_The main difference between sensation and simple feeling is that
a feeling cannot be made the object of direct attention._ Try to
attend to the pleasantness or unpleasantness of an experience, and
the feeling evaporates, eludes you; it is like clutching a ghost; you
find yourself beyond the feeling, so to speak, and face to face with
some obtrusive sensation or image that you had no wish to meet. This
peculiarity of feeling must, of course, be taken account of in our
conduct of the psychological method of observation. The formula of
observation (p. 19) was:
psychological (vivid experience → full report).
In the case of sensation, the observer is set or disposed, beforehand,
to attend to sensation and to report upon sensation; the sensation
comes, and is attended to; and the report which follows is determined,
under the influence of the preliminary set or disposition, by the
nature of the sensation. In the case of feeling, the observer is set to
attend to sensation, but to report upon the feeling which accompanies
the sensation; the sensation comes and is attended to; and the report
then describes, under the influence of the preliminary set, the feeling
which accompanied the sensation. That sounds a little paradoxical; but
the method is not difficult in practice; and it has the advantage that
we can use all manner of sensory stimuli (colours, tones, everything)
in our study of feeling.
We find, first of all, that _pleasant and unpleasant are really
opposites_; the colour or tone that is most often reported as pleasant
is least often reported as unpleasant, and conversely. An obvious
result? Not at all; for what is obvious to common sense demands very
careful consideration at the hands of science; and the fact that, in
this instance, common sense turns out to be right does not at all
mean that we should have been justified in taking it for granted. We
find, secondly, that _intensity of feeling behaves like intensity of
sensation_ (p. 67); the more pleasant or unpleasant an experience is,
the more must the stimulus be changed if we are to feel a difference;
and the less pleasant or unpleasant it is, the less change need be made
to produce a change of feeling.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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