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Synesthesia (Read 9351 times)

tomtom

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#25 Re: Synesthesia
July 28, 2014, 06:29:24 pm


My solicitors will be in touch shortly with their demands (get on it Sloper). Perhaps we could avoid the legal fees by meeting with an independent consultant? Mind you, Lagers' fees are through the F'ing roof these days as well.


Shit. Not again.

how does that feel?

salty

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#26 Re: Synesthesia
July 28, 2014, 07:53:18 pm
I'm always interested in this subject. It's fascinating... I sometimes wonder whether I have a slight disposition towards it on the hearing/feeling boundary.  When I hear some sounds I see and feel shapes that are very real and have quite interesting reactions to some that are difficult to describe in words, not quite purely mental and not quite physical but are pretty consistent in terms of how I feel/think.   :-[


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#27 Re: Synesthesia
July 28, 2014, 10:15:53 pm
Yoof - did it just suddenly stop out of the blue (no pun intended) or did something happen to make it stop?

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#28 Re: Synesthesia
July 29, 2014, 08:01:47 am
My folks and I were watching a TV programme about this a few years  ago, before I'd ever heard of it or realised that not everyone experiences the world like this. I looked at my dad and said 'Wednesday is green'  he said 'Wednesday is blue' and my Mum looked like she had just found herself in a room with two complete mutters!

As I have got older I don't notice it as much however I'm not sure if that's because of the fact that I no longer need the colours to interpret how I feel about something. I feel sure it is not LA learned behaviour though.

I am a very visual person and do still associate colours with things and I tend to think in shapes, textures and even temperature. Because so many of these things ate already present in climbing it's possibly not quite so pronounced.

Having said that, 6s are green, 7s are purple (getting darker the higher the number) and 8s are black.

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#29 Re: Synesthesia
July 29, 2014, 08:21:23 am
The thread title reminded me of this:


slackline

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#30 Re: Synesthesia
July 29, 2014, 09:50:18 am

Having said that, 6s are green, 7s are purple (getting darker the higher the number) and 8s are black.

Nah, 6s are normally red....


Fontainebleau (30/09/2005) by slack---line, on Flickr

Jaspersharpe

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#31 Re: Synesthesia
July 29, 2014, 10:15:06 am
I've not finished it yet but his is well worth reading on the subject of seeing numbers and other things as colours and shapes..... the guy is amazing:

http://www.danieltammet.net/blue-day.php

lagers I have a copy if you want to borrow it some time.

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#32 Re: Synesthesia
July 29, 2014, 10:17:48 am

My folks and I were watching a TV programme about this a few years  ago, before I'd ever heard of it or realised that not everyone experiences the world like this. I looked at my dad and said 'Wednesday is green'  he said 'Wednesday is blue' and my Mum looked like she had just found herself in a room with two complete mutters!

As I have got older I don't notice it as much however I'm not sure if that's because of the fact that I no longer need the colours to interpret how I feel about something. I feel sure it is not LA learned behaviour though.

I am a very visual person and do still associate colours with things and I tend to think in shapes, textures and even temperature. Because so many of these things ate already present in climbing it's possibly not quite so pronounced.

Having said that, 6s are green, 7s are purple (getting darker the higher the number) and 8s are black.

As I said before, I can't really guess at the learnt/innate split. My mother was an Artist, mainly painting commissioned landscapes and I spent a fair amount of time dragged around various galleries where she was exhibiting. So I was raised with conversation about things like this as a common thing amongst her and her fellow exhibitors (oddly contrasted by my father, being an Engineer turned Copper and slightly more "grounded" ;) ).

So it was quite late in my teens before I realised it was an " unusual" way to talk about the world.

Personally, my hypothesis, is that we all experience it; to varying degrees.
The omnipresence of cultural and linguistic reference, globally, of textural/colour/sound correlations; would seem to suggest that humans perceive the world "holistically" . Black has a texture, when you think of it, as well as a colour. The red mist descends, the blues overcome us, we see things through rose tinted vision, the lovers words were as smooth as silk and smiles glint.

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#33 Re: Synesthesia
July 29, 2014, 10:19:57 am
I've not finished it yet but his is well worth reading on the subject of seeing numbers and other things as colours and shapes..... the guy is amazing:

http://www.danieltammet.net/blue-day.php

lagers I have a copy if you want to borrow it some time.

I recall watching a documentary about him a few years ago...


Durbs

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#34 Re: Synesthesia
July 29, 2014, 10:35:12 am
It's a fascinating subject - t'other half studied it quite a bit as part of her psychology degree.

Regarding poetry & synaesthesia - at one point it became fashionable to be a synaesthete and so many poets/writers adapted the style.

For phrases like the "seeing red", "the green monster", "got the blues"  - whilst we all say it/know what it means, does anyone actually feel these colours? Generally not - they're just good metaphors as opposed to synaesthetic feelings.

Anger = Hot = Red
Sad = Cold = Blue

Of note, most people with synaesthesia  don't experience the same colours/tastes/smells regarding a word (as someone posted above - "Wednesday is blue" / "Wednesday is green" ) so you wouldn't get (m)any universal statements.

It can be a very strong emotion too - some people can't eat foods because their name evokes such a strong smell or un-pleasant colour.

slackline

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#35 Re: Synesthesia
July 29, 2014, 10:42:08 am

For phrases like the "seeing red", "the green monster", "got the blues"  - whilst we all say it/know what it means, does anyone actually feel these colours? Generally not - they're just good metaphors as opposed to synaesthetic feelings.

Then you have grammatically correct but non-sensical sentences such as Noam Chomsky's famous Colourless green ideas sleep furiously (Steve Pinker's The Language Instinct is a very accessible popular science book on the structure of language).

some people can't eat foods because their name evokes such a strong smell or un-pleasant colour.

lagers is already familiar with that...  Hákarl


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#36 Re: Synesthesia
July 29, 2014, 11:10:52 am
I remember listening to an interview with a guy who gets taste sensations associated with words and had difficulty dealing with people whose names produced unpleasant tastes

this obviously had an interesting effect on his choice of partners

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Will Hunt

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#38 Re: Synesthesia
July 29, 2014, 01:07:23 pm
I can't imagine why some people would discriminate against people with this condition. It's like being one of the bloody X-Men!

 

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