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I was thinking a lot about our discussion of primary emotions and feelings that then lead to our I-function creating a story for whatever feeling we have. To use the baby example: I see a little baby crying on its own…I get a warm, even maternal feeling, I think that baby is awfully cute…and so my I-function creates the story: this is a helpless baby that I need to care for. I think it’s an elegant idea and I’m quite happy that it finally begins to explain what the I-function is really for.

All the same I don’t know if I completely buy it. It seems that there are instances where the story could come before the primary perception. In class we talked about painters like Rothko who wanted to strip down an audience’s experience of a painting to their primary perceptions. It would seem that for me at least this is true. I look at the Rothko painting I feel warm and happy. But is that truly a primary perception? Am I not perhaps just associating it with the feelings I get from a sunset, or a warm fire. Perhaps when I see the painting my I-function is making sense of all the color and shape input and creates a story: “this looks like a sunset”. Consequently I think of the feelings I associate with sunsets, warmth, happiness…and apply them to my experience of a Rothko painting.