Feeling

There is some feeling everywhere[1]

(Tundmist on kõikjal)

Ökosemiootika suvelaager, 28-39.07.11, Rutja

I’ve had an idea for quite some time already, although I must confess that I haven’t had much success in gaining recognition to it. I’m not sure whether I haven’t tried enough or whether the idea isn’t right. I’ll try to present it to you again – I cannot hope that this time I shall win recognition to this idea, but at least it would be good if I can make myself comprehensible and the idea intelligible.

The idea is that – if I take the starting point chosen in today’s lecture’s title – there is some feeling everywhere. Let’s look more closely, what do I mean by that. What does it take to feel, to have a feeling? Every being or creature is both transitive and intransitive, that is, it has both a relationship to the “outer” world and to the “inner” world, to “others” and to “itself”. With a very broad generalization I would say that “feeling” is a modulation of being’s relationship to itself, due to internal and external causes[2].

We can distinguish three or four different extensions to this concept, who would be the ones that feel.

1) According to the first one, supported for example by Heidegger, feeling in the true sense of the word characterizes only human beings. Because only humans not only have the physiological mechanisms to receive impulses from the external world and give them back to it, i.e. sensorimotor apparatus, but they also are related to what they feel, and namely, they are related first of all to their death, their being-toward-death. Or to put it plainly, humans[3] are the only ones conscious of their death and consequently of their being alive, and hence of their feelings. Animals are perhaps in their feelings, simply undergoing them, but humans truly have feelings, relate understandingly to them. This idea might sound strange to you and perhaps artificial, but I believe it is a strong and credible idea. It stresses the discontinuity, the evolutionary leap that came about with humans; it shows that it is not merely quantitative, but qualitative. Nevertheless, at the same time we should not forget the continuity of humans with animals. As a general principle, to have an adequate idea of the meaning of evolution, we should always have these two aspects simultaneously in mind, discontinuity and continuity.

2) According to the second extension of the concept of feeling, it can be attributed also to animals, at least to higher animals with complex nervous system. This is a very commonsense idea and there is nothing strange about it: those animals have more or less complex brains, they express their feelings, so there should be no reason to suppose they have no feelings. Think of the great variety of emotions in apes and dogs, for example! We could admit that there is no “feeler” in the sense of human subjectivity, which means also that it is perhaps difficult for them to distance themselves from the emotional content of their feelings[4], so that they cannot displace it to “other time” (past of future) or to other persons (understand how s/he feels, although I continue to feel differently). But even if in the case of animals the feeler is not so autonomous and clear-cut, it doesn’t mean that there is none, and that there is no feeling. Surely there are, only that it is structured differently – not only in respect to humans, but also inside animal realm itself between animals of different complexity.

3) The previous position is perhaps the most common-sense, because we can see the reactions of those higher animals. These animals are similar enough in terms of constitution (nerve system) and scale (we can see them with naked eye, and also detect their reactions in our own time-scale). But if we take a more scientific approach, then it is difficult to claim an essential difference – as to feeling is concerned – on the grounds of the complexity of nervous system or on the existence or absence of it. For sure, nerves constitute another important evolutionary leap, but it rather “canalises” and “makes more efficient” than creates from scratch. What we can verify with naked eye as reactions expressing feelings, we can see with microscope as cellular reactivity, which can also be astonishingly complex, as in the case of Paramecium or Stentor or others. In any case it expresses specific reactions, which show that the living being (uni- or multicellular, plant or animal, pro- or eukaryote) is “concerned” about itself and its environment. So, in the third extension of the notion, we could consider this basic concern about itself as a basic form of feeling. Although this is not as commonsense as the previous one, I believe that most of you are willing to take this step.

4) The next step(s) are already far less commonsense, because they lie even further away from ourselves. In this extension of the concept of feeling, it could be attributed even to inanimate matter, to molecules, atoms, nucleons and elementary particles. I’m not expecting you to follow me in taking this step, but at least let’s see whether I can make myself intelligible, even if you will not agree with it. First, the general reasons to take this step are philosophical: otherwise, how do we explain the emergence of feeling and interiority (feeling is about some interiority)? Of course we can claim that feeling is something specific to living beings (if we have extended the concept unto the third step), but what did it build upon? (I’m not intending to fight battles around wording, I can readily allow the terminology of limiting “feeling” to life and defining anything preceding it as “proto-feeling” or something else. But I beg you to allow me here to continue using the same term). Interiority (which entails feeling) in the phenomenological sense is not a spatial concept, but it is a relation or better, a way of relating to itself and the surroundings. Did this “relating to itself and the surroundings” emerge only with life? I would argue that no.

Before delving further into the matter (in both senses of the word), let me note that perhaps a lot of the reluctance to attribute feeling (or proto-feeling) to forms preceding life stems from the way those forms are represented in textbooks: we have a model of a molecule with atoms as small balls and chemical bonds between them as rods. Or we have a model of an atom with nucleus as one big ball and electrons as small dots around it. Of course we know that it is a very crude way of representing them, but as we have never seen them “alive” with our naked eye, then we tend to forget it and to identify molecules and atoms with our representations of them (whether pictures in case of laypersons or equations, in case of scientists). We see also crude and motionless pictures of cows and dogs, but we are not misled by them because we have seen them.

For me it seems clear that even a molecule or an atom have a basic relation to themselves and hence a basic form of feeling and interiority. Molecules and atoms are not composed of discrete blocks (atoms or nucleus/electrons), which just stand next to each other. No, they form an integrated whole; they are in continuous motion or “action” in each of their parts and they form together a “whole” of action, which we call a specific molecule or atom. Atoms and electrons are distributed not randomly in molecules and atoms, but in a very precise way, which defines every time the molecule’s or atom’s structure (length, angle and torsion of bonds, and difference in electronegativity of participating atoms; electrons’ spins, energy levels, orbitals). If an atom is added to (or taken away from) the molecule, then it is not like taking away one brick from the wall, which would leave the wall and other bricks unaffected[5], but the molecule is transformed, restructured as a whole. To my mind, the structure of a molecule or an atom, the holistic maintaining and transforming of it would express a primitive form of “self-interest” or “self-relatedness” which would also imply a primitive form of interiority and hence feeling. Again, you can term it with some other word, but the important thing for me here in this presentation was to show the continuity in evolution, and also hint to its discontinuities.[6]

So, in conclusion, my idea was to show that there is some feeling (or proto-feeling, if you wish) down to the bottom, and in this sense that “there is some feeling everywhere”. Not that everything feels or that feeling is everywhere (this would cancel the difference and distinction between individuals), but that there is some feeling everywhere: if we “look”, then we can find some feeler everywhere.

To reply in advance to a possible question (which in the context of a seminar on ecosemiotics is more than natural) concerning ethical implications: if even molecules and atoms feel, are we entitled to dispose of them so carelessly as we have done until now (and perhaps we could, jokingly, call accelerators torture chambers for elementary particles). It seems absurd, but the question is not altogether senseless and groundless. There is an ethical problem in doing violence even to elementary particles. But on the other hand it has been natural for us, humans, to judge on other creatures according to their closeness and similarity to ourselves. So, we could say that if violence is necessary to exist, and it can never be wholly justified, then for pragmatic reasons we can take (we have already taken) the stance that it is less unpardonable “down” in complexity and more unpardonable “up” in complexity. This is something similar to what Spinoza said: every creature has a certain right over others, which is determined according to its degree of power (i.e. what it can do, how much and how differently). So, for example, animals have also a right over humans, but as their degree of power is much smaller, then in their relation with humans the latter have the right to dispose of them as they wish (perhaps today we are shocked by the utilitarianism of this idea, but I should stress the great innovation implied in it: everybody has a right over others, even animals over humans – so, our right over animals can never be absolute and it can have no absolute foundation – saying, for instance, that humans have souls and animals do not, or something similar –, but is deemed to remain a relative right.) My reply would be similar: we have a greater relative right over others when we move downwards in complexity, although they also “feel”, in the most basic sense of being related to themselves.

[1] Later I changed the title to “How To Expand Human Feeling” (“Kuidas laiendada inimtunnet”), but as I attended an intensive summer school on “World Philosophy”, I had no time to rethink the thing. At the beginning of my speech I told the famous story of Mencius about how we spontaneously rescue a small child about to fall into a well. I had a vague idea, how to rethink the topic in this light, but as I said, I didn’t have the time.

I had a good feedback from one of my friends to the draft version of this paper (it’s nearly the same version as here) which prompted me to rephrase the ideas to the extent that it would be meaningless to try to rewrite the present text. Now I would lay more stress on the logical character of self- and other relation, in the sense that there would be no continuity of substance between the self-relations of different levels of organization. The interesting task – and a necessary complement to the present text – would be to do research into the concrete ways and technologies of these self- and other-relationships. Next time I would give a speech in a similar contest (biosemiotics, ecosemiotics), I would rather talk about the changes in these mechanisms.

The subject of “feeling” was suggested by the fact that this summer gathering of ecosemiotics had as its theme the recent translation of Andreas Weber’s “Alles fühlt” (in Estonian “Kõik me tunneme”; English translation is in preparation), which I had no possibility to read before the seminar.

[2] And we should note, that the external is mediated by the internal, in the sense that a being is liable to feel anything only according to its internal constitution.

[3] Heidegger actually speaks about Dasein, which is not equal to “human being”, but this difference doesn’t concern us here.

[4] It is so even for small children and, I should say, very often also for a lot of grown-ups...

[5] We are not speaking of complex polymers; there somewhat different aspects may count.

[6] Whether we choose same or different words also already expresses our intent to stress more one or the other aspect, continuity or discontinuity. Here I stressed continuity, but I am very aware of discontinuities also.