From Curt White
In responding to David Robson’s important but imprecise statement that “up to 80 per cent of our mental experiences are verbal” (4 September 2010, p 30), Ben Haller was partly justified in saying that “raw visual percepts – such as colour – outnumber other kinds of mental experience by orders of magnitude” (30 October 2010, p 31). But they both missed by far the largest source of mental experiences: the mind’s reactions to skin stimuli.
In any 24 hours, the number of experiences “apparent to my consciousness” triggered by stimuli to the skin make verbal and visual experiences pale. The feelings of heat and cold, chills and goosebumps, rough and smooth are just the start. From the tops of our heads to the soles of our feet, via all sensual and sensory regions in between, our bodies are providing massive amounts of mental experience.
Midland, Michigan, US
