The limits of shared experience
If I feel the same way you do, then I am you.
Human communication relies on the assumption that we can understand each other's feelings. Empathy is crucial to this process, allowing us to connect with others' emotions. However, personal experience is inherently incommunicable with absolute precision. Our perception of others is always an approximation, filtered through our own experiences and biases. Even when two people agree on an interpretation of emotions, that agreement doesn't guarantee identical experiences.
Certain aspects of perception are fundamentally unverifiable. Consider color perception (see Inverted Spectrum Problem): two people can agree that an object is red or green, yet we can't confirm that their subjective experiences of those colors are identical. Their neural processing of color could be entirely different; language provides a shared label, not a shared experience.
This principle extends to emotional and sensory experiences. Individuals react differently to the same stimuli due to variations in neural thresholds, sensitivity, and cognitive processing. The intensity of joy or suffering cannot be objectively measured or compared between individuals. We use language to communicate these states, but language is an imperfect medium, inevitably distorting, simplifying, and often misrepresenting the true nature of our internal experiences.
If one person could feel exactly what another feels, they would cease to be distinct individuals. Perfect empathy would dissolve the boundaries of self, negating true individuality. Ultimately, communication isn't about transmitting experience, but about approximating understanding - a meeting of minds that remains forever imprecise.
Understanding the existence of limits and acknowledging that you can never fully comprehend others is essential for empathy. However, this does not diminish the importance of striving for it.
Related wiki articles:
- Qualia - the subjective, felt quality of experience.
- Mary’s Room Knowledge Argument - If someone knew everything about color but had never seen it, would they learn something new when they finally did? It suggests that they would, proving experience isn't just physical facts.
- Problem of other minds - How do I know what others are thinking and feeling, since I can only observe their behavior, not their inner experience?
- Hard problem of consciousness - How do brains create subjective experience - why does anything feel like something?
- Private language argument - Can a language only I understand actually make sense, or does language need shared rules? Suggests it can't.
- Simulation theory of empathy - We understand others by imagining what it's like to be them.
- Chinese room - If someone perfectly followed rules to translate Chinese without understanding it, would they really understand Chinese? It suggests that passing a test doesn't necessarily mean genuine understanding.
- Philosophical zombie - is a thought experiment. The zombie is physically identical to a person but lacks consciousness - it acts like us but feels nothing. It explores whether consciousness can be explained by physical facts alone.