In yesterday’s post I posed the following question: <\/p>\n
\nIf I spend a lot of time nurturing a character in a computer game, and that character \u201cdies\u201d, is my feeling of loss fundamentally different from my feeling of loss if a person in my life dies?\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
For me the answer is yes. As I mentioned yesterday, I was surprised to learn that not everyone agrees.<\/p>\n
I see the fundamental difference as this: In the former case, I am the only mind to consider. Yet in the latter case, I am dealing with an entire other sentient being, one with feelings toward me that more or less match my own. I have lost a reciprocal relationship.<\/p>\n
Surely there must be a fundamental difference between the loss of such a connection, and, say, the loss of a favorite wristwatch. I claim the two situations are very different. But perhaps someone has a good argument for why the two situations are fundamentally the same.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In yesterday’s post I posed the following question: If I spend a lot of time nurturing a character in a computer game, and that character \u201cdies\u201d, is my feeling of loss fundamentally different from my feeling of loss if a person in my life dies? For me the answer is yes. As I mentioned yesterday, … Continue reading “Feelings and reality, part 2”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17692"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17692"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17693,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17692\/revisions\/17693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}