Common 'ness'

Today, a super simple review of Kansei psychology.
This field feels quite like 'the heart'.

That is because it started from the question, 'Is it enough to only use things that can be defined by numbers or words?'

It seems to start from acknowledging the existence of not only intellectual recognition, such as 'this is X,' but also 'sensibility' recognition, such as 'this feels like Y'.

Let's talk a bit more concretely about intellectual and sensibility recognition brought about by sensory organs.
For example, suppose you see the Miroku Bosatsu statue housed at Chuguji Temple.

At this time, the flow of recognition might be as follows:

These are the three steps.

'This is the Miroku Bosatsu statue!' is intellectual recognition.
On the other hand, 'It has a soft atmosphere' is sensibility recognition.

And this sensibility recognition can also be called a 'process of meaning-making'.
If so, we can assume variations in this 'meaning' as well.

• Conceptual meaning: Literal, conceptual. Related to intellectual recognition?

  • Example: Dog, cat, mountain, river

• Non-conceptual meaning: Things that are not conceptual. Related to sensibility recognition?

  • Connotative meaning: Generally associated images

    • Example: Dog = 'cute', 'energetic', 'barks'

  • Emotional meaning: Personally felt images

    • Example: Dog = 'Joan', 'partner', 'likes fish heads'

And that's about it.

However, there is a problem.
That is, 'Wait, isn't it difficult to measure non-conceptual things after all?'

So, a method for measuring non-conceptual (connotative/emotional) meaning appeared.
Its name is the 'Semantic Differential (SD) Method'.

It's long. Very long and hard to understand.
I am not an expert, so I want to interpret it loosely.

In other words, the SD method is

defined as such.

Through the SD method, the theory that 'the world is defined by language' (Sapir-Whorf hypothesis) was refuted.
In other words, they discovered something universal in how objects are perceived.

There are three universal scales.

And it feels something like this.

This is very interesting.
It shows that regardless of language or culture, humans are equipped with something like standard-issue software.

However, there are times when it is difficult to evaluate things using common adjectives across cultural boundaries.
In such cases, it seems that sensibility is measured using 'Multidimensional Scaling (MDS)'.

Applying this psychology of sensibility to industry is apparently what is called Kansei engineering.
Well, I suppose that will be covered in future installments.

I felt that conceptual meaning and non-conceptual meaning (connotative meaning, emotional meaning) were like the conscious and the unconscious (collective unconscious, personal unconscious).

Also, the three universal axes revealed by Osgood.
This also made me feel a sense of the collective unconscious.

Things that cannot be put into words, things that are difficult to define.
By dealing with these, we might be able to see something like the common ground that lies deep within people.