for a second there, I got carried away and thought I was going to make a site with a point or a purpose, but that's silly. instead, here's a list of things

I don't really "see" things in my mind's eye (aphantasia?)

I don't really know what I like, if I like things (anhendonia?)

I don't "feel" a presence of a higher power (?)

I don't really know what I want to do

I don't get "Love"

I don't go for a hike and marvel at the beauty of nature. But I do like the views

I don't "like" brussels sprouts

It may be a bit sophomoric, but I've had several friends (I promise) that like to ponder the color problem. I mean, if you look at grass, do you see the same "green" that I do? Accounting for the inability to discern stemming from color blindness? Or are your greens my blues? We couldn't really say. Provided the colors are all shifted relative to each other (i.e., you can't have #ABC be #CBA and everything else is a straight transfer. That would be jarring and probably not injective. Surjective? Bijective? Can't recall.).

But I wonder at the concepts that people hold to be universal. Figuring this has been touched on before, on massive scale, I found this Reddit thread talks about more physical experiences. How do people throw away trash vs. recycle? Here's the /r/im14thisisdeep: sure I'm always reading these and marveling out how different peoples' cultures or experiences can be. But what about how these differences affect their lives or their cognition? Would that be a social psychology sort of thing? Obviously differences like "we eat fairy cake" shouldn't really be that big of a deal. But what about something like that "right to roam" concept? Should we imagine cultures where the land is more accessible... have a meaningfully different view of natural resources?

Anyway, I've lost the thread here. I guess it's dawning on me that maybe most people just "feel" a presence, and that explains why everyone thinks they need to have an explanation for it. I had a class once where the professor was trying to explain St. Augustine's reflection on a mother having breast milk and feeding her baby. For him, that's some godlike level of thinking and foresight (haha) that something so perfectly matched would exist... to the point that having such a perfect system of needs and wants somehow proves a god exists and created this process.

Of course, that's a classic case of looking at the world and deciding it must fit into some grander scheme. From a naturalistic perspective, I imagine you could just as easily explain instincts as being encouraged by selection -- your mothers had better want to nurture the dependent, and the dependent better not try and be independent at the ripe old age of infancy. For me, this idea seems more reliable and tangible. It gives an explanation for why this thing in nature should be the way it is, and perhaps moreso, explains why something /else/ would be worse. i.e., mothers absolutely refusing to nurture babies would not have very prosperous young or high fertility rates, etc.

That ties into the Goldilocks zone, another favorite borderline-metaphysical concept. My favorite approach to this is apparently the Anthropic principle. But generally, we can't look at the world, in the state that it is, and declare it good. I wonder what St. Augustine's take on natural disasters would be in that light. Would he still be of the school of thought that floods and windstorms are the wrath of the god(s)?

This is fairly tangential, but I also had a professor who made the claim that the only required concept for a culture/society to have is that some of the offspring are raised. I got caught on this because I wanted to argue that "no, consider the antinatalists!" but then, you know, that culture dies out immediately.

so yeah, I don't really get the whole "feelings" thing when it's supposed to explain something else about the world. but then, why do anything unless you _feel_ like it on some level? Ah I'm still rambling