Models of Endosynesthetic Loops
(renamed from metasynesthesia courtesy of @The_Lagrangian and others.)
The idea here is that a stimulus from one sensory/conceptual category triggers the experience of a separate stimulus from the same category. This differs from ordinary synesthesia, where triggers cross categories.
More simply:
Synesthesia = colors –> letters, music –> taste, etc.
Endosynesthesia = colors –> colors, letters –> letters, taste –> taste…
We could quibble about what exactly constitutes a discrete sensory/conceptual category. Synesthesia is really weird about this; inducers can be things like “days of the week”, concurrents can be things like personality. People can associate letters with colors without associating letter-like scribbles with colors. Ideasthesia is an interesting term I don’t see used much, which is more geared towards concepts and the possibility of a semantic link between the inducer and concurrent. (ex: a suspiciously high number of people thinking that ‘G’ is green.)
To simplify things, I’ll be using colors in all of my examples, but keep in mind that any of this could apply to categories like touch, emotion, texture, sound, and anything else you can think of.
So: the interesting problem that endosynesthesia poses is whether a concurrent can function as an inducer.
My instinctual reaction is “No, that’s dumb,” followed by “Oh myy god, what if–”
It’s probably worth distinguishing between projective and associative synesthesia. The former implies that if you see the letter G and it triggers green, you actually see something green, be it the letter itself or a floating shape in space. By contrast, associative synesthesia would just inspire a strong sense that G is green, it’s just green, you know, it feels green, the way harmonica sounds purple, …why are you looking at me like I’m crazy?
We’re going to concern ourselves with projective endosynesthesia.
A man sees something green, which makes him see purple. Normally, purple things make him see blue…
Here are a few possible outcomes:
- Seizure
green –> red –> blue –> purple –> yellow –> orange –> black –> turquoise –> crimson –> aquamarine –> olive –> mauve –> grey –> brown –> sunglow –> heliotrope –> indigo –> … ∞
You might as well be blind. Depending on whether this all happens simultaneously or you cycle through color to color, you’re either trapped in a neverending rainbow tube or seeing all the colors all the time, and presumably frothing at the mouth. - Stable loop
red –> blue –> purple –> red + repeat
This isn’t so bad. If you know your loops well enough, this might be like mild color-blindness, where all components of that loop would give an indistinguishable redbluepurple kind of impression. - Decreasing intensities
BLUE!!! –> PURPLE –> green –> …
The intensity of each color decreases at a set rate, eventually fading away so much that it fails to trigger the next one. Thus the intensity of the concurrent color is always lower than that of the inducing one. - RAM limit
Your brain is an ally and wants to prevent you from shorting out. Through some unknown mechanism, is limits you to something like, eh, four colors. The limitation may be based on intensity and not iteration, in which case this is very similar to #3. - All roads lead to X
yellow –> purple –> orange –> red –> red –> red
blue –> green –> red –> red –> red
literally anything –> red.
I expect this would be problematic, and interfere with traffic light interpretation. - oh no. Seizure 2.0
@fretzl:
neither, all of my feelings evoke feelings of “immense horror” except immense horror, which evokes “even immenser horror,” etc. - Some combination of the previous.
I find 3 and 4 the most plausible. Since endosynesthesia isn’t and will never be a thing, this opinion is completely vapid and worthless.