keannu
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- Dec 27, 2010
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- Korean
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- South Korea
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Source : Korean SAT Reading Practice 2021- 194p, 19 by Korean Education Broadcasting System
The sense of touch is one of the factors which prevent people from being convinced of the truth that the senses of sight, hearing and taste occur within the brain.
For example, if you told someone that he sees a book within his brain, he would, if he didn’t think carefully, reply “I can’t be seeing the book in my brain — look, I’m touching it with my hand”. Or, if we said “we cannot know whether the original of this book exists as a material object outside or not”, again the same superficially minded person might answer “no, look, I’m holding it with my hand and I feel the hardness of it — that isn’t a perception but an existence which has material reality”.
However, there is a fact that such people cannot understand, or perhaps just ignore. The sense of touch also occurs in the brain as much as do all the other senses. That is to say, when you touch a material object, you sense whether it is hard, soft, wet, sticky or silky in the brain. The effects that come from your fingertips are transmitted to the brain as an electrical signal and these signals are perceived in the brain as the sense of touch.
For instance, if you touch a rough surface, you can never know whether the surface is, in reality, indeed a rough surface, or how a rough surface actually feels. That is because you can never touch the original of a rough surface. The knowledge that you have about touching a surface is your brain’s interpretation of certain stimuli.
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In the underlined, what does "the original" mean? Does the author think that your sense of touch is just imaginary?
The sense of touch is one of the factors which prevent people from being convinced of the truth that the senses of sight, hearing and taste occur within the brain.
For example, if you told someone that he sees a book within his brain, he would, if he didn’t think carefully, reply “I can’t be seeing the book in my brain — look, I’m touching it with my hand”. Or, if we said “we cannot know whether the original of this book exists as a material object outside or not”, again the same superficially minded person might answer “no, look, I’m holding it with my hand and I feel the hardness of it — that isn’t a perception but an existence which has material reality”.
However, there is a fact that such people cannot understand, or perhaps just ignore. The sense of touch also occurs in the brain as much as do all the other senses. That is to say, when you touch a material object, you sense whether it is hard, soft, wet, sticky or silky in the brain. The effects that come from your fingertips are transmitted to the brain as an electrical signal and these signals are perceived in the brain as the sense of touch.
For instance, if you touch a rough surface, you can never know whether the surface is, in reality, indeed a rough surface, or how a rough surface actually feels. That is because you can never touch the original of a rough surface. The knowledge that you have about touching a surface is your brain’s interpretation of certain stimuli.
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In the underlined, what does "the original" mean? Does the author think that your sense of touch is just imaginary?
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