Alex felt it was bad that Alex felt that Bailey felt that Alex leaving out the milk was bad.
I want to point out that not all instances of the word “felt” mean the same thing here, and I want to split the two meanings into new words for clarity. I think this has consequences about what it means to have feelings about one’s own feelings.
Bailey felt that Alex leaving out the milk was bad.
In this case, “feeling” stands for “evaluating”. Bailey gives a low value to Alex’s action, and in some sense, maybe even to Alex. E.g. Alex is dumb, or Alex’s actions are suboptimal.
Alex felt that Bailey felt that Alex leaving out the milk was bad.
In this case, the top level “feeling” stands for “sensing”. This is a complex phenomenon:
X happens inside someone’s mind;
the person holding X produces some observable effect Y (e.g. they make a facial expression);
the part of your brain specialized in this kind of work observes Y, infers X from it (you can’t observe X!), and produces a conscious sensation Z (e.g. feeling judged);
you consciously observe Z in yourself.
Alex felt it was bad that Alex felt that Bailey felt that Alex leaving out the milk was bad.
The top level “feeling” stands again for “evaluating”. After observing Z in yourself, you give it a low value. But Z is a proxy for X given that X is true (you may be wrong inferring X from Y). Giving a low value to Z roughly means “I wish it was not the case that X”, but it’s difficult to recognize as such because I think it happens very rapidly and as a complex mental sensation rather than a sentence in your head. I posit that all feelings about one’s own feelings are of this kind, and I’m interested in hearing counterexamples.
So, to recap:
Alex evaluated it was bad that Alex sensed that Bailey evaluated that Alex leaving out the milk was bad.
I want to point out that not all instances of the word “felt” mean the same thing here, and I want to split the two meanings into new words for clarity. I think this has consequences about what it means to have feelings about one’s own feelings.
In this case, “feeling” stands for “evaluating”. Bailey gives a low value to Alex’s action, and in some sense, maybe even to Alex. E.g. Alex is dumb, or Alex’s actions are suboptimal.
In this case, the top level “feeling” stands for “sensing”. This is a complex phenomenon:
X happens inside someone’s mind;
the person holding X produces some observable effect Y (e.g. they make a facial expression);
the part of your brain specialized in this kind of work observes Y, infers X from it (you can’t observe X!), and produces a conscious sensation Z (e.g. feeling judged);
you consciously observe Z in yourself.
The top level “feeling” stands again for “evaluating”. After observing Z in yourself, you give it a low value. But Z is a proxy for X given that X is true (you may be wrong inferring X from Y). Giving a low value to Z roughly means “I wish it was not the case that X”, but it’s difficult to recognize as such because I think it happens very rapidly and as a complex mental sensation rather than a sentence in your head. I posit that all feelings about one’s own feelings are of this kind, and I’m interested in hearing counterexamples.
So, to recap:
Alex evaluated it was bad that Alex sensed that Bailey evaluated that Alex leaving out the milk was bad.
I think the unrolling is clearer this way.