6

I'm interested in how the human mind works, and over the years have experienced and took notice of a number of peculiar states of consciousness, thought patterns, dreams, etc.

While a lot of these states of mind are replicable, I do not know the correct English terminology for them, which makes it difficult to describe or explore them.

For example, if a person does not know the term deja-vu, two people can give very different accounts of "experienced something that just happened again" and use completely different words, while if they speak of common deja-vu experiences, everything is much clearer.

It is even harder with more complex concepts, like spontaneous, intuitive and non-verbal comprehension of a concept, for which the word noesis fits. Without knowing that word, it's really hard to convey or compare experiences.

Is there a way to learn to better express what's going on in one's head in such a way that the experience can be compared with another persons?

Maybe there's a comprehensive list of words that describe subjective states of mind, developed to help people better express themselves?

Bryan Krause
  • 7,376
  • 3
  • 13
  • 23
Alex Stone
  • 9,390
  • 2
  • 30
  • 79
  • 2
    I would like to upvote this but can't be the one to cause you to beat me in Chuckie's Race to 2K ;-) – Josh Aug 16 '13 at 04:01
  • Haha, I was not aware of this competition. – Alex Stone Aug 16 '13 at 17:47
  • 2
    @AlexStone I don't mean to be glib, but would you accept (a more elaborate variation on) "scientific psychology" as an answer? I would say that developing such a vocabulary is a primary aspect of what scientific psychology is in the business of doing. – Christian Hummeluhr Mar 21 '15 at 13:29
  • 1
    Sice it looks like you started the "scientific-psychology" tag with this question, perhaps you want to comment on the meta discussion about the tag: https://psychology.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2320/point-of-scientific-psychology-tag Also pinging @ChristianHummeluhr since he suggested it. – the gods from engineering Jan 23 '18 at 22:23

0 Answers0