How Does It Feel? - ACE056.3

R D Laing is asked "How important is it to you to be aware of your senses and emotions, your feelings?" and replies that it is "of supreme importance… to be aware of ourselves…" Commuters on packed Underground train. The camera obscura above the Avon Gorge, Clifton. R L Gregory shows how it works, and explains that vision works "by decoding … electrical signals", and that other senses function similarly via transducers. He says that his lapel microphone is also a transducer, in which sound signals to the microphone are converted to electrical currents – wave representations of his words shown – which are decoded by the brain. Gregory (intercut with images of the ear, of people touching each other, kissing, etc.) talks about the sensitivity of sense organs, and the difficulty of ascribing "meaning" to the experiences of the world occasioned by their stimulation. He proposes a way of analysing this by analogy with the elements of a novel: some derive from reality and some do not, and it can be dangerous "if the fictions get out of gear with reality". Optical illusion of hollow cube created by electronic signal. A simulated Penrose triangle which Gregory demonstrates. Laing says that people can only experience the world directly through their own senses; everything else is "inference".