Different experiences of familiarity:
a) Someone
enters my room, I haven't seen him for a long time, and
didn't expect him.
I look at him, say or feel, “Oh, it's
you.” ‒ ‒
(Why did I in giving this example say that I hadn't seen
the man for a long time?
Wasn't I setting out to describe
experiences of
familiarity?
And whatever the experience was I alluded to, couldn't I have
had it even if I had seen the man half an hour ago?
I mean, I gave the circumstances of recognizing the man as a
means to the end of describing the precise situation of the
recognition.
One might object to this way of describing the
experience,
saying that it brought in irrelevant things, and in
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fact wasn't a
description of the feeling at all.
In saying this one takes as the prototype of a description, say, the
description of a table, which tells you the exact shape,
dimensions, the material which it is made of, and its colour.
Such a description one might say pieces the ta
ble
together.
There is on the other hand a different kind of description of a
table, such as you might find in a novel, e.g.,
“It was a small, rickety table
decorated in Moorish style, the sort that is used for smoker's
requisites.”
Such a description might be called an indirect one; but if the purpose
of it is to bring a vivid image of the table before your mind in a
flash, it might serve this purpose incomparably better than a detailed
“direct” description. ‒ ‒
Now if I am to give the description of a feeling of familiarity or
recognition, – – what do you expect me to do?
Can I piece the feeling together?
In a sense of course I could, giving you many different stages and the
way my feelings changed.
Such detailed descriptions you can find in some of the great
novels.
Now if you think of descriptions of pieces of furniture as you might
find them in a novel, you see that to this kind of description you can
oppose another making use of drawings, measures such as one should give
to a cabinet maker.
This latter kind one is inclined to call the only direct and complete
description (though this way of expressing ourselves shews that we
forget that there are certain purposes which the “real”
description does not fulfil).
These considerations should warn you not to think that there is one
real and direct description of, say, the feeling of recognition as
opposed to
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the
“indirect” one which I have given.)