I don’t think I experience this “mystic emotion” thing that Einstein says is necessary to being alive. Einstein: what a jerk!