07.+What+is+Intelligence+(February+2006) - Get a Free Blog

What is Intelligence? 38
However, yellow and gold are found in Nature in short supply. A little of
either goes a long way, because like red they are such powerful colours.
Again, just like “emotion”, anyone who has ever tried matching paints
will be staggered at how subtle the variations of colour can be – for
example, who off hand could definitely identify what was a “vermillion
red” or an “ultramarine blue”, a “bottle green” or a “pearl white”?
For example again, depending upon the settings of the red/green/blue
colours on our TV or computer monitor, those named colours will appear
quite different, as will they be also on the varieties of printed colour
materials, as we can clearly observe for example by looking at different
copies of the same book, newspaper or magazine.
But we are perhaps not yet defining our terms clearly enough in this
analysis. Just what are these feelings, and emotions which we so freely
discuss and toss around to one another in describing our everyday
experiences?
Like sounds or colours, it is in fact not so easy to say what any particular
feeling is.
For example, let us try to describe how a piece of music makes us feel,
such as Beethoven’s well known slow movement of the “Moonlight
Sonata.”
There are all kinds of things in there – we can say, it is like the lapping of
waves, or gives us an image of a lake at night with the moonlight
shimmering on the water, as its title suggests.
Beethoven however did not name it so. This popular title was tagged on
only later after his death.
And moreover, if we could say what it meant precisely in words, what
would be the point of the music at all, why would we need it if words
could produce in us the same emotion, the same meaning?
So we are hinting here that the power of words in expressing our
emotions is generally speaking somewhat vague and limited.
For example, if we say someone is sad, that could in itself mean a whole
spectrum of degrees of what we call “sadness.”