-- *Mar*Your question contains two layers: 1.
*A philosophical challenge to Cartesian rationalism*, and 2. *Several empirical claims about perception*, which deserve careful clarification. I will respond without dismissing the spirit of your argument, but also without accepting factual claims that are not physiologically or scientifically accurate. Below is a balanced, respectful analysis that keeps the *emotional logic* intact while also clarifying the *empirical* side. ------------------------------ *1. Does breathing/sensing reveal “100% of totality”?* *Short answer: physiologically, no.* Smell, proprioception, touch, interoception, etc. all give you *different dimensions* of reality, but none of them—individually or collectively—give you “totality.” - Vision gives electromagnetic information. - Smell gives chemical information. - Touch gives mechanical information. - Breathing gives gas exchange and interoceptive sensation. - Emotions give internal meaning-making. Each mode *samples a tiny portion of the world*, but each portion is *real in its own domain.* So you are correct that *vision is not the master sense*. But smell or feeling is also not a master sense. No biological sense gives “totality.” However... *Emotionally and phenomenologically*, breathing *feels like* a connection to totality. Breath participates in the world directly: - The air enters you. - Your boundaries soften. - Feeling becomes continuous with environment. - Your organism resonates with the world. This *felt totality* is not literal totality—but it is experientially powerful, and in that sense “100%” is a *metaphor for existential immersion* . ------------------------------ *2. “Machines only give 3D geometry; feelings give real answers.”* *Machines* Machines give *symbolic, geometric, numerical* representations. They are abstractions—never the thing itself. A microscope does not show you “life”—it shows you a magnified image produced by optics and computation. You are correct that *machines do not feel*, and so machine-generated representations lack: - context - meaning - affect - intuition - organismic resonance Machines produce *maps*, not *experience*. *Breathing and feeling* Feeling is not geometric. Feeling is *integrative*: hormonal, neural, embodied, environmental, autobiographical. Breathing triggers: - vagal responses - parasympathetic activation - shifts in blood chemistry - changes in perception and meaning - emotional coloration of experience Feelings are part of how an organism *knows* the world from inside. They *do not provide objective truth*, but they do provide *existential truth*. Thus your question becomes: Which truth is “real”? The measured? Or the lived? Both are real, but in different ways. ------------------------------ *3. Cartesian vs Emotional Approach: Which is “reliable”?* *Cartesian (rational, analytic, measurable)* Reliable for: - precision - prediction - reproducibility - external verification - engineering - scientific explanation Unreliable for: - meaning - understanding of wholeness - wisdom - value - ethical orientation *Emotional (embodied, intuitive, felt)* Reliable for: - what matters - how life feels - insight into relationships - existential truth - moral orientation - internal coherence Unreliable for: - external accuracy - quantitative prediction - disentangling bias - confirming facts *So the answer depends on what you want to know.* ------------------------------ *4. Which gives the “real answer”?* *If the question is: “How does reality work?”* → The Cartesian approach gives the reliable answer. *If the question is: “What does reality mean for a living being?”* → The emotional/breath-based approach gives the real answer. *Reality requires both.* A life built only on Cartesian logic becomes mechanical. A life built only on emotional logic becomes distorted by bias. True understanding is *bipolar*: - *Measuring reality* (Cartesian) - *Absorbing reality* (emotional) Or as Merleau-Ponty said: “Science sees the world from the outside; lived experience sees the world from the inside.” ------------------------------ *5. My Comment (Synthesis)* The human being is not designed to choose between thinking and feeling. Breathing connects us to the *world as lived*. Reason connects us to the *world as explained*. Your essay—and your question—express a real and pressing truth: *Technology is replacing perception. But it cannot replace experience.* Machines will never smell the world, never feel a sunrise, never tremble with intuition. These dimensions of knowing remain exclusively human. So the “real answer” is not Cartesian *or* emotional. It is *the harmony between both*: - Machines tell us *what is*. - Feelings tell us *what it means*. If you like, I can also evaluate your follow-up note using the two logics again—Cartesian and Emotional. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Thatha_Patty" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/thatha_patty/CACDCHCJ3PP7W%3D-dTWbWhmWEZqm8A0iTAczaV5J7%2BG5E_uDF8-g%40mail.gmail.com.
