The ineffable
Quoting jgill
Perhaps it's the denizens of philosophy forums, as opposed to philosophers, who perform such wonders.
The problem with claiming that something is ineffable is, of course, the liar-paradox-like consequence that one has thereby said something about it.
There are a few possible responses. The one apparently advocated by Wittgenstein was to simply remain silent about the ineffable. Folk are not very good at doing this. A second possibility is simply to say that ascribing ineffability to something is to say that it has no referent. Another is to treat "ineffable" as a second-order predicate, somewhat like existence, such that ascribing ineffability is not ascribing a property but saying something (what, exactly?) about those properties. A fourth possibility is that to say that something is ineffable is to say that it can only be understood by listing the attributes that do not apply to it. Or it might be that the ineffable cannot be said, only experienced. Or perhaps it can only understood by metaphors. Or it might be an honorific, just a way of marking certain language as sacrosanct, or certain subjects as not available for further comment.
Or it might demark where nonsense and irrationality begins.
Or each of the above.
How long is a thread about what cannot be said?
It's not easy to talk about something that can't be expressed in words. Good luck.
Perhaps it's the denizens of philosophy forums, as opposed to philosophers, who perform such wonders.
The problem with claiming that something is ineffable is, of course, the liar-paradox-like consequence that one has thereby said something about it.
There are a few possible responses. The one apparently advocated by Wittgenstein was to simply remain silent about the ineffable. Folk are not very good at doing this. A second possibility is simply to say that ascribing ineffability to something is to say that it has no referent. Another is to treat "ineffable" as a second-order predicate, somewhat like existence, such that ascribing ineffability is not ascribing a property but saying something (what, exactly?) about those properties. A fourth possibility is that to say that something is ineffable is to say that it can only be understood by listing the attributes that do not apply to it. Or it might be that the ineffable cannot be said, only experienced. Or perhaps it can only understood by metaphors. Or it might be an honorific, just a way of marking certain language as sacrosanct, or certain subjects as not available for further comment.
Or it might demark where nonsense and irrationality begins.
Or each of the above.
How long is a thread about what cannot be said?
Comments (1315)
The ineffable can't be said, by definition -- but we reach all the same. I guess in reaching, the question is -- do we grasp what was there, or do we not? And as odd as it sounds I think that both answers are right?
Quoting Banno
I think the "what, exactly?" would be explicable, but only within a tradition. Mostly, though, I'd say the ineffable is either moral or aesthetic, so a judgment on statements about good/bad. But I'd quickly add that this is merely a best guess, that it is wrong -- because here we are articulating it.
(Tempted to go into a Levinas diatribe here ;) )
Quoting Banno
Infinite. Isn't the ineffable, in its own way, the inspiration for these questions?
Was it? Or was he warning that language is sometimes misused?
Was there an argument that shows that speech never falls short of expressing what we know?
Good point. The ineffable is not a patented product with a tag warning not to speak of it. If it were, the lawyers would have a field day arguing over whether the defendant was actually speaking of the ineffable. The meaning of the ineffable is nothing outside of how it is used in actual contexts, and since these contexts are never identical but only share a family resemblance (which does not mean that they are subsumed within an overarching definition of ineffability), there is no single generic sense of ineffability. What we can say is that to use to the word is to provide it with a sense, even when we are inclined to be bewitched by our ordinary use ( or misuse) of language into convincing ourselves that we can somehow understand a sense of a word like ‘ineffable’ and yet hold it to be outside all meaning. This apparent paradox , like the liar paradox, is only an illusion or confusion resulting from our misunderstanding of how language works.
On a hunch, are you trying to distill the semantic difference between “God” (effable by one and all) and “G-d” (written so as to not be effable) via analysis of ineffability?
If so, my best hunch so far is that “God” presumes the rational human intelligibility of the referent specified via certain qualifications; whereas “G-d” presumes that the referent intended is beyond rational human intelligibility despite being endowed with same said qualifications. One can describe its qualifications - but not that referenced as endowed with these qualifications, other than by saying that it is beyond intelligibility, hence indescribable, hence inexpressible.
It’s not that one can’t say “Gd” or describe the referent by asserting that it’s not a rock or dog; it’s the human unintelligibility of the referent as specified by its descriptions that the term “ineffable” intends to those who use it. At least as I so far best interpret the term’s use in this context.
But maybe this thread has nothing to do with the context in which the term is tmk most often employed … In which case, never mind then.
Instead, to change subjects: Any instantiation of beauty as direct experience is ineffable in its emotive particulars, but can only be described indirectly via conceptual generalities and perceptual details of that to which the beauty applies - which of themselves do not ever identify the instantiated experience of the aesthetic. One can say the words “this is beautiful”, but without a commonly shared experience - which can only be verified via back-and-forth interactions regarding that referenced as beautiful - the word “beautiful” is utterly meaningless. (When a certain Trump declares that “coal is beautiful” I for one don’t have any idea as to what he’s referring to. And it’s not too hard for me to presume that neither does he – other than that the term can hold some instrumental value or other.)
But instantiated experiences of the aesthetic - though impossible to accurately articulate (other than by poetic language such as metaphor to so indirectly describe) - are not nonsense. Else no one would sense their reality, instead being a beetle in the box that no box contains. Nor are they irrational. Beyond the scope of reason, sure, but not irrational. Those concrete instantiations from which the abstraction of “beauty/the aesthetic” is formed are nevertheless ineffable. And quite clearly dwell beyond the rational intelligibility of humans … with over two millennia of ineffective investigations into the matter as evidence.
Making this more concrete, Faith No More had a song, Epic, which addresses something ineffable.
The ineffable which the song addresses is described in myriad ways but not linguistically identified, other than by the nonspecific statement, “it’s it”.
But, judging by the song’s former popularity, a ton of people were able to relate to - to get - what the song was about. Which goes to show that not everything needs to be articulated - nor be rationally intelligible to us - in order for a sensible, shared cognizance of it to occur.
But then, “What is it?”
“It’s it.”
"infinite" is a curious case. What we cannot express with words, mathematics has proven to have the ways and means for understanding. So the ineffable is not a problem, mathematics is there for us. But then there are places where mathematics cannot go, and here we use words, like "infinite". Interesting, ineffable is not a problem unless you think it is, but then it's something personal. There's really just a matter of needing to know the limits of words, and the limits of math.
Nice set of possibilities. I mainly hear the word in spiritual/religious circles, where, as most of us are aware, ineffable is used to describe a 'spiritual' experience which cannot be put into words. On this Wittgenstein's 'silence' may be entirely apropos. I generally think ineffable refers to an emotional experience people find hard or impossible to choose words for. I think a spiritual experience is an intense emotional experience - of loss, recognition, solidarity, joy...
The nearest I get to such an experience would be listening to orchestral music. Sometimes the music leaves me with feelings I can't access linguistically - is the experience powerful; sad; euphoric; joyful? Is it catharsis - a journey through tension and resolution? Perhaps it's a melange of all of the above. Some people might dub such an experience 'numinous' - another delightfully ambiguous term which lacks linguistic and perhaps conceptual precision.
I often regard words as inadequate, crude building blocks. We do our best to assemble them in meaningful ways to clarify our thoughts for others. The results may be inadequate or even wrong. In some cases it might just be easier to describe something as ineffable - as a way to avoiding the need to assemble a set of coherent ideas.
The aesthetically beautiful can only be accounted for in terms of numeral. This why we have numerology.
Private feelings cannot be expressed in words: pain, anger, the colour red, the sound of a screech, an aesthetic experience, etc.
It is true that I cannot observe someone and experience their private pain, their anger, their experience of the colour red, etc, but I can observe their public interaction with the world.
Every different private feeling results in a different public interaction with the world: fear causes flight, anger causes attack, pain causes flinching, awe causes stillness, etc. Although I cannot observe someone's private feelings, I can observe their public interaction with the world, and I can infer that different public interactions with the world have been caused by different private feelings.
I can observe a particular effect and can infer a particular cause. I can observe someone flinching, infer that something particular caused the flinching, and name the cause "pain". The word "pain" is a label attached to the inferred cause of a particular effect, not a description of "pain". I can talk about "pain" as the inferred cause of a particular effect, although I cannot talk about what caused the effect.
The content of "pain" cannot be put into words, as the private feelings of another person, but the form of "pain" can be put into words, as the inferred cause of an observable effect in the world. I can put into words the public form of something even though I cannot put its private content into words.
Expressible form and ineffable contents are not mutually exclusive.
:up:
Right! Collectively, the 'identity' world of entities, things or objects, has been abstracted and formalized; abstracted from the determinably in-common human perceptual experiences. These identities are empty, changeless, in contrast to the individual experiences they are abstracted from, which are loaded with content, dynamic and ever-changing. Our language can only discursively reference the abstracted forms of human experience; the content is best dealt with allusively, via metaphor and poetic language. Heraclitus versus Parmenides is the seminal philosophical misunderstanding, if they are taken to be speaking about the same "worlds".
The taste of coffee is given as ineffable; that is, that one cannot explain that taste to someone who hasn't tasted it. But contra that, we do talk about the tase of coffee, comparing roasts and blends and so on, as well as the skills of various baristas (baristi? baristasi?)), so the taste of coffee is not ineffable. We do put the colour red into words, along with pain and the workings of the minds of others and all sorts of things that some folk call ineffable. Fumbling anachronistically with form and content doesn't look productive.
Others talk of the infinite is ineffable, but that's not right; it's clearly defied in terms of correspondence, and there are volumes on the topic.
I can go some way with ethics and aesthetics being somewhat based on the ineffable, at least in so far as I go along with Moore in seeing the good as un-analysable. I suppose that will be the case for any un-analysable elemental concept - truth, for example. But that it cannot be explained in terms of its parts does not of course mean that it cannot be explained, nor that it cannot be discussed. Worth further consideration, perhaps.
Quoting Tom Storm
Nothing to do with number, it means "to nod". Delightful, indeed, since one might well nod at what cannot be said.
Quoting frank
If what we know is believed, justified and true, it is propositional, and hence statable. But can one put into words how one rides a bike or play guitar? Tacit knowledge is a candidate for the ineffable.
Quoting javra
No.
Some have viewed Wittgenstein as being a mystic for his understanding of the importance of silence in relation to what one cannot speak about. Of course, his view was about the limitations of language, and this was in conjunction with the logical positivists. There is the whole area of people going into pointless speculation on aspects which cannot be known with certainty, like ideas about the invisible and life after death.
As far as the idea of the ineffable itself it can be seen as an attitude of wonder as opposed to trying to pin down understanding to specific theories and models. So, there may be some aspect of contemplation of known unknown. Nevertheless, in philosophy as opposed to some other forms of writing, it does seem that the art is to find words to try to develop rational arguments and clarity of thinking about concepts. So, even though both Socrates and Wittgenstein spoke of the limitations of their knowledge there may be an underlying paradox in which, despite the limits, there is a need to try to develop the best possible understanding of ideas.
Words exist as physical objects in the world, otherwise we wouldn't be able to talk about them, ie "word objects".
We can talk about concrete things such as apples, tables, mountains, books, and we can talk about abstract things, such as beauty, wisdom, truth, sadness. Abstract things exist in the mind, not the world. But even concrete things exist more in the mind than the world. For example, my concept of an apple has evolved over a lifetime of particular experiences, and with new knowledge is constantly changing. The concept of a city-dweller will be different to that of a farmer. The concept of a South African will be different to that of an Icelander. Our concept of the same object may be similar, but it can never be the same.
Therefore, everything we talk about, all our concepts, whether abstract or concrete, are more private than public. My concept of an aesthetic may be different to yours, but then again your concept of apple is more than likely to be different to mine.
Because word objects such as "love" and "apple" exist in the world and are simple and unchanging, I can be certain that other observers of the same word object will experience the same private concept. This is not the case with objects such as love and apple, which are complex and changing, meaning that I can be certain that other observers of the same object will not experience the same private concept.
Language is powerful because the words it uses are public. The fact that members of a society share the same private concept of public word objects, even if they don't share the private concept of the meaning of these public words, allows communication within a social group.
A word object in the world is only given meaning when linked to another object in the world. The word object "maison" has no meaning until linked to the object house. Within society such linkages are undertaken by either common usage over a long period of time or performative christenings by those accepted as authorities by the society.
Once a linkage has been made in the world between a word object such as "maison" and an object such as house, even though different individuals may probably have different private concepts of the object house, they will probably have the same private concept of the public word object "maison". Communication is then not about different private concepts of public objects but is about the same private concepts of public word objects.
For example, five apples may be labelled "red". I may in fact have the private experience of a green colour when looking at them. You may have the private experience of a blue colour. If I am asked to pass over the "red" apples, I will pass over the same apples as you, even though we have different private experiences of the colour "red". Successful communication is possible even if our private concepts of an object are different as long as the object in the world has been given a public label, ie, society has formally linked an object in the world to a word object in the world.
Even if we could, that wouldn't convey to the naive how to ride or play. Some things you have to learn on your own.
I subscribe to the notion that all language is metaphorical to the extent it can only to better or worse extents describe one's internal states to tell the listener what that internal state "is like" (thus implicating a metaphor or simile). This assumes a similarity in our experiences which is purely assumed, which may or may not present to you some feeling of what I was experiencing based upon what I assume you have previously experienced. Even in the most non-abstract of sentences where I tell you what my dog experience is by pointing to a dog, what I am telling you is that I expect your experience will be like my experience.
What this assumes, which I understand you disagree with, is that my descriptions are of phenomenal states, not of things, which I hold to be very distinct (this is the direct realism versus indirect realism issue).
The point to this whole preface is to say that all thoughts are ineffable. The best we can do is share our experiences by reducing them to symbols and uttering them, but the picture we paint with our words is a rough sketch, only partially revealing the actual thought.
E.g take the integer 2, which in Haskell can be written
2 :: Integer
where 2 is by definition the result of 1 + 1
On the other hand, if we identify 2 with it's effects, this means interpreting 2 :: Integer to be equivalent to the following type
2 :: (Integer --> r) -> r, where r is of arbitrary type (not necessarily a Nat).
In other words, here the meaning of 2 is the effect that 2 has on every function of type (Integer -> r) that takes an integer and returns an object of type r, where r is arbitrary and refers to any type. In functional programming, the latter representation of 2 is known as a continuation'.
In Haskell, 2 can be converted to a continuation by writing ($ 2), i.e.
2 :: Integer
whereas
($ 2) :: (Integer --> r) -> r,
Example applications of the latter type include
($ 2) (+3) = 5
($2) print = "2" as the display output of a computer monitor.
i.e r isn't necessarily an abstract type, but can refer to physical events.
in Haskell, the form 2 :: Integer is considered to be fundamental and the meaning of it's continuation is derived from this consideration. But in general there is nothing stopping us from treating the continuation as semantically fundamental. This stance has the benefit of allowing the meaning of a type to be generalised so that it is always incomplete, evolving and contingent upon the affairs of the physical world, e.g. effect r could refer to a physical or psychological response to a symbolic instance of integer 2, such as sense-data created by the mind of a human in response to a 2, or to the operations of a physical machine reading 2 as input.
"
In terms of continuations, the public meaning of "coffee" is of type
Coffee :: (Coffee-stimulus -> r) -> r
where 'coffee-stimulus' is the type of a perspective-relative hidden variable that isn't publicly shared (since only reactions to stimuli are publicly available). So if a person's reaction to a coffee-stimulus is of type (Coffee-stimulus -> r), then the effect of 'coffee' on that person is by definition implicitly included in the public definition of "coffee", in spite of the fact the public definition of coffee does not know about or explicitly include that person reaction.
Edit : I realise the last paragraph is technically problematic. For instance does 'sense-data' refer to r or to 'Coffee-stimulus' ?
My belief is that he was telling philosophers to remain silent about it. If only they would. He was too clever to think that the clergy or theologians would stop their hooting and honking.
Another of my (presumptively wise) beliefs is that where communication with others is concerned, art is the only means by which we may describe what we call the ineffable, however uncertainly. That would include poetry, but the use of words in poetry for that purpose is to imply, to suggest, to evoke.
Meaning is use
If people had no use for coffee, then there wouldn't be a word for coffee, and the word "coffee" wouldn't be used in language. However, as people do have a use for coffee, there is a word for coffee, and the word "coffee" is used in language.
Definitions
The fact that people have a use for coffee means that the presence of coffee causes things to happen. However, coffee is not defined by what it may cause to happen, coffee is defined by what it is, a dark brown powder with a strong flavour.
Causation
"Coffee" would still be coffee even if it didn't cause anything to happen. But if that were the case, "coffee" would not be a word in language. It is not the coffee that is causing the person to act, it is the person's desire to drink coffee that is causing the person to act, such as getting out a cafetière.
Meaning
"Coffee" means coffee, a dark brown powder with a strong flavour. "Coffee" doesn't mean that a person will act, the desire to drink coffee means that a person will act.
So in your opinion, 'dark brown' and 'strong' are observer independent properties of coffee that everyone can point at? Recall that the taste and colour of coffee is relative to perspective. Different organisms and processes react differently to coffee. From my perspective, how can i understand your use of "dark brown" and "strong" except as an observable effect of you drinking coffee?
Definitions don't need to be observer independent. For example, the Cambridge Dictionary defines beauty as "the quality of being pleasing, especially to look at, or someone or something that gives great pleasure, especially when you look at it"
I agree that one only knows that coffee has a strong flavour after drinking it, in that the drinker reacts to the taste of the coffee. But even so, is it still not the case that the coffee has a strong flavour, not that the coffee causes a strong flavour? The drinker of the coffee discovers a property of the coffee.
I would say that it depends on perspective, and more generally how the given term is used.
It is certainly the case that one often uses language tautologically, as for example in the case of private perceptual judgements. For example, ordinarily I might judge my socks to be 'white'. In this situation I am using 'whiteness' to mean my experience of my socks - I am not estimating their colour as being the effect of a hidden-variable that is a theoretical term of public discourse, e.g. 'optical whiteness' as referred to by Physics - rather i am defining what "whiteness" is in my judgemental context.
The interesting thing about continuations, is that they seem to accommodate such private analytic judgements. Take the continuation
Whiteness :: For all r, (whiteStimulus -> r) -> r
The intended meaning is that the public meaning of 'whiteness' is the hypothetical set of outcomes that might occur in response to anything acting upon a particular class of stimuli called "whiteStimuli'", in any conceivable fashion.
Then take the function (whiteStimulus -> r) to mean Bob's private interpretation of a 'whiteStimulus'. From Bob's perspective, it is tautologically the case that a 'whiteStimulus' is indeed a 'whiteStimulus'
By inserting the identity function id :: white-stimulus -> white-stimulus into the previous continuation, we get
Whiteness id :: white-stimulus
We can think of the term (Whiteness id) as representing Bob's private understanding or use of the public definition of Whiteness, which as shown, is indeed is of type 'white-stimulus'.
So the public definition of whiteness as a continuation isn't in contradiction with the subjective 'private language' use-cases of whiteness by each speaker of the linguistic community, but accommodates them in the same way that it accommodates the objective physical definition of 'whiteness' in terms of the physical responses of optical estimators,.
However, continuations seem to present the problem of infinite regress; for what exactly is the definition of the type called 'white stimulus' here? presumably in some use-cases, such as in physics it is taken to be another hidden variable that is another continuation.
White-Stimulus :: For all r , ( someType -> r) -> r
Whilst in other use-cases, such as Bob's perceptual judgements, it refers to a 'given' of experience that is decided by tautological judgement.
Continuations obviously aren't the whole story, nor even necessarily part of the story for there are problems, but they seem useful in conveying the open-ended, counterfactual and inferential semantics of terms as well as accommodating the differing perspectival semantics of individual speakers.
This makes sense to me. Poetry doesn't explain, it paints pictures.
Quoting Banno
Can one put into words the way in which one knows something as believe, justified and true, that is, the tacit sense of its truth?
So, you can't talk about the Tao because if you do, you turn it into something else. More generally, if you talk about anything you turn it into something different. For me, ineffable means that; if you put it into words, something valuable, fundamental, perhaps even sacred, is lost.
What something ‘is’ defines a use. ‘Dark brown powder’ represents the anticipation of ways of interacting perceptually with something, and these are guided by a background context of aims and purposes. What we notice about things is what matters to us. There is always a motivated reason why we find ourselves paying attention to something as being a dark brown powder. It is this particular instance of a powder, seen in these particular circumstances, and noticed for specific reasons in relation to our ongoing activities. All of these factors are part and parcel of the very meaning of coffee as ‘dark brown powder’.
But the conclusion with regard to the ineffable is that what is ineffable cannot be set out in ?-calculus. We kinda knew that. Is there something more?
I think we can take a slightly odd turn here, related to @Sime's post.
Consider the following puerly gramatical points. "I can ride a bike" will be true only if the one making the utterance can ride a bike. Someone else riding a bike does not make "I can ride a bike" true. The same goes for "I learned to ride a bike"; Someone else learning does not make that utterance true for the utterer.
And the same goes for "You have to learn on your own". Of course you do, since anyone else learning would not count as you learning.
But that makes "You have to learn on your own" just another grammatical point.
And if that is the case then nothing has been conveyed to the naive rider.
That is, "Some things you have to learn on your own" looks like it is about an ineffable entity we might call "knowing how to ride a bike", but then there is no difference between "knowing how to ride a bike" and "riding a bike"; we don't have two things here, one being bike riding and the other being knowing how to ride a bike.
Or, suppose we had a list of the instructions for riding a bike, to whatever detail we desire. Would we then know how to ride a bike? Well, no. So what is missing? Just, and only, the riding of the bike. But that's not something it makes sense to add to the list!
And so back to PI §201, the way of working with a set of instructions that is not adding to the list but implementing it.
And if this is right, then there is nothing here that is ineffable. Or if you prefer, what appeared to be the ineffable bit is just the doing, the getting on the bike and riding it.
And that as we have hashed out previously, is a path to solipsism. Happily, if is right then your internal state is irrelevant.
Indeed, I've much sympathy with that. The further question might be what it is that they ought be quite about, and that, if anything, is the topic of this thread: delineating, so far as it is possible to do so, what it is that is ineffable.
Perhaps the answer has to be that there is not anything about which we cannot talk. If the world is what is the case, then the world is what can be said. As in my fumbling reply to Frank, above, after everything is said, there remains what is to be done - riding a bike, dancing, painting, planting flowers, praying or visiting the Art Gallery.
That is, at least some of what is called "ineffable" is mistaking what is to be said for what is to be done.
Quoting Joshs
Sure, at some point the talk stops and one is left to act.
I'm impressed with this. It looks like a formalisation (or at least a more formal variation) of the private language argument, in that the "physical responses of optical estimators" drops out of the calculation, so that what does the work is the continuation. Is that roughly right?
Would that I had a better grasp of ?-calculus.
But what about the stuff we can do before we reach for the Tao Te Ching?
We have three related words. The ineffable, about which we can say nothing, and which as a result can not enter into our explicit considerations; 's numinous, to which we can no more than nod, and perhaps the sacred, which remains undiscussed.
I'd define the ineffable as that which we cannot say everything about, not nothing. We can call the ineffable sunset magical, which is to say something about it, but it hardly conveys the full experience.
That is why I disagree with your assessment that my view on universal ineffableness is solipistic. I didn't suggest we can say nothing at all about anything.
I think your definition of sacred is off. The sacred is that which is set apart from the mundane and venerated. While some things may be so venerated as to be forbidden to be discussed (the Orthodox Jewish prohibition of ever speaking the name of God (YHWH) comes to mind), that is the exception. Sacred prayers, for example, are recited daily. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacredness
Seems you wish to create a typology of thought, from those most capable of being reduced to symbol to those least capable. I'd submit it's not a type distinction, but just of degree, and dependent upon the artistry of the speaker in painting a picture of his thoughts.
Our thoughts are extremely complex, intertwined with countless perceptions and interpretations, so much so we cannot expect they'd be specifically and inerrantly conveyed, nor is it reasonable to assume they'd be interpreted similarly by others. That is, my understandimg of your comments will differ from how others understand them.
My private mental world will always remain to some amount private, no matter how much I might be the sort that wishes to share my deepest thoughts.
I can't see how that might work. What is there that cannot be said? "...it hardly conveys the full experience" - of course not! That has to be experienced! But as suggested to @Frank, that just means that it is not something to be said, but something to be done. It's not a something that remains unsaid!
Quoting Hanover
I did not wish to make such a definition - I was just marking it for discussion later - it remains so far undiscussed. I did indeed have in mind "setting apart", an act of deciding that such-and-such is special, a volition that marks something as outside. But I remain unconvinced that this is a good thing - it is after all exactly how the Golden Calf of Exodus came about, declared sacred by the Israelites.
I don't see that there is a necessary link between what something "is" and any use that something may have, in that something may exist and yet have no use.
A stone is defined as a "hard solid non-metallic mineral matter". Stone may be used as a building material, but even if it isn't, it still remains a stone.
Coffee may be drunk, but even if never drunk, it would still be coffee.
A person is something, and if it is true that "what something "is" defines a use", then people would have no value outside of what use they had.
I think we are saying the same thing.
Continuation
I know very little about the concept of "continuation" in computing, other than it gives a programming language the ability to save the execution state at any point and return to that point at a later point in the program, possibly multiple times.
I understand "continuation" as the ability to return to the same instruction or idea multiple times. Using an analogy, when hiking through a hot desert, I must continually refer to a note that says "drink water".
However, I don't understand its relevance to the situation of Bob experiencing the colour white when looking at his white socks.
Observer dependent and independent properties
Going back to the question as to whether the strong flavour of coffee is an observer dependent property or an observer independent property, I would suggest that the fact that coffee has a strong flavour is an observer independent property.
The light emitted by the socks has been labelled in the English-speaking world as "white". It could well have been that a different word had been chosen, for example "green", but in the event "white" was chosen.
However, when I see "white" light, I may in fact have the private subjective experience of the colour red, and you may have the private subjective experience of the colour green. We will never know, as it is impossible for me to put my private subjective experience into words, as it is impossible for anyone to put their private subjective experience into words.
Public communication
But our private subjective experiences are irrelevant as regards communication using language. Even if I experience the colour red, I can talk about the "white" socks. Even if you experience the colour green, you can also talk about the "white" socks.
We could have a sensible conversation about the "white" socks, even though our private experiences were different.
In this sense, the public label "white" is observer independent. As regards language, "the socks are white" is true regardless of anyone's private subjective experience.
The fact that private subjective experiences of public objects are ineffable doesn't prevent sensible conversations about these public objects.
In the most literal sense I think your final statement is true -- experience is not the same as words. And words are not cabinets into which experience gets placed and launched over to a conversation partner or reader (nor, for that matter, would I put concepts or thoughts into words, since words aren't cabinets at all -- "semantic content" rides along the vehicle metaphor, but it is a metaphoric understanding of language, I believe)
Also, I think that this notion relies upon visual metaphors about experience -- sometimes, we do know the private, subjective experience of others, and sometimes we are able to express our "insides" perfectly well to someone. After all, I followed along with what you were saying pretty well. And while it's possible for our spectrums to be inverted, we're also able to distinguish between color-blinded persons and non-color-blinded persons, in spite of (in my case at least) not being color blind. So there are cases where the private/public distinction just doesn't hold up so cleanly.
This by way of complicating the notion of "experience" as counting as ineffable.
:up:
If I touch a radiator, sometimes I notice that I quickly pull my hand away, grimace, put my hand into cold water and experience a pain. If I see someone else touch the same radiator, quickly pull their hand away, grimace and put their hand into cold water, I can infer with great certainty that they have felt the same pain.
Although we cannot put our private subjective experiences into words, we can put them into actions. Accepting Thomist philosophical axiom 7.7 "The same causes in the same circumstances produce always the same effects", it follows that our identical actions had an identical cause. As the proverb says, “action speaks louder than words”.
Ineffable is defined as "too great or extreme to be expressed or described in words". It may be that a private subjective experience cannot be described in words, however, as it is said that "words are actions", it could also be said that "actions are words", in which case putting our private subjective experiences into actions is a form of language, and therefore not ineffable.
Well, I think that's certain. That's not to say that's to our credit or benefit, though. I think Wittgenstein wasn't claiming there were subjects we couldn't talk about. Instead, I think he was saying that there are subjects we shouldn't talk about because by doing so we let "language go on holiday" or are bewitched by it, and do not gain by doing so.
Even for voluble verbose philosophers, the concept of Holism seems to be inherently ineffable, in the sense that a complex whole system cannot be understood when "delineated" in terms of its parts, without losing the integrated wholeness. An old high school biology example says that "if you dissect a frog, you lose the interrelating & binding effect of Life, which defines the essence of a frog. A dissected frog is no longer a functioning organism : it's "-ology" without the "bio-". So you learn about organs apart from the organism. Hence, you can't have your frog, and cut it too.
Naturalists typically define general essential frogginess in terms of how it differs from other aquatic animals. A specific specie can be described in terms of what it does, and how it fits a niche, instead of what it is. The "-ness" suffix is an indicator of essential qualities, that are difficult to describe or define, apart from enumerating its parts. Green is a physical property, but It isn't easy being green. :smile:
Ineffable :
Let's think the unthinkable, let's do the undoable. Let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.” ? Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
EFFING GREENESS
No, a stone is picked up, it is thrown, it is inspected, it is ignored, or perhaps it is ‘defined’. Every use of the word stone provides us with a different sense of meaning of ‘stone’. Asking for the definition of the word ‘stone’ is an uncommon and narrow use of the word, rather than being some overarching grounding for the word ‘stone’, as if every conceivable sense of meaning of the word in actual, unique contexts is somehow subordinate to a context-independent , generic dictionary definition of ‘stone’
Raging out and attacking someone or something? (just joking)
Actions constitute much of what is ineffable. Ice skaters, gymnasts, climbers, . . . An acquaintance of mine, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, from many years ago studied flow as a psychologist. Expressing this condition among participants of these sports is done as shared experiences, not words.
Love the way ineffable is being picked apart by forumites !
Of course there is a difference between doing something and knowing how to do it. One doesn't need to be riding a bike in order to know how; one can know how to ride a bike even while they aren't doing so. Riding a bike and knowing how to ride are two different things.
Quoting Banno
Assuming that the instructions are complete, with nothing omitted, then we should expect to know how to ride a bike after reading them. The instructions could include sections on pedalling and maintaining balance, for example. If there is something that cannot be captured in the instructions which can only be learned by doing, then why should this "something" not be called ineffable?
This is analogous to Mary's Room and the ability hypothesis. Mary supposedly learns everything there is to know about colour perception, except what colours look like or how to pick out colours by sight. This latter knowledge/ability is not included in the information that Mary reads while in her room which supposedly contains all there is to know about colour perception; it is only upon leaving her black-and-white room that she gains this ability. The fact that this knowledge/ability to identify colours could not be written down or verbalised, such that Mary could learn it within the confines of her black-and-white room, makes it ineffable. See also PI 78.
Quoting Banno
The ineffable.
Quoting Banno
Then what "has to be experienced" is something that cannot be said.
Quoting Banno
It is "something to be done" because it cannot be said. That's what makes it ineffable. Otherwise, we should be able to say it.
Yep.
A dead frog is not a frog? That is, not sure about your notion of essence. Nowadays a property is considered essential if and only if it belongs to the individual in question in every possible world.You seem to be using some other notion...
A stone has an uncountable number of potential uses. It can be used to hammer in a nail, be used in a game to skip over water when thrown, be used as a paperweight, keep open a door, to build the walls of a house, to construct a foundation, as ballast in a ship, etc.
If every different use of a stone gave us a different meaning of stone, then there would be an uncountable number of definitions of "stone"
I'm with @Banno who wrote "Nowadays a property is considered essential if and only if it belongs to the individual in question in every possible world."
It depends on how ineffable is defined
The Britannica Dictionary defines ineffable as "too great, powerful, beautiful, etc., to be described or expressed". The Merriam Webster Dictionary as "incapable of being expressed in words, indescribable". The Free Dictionary as " Incapable of being expressed; indescribable or unutterable".
Whilst the private subjective experience of pain cannot be described in words, it can be expressed in action, such as quickly pulling my hand away from a hot radiator.
Yes there is two distinct things here, as correctly points out. And, you ought not neglect this difference as it is a manifestation of the difference between potential and actual, which is the substance of Aristotle's biology. Knowing how to ride a bike does not require that one is actually riding a bike. The knowledge resides in a type of dormancy, as a feature of the memory; it is a potential which is only expressed as the action of actually riding, from time to time. Therefore knowing how to ride a bike is only the potential to actually ride, which is clearly distinct from the act of riding. All of the so-called "powers of the soul", self-nourishment, self-movement, sensation, intellection, are all understood in this way, as not active all the time. They are understood as a continuous potential, which is ready, and able to be activated at any moment, in a punctuated, discontinuous way.
Quoting Banno
The ineffable bit, for us because we have yet to figure this out, is the actualization itself. Knowing how to ride, as the potential to ride, we can talk about, and know about. Actually riding, we can also talk about. But the difficulty lies in the bit in between, the impetus, which is the actualization of the potential. This is where we find free will. But it is only "ineffable" because it does not very well fit into our categorization, and so it is something not understood. And since it's not understood we can't talk about it. It's that instant in time when something changes from being at rest, to being in motion, where acceleration must be infinite, we haven't figured out what constitutes this so we cannot sensibly talk about it.
And I’m with the later Wittgenstein , who argues that there is no such thing as a word outside of some particular use; for a word to be is for a word to be used, and word use is always situational, contextual and personal. Language does not exist external to its use by us in the world; there is nothing common to all language games or particular applications of a rule or definition of a word. Wittgenstein's metaphor of “spinning a thread we twist fibre on fibre” shows the difference between language use as applications of pre-existing categorical , normative and rule-governed frames and language use as a subtle or not-so-subtle re-invention of the sense of norms, rules and categories. The family resemblance among senses of meaning of a word like stone is the continuous overlapping of fibers altering previous patterns of language use via fresh contexts of use, rather than the churning out of a new instance of a superordinate theme, rule, property or attribute.
I can use the term "stone" literally/materially
"I threw a stone into a river and it made a splash."
Or
I can use the term "stone" figuratively:
"his heart was made of stone. He was cold, callous and did not care for the struggles of others."
In truth I can use the word "stone" in a number of ways:
"he was stoned because he smoked too much weed"
"he was stoned to death because of his crimes".
"his physique was as though he was carved of stone."
"the corpse was stone cold by the time the coroner arrived on the scene".
The use of a word depends on its context. All of which denote some particular characteristic /physical attribute of a stone. Anything from the "sphere of meaning" pertaining to the word "stone."
Therefore, one word can have many meanings.
We should then be careful to clarify exactly how someone uses a word so as to not misinterpret/make assumptions about the meaning of their statement. Especially if the use is ambiguous and could make sense in more than one non-discrete way.
Bertrand Russell in the Introduction to the Tractatus wrote "Mr. Wittgenstein manages to say a good deal about what cannot be said, thus suggesting to the sceptical reader that possibly there may be some loophole through a hierarchy of languages, or by some other exit. The whole subject of ethics, for example, is placed by Mr. Wittgenstein in the mystical, inexpressible region. Nevertheless he is capable of conveying his ethical opinions."
When going to the library and seeing the number of books on religion, ethics, morality, art, etc, one can only conclude that it is in fact very easy to talk about things that cannot be expressed in words.
I cannot express my private subjective experience of the colour red in words, for example, yet have no difficulty in talking about it.
As Bertrand Russell asked, where is the loophole.
In language are three rule-governed domains, form, content and use. Form includes the rules that govern how sounds are combined, rules that govern how words are constructed and rules the govern how words are combined into sentences. Content is the meaning of words and sentences. Use is the pragmatic skill of combining form and content to create functional and socially appropriate communication.
It must be the case that identical form has identical content, such that the proposition A "the bird is blue" has the same content as proposition B "the bird is blue". Therefore, if I know the content of proposition A then I also know the content of proposition B.
Therefore, generalising, if I know forms A and B, if form A is identical to form B, if I know the content of form A then I also know the content of form B.
I am human form A and I know its contents, my private subjective experiences. I observe human form B. As human form B shares more than 99% of its DNA with me, has descended from the same woman who lived in Africa between 150,000 and 200,000 years ago, and has, to all intents and purposes, the same human form as me, I can infer with almost absolute certainty that I know their contents, their private subjective experiences.
Human form B does not need to express their private subjective experiences in words for me to have an almost absolute belief that their private subjective experiences are the same as mine.
Perhaps this is the loophole that Bertrand Russell was looking for.
We can talk about that which cannot be expressed in words, because having the same form, we have the same content.
I don't understand this concession, where you acknowledge that the experience cannot be accurately conveyed. That would equate to universal ineffability, and it seems to acknowledge a distinction between the object and the phenomenal state, a distinction you've always maintained.
If I tell you I saw a sunrise, but I can never actually fully describe it, then there is something within my experience that cannot be stated, and is thus ineffable. If what we say of sunrises can be said of all experience, then all experience is ineffable.
To borrow from Kant, the unity of apperception is the a priori ability to perceive an object as a single thing, as opposed to it being a disorganized mix of various perceptions. If that unity we perceive of a single experience if not conveyable by communication, then what is being conveyed other than particular qualia composing the unified perception?
We've debated before whether there were a need to speak of qualia, with your position being that perceptions were not subdividable entities and that perceptions and objects were mirror images, not distinguished by our perception faculties (i.e., seeing, hearing, mentally processing, etc.) . Such is direct realism.
If you say now that the perception is not to be dealt with as a unity, but as that with various qualities (i.e. qualia), with some qualia being describable and some ineffable, then you seem to be admitting that which I thought you previously vehemently denied. We're now talking about the qualia that composes the unity of the experience and discussing which may or may not be describable in language.
And that raises another question here: If there are parts of the experience that are conveyable through language, which ones are they? I can't follow why the sunrise would be ineffable but the rays of light, the warmth, the joy provided by the sun (or any other such portion of the unified experience) would not.
I agree as well with the later Wittgenstein, in that language is a set of language games, where the purpose of language is to do something, change the world in some way. Meaning as use. It could be standing in front of a cave and saying the magical phrase "open sesame" or it could be walking into a Tanzanian builder's yard and saying "jiwe", where saying "jiwe" will achieve my goal of being given a stone. Saying "jiwe" in a Tanzanian builder's yard is one possible language game.
It is not the case that "jiwe" achieves my goal, it is the performative act of saying "jiwe" that will achieve my goal.
As you say, the context in which a word is used is crucial, but context is independent of whatever meaning a word may have. If I walked into a Parisian cafe and said "jiwe" I may get strange looks. If I said "jiwe" in a language class I might get top marks.
Wittgenstein talked about meaning as use, but this cannot mean that the meaning of a word changes dependant upon how it is being used in a particular context, but rather, the purpose a word is being used for changes with the context.
If the meaning of a word changed with context, language would have no foundation, and there would be the problem of circularity. I wouldn't know what a word meant if I didn't know the context, and I wouldn't know the context unless I knew the meaning of the word.
A stone may be used as a hammer. A stone may be used as a door stop. The meaning of "stone" is independent of any use it is put to. A stone being used as a hammer means that the nail will be driven into the wood. A stone being used as a door stop means that the door will remain open.
The way that the word is being used has a meaning and changes with context. The meaning of the word doesn't change with context.
While I agree that all humans necessarily share a set of commonly held experience in order for human language to be of any use to us, linguistics might not be the best way to justify this. More specifically:
Quoting RussellA
Identical form does not always have identical content. The form of [s]propositions[/s] sentences A and B can well be identical as forms go while nevertheless being endowed with the following, differing, propositional contents:
A: the bird is of a certain color termed "blue"
B: the bird is of a certain emotive state termed "blue"
-------
Quoting RussellA
One way to make sense of this is to infer that use is purposeful and, in at least some sense, is synonymous to purpose ... and that all words have intersubjective meanings / purposes relative to some cohort as top-level context. When viewed as such, words can then be further fine-tuned in meaning / purpose via the subcontext-situated intents of some individual(s) within the cohort
For example: The intersubjective purpose of the either visual or auditory symbol "stone" among the cohort of all English speakers is to reference a hard earthen object whose parameters allow for some leeway in terms of what the material object might be: e.g. a rock, a pebble, a large formation of marble, etc. This is the meaning relative to all English speakers as generalized, top-level context. Whereas, as one example, the purpose of this same symbol can among a subset of English speakers, here jewelers, be that of referencing diamonds. This being a subcontext of the former.
My notion of "essence" (e.g. of frogginess) is based on Aristotle's definition of "substance". Biologists may think of substance as material properties (the frog's physical body), but naturalists & philosophers tend to include such qualities as behavior, to define "frogginess" : definitive features that frogs have in common with each other. So the essence of Frog is more than physiology. It includes instincts & mental factors that differentiate a frog from a lizard. "Properties" are known via the physical senses. But "qualities" are known via rational inference. Pragmatic scientists necessarily focus on effable Properties, But theoretical Philosophers are more concerned with ineffable Qualities. :smile:
Essence or Substance :
In Aristotle essence was identified with substance (ousia) or sometimes substantial form. The essence is what makes the thing be what it is. The essence of a thing or substance is able to be known and so defined accordingly. It is through the definition that we come to know essences.
https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Essence
Qualia :
Philosophers often use the term ‘qualia’ (singular ‘quale’) to refer to the introspectively accessible, phenomenal aspects of our mental lives. In this broad sense of the term, it is difficult to deny that there are qualia. Disagreement typically centers on which mental states have qualia, whether qualia are intrinsic qualities of their bearers, and how qualia relate to the physical world both inside and outside the head. The status of qualia is hotly debated in philosophy largely because it is central to a proper understanding of the nature of consciousness. Qualia are at the very heart of the mind-body problem.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/
I disagree that the later Wittgenstein believes context is independent of whatever meaning a word has. Words don’t have meanings as context-independent categories. Word meanings only exist as particular senses of meaning produced in particular contexts. What the word “jiwe” means in a language class is not simply an already established definition within that class, but the product of the particular language game occasioning its immediate use. If that word is used in the class on three consecutive days, it will be understood not according to a single
identical definition applicable to all three days , but based on three unique senses related by family resemblance.
Quoting RussellA
You’re thinking of words in the old way as referring to objects. For Wittgenstein words don’t refer to objects, they enact forms of life. The issue of circularity isn’t resolved by referring the meaning of words back
to dictionary definitions or pre-established
rules of use. There is still the problem of interpretation.
Amazing how you can share the experience of a complicated gymnastic routine just by watching. Eons ago if I had only known that I needn't actually do the gymnastics to experience the flow and other sensations that gymnasts have; I could have saved myself a lot of muscle aches and bruises by just mind melding with an actual athlete.
And to think this thread took flight from what I wrote as a joke. :roll:
When I read this it feels like it'd go the same with objects... we cannot say objects, and so they are ineffable. But the reason we can't say objects is that they aren't words, not because we can't talk about them.
Now, that's just how I'm reading this. It seems like you'd agree that we cannot say objects since objects are not words, but we can talk about objects (and hence objects are not ineffable). So what is it about activity that makes it different from objects? Why can't we just note that activity, experience, and words aren't the same, but we can talk about them?
Yep. As if our inability to "say objects" were an incapacity.
Quoting Luke
Because
Quoting Banno
Nothing is not said here... but something is not done: the riding of the bike. The list is complete, nothing is left unstated, and yet the bike is not yet ridden. Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
But knowing how to ride a bike does require being able to ride a bike. Claim that you can ride a bike all you want, the proof is in the riding.
The point, again, is that there is nothing that is not said, nothing that we can add to the list; only something that has not been done; hence there is nothing that is ineffable.
Perhaps, there's your problem. There have been a few developments since then.
Are you not amused?!
The topic was always going to attract the day trippers.
This approach
Quoting Ciceronianus
must underpin any discussion here. Folk suppose that since there are things that are done rather than said, there must be something that is unsayable. One follows a rule by enacting it better than by stating it.
Basically, if qualia are anything, they are our tastes and touch and so on, and since we already do talk about those, qualia are not private and they are not ineffable.
That may be a problem for you, but not for me. Aristotle may be outdated in Science, but in Philosophy his concise categories are still applicable. Scientific facts may have changed, but the Philosophical problem of effability remains in our time. Scientists confronted with ineffable Qualia and Essences may chose to "shut-up and calculate". But undaunted philosophers continue to eff away with metaphors & analogies. Why else do you think the topic of effability keeps coming up on this forum? :smile:
The renowned British philosopher A.N Whitehead once commented on Plato's thought: “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.
https://www.college.columbia.edu/core/content/whitehead-plato
Answers for Aristotle :
Pigliucci is a singular bridge-builder, one who connects science as the investigation of what is with philosophy as reflection on what should be. Pigliucci acknowledges that Aristotle constructed such bridges long ago, but he laments that many modern thinkers, irrationally suspicious of science, have now abandoned half of Aristotle’s enterprise. Bravely renewing the entire Aristotelian project, Pigliucci surveys the latest scientific research in primatology, psychology, and neurobiology, always integrating the researchers’ empirical findings into a meaningful philosophical perspective. This scientific-philosophical (or “sci-phi”) perspective
https://www.amazon.com/Answers-Aristotle-Science-Philosophy-Meaningful/dp/0465021387
Ideas of Plato and Aristotle in the 21st century :
The goal of the stream is to demonstrate influence of philosophy of Plato and Aristotle on the contemporary society, science, technology, mathematics, philosophy and general culture reflecting new advances in understanding and development of their vision and ideas.
https://www.atiner.gr/humpla
Aristotle in the 21st Century :
Aristotle's essentialist metaphysics can assist in clarifying contemporary issues in (ii) value theory and (iii) economics as ethics.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/268505732_Aristotle_in_the_21st_Century
The ineffable now in physics :
[i]While physicists know how to use quantum mechanics, there is no consensus on what
quantum mechanics is a mechanics of. The aim of this paper is to introduce the beginning of what
might turn out to be an interpretation of quantum mechanics—one that leaves all calculated
probabilities intact. The basic idea is that quantum mechanics describes the objective world, but there
must be added to it ineffable variables, one of which is the temporal 'now'. Ineffable variables are not
'hidden variables'.[/i]
https://philarchive.org/archive/MERTIN-4
Aristotle on Einstein's Block Time :
Aristotle’s argument may or may not be a good one, but even if it is unsound, many people will feel, purely on intuitive grounds, that the idea of time having a beginning (or an end) just does not make sense.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/time/
I would think mainly because humans are emotional creatures who often struggle to express or resile from articulating these feelings.
I don't know exactly what you mean by "we cannot say objects". That was not my intended point. I was following Banno's reasoning and his conflation of knowing how to do something with doing it.
However, I might agree if you mean that, loosely speaking, what can only be shown cannot be said (and is therefore ineffable). You can show someone what red looks like, but can you explain, e.g. to a blind person, what red looks like such that they know how to identify red objects? That was the point of my reference to Mary's Room, which went unaddressed; also, my reference to PI 78. Perhaps a blind person could identify red via Braille, but could you explain to someone with no sense of touch how to read Braille (i.e. how Braille feels)?
We can find metaphors and descriptions for different shades of red if we both share the same sensory capacities - you then already have a foothold on what it's like to sense red. Or I can simply show it to you and then I don't need to explain it. Perhaps there is no need to explain some things just because we share the same sensory capacities. However, regardless of the whether we need to explain it or not, if what red looks like cannot be put into words (i.e. such that you can learn/know how to identify red objects without ever sensing red objects) then I would call that aspect of seeing red "ineffable".
Quoting Moliere
It's not necessarily activity, but the ability to use sensory information. Sensory information - experience, qualia, "what it's like" - is, at least partly, ineffable. It's not that we "cannot say objects", it's that we cannot say what it's like to sense; at least, not completely or not as a complete substitute for using the senses. It's much easier to just show someone. A picture is worth a thousand words.
Do you acknowledge that knowing how to ride a bike is different from riding a bike? The difference is that you don't need to be riding a bike in order to know how to ride a bike. Likewise, Magnus Carlsen knows how to play chess even while he is not playing chess. The knowledge-how is the ability-to, but this does not require or imply that one is doing the riding, only that one can. Riding a bike demonstrates having the ability or know-how but having the ability or know-how does not necessarily demonstrate riding a bike. Therefore, with regard to this:
Quoting Banno
As you must surely acknowledge, riding a bike and knowing how to ride a bike are not the same. So, if we had a list of instructions for how to ride a bike that was presented in the greatest possible detail, then why should we not know how to ride a bike after reading those instructions? It cannot be because riding a bike and knowing how to ride a bike are the same thing. So, is there another reason; something ineffable that cannot be included in the instructions which prevents us from knowing how to ride a bike after reading them?
In all honesty, I don't know whether there is anything missing from the bike riding instructions. I was merely following your lead in saying that there is something missing. However, I think if we examine the example of Mary's Room then it becomes more clear that there is something ineffable which is not included in Mary's "instructions" on everything there is to know about colour perception. This missing element is what (e.g.) red looks like or how to identify coloured objects by sight. If there is an analogy to riding a bike here, it could be how to balance oneself so as to not consistently fall off the bike. This ability to maintain balance on a bike is something that is difficult to convey via language alone, without experiencing/practising it for oneself. Anyhow, Mary's Room is a clearer example. Furthermore:
Quoting Banno
I don't believe that "conveying the full experience" implies making another person have that experience; only that another person can fully understand what it is like to have that experience. Can you convey the full experience of seeing red, or being synaesthetic, or being the opposite sex, or being a lion, via language alone, or are there at least some parts of those experiences that language is unable to convey in order that another can fully understand how it feels to have those experiences?
We can no more expect to convey an exprience in this way than we can expect to convey an object: we can talk about an experience, but there is always something beyond the talk, namely the experience itself; similarly, we can talk about an apple, but there is always something beyond the talk, namely the apple itself. But we don't say that apples are ineffable.
What makes it tempting to say that experiences, but not apples, are ineffable? Whatever the answer--and that might be the most interesting thing, I'm not sure--is it too easy here to just say that when we realize that experiences, rather like objects, are to be had (in the case of objects, to be), the issue dissolves?
What I suggested might be "the most interesting thing" could be to do with the supposed Enlightenment and scientific effort to explain everything away.
Why do people attend gymnastic competitions in their millions to watch gymnastic routines if not to share the experience of the gymnast. The visitor may not have the same skill as the gymnast in performing a gymnastic routine, but they can share in the experience.
Why would anyone go to a gymnastic competition, read a novel, attend a pop concert, the theatre, see a movie, visit an art gallery, etc, if the experience left them cold, if they felt nothing, if they couldn't share in the experience of the artist?
I addressed this in my post preceding yours:
Quoting Luke
Maybe an experience can only be "fully" known or understood by having it, as you seem to indicate. In that case, some aspect(s) of an experience cannot be communicated to another and "fully" known or understood only via language. If your words cannot give me the experience, or cannot fully communicate what it is like to undergo the experience, then this seems to imply that there is some aspect of the experience which cannot be communicated via language alone; which is ineffable. You say that my expectation is too high, where my expectation is that one's words can give another the experience. But this is not my expectation. I don't believe that one's words can give another the (full) experience. That's why some experiences cannot be fully communicated in words. That's what makes them at least partly ineffable. If you agree that some experiences cannot be fully communicated in words, then why do you disagree that they are at least partly ineffable?
Note my preceding discussion with @Banno comparing doing something with knowing how to do it, what Mary cannot learn/know within her black-and-white room, and whether teaching someone how to do something only via language communicates all the required information. You and Banno appear to advocate that some knowledge/information is missing unless one undergoes the experience for themselves. As I see it, that is not a rejection of the ineffable, but an endorsement.
Do you advocate the same for objects? Is some knowledge/information missing unless one undergoes(?) an object for themselves? I'm not sure what "undergoing" an object would mean other than sensing or experiencing it.
I should have been clearer about distinguishing between the different meanings of a particular word and a particular meaning of a particular word.
A particular word may have a set of meanings. The set of meanings doesn't change with context, although the intended meaning of the word is dependent on context. For example, "blue" = {the colour blue, the emotive state blue }
The set of meanings of a particular word is the foundation of a language. The set remains the same, even if the context changes. If I didn't know the set of meanings of words prior to encountering a new situation, I wouldn't know which word should be used. The set is independent of context, and pre-exists a particular context.
Quoting Joshs
If I walked into a Tanzanian builder's yard and said "jiwe moja tafadhali", I know that uttering this particular sound will achieve my goal of being given a stone. The sound only has meaning in enacting a form of life. It has no meaning if not able to change the state of the world in some way. Yet the sound does refer to an object, because if it didn't refer to an object, a "jiwe", the merchant wouldn't know what I wanted. Words both enact a form of life and refer to objects.
I should have explained myself better, in that a particular word may have a set of meanings. For example "blue" = {the colour blue, the emotive state blue}. I am thinking of the content of the word "blue" as the set of meanings, not that meaning used in a particular context.
Quoting javra
Yes, the word "grass" means something very different to a South African than an Icelander because of their very different life experiences, yet they can both have a sensible conversation about "grass" because of its inter-subjective meaning. They can talk about the "top level" meaning rather than any "fine-tuned" meaning.
To be able (knowing-how) to ride a bike, is not the same thing as riding a bike. When I say "I know how to ride a bike", it does not mean the same thing as "I am riding a bike" means. And this is contrary to what you claimed here:
Quoting Banno
Since there is very clearly a difference between these two, we need to respect this difference, and when we attempt to analyze, and describe the difference, we hit the place where the ineffable supposedly lies. How is it that knowing how can be something different from actually doing, and how is it that knowing how readily transitions, or translates, into actually doing in practise, when the two are so different.
We can start by inquiring exactly what the difference in meaning is, between the two phrases. So, "riding a bike" means to be actively involved in the named activity, at the present time. But, "knowing how to ride a bike", is quite difficult to determine the precise meaning, because it divides in two ways. One way references past acts, and the other references possible future acts.
We can refer to the past, and say that the person has demonstrated one's ability, through past actions of actually riding. This is Wittgenstein's preferred method. It is somewhat faulty though, because it requires a logical inference similar to the following: 'if one has carried out the activity, then the person knows how to do it'. So Wittgenstein approaches this little problem with the question of how many times must one successfully carry out the activity before it constitutes a demonstration of knowing how. Since there really is no adequate answer to this question, we can see that this way of determining the meaning of "knowing how" is really faulty, so we must turn to the second way.
The second way is the more common way, the way of what people normally mean when they use the phrase. This is to refer to possible future acts. Now, "knowing how to ride a bike" means that the person can in the future, successfully carry out the activity referred to, at will (with proper respect for natural restrictions). I would urge you to recognize this as the proper meaning of "knowing-how" (according to common usage), regardless of Wittgenstein's attempt to cast "knowing-how" in a different light, having demonstrated the capacity.
To correctly understand "knowing-how" we must refer directly to future acts, and not allow past acts to confuse us. This is because there is a multitude of different ways to learn how, and if ever we set a definition of what constitutes an adequate demonstration, we might always find something outside this. That's the problem Wittgenstein approached with the question of 'how many times' constitutes a demonstration of knowing-how. There really is no answer to this question because it varies from person to person, and as pointed out, a person could very well learn how through an instruction manual, or even simple observation. Then the person could actually know how, without ever having demonstrated one's capacity. So we must relinquish the idea that we can explain knowing-how through reference to past acts.
Now we can approach the supposed ineffable, the future action. The future action does not exist yet, so we cannot describe it. Any attempt to describe it will be imaginary, fictitious, because there is no action yet to describe, and we only have prediction, and hope that the action goes as predicted. To aid us in this attempt to describe what cannot be described, because it does not exist, we turn to probabilities, statistics, and mathematical principles. Now we can describe a future action with words, and determine the probability of occurrence, concerning the different parts of the act. However, when discussing future actions, there is always a hole in our understanding which presents as a probability instead of as a certainty. This is the supposed ineffable, it is unknown therefore it is not talked about, and cannot be talked about, unless we alter our understanding such that the unknown no longer exists. However, that would require removing probability from the future act, which is probably impossible.
To know how a clarinet sounds one has to hear the clarinet. I can tell you that it has a smooth sound, softer than a saxophone, the hum of a seriously cool cat . . . or I can pop "clarinet" into youtube and turn on the first clarinet concerto.
In church the analogy that was frequently used was the taste of salt -- how could you tell someone what salt tasted like if they'd never tasted salt? And by way of analogy, how could you tell someone what God's love is like if they've never felt God's love?
There's an element to knowledge that includes experience. I'm just not sure I'd say that makes it ineffable in the former sense, though I'd agree with you that Mary learns something and we learn something by experiencing that isn't the same as words, nor could it be conveyed by words alone. They'd also have to experience the sound of a clarinet, the taste of salt, the love of God, or the color red to say they had experienced these things, and no amount of textual familiarity would give them the experience, and they even learn something from experiencing.
But in the former sense, after learning something, we do talk about it after the fact. Like @Banno's coffee example -- while we learn from experience, that doesn't mean we are unable to speak about experience. In fact, it seems to me, by experiencing -- and the more we experience, the more we differentiate, the more we proliferate/share our categories and so on -- we make what was ineffable, effable. It's just a matter of time and experimentation. At least in the case of experience.
Those folk are, I think, among the flies referred to by Wittgenstein. But so are those who think it possible, and necessary or somehow beneficial, to categorize everything, like that relentless categorizer Aristotle. That, of course, requires the use of words. But there are things that we cannot express in words well, or accurately, or adequately and using words to express them (which we do all the time; which philosophers do all the time) is futile and worse "bewitching" as Wittgenstein might say. As to such things, we're better off remaining silent.
It could be that saying is also a thing that is done, as when you point to the gavagai.
Maybe nothing is ever specified. There are no references, so the OP presents a false dilemma.
But then what's the meaning of what I just said? What use is it supposed to have? Nah, we do specify and refer.
I think the bias against the ineffable jives with my theory about what propositions are: that they're what we take as the world's voice, it's what the world answers in response to our questions. Is the world partially mute? If so, why?
But isn't it just those things that we cannot express well in words, such as justice, ethics, morality, honour, wisdom, etc, that are exactly those things which we should strive to express well in words?
Since I am a late-comer to Philosophy, I am not well-versed in modern abstruse & esoteric modes of philosophizing. I prefer the timeless common-sense of the old dinosaurs. So, please allow me my amateur dabbling in the shallow end of the pool : where a dead frog is a carcass, and H2O is a universal solvent, not something to drink. :smile:
Saul Kripke :
“A Puzzle About Belief” (1979) generated surprising and paradoxical conclusions from seemingly innocent applications of the principles employed in reporting the beliefs of others, and it derived cautionary lessons about attempts to infer facts about linguistic meaning from analyses of belief-reporting sentences.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saul-Kripke
Caution : Banno errs in his biased reporting on Gnomon's beliefs. He adeptly skewers a risible straw man with his modal sword.
Word use doesn’t literally mean “changing the state of the world”, as if we first have an understanding of what a word refers to and then later decide to “change the world” in a separate step by using this word we already understand to change some other aspect
of our environment.
As human beings we always already find ourselves in motion( not physical but conceptual motion). We always already find ourselves thrown into new contexts of meaning. ‘Use’ of a word should be understood in the same way as ‘use’ of perceptual know-how. If instead of hearing the word ‘apple’, we find ourselves perceiving a picture of an apple or an actual apple in front of us, the image we are presented with is never identical with any image of apple we have seen previously. This is due not only to differences in its appearance , its lighting, color, shape , angle of view, but also to the context of its appearance. If it appears in a scene where we dont expect to see it we may not recognize it as an apple.
We may have something else on our mind and be looking right at it but not pay attention to it as an apple. Even when we do recognize it, this may imply that we are treating it as a a fruit , or as something to satisfy our hunger , or as an object to fling at someone, or as an element in a pie we want to bake.
In all of these cases of recognizing the object as an apple, our experience is of something slightly different. You want to say that hearing the word ‘apple’ refers us back to the memory of a concept( a specific object or category of objects). The word links back to, correlates with, a piece of information we have stored, and this allows us to recognize the word. The problem with this notion is the same problem with describing perception this way. When we recognize a visual image , we are indeed drawing knowledge from memory. We are ‘ using’ that memory to anticipate , to create expectations and predictions of what is in front of us. But because what we actually see in any perception is different in some respect with respect to our expectations, the way we end up ‘using’ our expectations is by modifying those expectations in light of the unique features of what we are actually seeing.
This is the same with words we have learned. When we hear the word apple, or when we summon the word in response to seeing an apple in front of us, we are ‘using’ our prior understanding of the word in the context of a new situation which always requires us to modify our prior sense of the word. Notice that this has nothing to do with wanting to deliberately “change the state of the world”. The state of the world is always already changed every time we are involved in new contexts of perceiving objects and using words, prior to any effort or desire on our part to ‘change the world’. What allows us to recognize words is the dance between expectation and the novel aspects of the actual situation. This gives words their intelligibility and familiarity. But this is never simply a matter of pure reference. Pure reference is impossible. It is reference (memory , expectation, anticipation) modified by context, which is another name for ‘use’ or ‘forms of life’ or ‘language games’ in Wittgenstein’s sense. Doing things with words is not a choice. Even if we don’t have the slightest interest in changing anything about our circumstances when we employ a word, the very intelligibility of the word involves the modification of its prior sense, which usually goes unnoticed by us , and allows you to believe in the idea of word as referring to objects.
I have always viewed the term "qualia" as meaning "the stuff of experience", rather than a description of a subjective experience. Do you think we're both talking about the same thing?
Of course I'm doing no such thing. The point made is, that one is able to ride a bike is proven not by being able to say what is involved, but in the act of riding.
You and Meta are on the wrong page. may be correct that the difference is one of the sense of "ineffable", but I suspect the difference is in not distinguishing explicit and tacit knowledge. Either way, your critique misfires.
Quoting Ciceronianus
It has long struck me that the problem with Jazz, as opposed to Blues, is that Jazz requires too many words of it's appreciators. You are I think right about the flies.
Quoting frank
I've contemplated something similar to this, especially after reading Davidson's derangement of epitaphs; but something is done, when we talk; some agreement or coordination is reached, and novel uses of language derive from mundane uses.
I would say no, if you mean arriving at all-inclusive definitions of that they are; treating them as objects which can be definitively described, objects of knowledge if you will.
That's how your insistence on applying only Aristotelian essentialism appears.
I wonder--who would be the Lord of the Flies? Could it be...but no, I won't say the name.
Hence rendering that name ineffable...? And we return to the difference between what can not be said and what ought not be said.
Consider:
Quoting Bret Bernhoft
This highlights one of the difficulties faced by the flies: mistaking experience for "stuff". See or
Quoting Banno
Exactly.
As I noted in a prior comment, the concession that the experience is not wholly conveyable in language concedes (1) that experiences are divisible into qualia, where some portions of the experience are conveyable and some not, and (2) that language is an interpretative act, offering a generalized glimpse into the experience, but not equivalent to it.
As to #1, I think it actually goes beyond that because if we can't accurately convey parts A, B, and C of an experience, I see no reason why we should think we could accurately convey D, E, or F, meaning the entire experience and all experiences are ineffable. If there are portions of the experience that are capable of being perfectly conveyed, I'd like to know what those portions are and why. It sounds like we're about to go down a Lockeian sort of division of the mental world, where there are primary qualities of mental events that can reduced perfectly to language and secondary sorts of ones that cannot. Sounds like a failed enterprise of trying to draw false distinctions. Where we'll end up is that all is ineffable or all is fully describable. It's equivalent to the direct realism versus indirect realism debate. Either we see all the world just as it is or none of it.
As to #2, if we start claiming distinctions between what we experience and what we talk about, we're in the murky world of metaphysics that I thought Wittgenstein was trying to avoid. That is, we're back to dealing with what there is versus what we can speak of, and if it appears that all experiences are ineffable (per #1), then we must remain silent about everything (a pleasant thought).
Is empathy the same as effability ? No. Even then the spectator can only partially "identify" with the performer. When Alex Honnold climbed El Cap in Yosemite a few years ago without a rope the world got an opportunity to indulge in a fantasy of the imagination while watching the Oscar winning film, Free Solo. But as a long time climber I could "feel" his moves with a depth not available to a casual spectator. You probably have had similar experiences watching something you have intimate knowledge of.
Who said anything about "earth wind, fire and water"? I'm not discussing physical Chemistry. Just meta-physical philosophy (ideas ; relationships ; categories). Do you believe that Philosophy should be about the physical world (matter) instead of the intellectual models (mind) of the world? We all look at the world through a framework, a paradigm, of some kind. The Chemistry frame is looking for the mechanics of matter, so that's what it sees. But the Philosophy frame is focused on the ineffable essential structure of those ideal constructs. That's why it's so difficult to express in conventional matter-based words. Some modern philosophers have gone so far into abstract abstruse linguistic analysis that they bury common sense under a pile of BS. Effing about the ineffable.
Apparently you haven't noticed that almost all of my links in Meta-physical topics are to the opinions of professional scientists, not theologians, or gurus, or mystics. What I'm presenting is a 21st century development from Quantum Science & Information Theory. Both of which have undermined outdated Atomism and Materialism. Science is indeed self-superseding. What nineteenth century scientists labeled "atom" was similar in function to the ancient Greek "atom". But, in the 20th century they were forced to abandon the search for a tangible foundation of reality. In essence, Materialism now comes down to Mathematics : formal (information) relationships.
As I mentioned before, Aristotle's physical science is obviously outdated in specific details, but not in general categories*1. For example, what he called "Fire" is what we now know as "Energy", but they are philosophically & essentially the same thing : dynamic change. Even his notion of "Aether", has been recently resurrected to explain how empty Space can act as a "Fabric" or Medium*2. Of course, fashionable philosophical paradigms, such as Atomism & Materialism evolve as new evidence comes in. But the essence of those categories remains : e.g. the smallest material element is now known as a trinitarian Quark, which is more of a mathematical philosophical notion than a tiny ball of tangible stuff*3. But what are quarks made of? The emerging physical/philosophical paradigm could be called Informationism. Please don't dismiss it (out of hand) until you try to understand (grasp) it. :smile:
*1. Evolution of Atomic Theory :
In the fifth century BC, Leucippus and Democritus argued that all matter was composed of small, finite particles that they called atomos, a term derived from the Greek word for “indivisible.” They thought of atoms as moving particles that differed in shape and size, and which could join together. Later, Aristotle and others came to the conclusion that matter consisted of various combinations of the four “elements”—fire, earth, air, and water—and could be infinitely divided. Interestingly, these philosophers thought about atoms and “elements” as philosophical concepts, but apparently never considered performing experiments to test their ideas.
https://chem.libretexts.org/Courses/Oregon_Institute_of_Technology/OIT%3A_CHE_101_-_Introduction_to_General_Chemistry/02%3A_Atoms_and_the_Periodic_Table/2.01%3A_Evolution_of_Atomic_Theory
*2. What is the Aether? :
The aether is a critical,missing component of physics that must be considered to explain the wave nature of matter.
https://energywavetheory.com/explanations/aether/
*3. Mathematical Matter :
We discuss the nature of reality in the ontological context of Penrose's math-matter-mind triangle.
https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0510188
You links seem to be in the main, irrelevant. Quoting Gnomon
...using Aristotelian logic. Oddly anachronistic¹. Frankly, your posts do not make much sense.
Like this...
Quoting Gnomon
What the fuck²?
1. Unhook the wire within the spark plug:
Firstly, you have to disengage the primary spark plug wire. Probably the most important safety precaution that you can take when doing your repairs or maintenance on a lawnmower is to disconnect the spark plug wire before you do anything else.
https://www.gardentoolexpert.com/how-to-change-a-lawn-mower-carburetor/
2. How to Make Organic Fertilizer: Storing Your Tea
Because cow manure (or any manure for that matter) can contain pathogens it’s best not to store manure tea. But if you do want to store it make sure it’s covered and kept in a cool place. If you can’t use it up in a few days to a week pitch it into the compost pile. Compost tea is less likely to contain pathogens but still can. I stay on the safe side and use it within a week.
https://ourinspiredroots.com/how-to-make-organic-fertilizer-manure-tea/
It's too long, I know. If you have time:
Think of it reductively: it is not about what cannot be said, but about what has to be removed from thought to see clearly. Ineffability is, in this inquiry, not a positive thesis but a negative one, and the positive thing we can say is what survives the reduction that is a process of discovery, this is the ineffable. Most of what is said in tis thread makes the mistake of deploying familiar language, and Wittgenstein's Tractatus makes the same error, for it does not occur to him that what-should-be-passed-over is no more silent than anything else; it is the positive residuum of removing presuppositions that implicitly give context and determine ontological propriety. Wittgenstein thinks with the working assumption that the world is the world that is delimited in all the usual ways, and he thinks like this because this is the consensus, and he never, ever thought that the intuitive landscape that is so familiar, that constitutes the norm could be other than this. In this he is like Kant and many others who think what we all talk about and the history of the way we talk about it is simply the established sanity for the way the world is. But consider what Hume says of reason, that it is an empty vessel that cares nothing as to what content it carries. It is not the structure of thought imposed upon the world that makes us finite and delimits meaning. It is the WORLD that does this, so the question of ineffability really come sdown to content that lies outside of the world, and by "the world" I mean the meanings that circulate through our institutions. We are inquiring about something new, something radically "other".
So where does this take ineffability? The reduction I have in mind is Husserl's. The idea is to consciously dismiss presuppositions that implicitly give us the familiarity of the familiar world in a perceptual event. The lamp before me comes to me not as an innocent lamp perceived with an innocent eye, and herein lies the matter of ineffability: We look upon things and invest them with meaning in the dynamic of a predelineating past. The present is never "pure" because the very education that allows the perceptual act itself to occur, fills the event with the thickness of experience, always, already, the moment the lamp appears. But if one can mitigate this hold that this body of delineating presuppositions has on perception, one can "liberate" the moment commensurately.
Possible? Is this not confirmed in the experience of achieving greater proximity to a pure intuition (putting Dennett aside altogether. Keeping in mind that strictly analytic philosophers put clarity over content, and are very conservative philosophically. What they miss is that the actualities philosophy faces are simply not clear, so instead of talking about what is before them, they take the totality of everyday thinking as unquestioned authority) in the simple reductive act of attending exclusively to its presence? If I ask one to observe and try to acknowledge only what is there before you in the occurrent event, and make an effort to do only this, is there not a "sense" of presence that steps in?
We tend to ignore this kind of thing, but it is well worth noting that Husserl's students, who practiced the method of the reduction were said to turn religious. And not to forget the Buddha who was the quintessential phenomenologist, called this because he reduced the world to a bare presence, and he called this (from the Abhidharma), in translation, of course, ultimate reality. Wittgenstein in the Tractatus would instantly reject this. The Investigations Witt would allow it meaning in a language game, but, as I understand it, the matter would not be allowed to be carried into some profound revelation of "presence".
OK, so if the stuff of experience is sense impressions would you class those as qualia? I would have said qualia are the qualities of sense impressions.
So, say I have sense impressions of an apple; they might be colour, smell, taste, hardness, texture, and so on.
Those would be the different qualities of the apple as experienced; so qualia, as I intended it, would refer to those qualities. Not to suggest they are stand alone or separable from the perception of the apple. Do you mean something different by "stuff of experience"?
I am also thinking of "ineffable" in the former sense. At least, I think that if the ineffable were ever to be eliminated, then it would require some sort of "perfect" language which is capable of communicating every possible nuance of any individual's experience. I don't think that our language is presently of this sort, but I also doubt that it ever will or can be.
Quoting Moliere
If knowledge is something that can be communicated via language, and if there is nothing which is not able to be communicated via language (because nothing is ineffable), then there should be no "gap" between what can be known/taught and what can be said. However, you and Banno say that there is such a gap. You both keep writing this off as a mere gap between knowledge and experience - where all that's missing is having the experience - instead of acknowledging the gap that you have both asserted between knowledge and effability.
What do you call this:
Quoting Banno
But now you say that your point is not that there is no difference between knowledge and experience; now you say that your point is that there is a difference between knowledge and effability:
Quoting Banno
Your position here is that there is a gap between knowing how to ride and saying it, which is a gap between knowledge and effability. If you know it but can't say it, then how is it not ineffable?
Maybe you will claim that I've mischaracterised your position and that you are not asserting any gap between knowledge and effability here. However, this was your position earlier:
Quoting Banno
If the most detailed possible list of instructions for riding a bike does not give one the knowledge of how to ride, then there is a gap between saying how to ride a bike (via a detailed list of instructions) and knowing how to ride a bike, which means that there is something about riding a bike which is known but which cannot be stated and included in the instructions. Which is just to say that there is something ineffable.
It would obviously be impossible to arrive at an all-inclusive definition of morality (for example). All we can do is strive to use words to better understand the nature of morality, surely not a futile philosophical undertaking.
Alrighty, I was wrong then. Just attempting to make sense of things.
Quoting Luke
I guess I just don't see the need for this standard. I'd say that knowledge is never communicated by speech alone. Knowledge is an integration of. . . many things. To speak is never to know, though if you know something then you might have something interesting to say.
Let's just grant this "gap", as you call it, between what we can say and what is known. It strikes me as being somewhat prosaic -- we all know that there's more to the world than speech, and there's more to knowledge than speech too. So what does this calling attention to a gap do for us?
Further, having called attention to the gap, now we can talk about it. So we might introduce a distinction between, say, theoretical and practical knowledge. Now here we have two categories, one of which refers to speech, and one of which refers to action. And we can predicate things of action in general. So, we can talk about it. That doesn't convert activity into speech, only goes some way to making the case for effability -- let's call this kind of effabilty the ineffably effable. Some sort of in-between stage, where we do, after having experienced something, communicate our experiences with others who have had that experience too. It's not as easy as "The cat is on the mat", but it's not as hard as "The soul is immortal"
I'd say there are some categories which don't quite count as this in-between, where experience, repetition, and education is enough to give us whatever it is that's missing between speech and knowledge. So I could even grant your ineffability, but then I want to note -- there's more. Such as beliefs in the soul, or that we live in the best of all possible worlds, or that everything has a cause. Those are the sorts of things I have in mind when I think of the ineffable: that which cannot be spoken of, no matter how much experience I acquire, no matter what evidence I bring to bear, no matter how clever I am -- God himself wouldn't be able to speak on these things, because to speak on them would be to destroy them.
The missing ingredient is that little bit of inspiration which gets you up off the couch and out to the bike, and continues to guide your movements at every step of the way. Sometimes its called spirit, motivation, ambition, or even determination. We all know how to use this feature of one's psyche toward getting what is desired, but since it only exists in the most general way, being able to be directed in any way whatsoever, it does not enter into any specific instructions. It is taken for granted.
E.g.: first, direct your attention toward the bike. Next, make your body move toward the bike. I think the majority of the processes occurring here are left undescribed. We easily cope with the ineffable by taking things for granted.
One can never speak for someone else. If God himself spoke for me, he'd just be speaking for himself. Whoever our interlocutor is, just by virtue of being a fellow conversationalist -- well, if we spoke for them, they'd no longer be in the conversation.
Words and action
I will have to change what I previously wrote, from " A particular word may have a set of meanings. The set of meanings doesn't change with context" to "A particular word may have a set of meanings to me. The intended meaning depends on the particular context. The set of meanings may be modified after a new experience."
I can enter a new situation not knowing the meaning of a word, for example "jiwe". Within the situation I learn the meaning of the word. The key is, as Wittgenstein wrote in the Tractatus 4.1212 "what can be shown, cannot be said" and as @Banno said "but something is done, when we talk; some agreement or coordination is reached, and novel uses of language derive from mundane uses." I learn the meaning of "jiwe" by the merchant saying "jiwe" and pointing to a stone. To learn a word needs some kind of action.
Once I have learnt the meaning of a word, once I have a concept behind the word, the next time I enter a similar situation I will be more prepared. As you say, "It is reference (memory, expectation, anticipation) modified by context, which is another name for ‘use’ or ‘forms of life’ or ‘language games’ in Wittgenstein’s sense". Almost certainly the concept I had when I entered the situation will be modified by the new experience. I may have a concept of an "apple", but after watching a program on growing apples in the Western Cape, I will definitely modify my concept. My concept of "apple", of any word, is continually changing with new experiences. What is not possible, when entering a new situation, is to be able to dismiss presuppositions and assumptions. To have, as @Constance discusses, an "innocent eye". As Gombrich said "reading an image, like the reception of any other message, is dependent on prior knowledge of possibilities; we can only recognize what we know.’ As Goodman said, ‘The innocent eye is blind and the virgin mind empty.’ The viewer is cognitively active and can never be passive. As you rightly say " Pure reference is impossible. It is reference (memory, expectation, anticipation) modified by context, which is another name for ‘use’ or ‘forms of life’ or ‘language games’ in Wittgenstein’s sense."
Once I have learnt the meaning of words, the only purpose of my words is to change the state of the world in some way. If words didn't have an affect on the world, then language would serve no purpose, and there would be no language. I say, "one coffee please", or pass me the apple, or "where is the apple" because I want a change in the state of the world. I say "hello", or "Kant is the most important philosopher", or "I am tired" because I want to change the state of mind of the person I am talking to leading to a change in the state of the world. The only purpose of words is to lead to an action
I experience a novel situation, and new experiences inevitably modify my understanding of the meanings of words. In entering a coffee house and saying, "one coffee please" and being asked "mocha frappuccino or vanilla latte?", my concept of what coffee is changes at that moment in time. The purpose of my asking "one coffee please" hasn't changed, my goal is still to be given a coffee. My goal hasn't been changed, even though the context of my interaction with the barista has changed. The next time I enter the coffee house, having my concept of coffee modified by my past experience, I may well ask for a mocha frappuccino. Again, with a new interaction with the barista, I may well gain new knowledge and again modify my concept of coffee.
Words only have meaning if they can be used to change the state of the world, ie, meaning as use.
You're saying that it's built into the concept of communication that our utterances must be distinct.
And yet we can express the same proposition.
Quoting Moliere
What is it we are doing when we merely ‘think’ rather than ‘speak’ something? Can we distinguish , for instance , pure thought or meaning from speaking to oneself? According to traditional understandings of the role of language, the communicative nature of language implies the risk of losing or distorting some aspect of what is to be communicated. Something is lost when we speak what we are thinking , and even more so when we write down what we are speaking. The problem with language is supposedly the risk associated with attaching of a signifier to carry and express the meaning of a signified.
But doesn’t this assume there is such a thing as a pure, or purely present to itself signified, an immediately present meaning in thought and then direct experience of doing that only secondarily , through symbolic language, is then expressed and communicated? What is immediate thought and direct doing are already mediated , already a form of speaking to oneself that is in fact never purely present to itself but already a form of language? When we know something , doesnt the knowing have to be repeated to itself, to refer back to itself, in or order to continue to be a knowing? Isn’t this necessary repetition a speaking to onself, and in speaking to onself, isnt there a gap from one iteration of the repetition to the next , between what one intends to mean to say to oneself and what one actually says and means?
:up:
Quoting Joshs
No, I don't think so. Though I think we have a phenomenological feeling of sub-lingual meaning, too, which is where this notion comes from. Listening to a song, absorbing a painting, or losing oneself in a play -- often times people think of meaning as being more than language, that language is this fallen state of meaning, and so there's some ineffability that's never reached.
Quoting Joshs
Right! At least, this is my basic understanding of Saussure, more or less -- and even of Husserl, by way of the looking glass of Voice and Phenomenon, at least (clearly biased, but it made sense too...)
I suppose I see the communicative role of language -- in the sense of communication between two individuals, at least -- as subordinate to other roles of language. Rather than posit a metaphysical barrier between language and experience, I'd say that the full powers of language are still -- to this day -- unknown. With language we are able to do so much, and we continue to explore what more we can do with language while we have no idea why we're able to use it -- But our activity, I think, is deeply linked with meaning, as others have pointed out here too. But if activity is deeply linked with linguistic meaning, then that poses some problems for claiming activity, or experience (if we include experience as being part of meaning, at least), as ineffable.
Quoting Joshs
I think that the classic notion of language assumes that, yeah.
Yup. At least, for the kinds of creatures we are, we require repetition.
Quoting Joshs
I'm interested. I might add, though, that I wonder if this is what's meant by ineffability with respect to language? In some ways language is this enabler for. . . so much. But then, what differentiates a reduction of everything to text from a reduction of everything to everything? (And, wouldn't a reduction of everything to text indicate that nothing is ineffable?)
Quoting Joshs
A gap in time, sure. And there's something funny going on with "repetition" too -- what marks the beginning an end of an act such that we can repeat it? What makes it the same act that we are practicing, when there's a gap between performances?
But not a speaking to oneself, exactly. In speaking, at least as I understand these things, we are speaking, not I. I use the collective vocabulary in my own way at times, but there's no self-contained subject which has its own meaning, that I can tell. (though there's something to the notion of a subject... just not a solipsistic one) -- rather, with respect to knowledge, I'd say it's more of a rehearsal, and that knowledge sits within the body. No performance is ever the same, but you can still put on 50 shows of the same script, regardless of that.
By referring to "the nature of morality" you identify it as a thing, and so are trapped into thinking of it as if is one. Why should we do that?
What little I have understood of Husserl's approach gives me little reason to try to understand more. So I'll talk instead about Wittgenstein. Your account of his approach would have it appear superficial. That would be an error. Wittgenstein does not limit himself with language but examines with great care what it is that language can do. Wittgenstein begins with language because there is no other way to begin. Phenomenology pretends that it begins with direct experience, but of course it has no option but to immediately puts those experiences into language. The Tractatus sets out how language and the world are coextensive, going on to show how despite this language does not place a limit on our comprehension. The Investigations further sets out how language is inextricable from what we do in the world.
Wittgenstein showed that the unsayable is far more important than what can be said.
But unlike others, he had the acuity not to say more.
Yep. And it is exactly riding the bike. Which is not something that can be said, but has to be done. Hence it is not a something that remains unsaid.
It's unclear if you have grasped this point, and are trying to articulate it, or if you remain benighted. Either way, I don't think adding more will be of help to you.
Well phrased. Wittgenstein's discussion of pain in a nutshell.
Since you've said that a detailed list of instructions won't give us knowledge of how to ride a bike, then perhaps you could tell us what additional knowledge one gains from riding the bike? Alternatively, could you explain why a detailed list of instructions for how to ride a bike does not give us knowledge of how to ride a bike?
But as I said, none of this seems to help you see the issue. Without a change of tack, there seems no point in continuing this conversation.
What has not been said is not the sort of thing that can be said. Nothing is missing from the list of instructions except it's implementation.
It's a bit like the difference between compiling a computer program and executing it. Or having a CD in the player and pressing "play" so you can hear it. The difference is in what is done, not what is said.
That's OK. We all have our blind spots. Yet, there are plenty of other posters who are not mystified by metaphysics, or flummoxed by feelings. But you're the one that raised a question about that which cannot be expressed in prosaic words. Ironically, this thread fills four pages of effing about the ineffable. Apparently your own negative feelings about "the ineffable" can be expressed in scornful language.
In Aristotle's day, much of what he discussed at length in The Metaphysics was ineffable to non-philosophers. Yet 2500 years later, even practical physical scientists are using his outdated-but-illustrative anachronisms to label some of the paradoxical & counter-intuitive concepts of Quantum Physics and Cosmology (e.g. Aether). :smile:
Ineffability and its Metaphysics : The Unspeakable in Art, Religion, and Philosophy
https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/ineffability-and-its-metaphysics-the-unspeakable-in-art-religion-and-philosophy/
Effing the Ineffable :
Ludwig Wittgenstein, for example, was convinced that it was nonsensical to try to speak about what lies outside the limits of language. Even so, he wrote an entire book about what cannot be said, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921), concluding with the observation: ‘Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.’
https://aeon.co/essays/what-if-anything-can-be-said-about-what-is-unsayable
EFFING IRRELEVANT NONSENSE
The question does follow; you're simply avoiding it.
You've said that the detailed list of instructions won't give us the knowledge of how to ride a bike. So what gives us the knowledge? If riding the bike gives us the knowledge, then you ought to be able to spell out what that knowledge is. I don't see what knowledge is gained from the act of riding which is missing from the instructions on how to ride.
Quoting Banno
This is disanalogous. A CD is not a set of instructions on how to press "play" or how to hear a CD, and a computer program is not a set of instructions on how to execute it. Even if they were, you are claiming that these instructions are insufficient to provide one with such knowledge.
What you've failed to address is this: you've previously said it's a difference in knowledge. So, what is the difference in knowledge between what is said and what is done? What is unknown after reading the instructions on how to ride a bike that is known after riding the bike? Or can you not say?
No, it's spot on, but you insist on misunderstanding, again.
(disanalogous?)
I wonder what, if anything, you think you have said here.
I like to consider how later Wittgenstein might have consider "The Ineffable".
From The Blue Book(1933-34) he says, "But let's not forget that a word hasn't got a meaning given to it, as it were, by a power independent of us, so that there could be a kind of scientific investigation into what the word really means. A word has the meaning someone has given to it"
Lastly, from Philosophical Investigations, "'But you will you surely admit that there is a difference between pain-behavior accompanied by pain and pain behavior without pain?'- Admit it? What greater difference could be there be? - 'And yet you again and again reach the conclusion that the sensation itself is a nothing." - Not at all. It is not a something, but not a nothing either! The conclusion was only that a nothing would serve just as well as a something about which nothing could be said. We have only rejected the grammar which tries to force itself on us here. "
So, I would say there is no discovery of what "Ineffable" really means, however, we certainly can give it meaning such as "She felt ineffable joy at the sight of her children". However, if we start philosophically analyzing "Ineffable", we start going down the path of a grammar trying to force itself upon, like in the "pain" example, in which nothing could be said.
But then, phenomenologists had a lot to say. One cannot say the presence of the world, but what does this mean? One doesn't speak in this way about anything. The point would be about that dubious assumption that there is nothing to say: keep in mind what it takes to speak meaningfully, which is to have interlocutors who have shared experiences. In Tibet, it was (is?) common for monks to speak in extraordinary ways, by our standards, to one another about experiences of deep meditative states. It was rather standardized to them. Such conversations included intimations of things we might call impossible if we were to attempt to fit them into our language's contextual possibilities.
There is the assumption in western philosophy that "sense" of the Real of the world is unproblematically determined, something we all know. Ineffability gets it bad rap from just this, but it should be understood that this is a cultural determination, and the sense of the Real is actually something indeterminate. Take Husserl's reduction down the phenomenological rabbit hole as far as it goes, and what you encounter is a revelation Wittgenstein never imagined.
No wonder anglo American philosophy is such a dead end, so busy trying to squeeze meaning our of ordinary language. Well, the world is not ordinary at all.
It is the nature of words to objectify what they are referring to, to identify as a thing, whether it be "mountain", "pain", "searching" or "wanting".
If a philosopher wanted to understand a topic, such as morality, without objectifying it, then they would have to use something other than words. Philosophers use language because there is no other way. The alternative is not even to try, and that would be a dead end.
Just to note: Is language so inhibitive? If God were actually God, and this was intimated to you in some powerful intimation of eternity and rapture that was intuitively off the scales, would language really care at all? Language imposes one restriction on what can be said, and this is logical form. Meaning can be anything at all, and it being "objectified" simply means it can be placed before you awareness. this doesn't reduce whatever it is to object status, but could elevate objects to a higher status, or lower, in the case of my cat (arguably).
Interesting: See how Eugene fink takes Husserl's reduction down to the Kantian cutting edge, where the occurrent experience is at the threshold of its production. I think a thought and thereby "give" this to the world. But when the thought manifests, the only way I can identify this as a thought is through yet another "giving" to the world of thought. Cut out the middle man: it is, through the agency of myself, the world giving to the world.
Words objectify what they are referring to. "Morality" identifies morality as a thing, "mountain" identifies mountain as a thing. This is how language works, and this is how we can use language to communicate
But as you say "If God were actually God, and this was intimated to you in some powerful intimation of eternity and rapture that was intuitively off the scales, would language really care at all?" No, language wouldn't care. I don't need language to have the private subjective experience of morality or a mountain. Humans experienced these things pre-language.
On the one hand, language imposes restrictions on what can be said. My understanding of a "mountain", my concept of "mountain" has grown over a lifetime of individual experiences, and is certainly different to your understanding and concept of "mountain", built up over a lifetime of very different experiences. Yet we both use the same word when using language to communicate, seemingly inhibiting what we can say.
For me, the word "mountain" is a label to a set of private subjective experiences. A single word can label a set of experiences. A single word is an object that refers to a set of experiences. When I think of a word as a label I am thinking not of a single thing but of a set of experiences linked to that word. When I think of a word I am thinking of the set of things that that word refers to
When we use the same word in conversation, we will be thinking of very different sets of experiences, but providing we have agreed beforehand with the definition that "A mountain is an elevated portion of the Earth's crust, generally with steep sides that show significant exposed bedrock.", although our language may restrict what can be said, it doesn't restrict what we can think.
A word can be a label for a complex set of objects, facts, events, feelings, etc, but when I think of a label such as "morality", "mountain" etc, I am not thinking of the label but the set of things that the label is attached to. The fact that a label can be attached to a set of things means that there is some similarity between the things, it does not mean that the things cannot also be different.
As Elizabeth Barrett Browning put it “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways”. "I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach, when feeling out of sight for the ends of being and ideal grace. I love thee to the level of every day’s most quiet need, by sun and candle-light. I love thee freely, as men strive for right. I love thee purely, as they turn from praise. I love thee with the passion put to use in my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith. I love thee with a love I seemed to lose with my lost saints. I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death."
"Love" is a thing, but I don't think of it as one thing, I think of it as labelling the vast set of things that it encompasses. Language is not that inhibiting.
But this just puts the burden on the term "objectify". I prefer to say one faces something, and this something is more or less closed or open as to what it is.
Quoting RussellA
Pre-language is a problem, given that you say it, to say what it is. But I actually agree with you, and instead of "pre-language" I want to say discovered IN language, but that which is discovered is NOT language. The discovery of what is not language, is a discovery that takes place in language; and even if one has to speak to say it, this does not reduce "it" to the saying. This may seem obvious, I mean,after all, put a flame to my finger and this is not linguistic event. But it can and will be. The question is, in the understanding, when we say the thing, the event, what it is, are we not wholly committed to the language possibilities provided by history and culture? Below, you seem to say, yes, we are so committed. I say yes and no.
Quoting RussellA
Yes, I agree with this. This is the default body of meaning that comes into play always already there when I encounter something. Importantly, there a cultural history, that presents centuries of language development, as well as a personal history in which these were assimilated.
Quoting RussellA
I think it is and isn't. Depends. I wake up in the morning, open my eyes, and there is the world. But the is given to me in my education that is tacitly brought to bear on things, making the world familiar and comfortable. So there is this. But this does not preclude something "new". The ineffable is made notorious by claims of some impossible, non propositional knowing. My question is, why impossible? Sartre had this concept of radical contingency: when we encounter the world, the world radically exceeds what language can do, for language has this structure, an early Wittgenstein's logical grid, and logicality itself is a perfect, tautological system of meaning relations, and this perfection rules in the way you bring out, which is Kantian: we "see" entire categories, universals (Hegel emphasized) IN the one thing, and without this unity, there is no thought. Sartre's famous Nausea was about this "superfluity" of existence that is unbounded by reason. Nothing to stop my tongue from turning into a live centipede, for the world is not constrained by anything.
I side with Elizabeth Barrett Browning, but it is, in my thoughts, rather profound to think how the world is radically independent of our categories of thought. Where does this leave ethics? For ethical restraint is NOT a logical determinant.
You ever wonder if the bottle is amber? Something like a cave?
If trying to get “straight” our concepts about our shared reality is a dead end, I will enjoy the fruits as I build roads to new frontiers. If the alternative is listening to some phenomenologists talk about a privilege and private realms of deep insight, I think I might get more by learning a Gregorian chant.
Yes!
, I invite you to read that quote.
Quoting Constance
Are you claiming that, that of which these monks speak is ineffable? I invite you to contemplate how that could be. If it is ineffable, then they cannot b speaking about it; and whatever they are speaking of, it is not ineffable.
The analytic point would be that whatever is being said has a use within the form of life of being such a monk, is part of some language game.
As Richard put it,Quoting Richard B
Your response is obscure. Quoting Constance No you don't, not until your thought is used. Only then does it take a place in the world.
Your juxtaposing two ways of doing philosophy is unhelpful. A more analytic approach might at the least make your point available to others.
Quoting Moliere
Some fundamentally disapprove of clarity. They suggest that being candid removes something (What?) from the discussion. A more pejorative explanation is that their suggestions will not bear open critique. There are those so critical of Wittgenstein's clarity that they cannot see that he is directly addressing their concerns. Quoting Richard B Exactly. Or the Tantras of Gyütö. We may also dispel the presumptive monopoly on Eastern Wisdom.
I think this is right; the objectification consists just in the word-object; a generalized, formal abstraction.
This is what many folk (perhaps ?) think analytic philosophy suggests. That could not be further from the truth. From at least Russel's theory of descriptions, philosophy has whole-heartedly rejected this idea, and with good reason: If "mountain" is a label to a set of private subjective experiences in each of us, we are never, when discussing mountains, talking about the same thing.
But meaning is public. Better to talk of use.
Risible.
The pertinent question then is, did Tenzing Norgay share that ineffable experience? Could they talk about it, making it effable?
If your analogy holds, then you should have no difficulty in explaining what knowledge is gained from pressing play on a CD player.
I don't "insist" on misunderstanding. You simply offer no argument.
Indeed you are right that it was a set of experiences.
But you need to think a bit harder and less rigidly than that... Hillary's climbing also involved a mountain.
Didn't mean to provoke. I though everyone knew analytic philosophy went nowhere. Private realms of deep insight? Well, are you saying private realms have none of this? To me, this is just dismissive. What do you have in mind?
Words objectify what they refer to
A word such as "mountain" is a physical thing as much as a mountain is a physical thing. The "mountain" is as much an object as the mountain. Somehow, "mountain" means mountain, is linked with mountain and corresponds with mountain. The "mountain" came after the mountain, in that "mountain" has only existed for less than 100,000 years whereas mountain has existed for at least 4 billion years.
As the "mountain" came after the mountain, as the "mountain" is an object, as the "mountain" somehow relates to the mountain, in that sense, the "mountain" has objectified the mountain.
Quoting Constance
The world exceeds our ability to explain it
The limits of our concepts
I have learnt the concept of "mountain". On arriving in Zermatt for the first time, the reality of mountains far exceeds my concept, but on leaving, my concept will probably have changed, hopefully giving me a better understand of the nature of mountains. Yet no matter how much my understanding improves, my understanding of the true nature of mountains will always remain insignificant. Metaphorically, my understanding of a mountain will be that of a horse's understanding of the allegories in Hemingway's The Old Man and The Sea, not because of a lack of trying, but because of the natural limitations of its brain. I am sure that if a superintelligent and knowledgeable alien race arrived on Earth, and tried to explain the true nature of time and space, we wouldn't have the foggiest idea of what they were saying. Not because we didn't want to know, but because of the physical limitations of our brain.
Sartre and existence
If knowledge and understanding is limited by the inherent structure of our brain, and similarly our use of language, then it follows that there will be a natural limit in our understanding of the reason for our own existence. In Sartre's terms, the "for-itself" may exist without ever finding a reason for its own existence. Existing without any justification or explanation, which is, for Sartre, a tragic existence. Without an explanation for our own existence, to exist is to simply be here. One experiences a groundlessness, existing without ever knowing why. An existence that is accidental and subject to chance, We may search for meaning, but ultimately there is no meaning in "being-in-itself", as there is no meaning in the world waiting to be discovered.
The limits of language
Language is a product of the brain, and is therefore limited by the brain. If our understanding is limited by the brain, then what can be achieved by language must also be limited. Language cannot be used to escape the "for-itself". Language can only mirror our limited understanding of the world, a world that radically exceeds that which can be explained in language. The chasm between the world and what can be explained in language is insurmountable because of the limited nature of the brain
Language as a mirror of the intellect is limited in its description of the world by the limits of the intellect, which is limited by the physical structure of the brain. Consequently, our understanding of the world is more about how the world appears to us, rather than how it actually is.
The same is true for all the senses, and for emotions as well. You cannot explain love or anger to one who has never experienced them.
The content of primary sensory experiences are utterly beyond language, they are the ineffable. They can be referred to, but never described.
Everything else is, in principle, communicable, owing to language's universality. Every sensation can be referred to by a word, and our thoughts are themselves either words or sensations. Only primary sensory experiences stand beyond language.
But this goes to the point, which is that ineffability is defined in such a way that the foundational issues of our existence are rendered nonsense, empty, because there is found here an apparent impossibility. which is an explanatory nullity that underlies everything. It is not as if science has met its new paradigmatic anomaly, and quantum physics is there to rescue empirical theory; rather, it is that Kant was absolutely right about one thing, that underlying all we acknowledge as real in the world is an index to metaphysics. He was wrong about another thing in failing to see that metaphysics is an existential "phenomenon", and this term is highly disputatious in its use here. But I disagree with philosophy's familiar categories that place powerful but nebulous experiences out of the boundaries of, call it palpability or realizability. Put bluntly, metaphysics is not some Kantian extrapolation to an epistemic impossibility (the noumenal transcendental unity of apperception) that cannot be spoken, for if it could not be spoken, we would live in world that had none of its intimation in the first place. This is the way I read the early Wittgenstein's cancelation on bad metaphysics, but he was wrong to take what he thought to be most important and declare it nonsense (most egregiously in ethics). And language games keep metaphysics at bay as well: an attempt to fill a breach in human understanding, a breach that is a structural part of our existence.
Ineffability has been argued into indefensibility, and this has created a false sense of thinking that to be in intellectual good conscience in philosophy, one must never speak of the most stunning issues that press upon us. this is where Husserl and Fink left off. They need to be rediscovered, for the they were right: beneath the familiar world, there is an altogether unfamiliar world of intuitive apprehension. This is revelatory in its depth as it intrudes into and discovers "intuitive ineffabilities" in what belonged to religion, and this is where philosophy belongs.
As I see it, philosophy is going to be the new religion, and phenomenology will be its method.
I would never argue against such a thing. Never crossed my mind to even try. But the issue of ineffability is not about how air tight language's hold on the world is. It is about how all of this confidence falls away when basic questions are asked.
Quoting RussellA
Physical limitations of the brain; what an interesting assumption. A rigorously conceived materialism leads to only one conclusion: the annihilation of any and all knowledge claims. The annihilation of knowledge. Unless, of course, you have an escape route to some acausal relation of accessibility between two objects, like a brain and my couch. This escape route, of course, would be a refutation of materialism.
Hemmingway likely never intended any allegorical reading of his work. Not that this matters to interpretation, but it is interesting to note that he had no romantic illusions about anything.
Quoting RussellA
My point about Sartre goes to this thesis that the world is not a "system" of rationalized entities of Kant. Kierkegaard inspired him on this (see his Concept of Anxiety and you can literally see where Sartre got his thinking), and it was an attack on Hegel's rationalism. To me, this was a very important insight when it came to a discovery of the nature of ethics, for ethics is "about" (I mean, in the basic analysis) value, and value is not a rational category. The thousand natural shocks are the sticks in our eyes and scorched flesh sticking to burning automobile seats, and THIS is not a conceptual affair, and its presence to the understanding is not the way understanding can conceive of it. It is an intuition that is "prior" to language, or presupposed in language's interpretative taking it up "as" something, some contextually bound discourse.
But I don't agree with Sartre nihilism. Look, if you are going the talk about brains producing experience, you're not talking about Sartre. And btw, obviously I do believe brains produce experience, for this has been shown in such abundance that one would just as soon believe the moon to be made of Gruyère cheese as deny it. But here, the discussion goes to presuppositional analysis, where this kind of thing simply is suspended.
Quoting RussellA
This chasm, how do you know about it? You see the problem?
Words are public yet meaning can be private
A word is a public object
Words are public objects. They only have a use because they are public objects that enable communication between individuals. They exist as public objects in speech and text. As objects, they physically exist in the same way as apples, mountains, etc. I can observe the word mountain in the world as can everyone else. The value of language is that the words it uses are public.
The meaning of words is inferential
Public words are given public meaning in public performative acts. As noted by Davidson, T-sentences are laws of empirical theory. Someone says "snow is white" and points to snow is white. Knowledge of language is extensional to the words themselves. Someone points to a mountain and says "mountain" several times. From Hume's concept of constant conjunction, the observer may infer that "mountain" means mountain. The meaning of words must always remain inferential, in that even if someone points to a mountain and says "mountain" one hundred times, the hundredth and first time they may point to a mountain and say "hill"
Yet my concept of "mountain" cannot be the same as anyone else's. My concept has developed over a lifetime of particular personal experiences, as is true for everyone else. A Tanzanian's concept of "mountain" must be different to an Italian's concept of "mountain". My concept of "mountain" is private and subjective, inaccessible to anyone else in the same way that my experience of the colour red is private, subjective and inaccessible to anyone else.
But it is also true that society has determined that "mountain" means "an elevated portion of the Earth's crust, generally with steep sides that show significant exposed bedrock." The meaning of "mountain" has been expressed in a set of other words, all of which as words are public objects observable by different individuals.
Yet the same problem arises, in that my concept of each of these words cannot be the same as anyone else's. For example, a Tanzanian's concept of "steep" must be different to an Italians' concept of "steep". What "steep" means to me must be different to what it means to anyone else
Ultimately, I learnt the meaning of new words inferentially, which is a private and subjective experience.
It is true that most individuals within a society have similar concepts for the same public words, but then again, this is only an inference. An inference is a private and subjective belief. A belief that I can justify, but can never know to be true.
Communication uses public words
However, the fact that the meaning of any pubic word is private and subjective is no barrier to communication between people. Communication is about the public word, not the private meaning.
Taking a simpler example, assume there are five red apples on the table, publicly labelled in a prior performative act "five", "red" and "apples". My private subjective experience of "red" may be green, your private subjective experience of "red" may be blue, but our private subjective experience is irrelevant in the language game of being asked to pass over the "red" apple. Even though I experience green, I will pass over the "red" apple. Even though you experience blue, you will also pass over the "red" apple. Our private subjective experiences "drop out" of the act of passing over the "red" apples.
"Red" means the public colour of the apple, even if it privately means green to me and blue to you. Words only have meaning if they can be used to change the state of the world, ie, meaning as use.
Bertrand Russell's Theory of Descriptions
Meaning as public
Bertrand Russell wrote On Denoting, which later became the basis for Russell's "Descriptivism", whereby proper names are really "definite descriptions". Kripke described Russell's Theory of Descriptions in order to critique it, which I believe would be as follows:
1) When I hear the name "mountain", I believe that "mountain" is an elevated portion of the Earth's crust, generally with steep sides that show significant exposed bedrock.
2) I believe that this set of properties picks out "mountain" uniquely.
3) If most of the properties are satisfied by one unique object then "mountain" refers to mountain
4) If most of the properties are not satisfied by one unique object then "mountain" doesn't refer to mountain
5) I learn that "mountain" has the properties elevated portion of the Earth's crust, generally with steep sides that show significant exposed bedrock.
6) Knowing that "mountain" has these properties, when observing these properties, I know that it is a "mountain"
The word "mountain" describes the properties elevated portion of the Earth's crust, generally with steep sides that show significant exposed bedrock, similarly "steep" denotes steep, "elevated" denotes elevated etc. "Mountain" means an elevated portion of the Earth's crust, generally with steep sides that show significant exposed bedrock, "steep" means steep, "elevated" means elevated, etc
All these things exist as physical objects in the world. Words such as "mountain" physically exists, objects such as mountains physically exist. They all exist in a public space, observable by any individual. Meaning has been established in a public performative act, as Kripke says by a christening, as Davidson says by pointing. Society has determined that "mountain" means mountain. In this sense meaning is public.
Meaning as private
Yet language couldn't exist without the mind of an observer of such a public world. Neither "mountain" nor mountain have meaning independent of an observer. What "mountain" or mountain means to me is unique to me, private and subjective to me, not accessible to anyone else but me. But as can be seen with the example of the five red apples, private subjective meaning is no barrier to public communication.
Conclusion
So which is correct. Is meaning public or private. In a sense both, in that in a public performative act a mountain in being christened a "mountain" establishes that "mountain" means mountain. And yet meaning does not exist independent of any sentient observer, whereby both "mountain" and mountain mean something different to every different individual.
Hrm, I feel the exact opposite. Phenomenology is a potential route to giving scientific explanations for religious feelings -- if we understand the structures of consciousness, then we'd have theories by which we can understand how people have visions, and such.
To me phenomenology shows how experience is a rich place for exploring the limits of language -- it's able to objectify what isn't, strictly, an object and make us able to communicate about general patterns of experience (at least, insofar that phenomenology isn't just a nonsense, a solipsistic invention for someone by themself -- a possibility, by all means, but it seems too intelligible to me for that)
If there were no intellectual limitations to the brain, I could have understood Tarski's Semantic Theory of Truth by now.
Quoting Constance
The Old Man and the Sea as Christian allegory
Quoting Constance
If knowing is a justified true belief, I don't know there is a chasm. I believe there is and I can justify my belief that there is. I infer there is, but I don't know there is as I don't know whether or not my belief is true.
Agreed. I’d go so far as to say the origin of meaning is exclusively private, even by extension over a domain of congruent communities. Words merely represent the relation of conceptions, and the reason for them is given simply from the fact communicable expression of the images, technically, the schema, of pure thought, which is itself the originator of words, is altogether impossible. In general, public use of words is only manifestation of constucts of representative schema.
Quoting RussellA
Also agreed, but beside the point with respect to communication proper, the point being that all human brains are operationally congruent, all mental activities given from brains are operationally congruent, therefore all logically derivable inferences are formally congruent. No matter the constructed word as representation of its conception forwarded by one subject to be received by another, the rational activity which generates its phenomenon in one fashion, re: saying a word, and the rational activity which receives the very same phenomenon in a different fashion, re: hearing that word, is synonymous between them. The sound of each phenomenon, the affect it inscribes on each sensory apparatus, may be different between the two subjects, but it doesn’t matter, insofar as no cognitive relation….the meaning of the word….is contained in a sensation. Nevertheless, they are treated by each subject’s cognitive system exactly the same.
Hence it is, that meaning is public only insofar as the donor inferences are expressed, or, as you say, objectified, albeit empirically. The recipient’s inferences are, obviously, not expressed, but are nothing but subjective inferences of their own, also objectified, not empirically, but rationally. The ol’ bottom up routine by the one, top down by the other.
It could be that meaning is said to be public, because that entire operation is reversible. The recipient becoming the donor often enough, implies publicity? Even if the case, the whole schebang then belongs to empirical anthropology anyway, so….who cares.
Look at phenomenology as a presuppositional analysis, and just that, of what we experience in the usual way. I certainly won't bore you with what they say, and this would be Kant through Heidegger (and while I have read a lot of it, I am by no means an expert) but will simply point out that Richard Rorty thought Heidegger was one of the three greatest philosophers of the 20th century, and this was a very busy time for philosophy. Rorty is important here because he really understood, though in an arguable way, continental philosophy, and he wrote extensively about and with and against analytic philosophers (like Davidson, Putnam, et al). He was strongly influenced by Thomas Kuhn whose Structures of Scientific Revolutions showed how one could explain science's progress in a way that kept theory really more about itself and less about the way the world revealed itself. He wrote about Heidegger and Derrida with this exact "distance" kept away from science's faith in empirical work's ability to "reveal" properties about he world, and defended, and this is and has been a very important revelation to me, the idea that there is noway anything out there can get "in here" (the brain).
Of course, he talked like this to simplify the strong claim he made that truth is made, not discovered. One has to give that notion some serious thought. He also thought Dewey, the pragmatist/naturalist, was among the three greatest philosophers, and you can see this in his writing: talking naturally about the world in terms familiar and commonsensical, but all the while, underlying this, was a theory of foundational pragmatism that entirely denied traditional models of a world independent presence in the intimation of its existence to empirical observation and interpretation. He was no Kantian, nor a phenomenologist, if you asked him, but in the broader sense of phenomenology, he was well aligned with Heidegger (arguably, again). You know, the early Wittgenstein is thought to be a phenomenologist.
It was the same epistemic divide that pushed Rorty to hold that truth was made, not discovered, that is in place for transcendental idealism. I read phenomenology because empirical science cannot address this simple yet all important question: how does anything out there get in here?
Only one way out of the problem this simple question poses: it is not a denial that brain generates experience, but that what a brain IS, like all things, has it accounting in metaphysics. we think of a delimited object like a house of a fencepost, and so this epistemic connection utterly fails. this delimitation has to be removed, and then the full breadth of what we are can be revealed. I hold this is possible, though not very familiar in reasoning why this is so. Oh well---the world is NOT a familiar place at the basic level of analysis.
The rub lies in the justification. What are you tryin to justify? What is being argued here is simple: how is it that epistemic connectivity can occur between two objects, a brain and my couch? Justify this. If this proves impossible, and it is, then you have to reassess the basis of your ontology. You will have to turn to phenomenology, which is about the Totality of our existence, and not just an aggregate of localized arguments that is found in analytic thinking.
He went so far as to suggest that we could do
away with the notion of truth because it was a confused and therefore not very useful idea.
I feel like I've found a kindred spirit, but I'll admit I think I'm now on the materialist side of things. And not as an inference, but as a choice. I think the materialist way of looking at the world makes us better, for the kinds of creatures we are. (we can sorta glimpse that there may be more, but usually, the "more" makes us do bad things)
Quoting Constance
My way of thinking is that if something is an accounting in metaphysics, then it's already something which we can only decide upon based on our feelings on the matter. Want to live forever? Sure, we're immortal. Want to note how we don't? Well, sure, we're mortal.
Like, literally, you could say anything, and as long as people like what you say then it'll be counted as true.
So the brain IS -- immortality. Or whatever religious belief you want.
EDIT: Just to note, I don't think "wanting" implicates "true". Because religious beliefs are never amenable to methods of knowledge-generation, like ever, while they could be true -- they'll never be known.
Experience itself cannot be conveyed. Yet, it is possible via language to project the speaker's experience into a similar experience imagined by the listener.
I cannot experience your red, it may or may not be the same as mine. We would never know precisely because the content of this experience is beyond language. Yet by saying "red" I am projecting my experience of red onto yours.
Is this communicating my experience? Both yes and no.
Are you making a claim here? Something that is either true or false. But it can't be either by the very way it is defined. If someone's experience is private and inaccessible, how could one determine whether it is the same or different? By definition, we could not make this determination; thus, making a claim that "my concept of 'mountain' cannot be the same as anyone else's." cannot be determined to be true or false because you do not have accessibility to my experiences to compare nor do I have accessibility to yours to compare.
However, if you start using "mountain" in new or unusual ways with your fellow human being, you might begin to think that you have a different concept of "mountain".
To a person who has limited knowledge of formal philosophy, this describes what seems to be going on in this thread.
This may be limited characterization of Anglo American philosophy. W. V. Quine, one who belongs is such a tradition, said the following in Word and Object, "There are, however, philosophers who overdo this line of thought, treating ordinary language as sacrosanct. They exalt ordinary language to the exclusion of one of its own traits: its disposition to keep on evolving."
Please list the presuppositions that I have to consciously dismiss that give me the familiarity of the world in a perceptual event.
Quoting hypericin
To be sure, blind folk are able to talk of the warmth of red and the chill of blue. They can use colour words in much the same way as the sighted. But what they cannot do is to choose the correct word for some object that is before them, to say if it is yellow or it is green.
Quoting hypericin
Which was so well captured by
Quoting Moliere
Nothing that might be said remains unsaid.
Quoting hypericin
And yet we do talk about our experiences, in detail. While I cannot have your experiences, that's not an inadequacy of language but a result of your experiences being yours.
And since we do talk about our experiences, they are not ineffable.
Quoting Richard B
On the other hand, Putnam, one of Quine’s heirs, wrote:
“Thus we have a paradox: at the very moment when analytic philosophy is recognized as the "dominant movement" in world philosophy, it has come to the end of its own project-the dead end, not the completion.”
Blind from birth? Reference?
I think this is the strongest point that those who would like to say experience is ineffable hasn't been addressed -- at best I think one could say that "talking about experience" is something like an error-theory . . . but the way I can make sense of that makes other things make less sense.
Persons who want experience to be ineffable, in principle (ala not Mary's Room, but after Mary has seen red) -- well, what's going on when we talk about our experiences? What's going on when I say "I know *exactly* what you mean because I... (story)"? Are we forever trapped behind the cartesian demon, talking to ourselves, or do we -- as the seeming suggests -- actually feel something that others feel sometimes?
Of course we do at times. Sometimes when a TV character I admire weeps I begin to empathize and feel a tear coming on. Partly that's old age. But watching a gymnast pull from a hang to a handstand on the still rings is something I can feel better than the casual spectator because of past experience. It's the talking about these things that fails to convey a full event.
The salient bit:
Why not start from the idea that talking to ourselves is already talking to an other, that the self does not coincide with itself? This will avoid the Cartesian trap of solipsism.
Indeed, the bald insistence that something we all do, at length, does not occur.
And no in this thread, that insistence comes from at least three or four differing approaches to philosophy, each of which argues against the others...
adopts a referential theory of meaning. There doesn't seem to be much advantage in taking that on.
offers a critique of her own caricature of "anglo American philosophy". The issue for her is more spiritual than philosophical, her view untouchable by counterexamples. Monks talking about the ineffable.
has a firm grip on the wrong end of the stick. wants to talk about Himalayan politics. is still interpreting Kant. remains rigidly enigmatic.
Give folk enough rope. and also get the joke.
However, I don't see how starting there avoids the Cartesian trap of solipsism anymore than what I've said so far. But, as I said before, I'm still listening. If you're willing to say more. (I appreciate the prodding, because it makes me think -- I'm just unsure what else to say now)
Quoting Joshs
I can imagine a private language argument. Self-talk as a back construct from public talk.
Quoting Banno
Something like that, yes. And to prevent it from turning into a discursive idealism, one could integrate the feedback from the body into this interplay.
No idea what that adds. But taking others as granted is much the same as dismissing idealism anyway, so ok. A public language implies a public.
I figured you'd go with: speech happens (somewhere in the motor cortex?) and when we reflect on this, we frame it as a conversation with a speaker and a listener. Posing and opposing things gives things meaning, right?
The social constructionism of Ken Gergen and others has been critiqued as a form of discursive idealism because it tries to derive all forms of experience from cultural systems of language interchange. They believe that ‘cognitive mechanisms should not to be searched for ‘within the head' of a person, but rather within the discursive or conversational interactions between persons.’ As Gergen puts it: ‘The locus of knowledge is no longer taken to be the individual mind but rather to inhere in patterns of social relatedness'.
Enactive, embodied accounts, by contrast, see the self-organization of the individual in its interactions with its environment as having an autonomy that allows it to distinguish between its own normatively organized unfolding experience and its awareness of others. We normally can distinguish between our own thoughts (internal dialogue) and thoughts from others, due to the agential nature of our own thoughts.
Thus, ‘dialogue requires the autonomous contribution of different dialogical partners, and furthermore, a mutual acknowledgment of ‘otherness'. There is a fundamental difference between others that are part of our self narratives and others to whom we tell our stories.’
Indeed. I am open to evolving language; however, pragmatism, parsimony, and a sprinkle of aesthetics will put pressure on what is accepted.
The posing is itself is already meaning in that it produces a differentiation, a way in which a fresh sense of meaning is alike and differs from what preceded it in memory. The posing is inherently an opposing, a contrast and comparison with the substrate it grows out of. A thought addresses and modifies the context it emerges out of, and so this is already a kind of speaking to oneself.
I prefer Midgley's metaphor. The pipes are dirty and leaking and need a good seeing to.
' monks have a role in their conversation for using some conjugate of "ineffable", perhaps in achieving a deeper mindfulness or greater respect for their teachers. The meaning of the expression is found not in a reference to that to which we cannot refer, but in that deeper meditation or respect. Since it has a place in their language game, it is not nonsense, but by that very fact it is not ineffable. So Constance account of what the monks are doing might be clarified. The pipes need fixing.
‘Preciate the noticing.
Yes, and thought is embedded within an affectively organizing bodily system in an even more immediate way that it is in the discursive world of other people. A cognitive system only continues to exist by making changes in itself.
If you want to start with Becoming, then substrate and emergent meaning are polar aspects of what is. They don't sit there waiting to do their jobs. So the posing has nothing to oppose until we equip it with that. There is no "one" to talk to itself other than the figments of reflection on what passes in unity.
So both language and other people are part of the world in which we are embedded.
Seems we agree on what to say here but not on how to say it.
Dunno; don’t care. Too many courts, half of which are held on what he said anyway, so….
Someday we might play ball.
Might be fun. Although, the analytically inclined on one side, the critically inclined on the other doesn’t bode well for meeting in the middle.
Well enough to make the list of only three choices. I’d say he still doing quite well.
Also, depends on which main question is asked about. For instance, for “a priori knowledge”, for which Kant is the more or less established authority, 72% find it acceptable.
For all prom queen wannabees out there: the striving for popularity is a Socially Transmitted Disease. Something to do with selling out and lack of authenticity or other. But then all the prom queen wannabees are bound to disagree. :roll:
Quoting javra
No one said it was.
:cool:
Speaking generally, consider what Michel Henry has to say about the the four principles of phenomenology. It is a movement toward pure givenness:
The first—“so much appearance, so much being”—is borrowed from the Marburg School. Over against this ambiguous proposition, owing to the double signification of the term “appearance,” we prefer this strict wording: “so much appearing, so much being.”1 The second is the principle of principles. Formulated by Husserl himself in §24 of Ideen I, it sets forth intuition or, more precisely, “that every originary presentive intuition is a legitimizing source of cognition”2 and thus for any particularly rational statement. In the third principle, the claim is so vehement that it clothes itself in the allure of an exhortation, even a cry: “zu den Sachen selbst!” The fourth principle was defined considerably later by Jean-Luc Marion in his work Reduction and Givenness, but its importance hits upon the entirety of phenomenological development as a hidden presupposition that is always already at work. It is formulated thus: “so much reduction, so much givenness.”
Henry comes after Heidegger and was well aware of the criticism regarding having a "pure experience" of phenomena. But this is a methodological and descriptive thesis, not a deductive argument. What is "pure" lies in the unfolding, not in what the concept says. the question is, can one make this dramatic move of severance from ordinary experience?
The list you mention would be everything, as I see it, that would encourage the assumption of knowledge in which the seeing passes over the presence of the phenomenon and into our "consummate ordinariness". Husserl wanted to get "zu den Sachen selbst!' Back to the things themselves!
Reminds me of Monet who said he wished he could be made blind from birth, and then to have his sight given to him so he could see with a truly innocent eye.
Anyway, it is hard to argue about. Not really far off from what Kierkegaard called this the beginning of original/inherited sin: when self consciousness makes one aware of the world, as if for the first time. He thought this was a rudimentary step toward redemption.
Furthermore, in one of my references on philosophy, they indicated that Husserl, toward the end of his career, wrote that the dream of putting the sciences on firm foundations was over. Rather tragic end to one who began phenomenology to put all the sciences on secure footing. Talking about a dead end
What can I say but that:
This passage has an ineffable quality of sophistry
Thank you for the list!
The self-appointed oracle has delivered his verdict from on high. As Wittgenstein once said:
The irony here is that the self-appointed oracle, while pretending to be a faithful follower of Dennett and/or illusionism, contradicts himself by advocating a "what-it's-like" to have subjective experiences such as riding a bike or seeing red. Moreover, that this "what-it's-like" (e.g. to ride a bike) adds to one's knowledge, over and above what can be said or what can be included in any instructions.
At least, that's what I gather from his scant remarks. Since he doesn't actually offer any substantial response, it's difficult to say.
Perhaps I should have made it more clear in my earlier posts that he was contradicting himself.
So set out the contradiction. I'll address it.
I think the main difference is that I can show you an apple, but I can't show you my experience. I can show you my expression of pain, but not the pain itself. You might describe your pain to a doctor as "sharp" or "dull" or "throbbing" or some such, and maybe that's enough for the doctor to make an accurate diagnosis or to prescribe some meds, but these are somewhat vague descriptions. Likewise, I might describe the taste of sea urchin as comparable to chicken (I really don't know; I've never tried it), and this might give you some idea of what it's like, but it's not the same as having the experience for yourself. Then there are people who perceive the world differently to ourselves, such as those with exotic medical conditions or abnormal bodies, or just those of the opposite sex. I know how pain feels in my body, but I don't know the pain of childbirth. Pain is pain, sure, but can a man understand the experience of childbirth via words alone?
Even if some technological machinery allowed one to have the experience of another, someone would need to program it to identify the full range of one person's experience in order to allow another to have the same experience, which I only imagine would be dependent on an existing public language and its available (limited) descriptions of an individual's experience. A public language possibly can describe common shared experiences, but what about putative experiences which may be unique to only one individual?
First, I think you can show me the experience. If you prick your finger with a pin, you can show me the experience by pricking me with a pin. Are the experiences the same? Well, there’s no numerical identity, but there’s some level of qualitative identity. There can’t be total qualitative identity because that would be equivalent to numerical identity, and that would require that I experience the pinprick as you, which is just to be you. I don’t think it’s right to describe this as ineffability.
I see this kind of how I see perception. Some around here will say that perception is deficient or distorted because we perceive in a particular way which is determined or conditioned by our anatomy and physiology and our behaviour in our environment. This view presumes that perfect, undistorted perception would be a view from nowhere or, in Kant’s terms, an intellectual intuition. This is a bad account of perception.
I don’t really disagree with the bulk of your post; we just draw different conclusions. In fact, I’m not yet even sure that I’m absolutely against your use of “ineffable”. I do think that the position I’ve set out goes some way to clarify things.
Second, all analogies will break down at some point. The apple, unlike the experience, is not subjective, so I agree that there’s a significant difference.
Yes, I was making a claim that our private subjective concepts of a particular word cannot be the same, in that it is impossible for them to be the same, although they may be similar.
I can never know my claim is true, as I cannot put myself into someone else's mind. I believe my claim is true from observations of other people's behaviour, but I can never know. It is an inference.
On the other hand, how would it be possible for anyone to know that their private subjective concept of a particular word was the same and not just similar to someone else's?
I believe that there are limits to what language can explain about the word because of the intellectual limits of the human brain, in that language cannot transcend the mind. Language doesn't have a power that is not given to it by the mind.
Quoting Constance
Perhaps neither the anti-reductionist Phenomenology nor the reductionist Cartesian method can be used by themselves. Both lead to problems. The Cartesian method suffers from treating the world as a set of objects interacting with each other. Phenomenology suffers from rejecting rationalism, relying on an intuitive grasp of knowledge, and free of intellectualising.
Taking the analogy of art, a complete understanding of a Derain requires both an intellectualism of the objects represented within the painting and an intuitive grasp of the aesthetic artistic whole. IE, a synthesis of both the Cartesian and the Phenomenologist.
As a non-philosopher I find this is dense and hard to follow, but very interesting.
It sounds like you are advocating for a metaphysical, shall we even say, 'faith based' belief? But obviously not in the traditional sense.
In essence, you seem to be saying that analytic philosophy's approach is too narrow and limiting and serves to keep metaphysics safely at bay and 'the unfamiliar world and its stunning issues' contained. And you are suggesting that the future of philosophy and some notion of transcendence may be found in using the phenomenological method and the metaphysics it 'opens up' to our awareness (sorry if the language is clumsy). Is this a fair summary?
What is it that you think lies beyond the censorious methodologies of analytic philosophy? Where do suppose the phenomenological approach takes human beings for it to be called a 'new religion'?
Quoting Banno
Banno seems to have a very big problem with this, continually insisting that it is unreasonable to reject or be skeptical of the foundational conventions of mathematics, physics, and other sciences. But the only reason Banno can give for accepting these principles is that they are the accepted principles, and they work, even though some are demonstrably inconsistent, therefore necessarily false. Then Banno will turn around and say something like this, above, demonstrating complete hypocrisy. The hypocrisy displayed is the reason why I am repeatedly inclined toward the charge of dishonesty against Banno.
Quoting Jamal
But what is this difference, the difference between your pinprick and my pinprick? Isn't it the difference between these two, the difference which makes them not numerically identical, yet still qualitatively identical, what is supposed to be ineffable? We know what it means to be one and the same (numerically identical), and that is to exist in the same context, no difference. And we know what it means to be of the same type (qualitatively identical), similar in some way, yet still separate, or different.
Now, in the case of the two pinpricks, the separation, or difference is a matter of context. The two things are called the same, "pinprick", yet the difference is that they each have a distinct context. This, "context" is where the ineffable is supposed to lie, it is what makes the two different. And it is what gives each particular instance of word usage its own unique meaning. If we attempt to bring the context into the statement, by describing it, we simply reformulate the context as part of the content, thereby making it not context any more, but content. However, there is always a part of the context which is missing from any such description or transformation, no matter how hard we try to include the entire context into our description of the difference between the two particular pinpricks. This inability to account for the entirety of the context is what validates the claim of an "ineffable".
Does it not follow, if all that’s needed is sufficient context, rather than entire context, that the claim “ineffable” is invalid?
If it is the case that all thoughts are conceptions, and all conceptions are represented by the word(s) that refer to them…..how can any conception be too great to be described? The representation just is the description. How can any conception, then, be ineffable?
So that which is ineffable has no word by which it is referred. For that of which there is no word, there is no conception that is the necessary presupposition for it, for otherwise, there must be conceptions without representation, which is self-contradictory, hence, unintelligible.
Imagination is that which presents objects without there actually being one. Imagination can present any thinkable object, which makes explicit imagination can present any thing that can be conceived, can be represented by words, can never be too great to be talked about.
Ineffable: a useless euphemism intended to obfuscate the fact it is impossible to conceive anything too great to be talked about. It merely indicates a way to escape the explanatory pigeonhole.
I don't think it's usually about greatness. "The ineffable aroma of the autumn wind...". It's just that words are sometimes like fingers and some of experience falls through the open hands of language.
Haven't you ever had dreams that couldn't be adequately put into words? I have. Interestingly, years later, all I remember are the metaphors I came up with to explain it: it was like a bee hive and I could feel each bee. I know that's not what the dream really was.
Maybe memory is a factor here. It's hard to remember what you couldn't put into words
In the referential theory of meaning, words mean what they refer to in the world. Words are like labels attached to things existing in the world, in that the word "mountain" refers to the object mountain.
However, as I see it, not only is a mountain an object in the world, but also the word "mountain" is an object in the world (setting aside exactly what objects are).
During (metaphorical) public performative acts establishing meaning, any set of objects in the world may be linked. For example, "mountain" may be linked to mountain, "mountain" may be linked to "awesome" and mountain may be linked to river.
As the referential theory of meaning only allows words such as "mountain" to be linked with objects such as mountain, because my theory of meaning allows not only words such as "mountain" to be linked to other words such as "awesome" but also objects such as mountain to be linked to other objects such as river, I don't adopt the referential theory of meaning.
One advantage of my theory of meaning is that it allows the word "horse" to be linked with the phrase "horn projecting from its forehead", overcoming one of Russell's and Frege's objections against the referential theory.
Sorry about that. Henry is pretty out there. The basic philosophical idea is this: When you face the world with understanding, it is not that the world is sitting there telling you what it is. What makes the world the world is your history of experiences, and this is what separates your world from a "blooming and buzzing" infant's world. But if it is education that informs the understanding, then how is it that the this education can ever access the "out there" of the world as it really is, given that the understanding is all about this stream of recollection? Sure, there is something before me, a tree or a couch, but isn't this recognition of what these are just the occasion for memories to be brought to bear in the specific occasion, and the palpable things of the world in their "really what they are" ness just an impossible concept; impossible because to have it as an an object at all is to be beheld AS a kind of regionalized set of memories, you know, memories about couches kick the moment you see a couch and there is no "in between" time to catch the couch in all its "pure presence". To perceive at all is to, with humans, with language taking up the world AS this language phenomenon.
Husserl thinks it is possible for a person to stand apart from the naturalistic attitude in which everything just moves along in the usual fashion, and couches are there as couches with no question, and insert a kind of conscious divide that allows the "intuitive actuality" of the occasion of encountering the couch to be recognized, as if one could SEE the world as it really is with the natural tendency to just go along suspended.
It is a very strong claim. Most think it impossible. But it goes directly to the issue of ineffability, for what is really on the table here is whether it makes sense to talk like this at all. For me, in t he meditating mind in which one allows memory, not to put too fine a point on it, to fall away, there occurs a crtain uncanny freedom, and in this freedom the world becomes a very different place, as if what was there all along had been forgotten in the naturalistic attitude.
This state of mind is proximal to what the issue of ineffability is all about. It sounds like sophistry, or as others have put it, the "seduction of language," when reading Henry because he is deeply embedded in the scholarly works of the neoHusserlian thinking. These guys just assume.
I understand what you're saying about language, but brain talk used to explain language's limitations has a serious problem. I won't labor the point, but brains are language, too. So they get their meaning from the contexts in which we talk about brains, and outside of contextual identities, it loses meaning. So there must be something else, some other explanatory means that can account for brains AMONG the trees and tables and coffee cups of the world. In other words, brain talk is not foundational.
And if you are defending a physicalist view about the world, then the thesis is just untenable, unless you can explain epistemic connectivity between brains and objects in a physicalist setting with out abandoning physicalism itself.
Quoting RussellA
You sound close to things Heidegger says, that the world and its concepts are "of a piece". I think this right, with emphasis! But on the issue of ineffability, I also think there is nothing precluded in this regarding novel and extraordinary experiences in which there is an intimation of deeper, more profound insights about our Being here. Descartes and his substance talk leads to trouble, but the direction for greater more "epistemically proximal" apprehensions of what we call reality toward our interiority makes sense to me.
Materialism takes an objective model and applies it across the board, but this leads to an existential alienation, as if what we really are is forever distant in t he "out thereness" of things, and one could argue that this kind of thinking in the modern age, so bound to its objectifying methods, is what has led to the crisis of identity.
I've noticed. :grin:
I see the Lord of the Flies has made an appearance, despite my restraint, which was all for nought. Or should I say "Nothing"? But perhaps it's to be expected that where the ineffable is a topic, the execrable must be summoned.
And here you are!
Sorry if this is hard to follow. I guess a person eventually becomes the what he reads.
My take on religion and philosophy is at a glance, pretty simple. the world is moving into an era of radical disillusionment, and the old narratives are simply not sustainable. What we see in the lying and cheating in politics is in part the death throes of popular religion, as believers become desperate in an increasingly unbelieving world.
You know, back in the sixties many scientists actually believed religion would simply die out. But this will not happen. For religion has an existential grounding, not just an historical one, and this lies with ethics and value. Science cannot touch these issues, and there is a strong tendency to redefine them to fit what physical science can say. But ethics and value are the MOST salient features of our being here in the world, and I don't think this can be argued about. If it was not for this dimension of our world, we would be as very complex sticks and stones.
Religion is, at root, "exclusively" about this very dimension of our existence. It is hard to see this given all of the history and metaphysics, but ethics and value is what religion is ALL about. Not even a challenging claim, as I see it. Phenomenology is a way to isolate essential things int he world and give them analysis at the foundational level of what they are. Kant was the first (?) phenomenologist as he took the givenness of experience and abstracted pure reason as a structural feature of our existence. It was there, everywhere in everything we encountered; i.e., part of its essential structure so that in order to be a human experience at all, it had to be invested with reason. As I see it, the same is true form value, only here, we have abstracted to the meaning of things, and not dictionary meanings, but the concrete meanings that give the world its "impossible" dimension. Wittgenstein wouldn't talk about it. this is a man who went to war with the intended purpose of facing death! Meaning, or value-based meaning, was paramount to him, that is, he felt the world very deeply and he had to know. Such an interesting person, brilliantly analytic, but so passionate! Few ever like him.
Anyway, in the end, religion will not parish because what it is about is an integral part of our being here. In the structure of our existence, there is the openness of metaphysics; ethics and value facing this openness insists on consummation and remedy. The next religious phase of our philosophical evolution will be to prioritize ethics and value. As I see it, Husserl's epoche lays a foundation for what will happen, for it is a Cartesian move inward, and here, I argue (as best I can) this leads to a radical unfolding of subjectivity. What this is about and what the argument is has its beginning just here. The more I read post or neo Husserlian thinking, the more I am convinced.
Ehhhh….just one of several predicates in a definition. Any qualitative superlative would work.
Quoting frank
Oh, you silver-tongued devil, you.
Anyone can use any word. By pattern recognition anyone can use any word in a plausible sounding way. What the blind cannot do re color words is know what they are talking about.
Quoting Banno
Our experiences are effable. What is beyond discourse is the elementals of our experience, your beloved, qualia.
Could you send me that reference?You may be confusing Husserl’s critique of modern sciences as failing to ground themselves on the basis of traditional presuppositions of empiricism with his own transcendental grounding.
Husserl’s last published work was The Crisis of the European Sciences( 1936), completed two years before his death. It attacks Cartesian and Kantian-based explanations of the basis of scientific truth( which brought us logical positivism) as leading to a crisis of justification within the sciences , and reiterates and further elaborates the firm footing for science in transcendental subjectivity, the central idea of his life’s work. In sum, scientific truth is grounded on objective concepts formed within intersubjective communities, which are themselves the reciprocal interactions among subjective perspectives.
Well, that's what I've heard. I've also heard other things about him, which, of course, do nothing to diminish his glory.
Makes sense...Ciceroni-anus the execrable...or excremental... :joke:
Ah, but I wasn't summoned, you see. That would require evocation by use of a name, as one would the Lord of the Flies, i.e. Beelzebub, the chief follower of Satan/Lucifer in Milton's Paradise Lost.
Actually, ianus is the significant part of the appellation, typically used in Latin in adjectives formed from proper names. So, Ciceronianus means broadly speaking someone like Cicero or a follower of Cicero, instead of Cicero's anus. But it's an interesting interpretation.
Is it e-voke or in-voke? I don't want to get it wrong and blow up the high school.
Ineffable :cool:
How many scientists have even heard or read of this?
No, the point was that we all have our own mountains of experience, and you want to flatten that out such that there could be no difference as to what 'mountain' means to each of us.
What you don't seem to get is that saying that there is a concrete object "mountain" "there" which we all independently experience and talk about is not so much wrong as it is just one possible way of talking about a situation we actually cannot get to the bottom of. It is the least thoughtful, naive way of thinking about it.
Another way of speaking about it; that is to say that there is "something" unknowable which gives rise to the human experience commonly referred to as "mountain", is neither more nor less correct, per se, but has the advantage of being more philosophically, phenomenologically, subtle .
That you don't personally favour the latter way of thinking says everything about you and nothing about the merits or demerits of either way of thinking.
Quoting jgill
You might want to check out Berkeley philosopher Alva Noe for a link between Husserlian phenomenology and contemporary perceptual science. A.I. and perceptual psychology are two domains where there is an increasing interest in phenomenology. Husserl and Merleau-Ponty both contributed intricate and original analyses of the mechanisms of perception.
“Alva Noë is a modern-day empiricist. His book Action in Perception is chockablock with contemporary cognitive science; its preface and notes (not to mention general erudition) point to on-going collaboration with Evan Thompson, Kevin O’Regan, and Susan Hurley. Their research investigates the sensorimotor bases of consciousness, and Action in Perception is offered as its philosophical backdrop.”
Makes sense. Thanks.
And yet folk who are blind do use colour words, correctly.
Pardon me, but your abelism is showing.
So where does that leave ?
So, what is it we can't say about mountains?
Quoting Janus
I'm thinking that the "something" which gives rise to the human experience commonly referred to as "mountain"... is the mountain.
But we do talk about mountains, and hence they are not ineffable.
So I can't quite see what it is you are saying.
Janus is the Roman god of doorways and gates, also transitions, usually depicted as having two faces, not two asses. But the Romans didn't use js, so in Latin it would be spelled Ianus.
I- anus: i.e. I am an arsehole...but at least I am not like and/or don't follow anyone.
Quoting Banno
Hilarious...you expect me to say what it is that can't be said.
Note, there is a difference between saying thst there is that which can't be said and, per imposibile, saying what "that" is. Conflating those will only confuse you further.
Quoting Banno
Of course you can't...you're excused.
:victory: you got it.
But the evolving he has in mind follows science's lead. Causal explanations of
psychology are to be sought in physiology, of physiology in biology, of biology in chemistry,
and of chemistry in physics—in the elementary physical states. From Facts of the Matter (pp168-69) he writes, Causal explanations of psychology are to be sought in physiology, of physiology in biology, of biology in chemistry, and of chemistry in physics—in the elementary physical states.
"As Christopher Hookway succinctly puts it, “for Quine, the physical facts are all the facts." (from David Golumbia's QUINE, DERRIDA, AND THE QUESTION OF PHILOSOPHY)
Indeed, there might be a sort of catharsis in the realisation that this is not doable, and perhaps the absence of a something to which "ineffable" refers.
It doesn't get more astute than this. Exceeds all expectations of a mole hill. :smile:
Oh, I do hope you are not getting the wrong impression concerning philosophy... :wink:
Quoting Janus
Quoting Janus
It's a mountain.
No, it is both a mountain and not a mountain and neither a mountain nor not a mountain. But keep on insisting if you think it weill get you somewhere
What is it you are claiming here?
give folk enough rope...
I'm not claiming anything...least of all that it is a mountain, or not a mountain...
I'm trying to get you to see that there is no determinate fact of the matter.
It seems that you don't have enough rope for conquering mountains...but keep trying anyway...
Must there be another explanatory means? Or might it be the case that we've tripped across the boundary of language?
Quoting Constance
I think this is an oversimplification of materialism. If materialism be the case, then our identities are material, and so there's no existential alienation -- rather, an affirmation of our identities where there is no "out there-ness" of things. They aren't out there, just we are partly an object, partly activity, partly experience, and partly language -- and the objects are right next to you, not out there.
At least, from my materialist way of looking at things.
Not sure I follow. As I see it, materialism takes what is a metaphysics of the Real of "out there" things, and applies it to mind, affectivity and moods, inquiry, language; but how does it explain any of this given that these are not revealed at all AS material. In fact, I cannot see how material is delivered to us at all as a working concept, except as a stand in for other thinks one doesn't really want to go into at the time. You know, grab your materials and run! If anything is a philosophical nonsense term, it's material substance: never been witnessed.
Quoting Moliere
Metaphysics, I argue, is the foundational indeterminacy of our existence. Many roads to Rome here, but take any concept that has meaning in our world, put it to the test and inquire about it, following inquiry down the rabbit hole in the search for something that is not questionable, that is absolute and as an underpinning to your concept, guarantees its veracity, or reality. You will not find this, BUT, you will find intimations of such things. As with value, discoverable in our ethics and aesthetics. One example I have won out, but makes the point with poignancy: put a lighted match to your finger for a few seconds. Now ask, why is it morally wrong to do this to another person (or you cat)? Words may be there at the ready for you to say this, but it is not the words that address the question. I is the pain. What is pain? A given, a preanalytic alinguistic given. As if the world were "speaking" the principle, don't do this!
But givens in the world cannot be spoken. They just are. Meet metaphysics. It is not some distant speculative notion, conceived in the imagination. It is the hard, arguably the hardest, because understanding is above the common course of thinking, reality. to me, it has its power revealed in the most powerful encounters with the world: like being sentenced to the stake's flames, for midnight trysts in a forest's alluring mysteries, and screaming to God for deliverance.
Not to put you off, but such things are the Real we seek, when we ask philosophy's most imposing questions.
Quoting Constance
Yes, a well established Weberian and Nietzschean critique. We seem to be well past this stage and hitting a counter revolution in many notable instances - with the blossoming of fundamentalist religions and concomitant conspiracy theories world wide.
Quoting Constance
Hmm. I suspect there's a very healthy dose of value and meaning making within secular humanism and environmentalism, surely as robust and arrogant as any overtly transcendent spiritual system?
Quoting Constance
Surely this would need philosophy (and a particular type of philosophy at that) to be more broadly valued. How does complex philosophy of this kind move from a narrow subculture of specialised interest (where disagreement is the norm) and become anything approaching a cultural preoccupation and new way of 'seeing'?
Given your views on phenomenology and the ineffable how do you determine what is effable and what is not and why does it matter?
There is no determinate fact of the mater that the mountain is a mountain? You are throwing out the principle of identity?
Or are you saying that, that we call that thing a "mountain" is in a sense arbitrary? But I already agree with that.
Amusing as this is, it all seems utterly pointless.
By way of summary, I'd be interested to hear what do you think is at the crux of this debate about the ineffable?
It seems some people believe that language is a blunt tool and simply can't cover off on 'reality' except perhaps as metaphor.
I'm a firm believer that words are sometimes inadequate to describe an experience - say being present at the brith of a child. Sure, you can use words to accurately describe what is taking place, but how one actually feels about it may be less accessible. Technical questions about language use aside, for me anything 'ineffable' remains for the most part an emotional claim.
The principle of identity; the mountain is a mountain is a mountain is vacuous and tells us nothing whatsoever.
I'm not talking about the arbitrariness of the name, that we might have used a different word.
Quoting Banno
Precisely!
Where there is no thing, there's nothing to address philosophically. There's no object to be known, and philosophy subsists on objects which can be known and described (in words). So, it pretends there is one.
Not exactly, from “On What There Is” he says “Here we have two competing conceptual schemes, a phenomenalistic one and a physicalistic one. Which should prevail? Each has its advantages; each has its special simplicity in its own way. Each, I suggest, deserves to be developed. Each may be said, indeed, to be the more fundamental, though in different senses: the one is epistemologically, the other physically, fundamental.”
Though, you are right, I would say Quine favors the later.
Is saying that a physicalist conceptual scheme is, from its own perspective, more physically fundamental saying anything at all?
If I weren't so distracted by the buzzing of the flies, I'd look to the implications of the half-dozen or so variations on "ineffable" mentioned in the SEP article, to see how they relate to each other and to other things.
And of course one can't put the birth of a child into words. But it would be wrong to think of that as a failing of language.
Quoting Ciceronianus
Or better, it is silent. And sometimes the philosopher acts.
I stopped caring if I was a materialist, physicalist, non-reductive physicalist, realist. . .
At least, with respect to knowledge.
However, while I understand others feel differently, it just makes a lot more ethical sense to think of others as creatures like me in a material world, connected by the fact that we are a species who -- in spite of our desires to not be this way -- needs one another to survive.
If there's a heaven in the here-after, it's pretty easy to justify exploitation -- the meek will inherit the earth, and that can accommodate both forgiving and vengeful souls. Further, while it's counter-intuitive to the claimed spirit of the religious texts, it really was easy to justify an incredible amount of human bloodshed.
And then I think that these spiritual thoughts also turn people against their natural natures -- and so they are resistant to their own desires. They want to be unhappy, because that makes them good (in a world that we have no access to, unless we just play along) -- and to be happy, to feel good, is to be unworthy, or something. Pleasure as sin. But then, being human, they continue to pursue pleasures while punishing themselves -- a true route to obtaining "spiritual" experiences, the constant to-and-fro of pleasure/pain which seems to be pretty popular among spiritualists.
I think religion is just as amenable to knowledge generation as anything else; it is just that religion needs to be rendered clear in terms of what it addresses that is in the world, that is actual. I hold it that popular religion is nothing less than the narrative response to the metaethical question, what is the good and bad of ethical problems? I think religion removed from its incidental encumbrances such as Who Saves Who and Why, and all the rest, has a existential core to it. Notice how ethics and religion would vanish if the question of good and bad were settled foundationally. Religion, properly understood, is the metaphysics of the ethical good and bad, the source of what we are calling ineffability. Questions about the Real, what consciousness is, the relation between thought and the world, and on and on, are dramatically overshadowed by questions of our suffering and delight.
Not suggesting it is a failing as such, perhaps a type of limitation. What's your take?
No, I don't think so, because the part of the context which is not reachable, is still real. So it's like you are saying that we never need the ideal, we don't need perfection, and so we should settle on whatever is sufficient. That's fine, but settling on sufficiency instead of the absolute does not make the difference between these two disappear. And we can live very well without ever even thinking about the ineffable, but that doesn't mean that it's not there. Nor does it make the claim of ineffable invalid.
Quoting Mww
It's not the conception that's ineffable, nor any part of the conception. It is the difference between the conception of what the word refers to, and what the word really refers to in a particular instance of use, which is ineffable. There is a number of ways to look at this. If the conception is a universal, and what the word refers to is a particular, there is a difference between these. If the conception is a representation, and there is something represented, then there is a difference between these. Those are examples. If we use categories, there is a difference between one category and another. To produce more categories in an attempt to describe the difference between categories, still leaves us with an unexplained difference between the new categories. We might try to say this difference consists of boundaries, but it isn't really boundaries between things, because things overlap.
Quoting Mww
Yes, I would agree. And because of this, even to put the name "ineffable" to it, is to refer to something, and it's either a particular or a conception. So this is really a self-contradicting thing to do. It's better just to recognize the reality of this problem, and understand that no matter how far we proceed toward perfection in our understanding, toward the ideal, there will always be a deficiency.
Quoting Mww
But the matter is not an issue of what can be conceived but not talked about, it is an issue of what cannot be conceived, and because of this it cannot be talked about. We avoid the problem to a great extent by talking about possibilities, and probabilities, as this allows for the reality of whatever it is which we are uncertain about. But the usefulness of possibility and probability is just evidence of the reality of whatever it is that we cannot conceive of, and therefore cannot talk about. It really skirts the issue because we pretend to have conceptions of the unknown, by showing off prediction skills, but these are just mathematical skills, and there are no hidden concepts here, just applied math.
Quoting Mww
I think you may have this backward. The problem is that we try to talk about things which we cannot conceptualize. That is the ineffable, we try to talk about something which we cannot talk about, due to a lack of conceptualization. The lack of conceptualization is what makes it so we cannot talk about it.
This is evident with the application of mathematics in the sciences. Through math we, in a way, talk about things, but it's only really an attempt to talk about them. The things supposedly talked about are not conceptualized, it is just a matter of applying general mathematical principles. So the talk is really about the mathematical principles. Thus mathematics creates the illusion that we are talking about things. But these are really things which we cannot conceptualize, those things which the mathematics is supposedly talking about, so we're not really talking about anything, just applying mathematics to the unknown.
Through this procedure though, applying mathematics to the unknown, I believe we can bring the unknown around to being known, therefore conceptualized, talked about, and properly described. That's why I said earlier in the thread, that we apply mathematics to the ineffable (what we cannot talk about because we have no conception of). Then through the application of math we produce an understanding, conceptualize, and start being able to talk about what was prior to this, ineffable.
Something more?
Well, the world is all that is the case. If it's the case, then it can be said. Hence the world is all that can be said. The world is all the true propositions.
But there is also what can be shown. And there is also what can be done.
So the squiggle on a page at first looks like a duck, not someone shows you that it can also be seen as a rabbit, and then you realise that wether it's seen as a duck or a rabbit depends on you, not on the squiggle.
Notice that we can say that it's a duck or its a rabbit, or that it is both, depending on how you look at it, so there is nothing ineffable here.
And there is your partner giving birth, with all the anticipation, dread and hope, that cannot possibly be put into words, and yet I just did. What's missing from any words is the doing, the being there, the participation.
There's no fact about the rock in my hand that cannot be put into words. But one cannot put the rock into words, because it's a rock.
Any propositional answer to that will be wrong. Nor is the ineffable just the words that have no reference; plenty of words have a use but do not refer to anything. And if the ineffable is a second-order predicate, then what does it predicate? If understood only apophatically, then it is sayable, in understood only by metaphor, then it is sayable, and if an honorific, then no more than the consequence of our honour.
So what is it that is ineffable? Well...
See?
But value as such is not very mysterious and no one likes to talk about it. What is it, in the final analysis, that makes bad things bad and good things good? Factually speaking, there is nothing there, so where and what is it, this, what G E Moore called "non natural property"? Wittgenstein famously said there is no such thing and value; and if there were, it would have no value. But he also identified divinity with the Good. He insisted this was strictly off limits to discussion, and when the Vienna Circle met, he would turn his chair to the wall if they started talking about ethics.
Sure, we talk about value all the time, but philosophically, can sense be made of it, this mysterious, non natural property of the good and the bad in our affairs?
Quoting Tom Storm
As you know, that is a really tall order, and it requires a really tall philosophical thesis to rise to the occasion. Best place to start here is Husserl Cartesian Meditations. You may be a bit shocked by what he has to say. A snippet:
[i]As we go on meditating in this manner and along this line, we
beginning philosophers recognize that the Cartesian idea of a
science (ultimately an all-embracing science) g[u]rounded on an
absolute foundation, and absolutely justified[/u], is none other than
the idea that constantly furnishes guidance in all sciences and
in their striving toward universality whatever may be the
situation with respect to a de facto actualization of that idea[/i]
What he has in mind can, I think, perhaps rests with this single intuition: One can attack any thesis, any proposition, essentially the way Descartes did. But can you doubt the merely descriptive just being there? This is not leading to Descartes affirmation of the cogito. It is much broader, this affirmation that one is in an indubitable intuitive world of presence. Not I think, therefore I am; but, everything IS there before me; therefore everything IS apodictically grounded in an intuition of pure phenomenological presence. This, he argues, underlies as the universal presuppositional basis for all empirical science, and he wants make this intuitive horizon of our existence the foundational science for philosophical inquiry.
In a qualified way, he is on to something very important. This goes to metaethics. E.g., one cannot doubt one is in pain. One can doubt the propositional content, the veracity of the facts, and granted that there are ambiguous examples of pain, but in cases of unambiguous pain, as occasioned by being stabbed in the kidney, say, one is witnessing an absolute. And it is not some tautological apriority; it is existential, and this is supposed to be impossible, the kind of things miracles are made of.
Better to turn your chair to the wall.
Quoting Banno
Yes, for the most part. Cheers.
Part thereof should be the getting on with it, that philosophical rumination is secondary to the doing.
I have decided to follow Husserl;
I have decided to follow Husserl;
I have decided to follow Husserl;
No turning back, no turning back.
Maybe, one day, philosophy will weave in music into this form of life.
I think you may need to decide to follow the more contemprary Zahavi, who seems to think most interpretations of Husserl are superficial.
You get a sense of how exciting his thinking is from his writing:
? Dan Zahavi, Self and Other: Exploring Subjectivity, Empathy, and Shame
Ok…..need the rest of the paragraph to unpack this.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Sure there’s a difference, but there’s nothing ineffable about it. The word representing a universal conception won’t refer to a particular example of it. The universal conception represented by the word “change” says nothing about particular instances of that which changes. The manifold of conceptions involved in the proposition, “the branches swaying in the wind make a joyful noise” has no need for, and forwards no cognition of, “change”.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
True enough. Herein is the limit of metaphysical reductionism. Conceptions represent thoughts….but there is no justifiable hypothesis for the origin of thoughts. If one wishes to call the origin of thought ineffable, insofar as there are no words to describe it, that’s fine, but we’ve already understood we just have no idea from whence come thoughts, so why bother with overburdening the impossibility with ineffability?
———-
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yeah, well….proof positive folks generally put more stock in their talk than their thought. Pity them, I say.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Truth be told, I don’t agree that’s what we’re doing. You say the problem is we try to do this thing we can’t do, I say we can’t even do, in any way, shape or form, what you say we’re trying to do, so the problem itself you say we have, should just disappear and along with it, the very notion of ineffability.
This is just as much fun as trying to fathom why some of us are right-handed and some are left. Why some of us like spinach and some of us gag on it. Only product there can be is fun; we ain’t gonna solve anything here, are we.
There is no proving goodness or badness, just as there's no proving something is real. As you say, it's as if it were given, and feels like the world itself were speaking a principle. I think that's a great phenomenological description of attachment to principle.
I'm just not sure that there is, in fact, an alinguistic given. Not everything is language, but we are the sorts of creatures who are deeply integrated with linguistic practices... it seems a stretch to think that we can bracket away language in looking at objects. They're all named and have differentiations and everything. We can pretend that the object we see doesn't have all of the "naturalistic" predicates pertaining to it and see where our mind takes us -- but I think that's about it. That's just a suspension of judgment, though, and not a mental ability to see things as they are absent a worldview. Or, at least, that's how I'd put it.
There is a sense in which, by changing beliefs we change the world. So there's something to it. But I'm unconvinced that bracketing is able to lead us to the things themselves in all but our imagination. In that process of imagining it seems people can trip across what may be patterns of consciousness that are common -- but, given that it's introspection, it may just be idiosyncratic too. From a scientific perspective, I think, the real advantage of phenemonology is it gives a language for talking about consciousness.
**
Also, I'll note, I don't think there are foundations to science, so losing its foundations isn't something I mind. Science isn't as grandiose as Husserl puts it, in my view. Which might go some way to making sense of our views here:
I agree that givens in the world just are. And if they cannot be spoken, then what does metaphysics have left to say?
The desire to be above the common course of thinking isn't something I share. I don't believe philosophy leads to a higher knowledge. Philosophy is just one of the activities human beings do. It, too, is not grandiose. It's little wonder that the small, hairless, weak, slow, but creative species which is deeply interdependent, and thereby vulnerable to the actions not just of the environment but what others of its creatures will do -- that something so pathetic might want to be more powerful, and imagines itself so in its own mind from time to time is the most natural of desires.
Like a cat puffing up, we build castles in the mind to soothe our self-image and make it a little stronger.
Quoting Constance
Heh, this may be the basis of our disagreement, in truth. I don't want exotic or or mystical experiences. I just want to be happy. And, ethically speaking, that seems a reasonable, at least, general goal -- but I understand lots of people don't want to be happy. They don't put it like that, but their actions speak louder than what they say they believe.
Form and content, brains and minds
Is the mind and brain a Cartesian duality or a phenomenological unity. What is the relationship between the brain as form and the mind as content. If a Cartesian duality, how can the form access the content. If a phenomenological unity, how can the form be the content.
Protopanpsychism as the link between the form of the brain and the content of the mind
Consciousness is the hard problem of science. Whether consciousness exists outside the brain as some ethereal soul or spirit or can be explained within physicalism as an emergence from the complexity of neurons and their connections within the brain, protopanpsychism is not the belief that elemental particles are conscious, rather that they have the potential for consciousness that only emerges when elemental particles are combined in some particular way.
As an analogy with gravity, the property of movement cannot be discovered in a single object isolated from all other objects, but may only be observed when two objects or more are in proximity. In a sense, the single isolated object has the potential for movement, but doesn't have the property of movement. The property of movement emerges when two or more objects are in proximity with each other.
Similarly, the property of consciousness could never be discovered by science or any other means by observing a single neuron, yet the property of consciousness emerges when more than one neurons are combined in a particular way.
Protopanpsychism breaks Cartesian dualism by enabling both the brain and the mind to come under the single umbrella of physicalism. The content of the brain and the conscious mind emerges from the form of the physical brain.
If the mind and brain are two aspects of the same thing, and are part of a physicalist world, then this explains the epistemic connectivity between mind and brain.
Aristotle and the link between form and content
Aristotle's "four causes" were i) material cause , ie the bronze, ii) the formal cause, ie the statue of Hercules, iii) the efficient cause, ie, the sculptor and iv) the final cause , ie, the purpose of honouring Hercules. The formal cause is the form, the final cause is the content.
For man-made objects, the final cause is not problematic, in that the maker of the statue has made the decision, but for natural objects, purpose may be debated. What purpose do mountains serve, what purpose do humans serve, what is the purpose of anything.
Aristotle denied that purpose came from a divine maker, but rather that purpose was immanent in nature itself . IE, the purpose whether of mountains or humans existed within their very form, ie, content is form.
Purpose necessitates a holistic approach. As Aristotle wrote "we must think that a discussion of nature is about the composition and being as a whole, not about parts that can never occur in separation from the being they belong to". As Frege wrote in 1884, "Only in the context of sentence does a word have a meaning’. Frege's principle establishes contextualism. Individual words have no meaning or value unless they are understood within the context of a sentence, a reaction against the atomization of meaning.
Teleology is the explanation of phenomena in terms of the purpose they serve rather than of the cause by which they arise, in that the purpose of humankind has been determined by neither something in the past nor something in the future, but by the existent present. A change in form inevitably results in a change of purpose. As Jonathan Lear wrote " "real purposefulness requires that the end somehow govern the process along the way to its own realization - it is not, strictly speaking, the end specified as such that is operating from the start: it is form that directs the process of its own development from potentiality to actuality".
The purpose of something in the world, its content, may be said to be determined by the nature of its essence, in other words, its form.
Heidegger and the link between form and content
The value of a Derain is in its aesthetic of representations. The form holds both the aesthetic and the representational content.
Heidegger wrote The Origins of the Work of Art between 1935 and 1960, whereby the "origin" of an artwork is that from which and by which something is what it is and as it is, its essence. The artwork has a mode of being that it is the artwork itself. The origin of an artwork is the artwork itself. An artist may have caused the artwork, but it is the artwork that has caused the artist. The artwork determines what the artwork will be, not the artist. The artist is just a facilitator. Art as the mode of being makes both the artist and artwork ontologically possible. Art unfolds the artwork. The artwork has a life of its own, independent of any maker. Heidegger's phenomenology emphasises the artwork as "Being", as he said "back to the things themselves".
On the one hand, to appreciate art one must start with an understanding of what art is, yet on the other hand we can only appreciate art from the work itself. A paradox described by Plato as "A man cannot try to discover either what he knows or what he does not know. He would seek what he knows, for since he knows it there is no need of the inquiry, nor what he does not know, for in that case he does not even know what he is to look for". This is a circle only broken by an innate and a priori knowledge of Kantian pure and empirical sensible intuitions, of space, time and the categories of quantity, quality, relation, modality.
An artwork has Being and is its own Origin, yet we can understand art from our innate and a priori knowledge of aesthetics and representation that precedes ant experience of art. We can understand the aesthetic form and representational content as a single unity of apperception as a holistic synthesis of form and content.
Quoting Constance
Language is metaphor
In language is the syntax of form and the semantics of content. Language is a set of words. A word is a physical object that exists in the world, as much as a mountain exists in the world.
Words refer to, represent, are linked to, corresponds with either another object in the world or a private subjective experience, such that "mountain" is linked to mountain or "pain" is linked to pain.
A metaphor directly refers to one thing by mentioning another and asserts that what are being compared are identical and clarifies similarities between two different ideas.
As mountain is being referred to by mentioning "mountain", as pain is being referred to by mentioning "pain", as it is asserted that the reference of "mountain" is identical with mountain, as it is asserted that the reference of "pain" is identical with pain, as the similarities between "mountain" and mountain, "pain" and pain are being clarified, then the linkage between a word and what it refers to fulfil all the requirements of a metaphor.
The word as an object is different to what it refers, meaning that any linkage between the word and to what it refers is metaphorical. As language is metaphorical, all our understanding through language is metaphorical: evolution by natural selection, F = ma, the wave theory of light, DNA is the code of life, the genome is the book of life, gravity, dendritic branches, Maxwell's Demon, Schrödinger’s cat, Einstein’s twins, greenhouse gas, the battle against cancer, faith in a hypothesis, the miracle of consciousness, the gift of understanding, the laws of physics, the language of mathematics, deserving an effective mathematics, etc
Words are symbols that refer metaphorically. As a metaphorical link can be created between any known object in the world and a word or any known private subjective experience and a word, any known object in the world or known private subjective experience can be expressed in language, meaning that in language, nothing that is known is ineffable.
Conclusion
As language is metaphorical, and as every known object in the world or known private subjective experience can be expressed in metaphorical terms, everything that is known can be said, whether concrete concepts such as mountain, abstract concepts such as pain, non-existents such as “The present King of France is bald.”, negative existentials such as “Unicorns don’t exist.”, identities such as “Superman is Clark Kent.” or substitutions such as “Taylor believes that Superman is 6 feet tall.”
Only that which is unknown cannot be put into words. Only that which is unknown is ineffable. If it is known, it can be put into words and is expressible.
All well-said.
Do we….or do we not….still need to stipulate the criteria for determining how the unknowable isn’t a mere subterfuge? Seems like that would be the logical query to follow, “only the unknown cannot be put into words”.
It need not be unknowable in principle, just unknown in practice - and we would need to know that it is so. Some givens, via reasoning or experience, can be demarcated as known unknowns (if one pardons my Rumsfieldesque expression). All known unknowns will then be known ineffables.
To readdress examples in my first post here, hence, among some theistic folk, if G-d is a known unknown to them, G-d is then ineffable to them, and known to be so. As an alternative more down to earth example, if I know how to describe a painting but also know that I don’t know how to describe the particulars of how the painting makes me feel, then the painting’s properties will be effable to me but not the precise aesthetic experience which the painting provokes in me. All the same, it’s it, and known to be so by those who might express, "it is ineffable".
Can known unknowns be intersubjectively shared? Language use indicates that they can. As is exemplified in our being able to understand skits such as “Dude, you know.” “Know what?” “Dude …” “Oh, right, of course.”
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And as could also be argued for some Fly of the Lords or other: were it to be a known unknown.
This from a gentleman who questions 1+1=2 is a surprise. Assuming MU is not being sarcastic, there is value in his observation. Through math we gradually approach a moment of conceptualization, where the mantle of mathematics slips away, revealing a new level of reality that slowly becomes understandable and even effable.
This seemingly has happened when a rare mathematician claims to visualize objects in four dimensions. William Thurston I seem to recall made that claim. He suffered from a vision disorder as a child and that might have had an unexpected effect. Who knows?
The blind can use color words as labels (red ball vs. blue ball).
They can discuss the optical properties of different colored light.
They can use color words as metaphorical proxies for emotions.
The one thing they can't do is know the subjective experience of colors (assuming they didn't lose sight after birth). Because, not only do they lack this experience themselves, but this experience is completely incommunicable through language. It is ineffable.
Blind folk use colour words correctly, but do not see colours. Yep.
What is it that blind folk cannot say, yet sighted folk can?
There is something blind folk cannot do, not something they cannot say.
Hence the word "ineffable" is ill-used here.
Understood, and that’s the common argument, yes. The counterargument is that feelings per se are not cognitions, hence that part of understanding from which conceptions and the words representing them arise, and from which cognitions follow, is inactive with respect to feelings. So, while it is the case feelings cannot be put into words, the aesthetic judgements which follow from them, can, and those are to which we put words.
Simply put, we don’t speak apodeitically of feelings because understanding doesn’t treat them as objects of reason. Another way to look at it, feelings regard the condition of the conscious subject, whereas understanding regards the condition of the conscious subject’s intellect. This has support when we consider that sometimes it just doesn’t make sense to feel a certain way about a certain thing, e.g., doesn’t make sense to cry over beautiful music.
———-
Quoting javra
Doesn’t the unknown in practice still require an explanatory principle? I should think that if it is the case that knowledge is only possible in conjunction with principles, the criteria for the unknowable must be either the negation of those, the validity of its own, or the absence of any. But principles at any rate.
If we were playing ball, I’d have to concede a score.
Yes. Per my example, it is something they cannot do, and we (sighted) cannot say, to them. We cannot say the experience of sight, it is ineffable.
Quoting Mww
Cantor gave us the language to put what was previously unknown into words. Do we use "ineffable" for things we might say, but so far haven't? Isn't "ineffable" reserved for stuff that we cannot in principle say?
Quoting RussellA
Beyond 's quite valid criticism of that phrasing, Cantor shows that what was previously unknown can indeed be put into words; putting it into words is the act of making it known.
So it might be more astute to say that what is known can be put into words, and what is unknown becomes known by putting it in words.
You seemed to miss the point. What is ineffable cannot be said. Yet a blind person can talk of colours. by that very fact, colours are not ineffable to them.
It would be an error to say that what is ineffable is what cannot be done, or that what cannot be done is ineffable.
(An error in grammar)
Was there some sense in that scrambled post? I'm surprised. Cheers.
It depends on what you mean by "know". I know what my friend looks like, but I can't put that "knowing" into words that could communicate what she looks like such that you could, on the basis of what I told you. recognized her on the street. For me our whole experience is ineffable, since we speak only in generalities, whereas experience is particular. But again, it depends on what you mean by "ineffable"; on how you conceive its range and application.
You can endlessly verbalize about the experience of color. Moreover you can endlessly use color words. Nonetheless, the experience of color cannot be communicated. That is what makes it ineffable.
Yep. You got it. Enough rope.
Quoting hypericin
Yeah, it can. The cup is red.
:grin: Am reminded of "tears of joy" ... could happen ... but your point is well taken.
Quoting Mww
I’m unclear as to how to best interpret this. But in addressing principles, what comes to my mind are epistemological principles. To address a relatively concrete example that we could all relate to: The future is uncertain.
Because we know this via experience-laden inference, we can thereby express that the future is “uncertain”. That we know the future to be uncertain then implies that we know - hold JTB - that much of the future is unknown to us - i.e., that we don’t hold JTB regarding some of what will be - usually, and in general, this in correlation to how distant a future we’re addressing. Of course, we have our best inferences of the immediate future, that tomorrow will most likely resemble today to a significant extent, etc., but in terms of what we clearly know the be unknown aspects of the future:
We can speculate as to possible alternatives of what might be, and these will be know to us as such, and thereby expressible by us. Example: a year from now it might rain or not rain at the location I’m currently at. That said, while it may be true that some might presume to know and thereby express what the case will be, for those who know they don’t know what will be what will be is quite technically inexpressible.
This is a relatively challenging example because alternative expressions can be used: the future might be X, or is likely to be X. Still, if we hold JTB that we do not hold JTB regarding what the future will be in a certain respect, then, for those who so hold a known unknown, this aspect of the future will be ineffable.
This roundabout line of reasoning to my mind will then apply to any inferred known unknown.
When it comes to experience, it gets far trickier to express, but there is - and some here might be very appalled by this - a certain form of meta-cognizance regarding what one is consciously experiencing: a non-inferential knowing that one knows. The clearest simple example of this that currently comes to mind is in our tip-of-the-tongue experiences. Here, we know the word’s meaning we want to express and likewise know that we, at least momentarily, don’t know the phenomenal word itself. Furthermore, maybe most poignantly, we non-inferentially know that we have knowledge-by-acquaintance of the phenomenal word although we can’t for the life of us recall what it might be.
Then, in a similar, but far more complex, way, we could non-inferentially know that we don’t know how to articulate that emotive state of being we are knowledgeable of via direct experience (via a kind of knowledge by acquaintance).
Don’t know if this helps any. But that’s my best take so far.
To your personal subjectivity, your experience is unrelatable to me. But you’re not relating an experience, you’re relating a certain understanding of the properties you have already thought as belonging to an object I will eventually perceive. If our intelligences are sufficient congruent, which they very well should be, I should be able to transpose your words back into my standing intuitions, such that I will perceive exactly what you are enabling me to do.
As for generalities, the more properties you relay to me, the less general the description becomes, hence the easier to recognize the person.
Still, in one respect, you’re correct, in that merely perceiving the correct person in a crowd is very far from knowing the person. But, technically, that wasn’t the knowledge you enabled me to acquire with a mere descriptive appearance.
So I submit that you can put your knowing into words, at least for that which you want me to do with it.
I’m gathering that’s the consensus opinion, yes. Just seems rather silly to overburden what was already impossible, with another word that doesn’t change anything.
Anything at all, that cannot follow from principles, is impossible. So why does it need to be ineffable too?
I don't understand that. What are "principles"?
HA!!! Nice try.
Principles are ineffable.
:rofl: :roll:
This says the cup is colored red, but nothing about the experience of the color red.
Quoting hypericin
The ineffable is about what cannot be said, not what cannot be done.
A blind person cannot see that the cup is red. But your claim was that there is something they cannot say - something sighted folk can say but not blind folk.
What is it that sighted folk can say, but not blind folk?
It would not help your case to argue that neither blind nor sighted folk can talk about the experience of red.
But also, that is also just plain false - we do talk about the experience of red.
I'm blind. Please explain to me in terms I can understand what it is like to see red. If you cannot, you must concede that the experience is ineffable.
… until they aren’t.
Hence: Nietzsche’s principle of will to power, Freud’s principle of will to pleasure (in fairness, together with his reality principle), Frankl’s principle of will to meaning, and the one which I find most important, Enigma’s principles of lust.
It might take a whole lot of reasoning to make me change my mind on this stance:
Given neither of us arrived here by reasoning, it ain't gonna be reasoning that gets us out. :joke:
You have my sympathy. Try reading Austin's Sense and Sensibilia, or Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations...
I'm sighted. Please explain to me in terms I can understand what it is like to see red. I don't think you can, and again, that's because seeing red is something that we do, not something that is sayable. So saying that "the experience of red" is ineffable is making a sort of category mistake. That's the sort of grammatical problem that comes from supposing that seeing red is some sort of private experience, as opposed to learning to use the word "red"
It can't be said, but it can be shown.
(Edit: This post was done too rapidly and is inconsiderate. I am honestly surprised that a blind person would suppose themselves to be unable to enter into a conversation about colour, since I have had such conversations with blind folk. Doubtless I am misunderstanding your position. )
Listing properties communicates experience? Only if speaker and listener have common ground. Hypericin is correct wrt congenitally blind listeners.
That's just the way it is.
Nah. Too anarchistic.
Ok. It might help if you stated what you think he is claiming.
I think he's claiming that you can't teach someone what red is. You can only point to it. If they have the anatomy and physiology that allows them to have that experience, you can help them attach the word "red" to it.
Plus there's a Meno's paradox situation here. All speech ever does is point, and then we hope they got it.
Well, teaching is showing.
I say in addition that a blind person may enter into a conversation concerning colours, using colour words accurately, for all sorts of purposes, and yet what they cannot do is to provide the colour of something by looking at it.
What think you?
The first target here is blanket statements such as "blind folk cannot understand the meaning of colour". Blind folk do make use of colour words.
See Making sense of how the blind ‘see’ color
(Edit: I reneged on my agreement with what I quoted from you. Learning what red is just is being able to pick the red flowers, describe the sports car, stop at the lights and so on. Meaning is not a thing in one's head but what we do. But that's the big picture. Small steps first. )
Quoting hypericin
Thanks for minimizing the philosophical jargon, this helps to improve the dialogue.
Quoting Constance
Not exactly, another human being is part of this world and they can tell me who they think they are.
Quoting Constance
I do not share your causal commitment here. We don't have a world because I have memories of it, but I have memories of it because there is a world.
I don't find there is much sense or value talking about "out there" of the world as it really is. If Husserl came to this concern through thinking of the metaphysical implications of illusions or hallucinations, I am not sympathetic to this worry. Talk about "real" loses its meaning because those who theorize never put forward what we are suppose to confirm, verify, detect to determine what it real and what is not. As for its value, I think CS Peirce said it best when he ask readers what would be wrong with a metaphysical theory that claimed a diamond is actually soft, and only becomes hard when it is touched. "Peirce argued that there is "no falsity" in such thinking, for there is no way of proving it. However, he claimed that the meaning of a concept is derived from the object that the concept relates to and the effects it has on our senses. Whether we think of the diamond as "soft until touched" or "always hard" before our experience, therefore, is irrelevant. Under both theories the diamond feels the same, and can be used in exactly the same way. However, the first theory is far more difficult to work with, and so is of less value to us." (from The Philosophy Book, Big Ideas Simply Explained)
Quoting Constance
And yes, it makes sense to talk about the table, its shape, size, color, etc and to doubt the sense and value of such talk is foolhardy.
Quoting Constance
Just because I name that object "couch" and a teach a child to call that object a "couch" it is quite a reach that we both don't detect the "pure presence" of the "couch". But how would you know anyway, it is not like you have any privilege access to my experiences to characterize the presence as "pure" vs "impure."
Banno sort of beat me to the punch a little, but I’m going to join in for a second anyway.
It’s to be acknowledged that words for colors have meaning to blind people: expressions such as, “I’m seeing red”, “I’m blue”, or “it’s not all black and white” can be readily meaningful. Likewise can other associations between colors and properties be made: green is generally a cold color; yellow warm; purple is beyond the light spectrum and can signify some form of spirituality (these are examples taken from personal experience interacting with one or two people blind from birth). I never asked, but it’s also at least possible that people blind from birth could hold some form of color scheme that could be seen by them with the mind’s eye.
That said, what a concrete red apple perceptually looks like will not be a shared experience. And its particularities will not be expressible.
More interesting to me, I’ve read of blind people being very pleased at touching the surface of heavily impastoed paintings of the ocean’s waves and crests. It helped them get a tactile sense of what the ocean looks like. They held descriptive understandings of this, but, obviously, had no visual experience of it. And the tactile feel of the painting helped them form an image - however accurate or inaccurate it may have been - in their mind’s eye.
As to expressability, my take away is that much of the meaning of color words can be cognized via language by those who can't see - but not the direct experience of perceptual color. This anymore than we know what a color blind person experiences when looking at the world day in and day out, or else what a fully blind person experiences via heightened sensitivity to tactile feelings and sounds, and the mental mappings resultant from this.
The issue though is why, or how. Suppose I write here, the word "box", and I tell you that this word signifies something, it stands for something. How do you know whether it signifies a particular which I have named, or whether it is a concept which the word refers to. You say it can't be both, but why not? I think that in most common usage it actually would refer to both. If I say "get me the box", I refer to a particular, but you know what thing to get me because of the concept. So I must be using the word to signify both. Now we have no dichotomy of one or the other, we have both. The word actually signifies a sort of unity of particular and universal. How can we describe this unity? Is it even correct to call it a unity?
Quoting Mww
The issue was that there is a difference between the representation and the thing represented. But this led me into a problem with boundaries, so perhaps "difference" was not the right word. In the above paragraph I described a "unity", and this is probably a better word than "difference". Now it's not a difference between the representation and the thing represented, but a unity of the two. The issue of "ineffability" is evident because I can use these words freely, "difference", "unity", "boundary", or whatever, and it really doesn't matter. I'm just choosing a word to talk about something which doesn't already have a word for it. That's common in philosophy. But some would say that if there is no word for it, we cannot talk about it. That's not true though, we just get a more free choice in our words when we approach the supposed ineffable. There aren't any words for the thing to be talked about, making people think that it can't be talked about, but really we're just free to make the words up.
Quoting Mww
Sure, trying to do something I can't do is a problem, but it can be overcome. That's the point with learning, advancement of knowledge, and practise. So, I can often do at a later time what I could not do at an earlier time. And this is an issue with the concept of the ineffable. What is ineffable at one time may not be at a later time. But some people do not see that language evolves, and we learn to overcome problems, and that's how knowledge advances. For them, the ineffable might appear like a wall which we cannot get past, or a problem which cannot be overcome. I see it as a temporary inconvenience, and a good reason to use words very freely.
Quoting Mww
For some of us, using words freely is fun, so the ineffable presents us with a good source of entertainment.
Quoting jgill
Yes, I do question this phrase, "1+1=2". And I just state the obvious, that "1+1" does not say the same thing as "2" does. So those who claim that "=" means the same as, are mistaken.
This sign, "=", actually gives us a lot of freedom of expression. We are allowed to, arbitrarily point to two distinct things, assign them the same value as each being "one", and make the conclusion that each, as one, is equal to the other. Of course they are not the same as one another, but by designating them as equal to each other, we can perform all sorts of magic tricks of transposition. I don't practise math, but I bet that's fun.
The blind can know how to use the word, that color is often a property of objects, for instance. They also know that they don't know what it is in the sense of being able to see it.
Quoting frank
They cannot tell what colour something is. But do they know the meaning of colour words?
I take the answer to be "yes", and that consequently the meaning of a colour word is not an association with the memory of some ineffable sensations.
What counts is the capacity to make use of the word in various situations - that rather than talk of the meaning of a word we would be better off talking about its use.
I understand your argument. I think most blind people would disagree with you.
As a child I would pretend to be blind, walking around with my eyes closed. To me, blind people are silent super heroes.
Cool.
Quoting frank
Really? That surprises me. I associate with folk in the general disability community, where the implication that blind folk cannot understand colour words would be treated as offensive ableist crap, and suitably mocked.
If you stopped equivocating, they would say, "Yes, of course."
Good. So we agree that blind folk are able to talk about colours.
You misunderstood, the frustration was at your mental block, not mine.
Quoting Banno
Again, you misunderstand. No one can say anything about the experience of red. It is ineffable.
Quoting Banno
There are a million things we do, the experience of which is perfectly communicable. I can describe perfectly well what it is like to fly in an airplane, so that someone who has never done so will have at least a rough facsimile of the experience. But not so of red, or of qualia in general. We cannot even begin to communicate their experience.
Quoting Banno
So you are committed to the claim that a computer, LaMDA for instance, that is trained to use the word red appropriately is "seeing red"? Maybe in your English, but not mine. I think most would agree that seeing red is absolutely a private experience.
No one can say anything about the experience of red, not because it's ineffable, but because it doesn't exist. Experiences are constructed by the brain post hoc, way, way after any processing associated with the wavelength of light reflected off an object. The 'experience' of red is a nonsense. We experience a red postbox, a red car, a red rose. No one experiences just 'red'.
Even if it were true that conscious experiences are epiphenomenal, this is not to say they don't exist.
Quoting Isaac
What is the difference between experiencing a red apple and the identical but green apple? The experience of redness and greenness, about which we can say no more.
Redness is always experienced as an attribute of a particular. Voilà, I said something about the experience of red.
And yet our blind friend is none the wiser to it.
No. There's simply no evidence to support such a notion. The parts of the brain which process colour are way back on the chain of processing they're not even consulted by the time we're constructing the difference between a red apple and green apple. We might later abstract the notion of a colour from two similar objects to describe what's changed and what's remained the same, but this would be a construction (a socially mediated one at that, therefore bound up with language). It's not an 'experience' in any sense[hide="Reveal"]other than that we can reflect on having just done it and construct a narrative about what happened[/hide].
By construction. Socially mediated.
Quoting hypericin
No. They're not. That's the point. What you're calling your 'experience of red' is a socially mediated construction. Therefore it is bound up with the language your culture uses and so can be reiterated in that language.
Subterfuge is about deceit, in that we are being deceived in some way. Are we being deceived that the unknown is in fact known?
As @Javra writes, there is the unknowable in principle and there is the unknown in practice. The unknowable in principle cannot be put into words. The unknown in practice can be put into words but only after it is known, meaning that when unknown it cannot be put into words, but when known it can be put into words. It remains true that "only the unknown cannot be put into words"
Are we being deceived about the unknown or is the unknown just a fact of the limits of the intellect. Every animal has a natural limit to its intellectual powers, limited by the physical nature of its brain. Is the horse being deceived that allegories in The Old Man and The Sea will always be unknowable to it, no, it is just a fact. The human is an animal, and similarly, we are not being deceived that some things will always be unknowable to us, it is just a fact.
Yes, just as we do for every single word ever. Which leads inevitably to….under what conditions is it impossible for a word to be invented, such that the object the word would represent, remains impossible to talk about. Then and only then, does the notion of ineffability attain its logical validity.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
That you are communicating with me presupposes congruent intelligence.
That being the case, and under the assumption I don’t know what “box” indicates, nevertheless, by perceiving the expression itself and alone, I immediately understand “box” presupposes a conception you have denominated, however arbitrarily, by that particular representation. Otherwise, I surmise you couldn’t have expressed the word, insofar as, due to our congruent intelligences, I couldn’t if it were me. If left at this point, I may or may not consider “box” a universal conception, because I don’t know what the word indicates.
On the other hand, if I already know what “box” means, I also understand it isn’t a universal conception, because I know it is a particular thing and the Principle of Complementarity tells me the one can never be the other.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Not necessarily. Depends on the extent of my experience. As before, if I don’t know, without experience, you informing me that “box” signifies something, while reducing the conception to a particular in the class of things, doesn’t inform me as to what kind of particular thing in that class it is. So I wouldn’t know what to get merely from the signification of something.
And if I do know what the word “box” stands for, which means your signification and mine are congruent, I know what I’m expected to get.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
If you’d written the parentheticals rather than the crossed outs, I wouldn’t have that argument to make.
Yep, and overstepping those limits determines the extend of subterfuge….self-deception….and recognizing them prevents it.
———-
Quoting RussellA
We’ve already agreed it is necessarily true only the unknow-able cannot be put into words. Anything else is either redundant or superfluous, sustained by….
…..Unknown in practice is merely a condition of experience, susceptible to possible amendment.
…..Unknowable in principle is altogether unsusceptible to any condition of experience.
…..Unknown in practice, an a posteriori condition, and unknowable in principle, an a priori condition, are completely distinct from each other and have no business being intermingled.
……The unknown in practice is not conditioned by, and does not adhere to, the principle that the unknowable is impossible to conceive and thereby represent in words.
……The unknowable in principle absolutely cannot change its state by becoming known in practice, but the unknown in practice, can.
That lightning was not manifestation of the anger of the gods was not unknowable to the ancients in principle; it was merely a matter of unknown practical knowledge.
But none of that you didn’t already know. I’m just reiterating the maxims grounding an seemingly inconsequential conclusion.
Bracketing should not be looked at as a logical procedure, I argue, as if the object can only be seen if language contributes nothing to the perception. I hold that one can, in the temporal dynamic of receiving the object, acknowledge that which is not language within the contextual possibilities language gives us, and this is evidenced simply in the manifest qualities of the encounter, visual, tactile of whatever. to me it is as clear as a bell: the taste of this pear is not a language event, notwithstanding attendant structures the understanding deploys in the event of the experience. The trick seems to be to overcome the default reduction of the pear to the familiar. This is habit (this goes back to Kierkegaard who actually thought this habitual perceptual event was what original/hereditary SIN was about. Weird to think like this, but his Concept of Anxiety originally holds a great many of the century later themes for continental philosophy).
I think philosophy has thought its way out of "direct apprehension" of the world, and in doing so, undercuts the actuality before us. Philosophers have "talked their way out of" the actuality of the world. But this leads to the core of this argument: how do language and the world "meet"? This is no place for a thesis, so I'll say I agree with Heidegger and others who say language is part and parcel of the objects we experience, and it is only by a perverse abstraction to think of them as apart. But there is nothing in this that says language and any of its descriptive analytic accounting, is the sole source of the understanding's grasp of the world. I don't agree with Rorty, in other words, when he rejects non propositional knowledge;I think rather, non propositional knowledge occurs IN propositional knowledge. I think of Hume saying reason has no content, and would just as soon annihilate human existence as not. It is an empty vessel, and the meanings are unrestrained by this. God could appear in all her glory, and language's restrictions wouldn't bat an eye.
Quoting Moliere
You are certainly not alone in this. But Husserl is clearly NOT defending scientific foundationalism. Just the opposite. Science is a contingent enterprise, for it takes no interest in examining its own presuppositions. Prior to talk about timespace, there is Heidegger's (or even Kant's) temporal ontology, and Husserl's Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time. It is an analysis of the structure of experience at the presuppositional level of inquiry.What Husserl thinks is so grand is not empirical science, and repeatedly emphasizes this. It is the intuitive givenness of the world that is taken up by and underlying science.
Quoting Moliere
That is a good point. This is why I argue for a value ontology. Redness as such really has no independent epistemic intimation of what it is. But the pure phenomenon of ethics and aesthetics does, and Wittgenstein agrees, sort of. "The good is what I call divinity," he wrote (Value and Culture). Pain itself constitutes an injunction not to do that, whatever it is. What of pleasure, love, happiness? This kind of thing bears the injunction to do such things encourage these. To me, this is simple, obvious. It is not that the world speaks, but one has to see that an ethical question takes one beyond facts, and so, what is the difference between what is factual and what is ethical/aesthetic? The answer lies in a value reduction whereby facts are suspended or bracketed. The essence of the ethics is this value-residuum. I say Kant did the same thing with reason.
Why is value and ethics grounded in metaphysics? That is a hard question.
This kind of inquiry is metaethical as it tries to isolate the value dimension of ethical affairs. This "good" of "bad" of happiness and suffering. Consider how Kant had to build an argument that ultimately posted transcendence as the metaphysical ground for pure reason. This is because, and I defer to early Wittgenstein again, there is a complete indeterminacy at the terminal end of inquiry. Value issues from this indeterminacy, which I call metaphysics.
This line of thinking is stubbornly resilient critique, because it puts the onus of justification on the world and its presence or the Being of beings. if you prefer. It is an appeal to actuality. I do not expect, nor have I gotten, nods of approval.
Although @Javra rightly points out that there is the unknowable in principle and there is the unknown in practice, I don't agree that this renders my quote "only that which is unknown cannot be put into words" invalid. It cannot be the case that something that is unknown can be put into words just because at some future date it happens to become known. If something is known then it can be put into words, regardless of whether it was known or unknown at some date in the past, and where knowing precedes saying what one knows.
"Ineffable" is defined as something too great or extreme to be described in words, such as ineffable joy.
As regards the unknown in practice, at this present moment in time, no one knows the number of sheep on the hill behind the cottage. As the number is unknown, the number cannot be put into words. But as the number is not unknowable in principle, and as no one would say such knowledge is of great or extreme significance, ineffable would not be the correct word to use. As the unknown in practice can be put into words but only after it is known, meaning that when unknown it cannot be put into words, but when known it can be put into words. One can say that the unknown cannot be put into words, but in this case, the unknown is not ineffable.
As regards the unknowable in principle, although I know my pain, I don't know the pain of others. The pain of others is unknowable in principle. In this case the unknown cannot be put into words, and because of great or extreme significance is ineffable.
Therefore, neither the unknown in practice and the unknowable in principle can be put into words, though only the unknowable in principle may be defined as ineffable.
The problem is, how does one talk about the ineffable, that which cannot be described in words. As previously set out: i) remain silent about it, ii) ignore any referent, iii) treat it as a second-order predicate, iii) describe what it isn't, iv) not talk about it but experience it, v) treat it as a metaphor or vi) ignore any possible relevance.
Perhaps we should take the example of Cantor, who discovered the concept of transfinite numbers, numbers that are infinite in the sense that they are larger than all finite numbers, yet not necessarily infinite.
i) is incorrect in that we obviously don't remain silent about infinity
ii) is incorrect in that we don't ignore the referent, which is infinity
iii) is possible, in that the second order predicate "is infinity" designates a concept rather than an object.
iv) is not correct, in that we cannot experience infinity
v) is possible, in that language is metaphorical.
vi) is incorrect, in that we don't ignore any possible relevance of infinity.
This leaves treating "infinity" either as iii) a second-order predicate or v) a metaphor.
A metaphor is the application of a predicate that is not in the appropriate category for what is being referred to, allowing a hidden essence or attribute of the predicate to be made visible by allowing a category mistake. For example, "God the Father" is a metaphor as God can neither be the father of humans or a male. By giving the object "God" the predicate "the father", we are making a clear category mistake, but enabling us to experience the character of God more clearly. We could say "God is infinite", which is a metaphor. We could say "transfinite numbers are infinite", which is a metaphor. By comparing an unknown object with something else using metaphor, we get closer to what that object is.
But second-order predicates as part of language are metaphorical. The conclusion is that we use the word "ineffable" for those situations that are unknowable in principle, are of great or extreme significance and are described metaphorically.
Having gotten that (this false ineffable) out of the way, we can now approach the true ineffable, with the issue of conception. If something never comes to your mind, you cannot put a word to it. So, let's assume the possibility, that there is a huge part of reality which is completely undisclosed to our senses, and never comes to anyone's mind in any conception, sense image, or anything like that. Would you agree that this logical possibility validates the notion of ineffability?
Further, we have mathematics which produces evidence of this large part of reality which is not sensed, nor has it entered into human minds, concepts like spatial expansion, dark energy and dark matter. Except, now we have an issue, the use of mathematics has allowed some of these ineffable things, those just mentioned, to enter the mind. Now they are no longer ineffable, because we see that although they were ineffable at one time, they no longer are now, they have some conception and words for them. So all we've done is produced another sense of false ineffable. It's not truly ineffable because for everything which hasn't yet entered the mind there is a possibility that it may.
One false ineffable was the things which no one has a word for, and that was rectified by creating a word for them. The other false ineffable was the things which have never entered into the mind, so they could not have a word for them, nor could we produce a word for them, because they were not there in the mind. However, we see that the application of mathematics and speculation bring some of these things into the mind, so they are not really ineffable in a true sense either. Is it possible, that there are such things which could never be brought into the mind, not even though the use of mathematics? This would imply that there are limitations to the mind, to the use of mathematics, and human knowledge in general, which would make it so that there are things out there, aspects of reality which cannot ever be brought into the mind. It would be absolutely impossible for the mind to apprehend them, by any means. That might be the true ineffable.
What would be the point in believing in the ineffable then? If the human inclination is to learn, advance knowledge, toward knowing all that there is to know, what would be the point in positing somethings which are impossible to know? That would be self-defeating. It would kill the desire to know, because we would quit the enterprise, believing that it is impossible to know these things. So I belief that the ineffable is a logically valid concept, but it is unphilosophical. Classically, it's said to be repugnant to the mind, because it validates unintelligibility, like infinite regress. It is contrary to the philosophical mindset, which is the desire to know, and therefore it is an unphilosophical concept. In reality, it amounts to an intellectual laziness; there are aspects of reality which we do not know about, but since we cannot ever know about them, there is no point to trying to understand them. This is the issue which Aristotle pointed to with the proposed apeiron, or prime matter. This is the proposal of a fundamental unintelligible base, upon which all the universe is supported. It is an unphilosophical principle which is self-defeating to philosophy because it stipulates that the foundation of the universe is unintelligible, thereby discouraging any attempt to understand the foundation of the universe. That is an unphilosophical metaphysics, to simply say that the universe is based in some fundamental randomness which is impossible for the human mind to grasp, or understand in any way, therefore forget about it and think about something else.
Quoting Mww
The point though, was that you know I am referring to a particular called "the box", not because I have not pointed out this particular and given it that name, but because you know the type of thing which is called a box. So in order for the word to do its job, you need to respect both, that "box" refers to a universal, and that it refers to a particular. And the need to know both is required for one specific instance of use.
Quoting Mww
But the congruency in many cases is a feature of the conception, rather than pointing out a particular, and the conception is what allows you to identify the individual. Maybe that example wasn't clear, so here's another. I pass you my car keys, and tell you to get my car, it is the black Civic at the far corner of the lot. I am referring to a particular, my car, but I lead you to it through an understanding of the conceptions, "black", "Civic", "far corner of the lot", not by physically pointing out the particular. So the words really have a conceptual reference in your mind, but through that conceptual reference you are able to pick out the particular which is the 'real' referent.
Put aside historical references. It will only confuse. Think of the differences as they are laid out before you here, in the argument.
Quoting RussellA
Yes, all very predictable. You simply have to move out of how science would defend materialism, and into how philosophy would (should) do this. The latter looks to the presuppositions of the former. Once again, you have to go to foundational assumptions. Before the world systems of thought can even be discussed, what needs to be discussed is the basic conditions of knowing things at all. And how an ontology can be possibly conceived.
I would ask you not to ignore this basic issue, basic to the question of ineffability. If you have ready to hand a long list of ready made responses quoting scientific journals, you are simply begging the question.
Quoting RussellA
Heidegger is NOT going to help you defend materialism. At any rate, here is a passage from his Origin of the Artwork:
[i]What art is should be inferable from the work. What the work of art is we can come
to know only from the nature of art. Anyone can easily see that we are moving in a
circle. Ordinary understanding demands that this circle be avoided because it violates
logic. What art is can be gathered from a comparative examination of actual art works.
But how are we to be certain that we are indeed basing such an examination on art
works if we do not know beforehand what art is? And the nature of art can no more be
arrived at by a derivation from higher concepts than by a collection of characteristics
of actual art works. For such a derivation, too, already has in view the characteristics
that must suffice to establish that what we take in advance to be an art work is one in
fact. But selecting works from among given objects, and deriving concepts from principles, are equally impossible here, and where these procedures are practiced they are a
self-deception.
Thus we are compelled to follow the circle. This is neither a makeshift nor a defect.
To enter upon this path is the strength of thought, to continue on it is the feast of
thought, assuming that thinking is a craft. Not only is the main step from work to art a
circle like the step from art to work, but every separate step that we attempt circles in
this circle.[/i]
This "circle" is hermeneutical, not material foundational.
Quoting RussellA
You do see the issue that comes out of this, fight? I mean, to refer to a mountain at all is to "say" or think 'mountain'. So in order to see how language stands to mountains and the like, one has to look to language first, that matrix out of which mountain is conceived. If it were the case that mountains and other objects directly confronted inquiry, as a direct communication it its "mountain-ness" that is apart from you and your existence, then you would have a kind of metaphysical logos, the "what they are" being "out there" and you there receiving it.
But what is this epistemic nexus that makes this even conceivable? If you can't even IMAGINE what this is, then the idea is unsustainable. This is the trouble with materialist thinking.
Quoting RussellA
It is an odd way to think of this. Metaphors borrow from one context to fit another, but it is not identity that is passed on; it is similarity. I am a real lion before my morning coffee, e.g. There is nothing of the desire to kill and eat live gazelles in this. But I am grouchy and ill tempered, a small bit like a lion's aggression.
And concepts are NOT what they refer to. If I say to you that I broke my ankle, I am not thereby transmitting to you a broken ankle. Words "stand in" for the world.
And the whole idea you present carries the assumption that we all know what mountains are. Of course, we do, but how does this occur, THIS is the question. Materialism, even something like Galen Strawson conceived in his Real Materialism, can't handle this.
Quoting RussellA
I see nothing but problems with this. How is it that material brain cells have a metaphorical relation with anything but brain cells? And if it is physical brains cells all the way down, how does physicality not reduce all that is said here to mere physicality? You can say, well, our experience is just what physicality does, but then you have to completely reconstrue what the idea means to accommodate perception, affectivity, values, thought, ethics, aesthetics, consciousness, and so on.
But then, meaning does not issue from what materialism can provide. One has to think again, completely reorient the approach, and this takes you only to one place: phenomenology, the "beginning" of things.
"Only that which is unknown is ineffable"?? We don't know how to send a rocket to another galaxy, yet. Is this an issue of ineffability?
But Wittgenstein was not turning away like this when he went to war. He wanted to know this experience, at the front line, something he made formals requests for.
You cannot speak the world, and I agree. But then, our words NEVER do this. I think Rorty and others right when they say that at root, truth is made, not discovered. But ethics has this extraordinary dimension to it which is value IN the presence itself. This is still given to the understanding in only the way thought can do this, but it is the residuum of experiential presence that sustains through to the end of the interpretative reduction. It will not be reduced to anything, and so philosophy needs to be very attentive to it. It is AS IF the world itself speaks: do not do this! Think of the default prohibition on assault: Why not! It hurts, and this speaks for itself. Hurting IS an interpretative term, contextually bound; but there is that certain ineffable "otherness' that is there.
The practical upshot of this is, well, extraordinary: Our ethical entanglements have a gravitas beyond what can be said.
Okay! I can't help but argue though. For me, as I grow older, the matter is exactly the opposite. I simply must understand why oh why we are born to suffer and die. And this goes metaphysical in an instant.
Then please, demonstrate so. Unless you claim you have none?
"That red postbox was very vibrant for a moment, it reminded me of blood for some reason, I think it was the horror film I'd just watched. Just as the sun caught it though, the colour was more muted, like autumn leaves, I felt a lot calmer."
This tells me a quality of the sensation (vibrancy), another color sensation it reminded you of(blood), and how it later made you feel(calmer). But nothing about the sensation itself. I can understand your account only because I experience the same color sensations. If I did not, if I were blind, or an alien, I wouldn't know what you were talking about, no matter how immersed I was in your culture.
Yes. Validity of the notion, not the conception itself. Point being, the notion of impossibility carries the exact same implication as the notion of ineffability. Impossibility in turn, carries the power and weight of a pure categorical conception, whereas ineffability is a mere logical construct.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Ok. This is elaboration of ’s knowledge in practice.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yep. What I’ve been advocating. There’s even an example of what something like that would be. Those cannot be named as existents, simply from the thesis that our manner of naming things could not possibly be applied to them. It is tacit acknowledgement that we have no warrant to claim our intelligence is the only possible kind of intelligence there is, from which follows that we cannot declare such things are impossible in themselves but only that they are absolutely impossible for our kind of intelligence. And it isn’t because we don’t know how, but that we are not even equipped for it.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I can’t think of one. If a thing is already impossible, what’s the point in calling the same thing something else?
————
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, I know you’re referring to the box, but no, there’s nothing contained in what you told me that justifies I should have already known what the word you wrote, “box”, stands for. Dialectical consistency demands I work only with that which has been given to me, and from that, I couldn’t deduce the type of thing you’re talking about is something I should already know. I brought this to your attention with the parenthetical.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, I need a universal in order for a particular to be possible on the one hand, and cognizable on the other. My contention is only that “box” isn’t it. Put another way, box is a conception itself subsumed under a more encompassing conception, e.g., “container”, hence cannot be a universal, which is not subsumed under a conception, insofar as there are none greater than it.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Ok, but being feature of congruent conceptions reduces to congruent understandings, which I hinted at by prefacing my comment with the necessity for congruent intelligences, which includes understanding.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
And there it is: precisely the missing conceptual schema of “box”. And while the inclusive schema with respect to the car isn’t physically pointing, I have a much greater chance of locating it because of them. Besides….you didn’t point to the box either. You just told me to go get one.
Good stuff. Socrates would be happy.
Those are all there is to 'the sensation itself'. You have evidence of something more?
Quoting hypericin
@Banno has already disabused you of this misunderstanding. You could and would know exactly what I'm talking about by learning how to use the words correctly.
Yes. A blind person would understand all those words and yet know nothing of the sensation of red.
Quoting Isaac
He certainly has not. A computer can learn how to use the words correctly yet know nothing of what it's talking about.
Take pain as a less loaded example. Suppose someone was born with no sensation of pain. They can certainly learn to use "pain", "ouch!", Etc correctly, yet have no knowledge of what pain is like.
I am not sure 'why' questions are of much use when applied to life but, as you suggest, there are plenty of baroque 'answers' available to such questions. My favorites are mundane: nihilism and naturalism. We're back to the ineffable it seems. For my money there is nothing 'true' we can say about life when questions of meaning arise. There's a few thousand years of speculation and superstition no one can agree upon and it's all of no use in finding a plumber on a Saturday night when the sewerage is backed up.
So you keep saying, but you're offering nothing by way of argument. I don't agree that there exists a 'sensation of red'. I've studied perception (in relation to the formation of beliefs) and I've found nothing which answers that description. So if you want to make a case that such a thing exists, make that case. Just saying it exists is unconvincing.
Quoting hypericin
This is just assertion. A computer processes the information about how to use words differently to a human. If it processed them similarly it might well 'know' what it's talking about. Again, there doesn't seem to be anything which answers the description of some body of knowledge that is a 'sensation of red'.
Quoting hypericin
Again, there doesn't appear to be any such body of knowledge. Pain sensations appear to be constructed, similarly to other emotions.
Aren’t you forgetting the perspectival role of the body here? Our use of langauge is not divorced from our embodiment but presupposes it. Thus there needs to be room for unintelligibility in language, which shows up as situations where, for instance a blind person is marginalized from a sighted language community due to a gap in intelligibility.
Quoting Isaac
And neither does there exist a socially constructed notion of red that is completely shared within a language
community. It would at best be only partially shared, continually contested and redetermined , slightly differently for each participant, in each instantiation, relative to purposes, context and capacities.
This goes some way towards what I was attempting to point out as ineffable -- we cannot speak for others. I thought you were claiming that you were blind at first -- but if you're not blind, then one couldn't say things like "the blind are like this" and such. A blind person could, of course -- because they have that experience. But it doesn't make sense for me to speculate on the experience of the blind if I'm not blind. It makes much more sense to ask them.
I am sympathetic to this. What are your thoughts regarding the variations within a shared understanding? While it seems accurate to say that people have different understandings of red, do you consider those differences are sufficient to warrant being seen as incompatible.
Quoting Tom Storm
It really depends on the task. If I ask you to hand me the red towel, your responding correctly will give me no reason to wonder if you’re picturing the red color exactly the way I am. If I tell a painter to paint my kitchen red, it may not be a good idea to rely on their determination of what red looks like. It would be wiser for me to select a sample of the color I want first. Otherwise I may very well find their idea of red incompatible with mine.
Quoting hypericin
No, I didn't. I was making use of irony. Here, let me do it again:
Quoting hypericin
And yet...
Quoting hypericin
Quoting Isaac
Apparently that is too great a task.
Quoting hypericinA quick shift of the goal post in order to avoid falsification.
But this is now kicking a puppy.
Quoting hypericin
@Isaac, here we have the illusion, encouraged by phenomenology, that there is a clear distinction to be had between red and the-sensation-of-red or the-experience-of-red. And we find folk making claims that relate to Stove's Gem, such as that we really never see red, but only see experience-of-red or sensation-of-red. perhaps holds some similar view. Quoting Isaac
Thanks for that.
So "ineffable" becomes a mere superlative. Fine.
I was unable to follow your comments concerning Cantor and metaphor.
What is one supposed to do with sentences such as this?
Quoting Constance
The sorry state is, that this is pretty much Wittgenstein's point in turning his chair. Somehow you seem to have misunderstood what he was doing.
Ok, why are you arguing when you should be bracketing. Why are you trying to convince someone, when you should be detecting the pure presence of phenomena.
Depends on the meaning. Do you mean dictionary meanings? We live in an interpretative world, and such meanings are indeterminate. Take a "spin" (it can be dizzying) in a deconstructive analysis, and you will find the concepts never find their grounding in something a-conceptual and Real. Phenomenology, I argue, puts all eyes on the manifest world in its original presence. Alas, when it comes to "being appeared to redly" and the like, there is little there to claim independence from the contexts of contingency that usually rush in to make a knowledge claim, as in red compared to blue, and red as a signal of danger or stopping at a traffic light, and so on. It seems that red as a color qua color losses all meaning when contexts are withdrawn. But here is the rub to the "why" of ethical questions: There IS something independent of the contexts of contingency. for this, the proof is in, if you will, in the pudding. I don't have to explain to you why a broken wrist is bad, nor do you need a context for prima facie discernment.
Quoting Banno
It is not encouraged by the founder of modern phenomenology. Husserl, or his disciple, Merleau-Ponty. Husserl contributed in-depth analyses
concerning how redness is the product of a complex constructive activity of perception, rather than some irreducible primitive sensation.
No, I was talking about your question of meaning. Asking 'why' of life seems moot to me.
Quoting Constance
I have read some Derrida and Richard Rorty and understand this well enough. But it doesn't matter. Everything when looked at too closely distorts and may even vanish. But we don't live in the examination, we live in the experience.
Quoting Constance
But this matters little. We conduct our lives in the contexts. :wink:
I'll have to take your word for it. But as @Isaac pointed out, there's more to red than "a complex constructive activity of perception". It's a social construct, and not private.
You might even say it's an intersubjective agreement (I know you dislike that word :joke: ).
Rude.
So when did you agree to red?
It is neither strictly private not strictly public. Language is embodied, which means perspectival. That is why language must allow for failures of shared intelligibility.
Quoting Joshs
What is the relationship between "the product of a complex constructive activity of perception" (redness), and the embodiment of language here? When I say 'red', my utterance
is virtually accompanied by a complex perpetual activity. Yet, at a more profound level, both saying and seeing are ultimately affected by my socio-cultural situation.
Consider, from Culture and Value:
[i]What is Good is Divine too. That, strangely enough, sums up my ethics.
Only something supernatural can express the Supernatural. MS 107 192 c: 10.11.1929
You cannot lead people to the good; you can only lead them to some place or other; the good lies outside the space of facts. MS 107 196: 15.11.192[/i]
And then
[i]It is clear that ethics cannot be put
into words.
Ethics is transcendental.
(Ethics and aesthetics are one and the
same.)[/i]
He does not defend the same thinking as, say, John Mackie who wrote an excellent book on why there are no objective ethics (obviously I disagree; but it is very clearly written). Witt goes much further: We cannot talk about ethics because (and this is the Tractatus, early on) ethics and aesthetics are not states of affairs, not merely formal, tautological placements in the logical network, and this is where sensible talk occurs. But he does talk "about" such things, he simply intends to talk around them.
My point here, regarding the ineffable, comes from here, among other places (French Husserlians like Emanuel Levinas, et al). I think Witt is right, ethics is utterly mystical, that is, a foundational indeterminacy like everything else, but with ethics, it is not that it is simply off the grid of logical possibility like some ontologically adrift qualia. It presents an injunction. If ethics is transcendental, and I have no doubt it is (though always keeping in mind that everything is like this once one's inquiry leaves familiar categories) then value (entirely off the grid: "If there is any value that does have value, it must lie outside the whole sphere of what happens and is the case") is an absolute. And this means all of our ethical affairs are grounded in an absolute.
Frankly, I don't see why there is resistance to this thinking. It is crystal clear: all ethical issues have some value at risk, in play. Without this, there simply is no ethics. This is what Witt was talking about when he said ethics is transcendental. What is Good is divine, too. What good is he talking about? Why, the good we witness every day.
But then, philosophy is not telling you how to live. It doesn't care, I would argue. It is analysis at the most basic level and nothing more.
Wait, you seem to be showing inconsistency here Mww. Let's say that it is possible that there are things which could never be brought into the mind, cannot be known by human intelligence. And lets respect this as simply a possibility. Now here's the tricky part. You say that you've been advocating this possibility, yet you then say that you see no point to "believing in" it.
We have three important terms here which we need to know the meaning of and how they relate to each other, "possibility", "advocating", and "believing in". So, it appears like you have stated that you are advocating something you don't believe in. But the thing you are advocating is a possibility. Are you advocating that we respect this as a possibility, rather than being impossible, yet you don't actually believe in it because you think that this possibility is not likely? Or what?
Here's the issue I raised. It might be the case (it is possible) that there are things which could never be known to the human intellect. But if we assume this possibility, we might be inclined not to reach our minds into the dark corners of reality, assuming that the things there simply cannot be known, and therefore this would be a waste of time. But the things there might actually be knowable, just requiring effort. Furthermore, we will never know whether we can actually understand things where it appears like they might possibly be unintelligible to us, unless we try. So why would anyone advocate for the possibility of the existence of something which the human mind cannot apprehend? Isn't it better just to assume that everything is potentially intelligible to the human mind, and keep us trying to figure it all out? What is the point to believing in the possibility that somethings can never be grasped? Maybe it's better to believe that everything can potentially be grasped.
Of course not. But why do it then? And the analysis is itself replete with confusions, omissions, contradictions, contortions and, perhaps, the odd glimmer of understanding. And Christ knows who can tell what's what? :wink:
Language is both what reveals the world, and what tells us to bracket the world. As I see it, the difficult time that philosophy has in trying to deal with Husserl's epoche is that it is seen as contradictory in its insistence that intuitive purity is possible, on the one hand, yet in order to realize this, one has to deploy language, education, knowledge claims, the very thing that confounds purity. How can one defend any meaningful conception of pure phenomena, yet give an analysis of the way the past predelineats experience of phenomena, since this intrusion from the past surely saturates the perceptual event, making the present, and the so called nunc stans (standing now) an impossibility?
But the way I approach this is not as a logical set of propositions. Bracketing is a method, a practice, and the errors in its conception are assailable, but the revelatory dimension of this remains sound. This is why I associate Buddhism with the phenomenological reduction.
I don't mean there is no purpose to it. I just mean its purpose, the analysis, is not manifestly practical. The purpose, I believe, of philosophy is to take the place of religion. Religion is mostly bad metaphysics and story telling. But beneath this, there are existential issues that are profound, and this goes to ethics, the metaethical question about the nature of the good and the bad in ethical cases.
Religion as we know it is dying out. I say good riddance. But this leaves a void that is not contrived, as Nietzsche would have it, by deluded people who resent and want to lash out at the strong and the spirited. I put the matter simply: why are we born to suffer and die? An innocent enough question, and I would think the matter clear. As I see it, one good way to ask it is to give it a scientist's setting: why, after a Big Bang threw the basic stuff of things into existence (so to speak. Hardly matters) did this after 13 billion or so years, begin to torture itself through the agency of human beings (and dogs and cats, etc).
I think it is a fair question, given how impossibly important such a thing is.
A lot of philosophy seems to be the same.
Quoting Constance
Not you alone. It's one of questions most people seem to ask themselves. It's at the heart of Buddhism. I hear this question often when working with people who are experiencing suicidal ideation.
Quoting Constance
How did you determine this was an impossibility? We really have no way of determining if this is the case. It may seem it from our vantage point (our particular kind of inferential thinking) but given the erroneous and tentative nature of much human thought... who knows, right?
But perhaps we are off the OP. Nice topic for a separate OP.
There are people who come into existence just to suffer. Indeed, if we had a hedonic accounting of all who suffered, and could compare who had what and how much, it would be possible to identify the one person who suffered more than any other human being. I would like to take this person and hold him or her up for a proper examination. Suffering is not given its due, since, as you say, a lot of philosophy is just bad metaphysics and story telling; what I mean by this is that when we bring a matter into discussion, we familiarize it in the contextualizing influence of habits of thought. We hear about terrible things so routinely that we are very good at making them benign-in-conversation, whereby suffering is no longer suffering. It becomes something else, a place on the grid of familiar affairs, and all of this makes perfect sense: after all, if we really looked suffering squarely, all schools in abeyance, just the pure phenomenon of terrible pain, it would be an existential crisis of the first order. Ignoring this is a necessary condition for our sanity, granted. But the world opens in a new horizon of discovery.
I am guessing I lost you on that point. This is it is lost on almost everyone, and this is why phenomenology is so important: the suspension of knowledge claims uncovers an [u]original experience[/u].
That must sound weird. We don't live in a world that encourages this kind of thinking.
Quoting Tom Storm
I refer you to Wittgenstein:
Consider, from Culture and Value:
[i]What is Good is Divine too. That, strangely enough, sums up my ethics.
Only something supernatural can express the Supernatural. MS 107 192 c: 10.11.1929
You cannot lead people to the good; you can only lead them to some place or other; the good lies outside the space of facts. MS 107 196: 15.11.192[/i]
And then
[i]It is clear that ethics cannot be put
into words.
Ethics is transcendental.
(Ethics and aesthetics are one and the
same.)[/i]
He is talking about value-in-ethics, the good and the bad of ethical matters. Here is what I wrote to Banno on Wittgenstein and his Tractatus:
He does not defend the same thinking as, say, John Mackie who wrote an excellent book on why there are no objective ethics (obviously I disagree; but it is very clearly written). Witt goes much further: We cannot talk about ethics because (and this is the Tractatus, early on) ethics and aesthetics are not states of affairs, not merely formal, tautological placements in the logical network, and this is where sensible talk occurs. But he does talk "about" such things, he simply intends to talk around them.
My point here, regarding the ineffable, comes from here, among other places (French Husserlians like Emanuel Levinas, et al). I think Witt is right, ethics is utterly mystical, that is, a foundational indeterminacy like everything else, but with ethics, it is not that it is simply off the grid of logical possibility like some ontologically adrift qualia. It presents an injunction. If ethics is transcendental, and I have no doubt it is (though always keeping in mind that everything is like this once one's inquiry leaves familiar categories) then value (entirely off the grid: "If there is any value that does have value, it must lie outside the whole sphere of what happens and is the case") is an absolute. And this means all of our ethical affairs are grounded in an absolute.
Frankly, I don't see why there is resistance to this thinking. It is crystal clear: all ethical issues have some value at risk, in play. Without this, there simply is no ethics. This is what Witt was talking about when he said ethics is transcendental. What is Good is divine, too. What good is he talking about? Why, the good we witness every day.
Write another considered post so that you can dismiss it again in three words? I already set out the contradiction in my previous posts and you did not respond.
Quoting Banno
Here is the contradiction:
The most exhaustive list of instructions on how to ride a bike will not give one knowledge of how to ride a bike.
The experience of riding a bike is/adds to one's knowledge of how to ride a bike.
[Therefore] The experience of riding a bike is/contains knowledge that cannot be stated or included in the list of instructions on how to ride a bike.
Something which is known but which cannot be stated is ineffable.
However, (according to you) nothing is ineffable.
:up:
Ah.. but not everyone sees the world the same or makes the same inferences. That's part of the problem when someone maintains their own worldview is reasonable (or base line common sense) and the other person is... strange or mistaken.
Quoting Constance
This sounds theatrical and reminds me of Voltaire - the joke about how god designed the nose just so we could wear glasses. For the rest I am not clear what your points about suffering mean.
But let's just drill down into one thing since this is discussion has expanded and is messy.
When you say this:
Quoting Constance
So this is a style of argument we get from many; from Islamic religious thinkers to David Bentley Hart (an interesting Eastern Orthodox theologian). Can you demonstrate that there is any value which transcends human perspectives and perceptions?
Quoting Constance
Wittgenstein means little to me and for what reasons should I accept his authority on the subject? What I liked most about LW is that he went out and actually did things. Brave things. The point for me is getting on with it.
Arrogant bluster aside, you really aren't very good at this. Perhaps you have forgotten already?
Quoting Banno
Yet computers have learned to use the word red without seeing it. I guess lacking any response, one can only yap and whine about goalposts.
Quoting Banno
"Red" can refer to many things. A word, a range of wavelengths of light, a class of pigments with absorptive properties, and a set of subjective sensations. Are you unable to discern these differences?
I have experiences of red, therefore I have knowledge of what it can be like to experience red, therefore such knowledge exists. As a human with functional eyes and occipital lobes, you may consider me to be a domain expert.
I have experiences of pain, therefore I have knowledge of what it can be like to experience pain, therefore such knowledge exists. As a human with functional peripheral and central nervous system, you may consider me to be a domain expert.
If you want to tell me that I don't experience red or pain, that's some heavy lifting, but go for it. Thus far you have done none of it.
I don't know a blind person to ask. In fact this suggests they do indeed have visual experiences.
But my point is, how would you determine what they experience by asking them? They may describe their experiences using sight words, but they may or may not be referring to something totally other than what we know as sight experiences. Similarly, our own inner experiences may be identical or totally dissimilar from one another's, and we would never know it. When we hear sensory words we map them to our own inner experiences, without ever knowing how others map those same words. Because we can never express inner experiences without using sensory words that map in totally unknown ways in the listener, inner experiences are ineffable.
Sure, but this is post hoc. The social constructions from which we build our narratives are made available first (albeit by disproportionately able-bodied folk), the marginalised may well build their narratives in partial response to their more heterodox embodiment, but they still build them out of the social constructions of the culture they've grown up in, they don't somehow switch all that off to revert to private constructions.
Of course, some of those social constructions will be those of the differently able, it's not like there are no narratives around disability.
Quoting Joshs
Absolutely. The point is not the universality, it's the direction. We build our narratives, our experiences, out of social constructions, we do not have 'private, ineffable' experiences because the whole concept of 'experience' is itself a social construction - a negotiated, dynamic and fuzzily defined one, sure, but a constructed one nonetheless.
Quoting Banno
Yeah, as if the decades of people using the word 'red' from toddler's colouring books to traffic signals, had no impact, but rather this yet-to-be-demonstrated 'sensation of red' was driving our whole experience-building practices. It's quite odd.
OK, well let's explore one. When was the last time you had an experience of red and how did you know that that's what you were having at the time?
Cool. If it's not a logical procedure, then I believe can get along with it well enough -- though by no means am I an expert on Husserl, just an interested bystander who likes to think about these things.
I'd agree with this:
(1) "I hold one can acknowledge that which is not language within the contextual possibilities language gives us"
The other clauses:
"...in the temporal dynamic of recieving the object...", or "this is evidenced by...."
I'm less certain on.
But I can see those conversations going into wildly different directions. I want to focus on sentence 1, because it seems more pertinent to ineffability. With sentence 1, it seems to me that in order for us to even have a hope of differentiating the effable from the ineffable we'd have to grant that we have the ability to distinguish language from not-language, somehow.
Sentence 2 would have us go down the rabbit hole of phenomenology that I'd want to bracket, for the moment, in order to be able to differentiate phenomenology from not-phenomenology. Phenomenology, I'd say, is one way of talking about why it is we can differentiate language from not-language. But surely it's not the only way? (even if it happens to be, say, the one true way)
In which case, while it'd be interesting, we might want to hold off on why it is we are able to differentiate language from not-language, and focus on that we are able to.
Because that might be an interesting focus for the debate on ineffability -- if we hold that we can differentiate between language and not-language, and we hold that we can "access" not-language without the use of language, AND we hold that we cannot access such and such with language THEN, and only then, could we say what is ineffable while not falling into the trap of saying what can't be said (and its attendant performative contradiction).
(I think, at least.... a first guess at some conditions for being able to state ineffability)
Quoting Constance
I agree that the taste of a pear is not a language event. And notice how often we indoctrinated in western philosophy reach for non-visual senses to get at the non-linguistic nature of experience? So there's something intentionally fuzzy about this notion, like it's defined as what cannot be said.
One experience I have to complicate this, though, is how I listen to classical music before, and after, reading about classical music. The more I'd read about classical music, the more my actual experience would change, even though it was an identical recording (like, literally, the same YouTube link :D Classical music is much easier to study than it used to be...)
I attribute this to the analytical and conceptual things I learned from reading. That is, the more I knew about the basic experience, the more the basic experience changed -- but in a way that was enhanced rather than dulled. Aesthetically, then, my thought is the exact opposite of reducing value to the raw experience. The raw experience, for the case of aesthetics at least (and not just individual enjoyment), is just an un-tutored mind. It's fun to think back on, but really, the more we come to know things about the art, and especially the more we listen to how others encounter the work of art, the more we get out of it.
So language, in my estimation, must go some way to constructing experience. Even at the level of acquiring it in my individual skull. But, from the phenomenological side of things, it seems impossible to be able to state to what extent it does or doesn't, hence my feelings of skepticism of such things. (not a hard skepticism, just an uncertainty).
Quoting Constance
I think there's something to this way of talking. But... ;)
If we take the assertion that language-world is fused, Heidegger's phenomenology of Ancient Greek to modern German should have worked -- and he wouldn't have posited something entirely different from what Plato said (or, maybe, he knew what Plato really said if we're true devotees :D ). His procedure would have seen the original meaning right there, rather than creating a very interesting treatise that is interesting specifically because it is a creative work and a fusion of ideas.
(It doesn't help Heidegger's case that he got lost in his own hermeneutic circle and couldn't even finish the 6 books that were planned, and then was seduced by fascism)
Where I think you and I, from the rest of what you write, will get along well is with Levinas -- I agree with you and him that ethics is the starting point for philosophy.
And if ethics is the starting point of philosophy, then there's no point in discussing proposition from non-propositional knowledge, or whether an ontology of naturalism is better from an ontology of phenomenology without, at first, understanding the ethical dimensions of these things.
Quoting Constance
:D
Quoting Constance
Hrmm, for me it's the foundationalism that's an issue (same issue I have with Descartes, for that matter). Also, I have a feeling we have very different notions of what science is :D -- but that's going to take us very far astray. Maybe put a bookmark on this line of thought for another thread?
Quoting Constance
Thanks :)
This whole conversation I've been attempting to not do Levinas, because I'm in the middle of a re-read of Totality and Infinity -- so the thread has been a wonderful opportunity for me to exercise in translating ideas and working through mistakes, but I don't want to lead anyone down the wrong path with Levinas. I'm still mid-interp.
But all that only to say: I believe philosophy begins in ethics -- and with Levinas' thrust that ethics precede ontology-- so when you say:
Quoting Constance
I'm thinking it's the reverse -- metaphysics is grounded in ethics.
I hope my prodding isn't seen as disapproval. Because your posts have been a treat to think through some thoughts. So, at least from me, I have nothing but approval, though I am naturally inclined towards skeptical thinking, and skeptically inclined towards naturalism. Usually I doubt people who claim to have special knowledge. But, then, there's the curious fact of our individuality, our interiority, and so on that doesn't seem to be physical.
I just wonder if we really lose out on naturalism, for all that, when we think of naturalism as a philosophy rather than as "What physics books say is the whole truth and nothing but the truth"-style naturalism. Or, even further, I doubt metaphysics ever produces knowledge, ala old Kant's line of thinking. So, if phenomenology be an object of knowledge, then it's not metaphysical and thereby amenable to the methods of science. And if it's an object of knowledge, it would be effable, shareable, study-able.
But if it's an ethical basis, then it wouldn't. In which case, what is Husserl doing when he asks us to reject naturalism? What is the ethical dimension to Husserl's thought? Isn't that the important part?
It may be the case I should have been more attentive to the clarity of my writing, or, it may be the case you should have been more attentive to the subtleties in your reading. Call it a toss-up?
————-
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Hmmmm….I wasn’t advocating the possibility of things.
Quoting Mww
I was advocating the truly ineffable, which manifests as a certain impossibility of the mind.
—————-
quote="Metaphysician Undercover;758401"]….you then say that you see no point to "believing in" it.[/quote]
quote="Mww;758343"]What would be the point in believing in the ineffable then?
— Metaphysician Undercover
I can’t think of one.[/quote]
To believe in THE ineffable is to believe in things that are ineffable. If truly ineffable is only the condition of the mind for the reception of certain things, what point is there in believing in the very things the mind could never receive?
————
Let’s say it is possible there are things…
Let’s say there are possible things that can never be known by the human mind….
Let’s respect this as a simple possibility….
“respect this” is singular, which implies a singular mind’s knowledge. If you meant “respect this” as pertaining to possible things, you should have said “respect them”. It is contradictory for it to be simply possible that the mind cannot do an impossible thing, while it is a simple possibility there are things.
————
quote="Mww;758343"]Is it possible, that there are such things…
— Metaphysician Undercover
(…) we cannot declare such things are impossible in themselves….[/quote]
To state the existent of a thing as not impossible, is not to advocate that it is. There’s no logic in positing a possible existence when it is absolutely impossible to form a judgement with respect to it. How could we ever say a thing is possible if it has absolutely no chance of ever being an object met with our intelligence? What could be said about a thing for which we couldn’t even begin to speculate? To say such is not impossible carries more truth value than to merely say such thing may be possible.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
We DO know we can never understand the unintelligible exclusively from the reality of that which IS intelligible. Pretty simple really. If intelligibility is this, anything not this is unintelligible. Besides…doesn’t “unintelligible” factually denote a non-understanding? Absurd to posit the unintelligible, then turn right around and say maybe we just don’t understand it. There may be a veritable plethora of reasons for not understanding, but the irreducible, primary reason must necessarily be because it was unintelligible to begin with.
THAT is what the ineffable is all about. Hasn’t a gawddamn thing to do with things, but only with the limitations on the system that comprehends things.
If we must part,
Then let it be like this.
Not heart on heart,
Nor with the useless anguish of a kiss;
But touch mine hand and say:
"Until to-morrow or some other day,
If we must part".
Words are so weak
When love hath been so strong;
Let silence speak:
"Life is a little while, and love is long;
A time to sow and reap,
And after harvest a long time to sleep,
But words are weak."[/quote]
Eff that, Mothersuckers!
Maybe I last experienced it when I was looking at a bottle of hot sauce. How did I know? When I was a small child I learned to associate this sensation with "color", and this variety of color sensation with "red".
Which sensation?
If you're claiming we don't have experiences of red and pain, you're making a strong claim and you'll need a strong argument for it.
But you wouldn't be so silly as to claim that, would you? :razz:
OK, so here's the difference which led me to think you were being inconsistent. I suggested the possibility of something which is completely inapprehensible to the mind. So I thought you were advocating this as a possibility. Now I see that you advocate it as an actuality, a reality that there are things which are completely inapprehensible to the human mind, due to the deficiencies of the human mind.
Your position then, if it is as I state above, is the position which I dismiss as self-defeating, counterproductive, and unphilosophical, as intellectually repugnant, because it accepts the reality of something fundamentally unintelligible (like infinite regress for example), and this assumption discourages the philosophical mind which seeks to know.
Quoting Mww
OK, this is interesting. We premise that the human mind (I'm trying to be careful to qualify "mind" with "human" because you have deemed this to be a problem with the human mind while allowing for the possibility of other minds to which it wouldn't be a problem) is deficient therefore there are some very real things which the human mind cannot grasp.
It appears to me, that it is the premise, that the human mind is deficient, which forces the conclusion that there are real things which are inapprehensible. It cannot be the other way around, because these things can be in no way apprehended, so the existence of them in the mind cannot force the conclusion that the mind is deficient. Therefore, it is a logical conclusion produced from the premise of human deficiency, that there are things which are inapprehensible, and because it is necessitated by logic, we must believe in the things which the mind cannot receive. This is to say, that as soon as you accept this premise, that the human mind has this deficiency, it is logically necessary that you believe in the things which cannot be received by the human mind. So it is not a matter of "what point is there" in believing in these things, as you state, it is a matter of it being logically necessary that we believe in such things. When we accept that premise of human deficiency it is necessary that we believe in things which cannot be grasped by the mind.
So this is where my notion that this perspective is unphilosophical, and intellectually repugnant comes from. If the philosophical mindset is the desire to know, and understand all things, then what is the point to accepting a premise (human deficiency) which forces the necessary conclusion that there are things which cannot be known? This premise is directly incompatible with the goal of philosophy which is to seek out and understand all aspects of reality.
Quoting Mww
As we have been discussing, "possible" must refer to the idea that there are things which cannot be apprehended, in the sense of logically possible, this is a logical possibility. In this context, "possible" does not refer to the thing itself, as if it were a possible thing, because that would imply that the thing necessarily has existence, and calling it a possible thing would be contradictory. So we cannot assume that these inapprehensible things exist, and speak of them as possible things, we can only assume a logical possibility that they may exist.
From here, we can take your premise, that the human mind is deficient, and conclude that they necessarily exist, and give up on the enterprise of increasing human knowledge whenever it appears like something is unknowable, concluding that it is unknowable, or we can maintain the premise that the human mind can potentially know all things, and continue with the effort to know all things.
Quoting Mww
You are completely neglecting my use of "appears" in relation to unintelligible. I was talking about things which appear to be unintelligible. If, whenever something appears like it is unintelligible, we designate it as actually being unintelligible, then we will never make the effort required to understand it, and prove that the unintelligibility which appeared, was just an appearance. Therefore, I clearly did not "posit the unintelligible" in that context, as your misrepresentation indicates, I posited a situation in which something appears to be unintelligible. And this is completely consistent with what I've been discussing, the possibility of something which is inapprehensible.
The appearance that something is unintelligible presents us with the possibility that there is something inapprehensible to the mind. From there we can adopt what I would call the philosophical premise, that the human mind has the capacity to know all things, and proceed toward understanding, and proving that this is just an appearance, or, we can adopt the premise that the human mind is deficient, and this appearance of something unintelligible is proof that there really is things inapprehensible to the human mind.
I believe that the key to unravelling this little problem is to understand what is meant by "the system that comprehends things". This, the human mind is a continually evolving system. So if we propose to put a limit on "the mind", by qualifying it with "human mind", how do we allow for evolution of the human mind? At what point in the evolutionary process is the mind definitively a "human" mind? And if the definition of "human mind" is produced so as the thing called "human mind" is allowed to evolve in the future to a point where it might apprehend things which are currently inapprehensible, and still be called the "human mind", then the problem is simply semantic. You might argue that this mind no longer qualifies as a "human mind", seeking to separate the "human mind" which is deficient, from these future minds which do not have the same deficiency. Then the philosophical mindset, which is the desire to know becomes an effort to evolve the mind so as to understand things which appear as if they are unintelligible.
No, no. Ethics IS the matter on the table for talk about ineffability. In fact, it is the major theme. The point about the person who has the distinction of having suffered more than anyone else is to bring out latent curiosity that stands before philosophical inquiry, nothing more. The theatrical aspect you detect comes from a prevalent cynicism regarding ethics, and this is a very big problem for an enterprise that is supposed be trying to understand human existence. Suffering is not just a proper theme for philosophy, it is the most important one. Ethics is first philosophy, and the actuality (call it) of ethics in the world is value, and value, I repeatedly argue, is (and I stand with Wittgenstein on this) ineffable. It is not a dramatic presentation of poor Robert or Jane who suffered most; it is just a poignancy of the extremity to make the case most visible. In truth, I could have given any example at all, to make the point, but weaker examples, like the time I skinned a knee or failed a quiz, do not make the case as well.
Keep in mind that philosophy is full of such oddities, as with the hedonic glutton counter example to utilitarianism, or the barn facsimiles and severed head remedies to Gettier problems.
Quoting Tom Storm
Not any value. Value as such. It is not an argument from dogmatic authority, but from what I would call phenomenological ontology, and by this I simply mean, take an occasion of ethical ambiguity and give analysis. there are facts before you, like your friend who owes to money but will not pay, but you owe him from a prior business, and does the one cancel the other? This kind of thing. Facts are facts. Ask in this conundrum, what is it that makes it ethical, and not just a logical puzzle, as, say, an engineer might face in a design problem. Value is IN the problem itself and not incidental to it (as with engineering); it is the very essence of the problem. Your friend is a fried, and you value this, and you also value being paid, and so on. But what is this valuing about in this philosophical analysis?
Philosophy is an inquiry into everything and anything at the most basic level. Kant looked at the formal dimensions of thought, not just occasions where thought was in play. So what is this foundational analysis of value about? The good and the bad, to give it categorial recognition (keeping in mind always that such analyses are abstractions. There is no such thing as pure reason or value as such. These are ways we talk about reality). Good and bad can be contingently understood, as with a good couch or a bad knife that doesn't cut cleanly. This is not the ethical good and bad. Follow analytically any contingent use of these terms and eventually you will run into the non contingent good and bad: the discomfort of a bad couch, the frustration of a knife that won't cut. Now the analysis has gotten to the final question, what is this discomfort all about? That goes to the feeling, and here, this cannot be derided or deflated: we have come to the analytic basis of the, if you can stand it, meaning of life.
But this absurd term, 'the bad' sounds ridiculous, like some kind of platonic ultimate reality. It is best to leave historical platitudes out of it and just attend to the matter at hand. No one is talking about the "form of the bad". This is just bad metaphysics. We are talking about a dimension in our existence thatdefies presuppositional analysis. Value as value is its own presupposition. And I have to leave it at that unless you want a further go at it.
Quoting Tom Storm
Yeah, I really respect this person. But wanting to go to war to face death is puzzling. He wasn't doing it for country (in fact, I think he wanted England to win) but for the encounter with a world that was a powerful presence to him. He was passionately engaged with the world, which is unusual for a philosopher. Well, he wasn't a philosopher, had read nearly nothing.
Not his authority. Philosophy is analytical, not authoritative. He helped elucidate the world. I certainly do not understand all he said, nor am I interested in all of this. I find his thoughts right, where I am interested.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
…..and when we accept the natural limitations of a given system, we don’t need to lament what it can’t do.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
….but can never evolve out of the kind of system it is. (Remember….dialectical consistency)
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
….which was never my premise.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
….an unintelligible can never be an appearance. If something appears to us, it is a phenomenon, hence possibly intelligible. So, yes, I can neglect your use of appearance, because I don’t consider intelligibility and appearance related to each other.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
….an unjustified assertion, insofar as it is impossible to know all the things there are. The very best to be said is the mind has the capacity to know all things presented to it.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
….and I’m arguing the conditions for what unintelligible necessarily is.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
….it is absurd to suppose understanding of all things. The occasions in which some things are misunderstood verifies limits. Nothing ever being misunderstood is the only sufficient ground for the possibility of understanding all things.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The human mind adapts; the human body evolves. The mind adapts in conjunction with experience.
(Remember….I detest the use of “mind” anyway, always preferring “reason”).
On and on it goes. Give it up and go have a turkey leg or something.
We are affected by our sociopath-cultural situation as filtered and interpreted through our situated bodily organization of perception. The word red has as many senses as there are shared purposes and uses, but those purposes are always only partially shared, due to the fact that we are all situated differently within the ‘same’ culture. The meanings of words are negotiated , not introjected from culture to individual.
Redness, the visual sensation I experience when an object or light source designated "red" enters my visual field .
You still haven't made the case that value is transcendent. Values talk is simply a conversation people share about the world. Like the idea of truth, value is an abstraction and is not a property that looks the same where ever it is found. Values can only be understood through specific examples - it is a process applied to beliefs, objects, people, behaviours, etc. The process of setting or accepting values is mundane and subjective and messy - it is deliberative and people disagree.
Quoting Constance
All this is wordy and says little to me, I'm afraid. Not sure what your point is. Good and bad have multiple meanings, many subjective, most people know this. As animals who depend on and risk so much to survive, it's hardly surprising that humans have created a multiplicity of notions for good and bad. Valuing things (making judgements and making choices) is how we stay alive, it's hard wired.
The first time one makes use of the word as it’s expressed to oneself by others, one agrees, or willfully consents, to its use.
One can also disagree to use the word “red” at any time; instead making use of “crimson”, “scarlet”, “vermilion”, “amaranth”, and so forth.
... or even coin a new term for a unique shade or red, and this irrespective of whether others would then agree to make use of it so as to make the term an aspect of the shared language.
Back to the issue of blindness and color awareness:
Given that many sighted-people have no clue as to what these terms concretely specify even if able to use them in grammatically correct sentences, how does one find that a blind person could know the difference between, for example, Alizarin Crimson and Crimson Lake when devoid of any visual experience … and, for that matter, be able to know the differences in these colors that different paint manufacturers produce?
This could easily start to approximate the Chinese Room problem, wherein one could make fluid use of words to specify that, “this manufacture’s carmine has a yellower tint than that manufacture’s” without any awareness of what one is expressing in relation to colors.
ps. All this being in no way contradictory to blind people being able to use color-words to express abstract sentiments (e.g., I'm feeling blue) or abstract states of affair (e.g., it's not a black and white issue) - but not concrete experiences of colors. They can know that in certain cultural contexts white represents good and black bad - and can further know that in other contexts no such representation is to be validly made (such as in addressing people's skin color) - without having any awareness of, for example, the concrete differences between Ivory and Floral White, or else Onyx and Ebony. Whereas sighted people can learn of these differences by being presented with direct experiences of these shades.
I don't remember agreeing (but I did follow orders) - I remember being told what the names of colors were and getting them wrong. I still do, as I am color blind. I have to say parsing the notion of color as a pathway to understand the merits of the term ineffable is bloody dull.
Thirteen pages in and I am no closer to understanding what ineffable means other than the literal definition and associated, shall we say, poetic uses. Is it not the case that some people believe there are quasi mystical matters that are beyond words while others think that everything can be understood or, at least, turned into words? It's hardly a surprising bifurcation.
Babies begin to see red after a few weeks... long before any of this social construction guff might have had time to take hold. And certainly long before they learn to correctly use the word, despite @Banno's ludicrous insistince.
What say you?
If you prefer. The philosophical issue at hand here is that there are folk who understand "red" as the public name of a private sensation. There are many, many problems with this, some of which we have drawn attention to here. The problem of supposing that there is even a little bit of the notion of red that is a private sensation is nicely pummelled by @Isaac's asking which private sensation...
...why, the red ones, of course...
It's a quite vicious circularity.
The salient point with regard to the topic, what cannot be said, remains the fact that we do talk about red. Hence red is not ineffable. The retort is something like, that we can talk about the colour red but not the sensation of red. This sits oddly in the mouths of those who also claim that the colour red is the name of a sensation. And it is wrong, since we do talk about the sensation of red.
Poetry seeks to overcome the weakness of words - easily given, but sometimes as easily broken - by invocation. One calls into being something that was not, by a creative verbal act. The weakness of this thread is that it does not even try to escape the dance of words - there's a red house over yonder, where even the blind can be seen to. Let there be Red!
And it was so, because the invocation was puissant. Thus poetry builds language as fast as doublespeak destroys it, and so builds the world anew, as @Banno would have it. What does it mean that in a century we have gone from a nature red in tooth and claw, to a nature that is the greenest of greens? (This is an observation intended to evoke a transformation, not a question to answer.)
[What is ineffable? {response} But look we are talking about it, so that isn't it.] That is a gigantic turd of analysis, or a pathetic joke of logic.
What is creativity? Only original answers will be considered.
The three theses argued for there are that we set aside trying to do ethics until we have a decent science of psychology; that the notion of obligation is no linger of much use, and that much of moral philosophy is of little importance. Challenging theses, but bear with her argument and you might find much of value. There's a neat summation in tHer SEP biography.
Quoting Constance
This I take to be the view Anscombe critiques in her second thesis, so I'll drop in here the relevant paragraph from the SEP article:
Quoting Anscombe (SEP)
I suspect that you will find you have much in common with Anscombe, a devout theist.
In that we can agree, but my posts seem to be doing much better than yours. For a start, my insults are funnier.
Which proves beyond a shadow of doubt that the perception of red is ineffable.
...you really aren't very good at this.
That's not a weakness - the dance is the very reason for the thread. One comes to see the dance as without a purpose beyond amusement. A parlour game. The dance is a cure for those who would sanctify words.
But some folk have the Red Shoes.
Nice. Classic film buff?
This is much the same argument as is commonly used against those who suppose that we follow a social contract in our dealings with others. Quoting Tom Storm
Kate Bush fan...
For many, “mommy” and daddy” are the first words we willfully consent to using - though, granted, we might not have memories of it. Color words come later- and whether or not we use these terms correctly is not pertinent to the issue I was addressing. At issue here, if you’d want to get in it philosophically, is this: how does one first come to use any term if not via agreement with those who so use these terms? (This regardless of whether the agreement is obtained via coercion from others or via one’s own willful inclinations.)
Quoting Tom Storm
I can get that, but you speak as though you’re forced to partake.
Quoting Tom Storm
For my part, I don’t see what all the hubbub is all about. If meaning is use, then the word means whatever its use intends it to mean. Haven’t heard of “ineffable” being spoken of by people, except in certain academic and philosophical circles. But if one wants to say that, for example, “my joy is indescribable” or else “beyond words” well, when it gets the point across it has meaning to both the speaker and the listener. Case closed as far as I’m concerned.
Quoting Tom Storm
As to this issue, I’d phrase it in more blunt terms: does one find that reality is - or else can in principle be made - equivalent to words?
If so, then everything that is can be expressible via words. If not, then some things of which we can be aware of will not be accurately expressible via words.
Maybe I'm missing something here, but I so far don't see it.
Besides, there’s a lot more to meaning and its conveyance than words: I can verbally tell you anything about my state of being but if my body posture and mannerisms express otherwise, what will you make out of my words? And as to non-verbal communication, think of the Mona Lisa smile: other than by pointing fingers at it, literally or via words (as in, “the Mona Lisa smile”), I so far don’t know of anyone that has managed to accurately convey it linguistically (other than via poetry, maybe).
Quoting Banno
Ah.. she's the classic film buff that work is based on the 1948 movie.
I prefer my illness to your cure.
Doubtless it could be, for some. But for most, it leads to petrification, often in the form of religious or philosophical dogmatism. Transcendence is silent. Before enlightenment, carry water, chop wood. After enlightenment, carry water, chop wood.
But you enjoy commenting on the dance. You are here, after all.
Projection. Just an observation on my part. :wink: @Banno is convincing me that it matters.
Quoting javra
Not sure how one goes about answering this question. My intuition is that words are like crude building blocks we use to make (describe) our reality. We don't use them consistently and many of our problems arise from definitional confusions, misuse of words and subjective interpretations.
Quoting javra
Indeed. Is it not the case that most human communication is non verbal? But isn't this also a set of signs and signifiers we can interpret - or we wouldn't be able to read people as well as we often do. Having worked with pretty tough prisoners, I know that nice words like, "How are you, Mate? " can mean, 'I'm going to smash you.' And based on reading the incongruent body language, I know to move away or duck.
There can be purpose, utility, in remaining in the trap.
As there can be in believing one has escaped a trap one has merely imagined.
Like your mountain?
I could be on board with your metaphor of "clumsy building blocks". As to the question itself, please go for it if you find any faults; I'll rephrase it for easier criticism: The "is everything linguistically expressible" issue boils down to "can reality itself be in principle made equivalent to words".
Does freeing oneself from the bottle consist in believing that we know some unimpeachable fact of the matter concerning the reality of the mountain, or does it consist in becoming comfortable with uncertainty?
No, I am not there. No I am not commenting. I am elsewhere and resisting.You reduce me to the words and then point out the contradiction, and that is the giant turd of analysis.
Quoting Banno
Imaginary mountains are definitely a (no)thing round here. Try this fictional one for size
Quoting 6. Conclusion: The Social Contract and Justification
The attempted justification is that we agreed to use "red" for red; but we didn't get nay such choice.
...with which you still play.
Bloody Huge Grant. So fucking nice.
Decidable?
Meaning?
Of course, having never said "yea".
Quoting Banno
forget Hugh Grant: as @Bartricks would say, " Bloody Hugh Janus".
I think this is a fair and obvious question. My intuition says it's unlikely. Of course there's a lot hiding in those words 'everything' and 'reality'.
Quoting Banno
Agreement is a bad word. It's more of a social requirement or convention.
If you're speaking in general, it's contingent on a lot of factors. Choosing not to ever say "red" would hence likely not be in my pragmatic interests. Choosing to not say "ineffable" on the other hand ...
Here's something more palpable, with the strong caveat that no undertones are in any way intended: People nowadays commonly enough express "fuck you" to others when upset with the other. Seeing how "fuck you" implies "may you be raped", one could then in theory make a concerted effort to cease saying this term to others (given that one detests rape for any reason and in any context). Maybe replacing it with "to hell with you" or, if this is too spiritualistic sounding to one's ears, maybe via the coinage of some new terminology. One person can so decide / determine. Were others to then follow suit, maybe such as due to admiration or else finding it pragmatic in their own lives, it would then be a sub-cultural use of language that distances itself from the current norm. Where the vast majority of people to in due course so choose to use alternatives to "fuck you/him/them/etc.", then this use of "fuck you" will in effect then have become a thing of the past.
Again, no undertones intended.
Same can be said with replacing "pimping" (directly implying being a pimp with whores) with something like "stoked" (which need not refer to drugs) or, else, some newly coined terminology.
It costs me nothing to willfully choose not to say "may someone be raped" or else "this is pimp-like behavior and thereby good". Here, it would be in my pragmatic favor - given my ethical values - to not use the terms "fuck you/him/them/etc." and "pimping". Whereas I find no personal interest whatsoever in not using the term "red" - it improves my ability to communicate without in any way compromising my ethical nor aesthetic values - though its up to me to not use the term in practice.
Aesthetics are a big part of language - "Bank of Billy" rather than "Billy's Bank" - but this is a whole other issue all together.
It's not a mathematical type of determination, but it in such roundabout ways I find that it can be more or less decidable / determinable, yes.
:up: Makes sense, in different contexts in regard to saying 'yes' or 'no' to the use of loaded words.
If one can feel their teeth, it's not one's pragmatic favour. Inappropriate link
Cool, that is exactly what one would expect of something that cannot be described, only named.
What is it that you suppose is named here?
For a philosopher with the desire to know, the idea that there might be things which are impossible to know is cause for lament.
Quoting Mww
As I said, this is a semantic issue. How would you define "the kind of system it is"? Remember, it is common knowledge that human beings evolved from single celled organisms. So if it is the case, as you say, that the system which comprises the human capacity to understand has natural limitations as to how far it can evolve, you must bear in mind how far it has already evolved. It appears to me that thus "kind of system", one which has evolved from a single celled organism to the extremely complex reasoning human being, doesn't have a whole lot of natural limitations.
Quoting Mww
Sure, this is my "unjustified assertion", that the human intellect has the capacity to know all things. And your "unjustified assertion" is that there are things which can never be apprehended by the mind because they will never appear to it. The difference is that my unjustified assertion provides a good healthy inspiration for human beings to seek out and try to understand all aspects of the universe. Your unjustified assertion is like a degenerative disease of the human being, because it inclines the reasoning being to think that everything which is hidden from it at the present time will always be hidden from it, thereby extinguishing the human being's motivation to learn.
Quoting Mww
I can't see why you think that this is an absurd goal. Yes, it is a lofty goal, but why dismiss lofty goals as absurd? If a youngster comes to you and says my goal is to some day win the World Cup, would you tell the child that this is absurd, and send them home crying by shattering their dreams? I don't think you would, because the proper action is to encourage the child who has lofty goals. Philosophy is similar, except that we are grown up, so we make goals which are not personal but communal. We have very lofty goals which a philosopher knows will likely never be fulfilled in his or her lifetime. But each small step taken is a step toward that lofty goal, which would only be a step taken in vain, therefore not inspired to be taken at all, if the goal was designated to be absurd.
Quoting Mww
There you go, making your defeatist attitude explicit.
I agree that there is no ineffable sensation of red in the guise of something like a qualia. I also agree that red only has meaning as something we talk about. But I argue that in order to understand perception as simultaneously private and public, rather than as one or the other, we have to recognize that in perceiving color or anything else, we must ‘talk’ to ourselves, and this is the essence of perception. Whatever we have learned about the meaning of words, objects and colors through prior interchange with others contributes to the background informing our self-speech, just as what we have learned about the perceptual world though solitary exploration of it does. When we are alone and deciding what colors to use in a painting we are creating, we draw from that previous merged public and private history with color, but then transform that history in applying it to the present task.
Perception doesn’t just draw from an archive of previous experience with words and perceptions, it always uses that knowledge in new ways. Just as the use of words between people is a language game, the use of prior knowledge about perception in new perceiving is a ‘perception’ game, a kind of language game that takes place in solitary situations. We ask ourselves ‘which’ sensations, and answer them to ourselves through such games which are neither strictly private nor public. They are private only in the sense that we renew the meaning of perceptual experience in every new context of engaging with the perceptual world, without the need to have another person there to respond to us.
They are public in that new perception forces us outside of the archive of previous perceptual meaning, interrogating and modifying our expectations. We are not just in our heads when we construct an experience of red, we are thrown into new situations with red which alters the meaning of past experience. If it is the discursive exposure to another in a use situation which is the requirement for answering the question “WHICH private sensation?” , then this requirement is already met in solitary perception, since to recognize any aspect of our environment is to use our previous experience with it via the transformation ( use) of expectation through my discursive exposure of my past with the fresh novelty of immediate context This is how perception functions by talking to itself. My self-speech is more than just a proxy, an already archived record of my history of discourse with other persons. Asking ourselves what we mean by red , in the context of the solitary perceptual ‘language’ game, is asking ourselves in a fresh way what is at stake and at issue in using a perceptual sense, and the answer comes from both the world of speaking communities we participate with and the solitary world of light and sound and touch.
It's a 'strong' claim because you said so?
Hers' my 'strong' argument for it. There's absolutely no evidence for it. No one can describe such an experience, no-one can pin down such an experience, there are no tests for it, there's no mechanism in the brain which could account for it, there's no cortex in the brain which could process it, and every test that's ever been done to try and identify such a thing has failed utterly.
Which one? The one you experienced with the red post box, or the one from the red wine, or the red rose, or the red car...which of them is the 'red' one?
Babies respond to different wavelengths. Plants do that too. Do they have 'experiences of red'?
"Red' is a generalization applied to all of them. The experience is the experience regardless; is the post box red or maybe more orange, is the red wine red or burgundy, the rose red or dark pink, and so on. You're not going to convince me that I don't see colours or that there are no animals who see colour on account of not undergoing the requisite social induction.
How?
I didn't say I can't show you "the" experience. I said I can't show you "my" experience.
Quoting Jamal
How do you know that "there's some level of qualitative identity"? Can that ever be anything more than an assumption?
Quoting Jamal
I have not described this as ineffability. I have said that language may not be able to communicate one person's experience such that another can "fully" understand their experience only from the language.
Quoting Jamal
I don't presume or have any sympathy for an undistorted view from nowhere.
That's language. You were denying the role of language. I was asking how this 'generalization' was carried out absent of language or socialisation.
It's ineffable.
Quoting Isaac
You must possess a preternatural understanding of what the brain can and can't do.
Quoting Isaac
No tests and all the tests fail, things are looking grim for team experience.
Quoting Isaac
Don't believe your lying eyes.
Quoting Isaac
No "the", these are all "red experiences". Is this going somewhere?
Consciousness is a mystery, to which sticking your head in the sand and pretending it doesn't exist is not a solution.
I denied the role of language in determining the colours seen, but of course language is involved in conceptualizing and talking about the colours seen, including the kind of gross generalization involved in referring to all those differently coloured objects as "red". Do you deny that animals can recognize different colours although they have no language?
So 'red' is a social construct.
From where do we learn that the wine and the post box are of similar enough colour for the experience they produce to be the same 'red experience'? Language. Culture.
Quoting Janus
Yes, in the main. I would deny the claim that animals have no language, but I doubt any are sophisticated enough to delineate colour terms.
The concept of red, as in a grouping of similar colors under the rubric of a single word, is a social construct. But this is trivial, this is just how language works, there are only so many words. Other cultures divide the colors among their limited allotment of color words differently. So what. None of this has bearing on your radical and unsupported claim that the phenomenal experience of red is an illusory social construct.
Quoting hypericin
I asked...
Quoting Isaac
You replied...
Quoting hypericin
Now you're saying there's no 'the'. So which sensation did you learn to associate with the word red as a child?
Of course we learn colour terms via culture. They are part of language obviously.
Quoting Isaac
Animals have no symbolic language such as we do, But some animals can undoubtedly recognize different colours. You could set up an experiment to show that, for example dogs, might respond differently to different coloured cards where a green card meant getting fed and a blue card meant being let out for some exercise, and where the cards were tonally identical, which would rule our their responding to different shades of grey, (I remember reading that dogs can see certain colours, but I can't remember which ones, so my suggested experiment is just an example).
So has this been done? It doesn't seem much of a point to say that an experiment could show what you believe to be the case.
As I said before. Plants respond to different wavelengths. Are you prepared to say that plants have experiences?
I've saved you the trouble
So are you prepared to say plants have experiences?
I can get a spectrometer to respond one way to green light and another to red. Did the spectrometer just have two 'experiences'?
There is not one single red sensation, it is a family. I learned to associate a spectrum of color sensations corresponding to a spectrum of light centered around 700nm or so as "red".
The linguistic association between this set of sensations and a word is of course socially mediated, that is no great insight. But this is not to say that the sensation itself is somehow socially mediated, or somehow doesn't exist.
Of course we can't know for sure that any beings other than ourselves have experiences, although language capable humans can report their experiences, so we can be justified in thinking it more or less certain that they do. Are you prepared to say that a human being who had been raised without learning language would have no experiences?
I see no reason to think there is not a distinction between having and reporting experiences and that having them is not contingent on being able to report having them. But again, there is no way to be absolutely certain either way.
Yes, but as far as showing me your experience has any meaning at all, it means just the same as showing me the experience, which is why I put it that way and why I made the point.
Quoting Luke
There is little that is more certain than that we share lots of things, so I wouldn't want to characterize it as merely an assumption. (Obviously though, I could have lost the feeling in my finger, so we're not always right).
Quoting Luke
My point was that this is tantamount to saying what I said.
Quoting Luke
I didn't think you did. It's precisely because I thought you didn't that I used it as an analogy to help get across my point.
But this is going around in circles and I don't think you're reading me charitably, even though I'm being pretty clear. If I'm misunderstanding something (to do with knowledge and understanding I suppose), then you could try to explain what it is.
It's a strong claim that we don't have experiences because it's counter to common sense. If you don't have that, you wouldn't notice.
Lack of evidence is not evidence of lack. Try again.
It is said that each string has two ends. It is sad that each thread has two ends. One of the two ends may be never finished, completed, and final; but not to say it ends in infinity, as infinity is not one given number, it is not one given point.
Is "ineffable" ineffable itself? "That which cannot be said." But I just said it, did I not.
To the list in the Opening Post, I'd add one more category of ineffable: That which ONE can't say, but OTHERS can. For instance, a child gets a stomach cramp. It is an ineffable feeling for her; she never got it before, she has no concept of what to compare it to. So this three-year-old says to her mommy, "Mammy, mammy, I am experiencing and ineffable sensation in my lower abdomen." To which her mother replies, "Oh, darling, my Sweetness, it's nothing but a fleeting stomach cramp." To which the child replies: "Ah? Well, I'll be. In that case, make it a stiff one, please, Mammy." This discourse happens of course in none else but an English household.
And life goes on. Ob-la-dee, ob-la-da.
Is there a word for this? Something that can be said, clearly and unambiguously, everyone knows what the speaker has in mind, but still, the thing just said can't be fathomed by human minds? Other concepts in this category are god, particularly the modern theological concepts of solitary gods, zero, nothing, love, life, the essence of humour.
Canada coach John Herdman wasn’t trying to be disrespectful when he said the next mission for his squad was to “eff Croatia", he was just setting the tone for the F match.
https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/canada-coach-john-herdman-eff-croatia-comment
And so the Croatian coach replied with everyone has their own communication style. I'm not sure it's a nice thing to say but that's his right.
If "eff" was hate speech, the right to use it would be denied, and "eff" would be officially ineffable.
How did you identify that the sensation was a 'colour sensation'?
Quoting Janus
I don't think anyone 'doesn't have experiences'. I said earlier that experiences are post hoc constructions, they're narratives we use to make what just happened in our brain more predictable (understandable in more colloquial terms). We weave together disparate, and often completely contradictory processes into one coherent narrative after the mental events themselves have already taken place and then 'prune' our connections to those process via the hippocampus to create a false memory of how things went down - one which eliminates all the contradictory and inexplicable stuff. That process will (theoretically) happen in a newborn as much as in a language-less adult - though nether have been so thoroughly tested as normal adults. But our word 'red' acts as an off-the-shelf ready-made narrative (one used pretty specifically for communication as well, not one much used for understanding life in general). So anyone having a 'red' experience' is, by definition, using that off-the-shelf narrative.
What actually just went on in their brain which the narrative was chosen to help explain has nothing whatsoever to do with 'red'. It may have been triggered by wavelengths of light. It may, as in @Banno's mention of blind people using colour words, be completely unrelated to such triggers.
The point is that any use of the public narrative 'red' is, by definition, public.
It is.
Your quote...
Quoting frank
Casting it in terms of "the" experience, as though there is only one to be had, seems little more than a stipulation that two people cannot each have different experiences or different feelings in relation to undergoing the same experience.
Quoting Jamal
Sharing lots of things is not the same as sharing everything. It is in those unshared differences that I claim ineffability may reside. Also, in what sense would you be "wrong" if you lost feeling in your finger?
Quoting Jamal
Returning to what you said, how are you not arguing for total qualitative identity (e.g. wrt the pin prick)? I actually don't follow why total qualitative identity entails numerical identity. I imagine it might be possible for two people to have total qualitative identity in relation to a particular experience (e.g. seeing a red patch) while remaining separate people. Perhaps I've misunderstood what you mean by "total qualitative identity"?
Quoting Jamal
I'm sorry that you feel I'm being uncharitable. I'm only trying to get my point across, but I'm probably not doing a great job of it.
Same here! No problem Luke: right now I don't have any more words.
See I knew you weren't denying that. You're too smart for that.
I would argue that what we weave together is not disparate and completely contradictory bits but inferentially compatible ( but never identical) experience united on the basis of commonalities as well as differences. That’s what makes the narratives cohere. It is only when we shift our interest and focus in order to spin out an empirical third person narrative consisting of neuro-chemical bits and physical wavelengths that what we wove together now appears as disparate and completely contradictory. The contradiction is between two forms of language, two kinds of narratives, the phenomenological and the naturalistic, not between our perception of the ways things are and the way things REALLY are, as if our folk psychology ‘fools’ us into ‘false’ knowledge.
It’s interesting that you can apply this relativism to perception but not to the underlying empirical realist assumptions you ground it in , implied by terms like such as “false memory” , “what actually happens in the brain” and “wavelengths of light”. Why not be consistent and jettison the assumption that neurons and brains and wavelengths refer to something any more context and person-independent that the experience of color?
Interesting synopsis.
Quoting Isaac
So the child learning. Is it his teacher/parent/sandbox buddy that puts “red” on his shelf? If the sociological theme for the ground of our experiences is true, is it the case the child doesn’t need that “disparate/contradictory process” for his constructed narrative? And, of course, if he does need it, simply from the fact he has a brain and thinks for himself, the sociological theme would surely be false.
I agree “red” acts as an off-the-shelf narrative for use post hoc, along with every other possible “__” experience. But ‘tis a veritable beggar’s banquet, I say, not to consider how they were one and all put there in the first place.
Yes, there is no such introjection. But our use of language has no more autonomy than our socially situated organization of perception. As you wrote in your article ‘Where is the social’: “What I bring to a conversation with each word, gesture or bodily action is not a symbol whose referent is available as context-independent meaning but is instead radically indeterminate.” Following your reading Derrida, you conceived our body and language as equally grounded on what is “neither sensible nor intelligible” (‘Derrida and Negative Theology,’ p74). Accordingly, both are entirely determined/undetermined by the ineffable premise. Doesn’t it make the task of redefining the social unrealizable?
Was in a rush with my last post; sorry about that. I had something more fundamental in mind.
Loaded words may indeed be more easily changed in a language, but I’m sustaining that no language or part thereof is absolute. Therefore, any word or phrase can in principle change by being either endorsed for use in a language or else by being proscribed, this by any individual or cohort of these. Every time we make use of a word, we endorse its usage in the language community we partake of. Or, as phrases it (and in disagreement with his appraisal), we say yea to a word’s use every time we make use of it.
So I’m here arguing that we all partake in the construction, preservation, and alteration of the language we communally share - this via the choices we make (be they conscious or subconscious) in terms of which words we as individuals use.
Both the endorsement and proscription of particular words will be contingent on the interests of individuals: words which individuals find favorable to themselves in terms of functionality, aesthetic appeal, or (as in my previous examples) their ethics will be endorsed for use in language. “Meme” comes to mind as a word that via these means of endorsement has gained mainstream presence in at least the current English language, and this in a very short span of time. On the other hand, whatever words individuals - such as via their changing culture - no longer find favorable to themselves (functionally, aesthetically, ethically, or for any other reason) will degrade in the language until no longer present.
Hence, I'm maintaining that since no language is absolute or else set in stone, all languages thereby evolve via the endorsement or proscription of word use by individuals.
As to use of the term “red”: Two thousand years ago “red” didn’t exist as word to express the given color (neither did English for that matter). And two thousand years from now, there could well be a different term to address the same color in some neo-English language. But when it comes to our concrete experiences - unlike at least some abstracted notions which words express - words will change over time while their referents will remain the same. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, sort of thing.
The ‘autonomy’ I have in mind is not that of the repetition of self-identity. My sense of my own identity is relentlessly, but subtly, formed and reformed through direct and indirect social engagement, in a manner which presupposes and is made possible by the self's ‘continuing to repeat itself “the same differently or otherwise”, as Derrida (1978) says. Derridean differance would be an "imperceptible difference. This exit from the identical into the same remains very slight, weighs nothing itself...(p.373)". The repetition of this very slight difference dividing self -identity from itself produces an ongoing singular self that returns to itself the same differently.
“…there is singularity but it does not collect itself, it "consists" in not collecting itself. Perhaps you will say that there is a way of not collecting oneself that is consistently recognizable, what used to be called a `style' “(Derrida 1995, p.354)
I'm not sure I fully understand what this means, but why would you think there'd be a lack of internal disparity. We have many different inputs, many sources of data noise, why would each input yield, nonetheless, complimentary dataset?
Quoting Joshs
Well, that's an interesting suggestion, but I'm not entirely sure how one might speak at all without such terms.
Absolutely. I'm ultimately a realist, which means, for me, the social constructs aren't just random, they are constrained by the external states they seek to explain. Not just any old explanation will do. But where I depart from many realists in in there being a single 'true' narrative that somehow captures external states in perfection. I just don't see external states as being so closely tied to our modeling methods.
What is it you say, something about being able to think what you like so long as it's not contradictory? Something like that, I think is true of social constructs.
With the understanding that a concept is an abstraction abstracted from particulars:
In terms of languageless creatures and language, dogs, for one example, can on average understand 89 unique words and phrases - with a demonstrated extreme of being able to recognize about 1000 - and with at least some such words understood on average referencing concepts, e.g., “treat”. So, a preliminary question: Do human words for concepts bring into being the dog’s very ability to cognize that concept which the word references? Or do dogs hold cognizance of non-linguistic (hence non-narrative) concepts which they can then associate with human words?
As per the quote above, you seem to lean toward affirming “yes” to the first and “no” to the second. Then:
Without an organism’s innate ability to cognize non-linguistically expressed (hence, non-narrative) concepts - such as the concept of treat - how do words that reference concepts, such as “treat”, become associated with [s]anything[/s] any concept whatsoever?
Edited the crossed-out word for better comprehension.
….so long as I don’t contradict myself. Cool as hell of you to remember that. As for its relation to social constructs, asking you to explain that would take you away from your engagement here, so I won’t.
Quoting Isaac
Agreed; the realist proper likes to think he can tell the external states what they are. There remains the certain kind of idealist, on the other hand, who asks those states what they might be.
Quoting Isaac
Nor do I, in general. So closely tied meaning captured perfectly. And that which is closely tied, narrated near-perfectly, has nothing to do with external states, but they nevertheless serve as verifications for our modeling methods.
So, if I see, for example, a blue ball, that will differ from seeing a yellow ball, whether I be dog or human, and my report of that experience will vary accordingly, assuming my report is accurate.
Quoting javra
I agree with that and the rest of your post, but watch out, @Banno might interpret what you've said in such a way as to make it seem that you are stuck in a bottle that he has freed himself from. :wink:
It would be pretty fly of him if he could so demonstrate. :wink:
Freedom … it can be such a cockeyed concept. Some seek freedom from reality; others freedom from prohibitions not to be a tyrant; but I do believe that the typical philosopher - including those anti-philosophy philosophers amongst us - seek freedom from falsehoods … very much enjoying the bottle of truth-filled reality in which we would like to perpetually dwell.
There, waxed poetic a bit in turn. :smile:
:lol: Well, there are demonstrations, and then there are acceptances of the soundness of those demonstrations. Likely it is we all accept our own; hopefully not in perpetuity, though. :pray: .
Quoting javra
:up: :cool:
Two musings here.
The first is that such an "ultimate" narrative can be either consistent or complete, but not both. Hence it seems pretty unlikely that there could be such an "ultimate" narrative, since to avoid contradiction the narrative must remain unfinished.
The second is that if we have two competing narratives such that there is no test to decide which one is true, then either they are consistent, amounting to two different ways of saying the very same thing, or they are inconsistent. If they are inconsistent then either one is true and the other false, but we can't know which, in which case we are wrong or they again amount to two different ways of saying the very same thing: or they are both true, in which case we have a contradiction and anything goes; or we deny realism, in such a way that the narratives have some third truth value.
Not taking a side so much as prying out the implications.
, There are also some who claim to find freedom in the bottle. Not good for one's liver, I hear.
:up: Ha, that is more a case of finding freedom, not in the bottle, but in the contents; and a very temporally limited freedom it is, often followed as payback, in proportion to the sense of intoxicated freedom enjoyed, by having to endure a period of even more strict unfreedom than that imposed by nature herself. Of course, the trick is to avoid the hangover by never sobering up, but I think that course comes with its own horrendous set of constraints and rigours.
It is not so much a matter of putting yourself in the bottle as it is putting the bottle in you (figuratively or metonymically speaking).
Quoting Banno
The third possibility is that they are narratives derived from different perspectives, which are neither consistent nor inconsistent.
There are some drinkers (about 20% as I understand it) who do not get hangovers. I was one of those. I could drink an entire bottle of whisky over dinner and be bright as a new pin next morning. That's why I stopped. If you don't get warnings, it can be hard to know how to act. But it makes me ponder the ineffable nature of hangovers - something about a headache and queasiness; but those are just words, right? :razz:
Eh, for my part, yours is a trite retort, especially seeing the lack of coherent rebuttals to the arguments I’ve provided. FYI, there’re other kinds of freedoms associated with to bottles that are nowhere near as common, like the far harder to express and obtain sense of profound freedom pointed to in Jim Croce’s song Time in a Bottle. And yes, unlike booze, it’s not something that can be easily, if at all, effed.
But it’s your thread; express ad nauseum what you will about your lowly flies.
Feeling grumpy today, eh. Fine.
What was it you wished rebutted?
Right, words will never convey what it is to enjoy a hangover if you've never had one; if you've experienced a hangover then you might relate to the words.
I have heard that some don't experience hangovers; I didn't myself until I was about mid-twenties. Maybe it's on account of having a very efficient liver, since the excess alcohol which overburdens the liver's capacity to metabolize the alcohol is converted to formaldehyde apparently, which toxifies the body. There is also the dehydration caused by alcohol's diuretic effect, but this can be counteracted by consuming adequate water during or after your drinking sessions.
If an ultimate narrative, wouldn’t it be complete? If so, an ultimate narrative cannot be consistent. But there’s nothing in a complete narrative that makes necessary it is therefore inconsistent. Paraphrasing ’s words, capturing external states in perfection makes explicit a consistent narrative, insofar as the negation of it would be a contradiction, re: an inconsistent narrative cannot be a perfect capture.
Quoting Banno
The contradiction here, though, regards true or false in competing narratives. For a single true narrative, to avoid contradictions, the narrative only needs to be internally consistent.
Quoting Banno
Dunno so much about third truth value, but I’d deny strict and stand-alone realism in favor of an underlying predication.
Well, Gödel seems to think it makes the narrative behave oddly. You get to choose consistency or completeness, but not both. There will either be a contradiction in the narrative, or there will be stuff left our.
So "This sentence is not part of the ultimate narrative", if true, will not be part fo the ultimate narrative, and hence the narrative is incomplete...
Yet if it's false, then the ultimate narrative contains falsehoods.
In a discussion on ineffability, with some folks asserting that nothing is ineffable, calling attention to this gap shows that some things are ineffable.
Quoting Moliere
Saying that some things are ineffable doesn't make those ineffable things effable. I think that's like saying that the concept of 'nothing' is substantive, where 'nothing' is a something.
Quoting Moliere
As a non-religious type, it's not really what I had in mind (and I don't understand why God's speaking of such things would destroy them). But if you accept that some things are ineffable, then we at least agree on that.
I don't know anything about canine psychology, but if it works anything like human psychology, the association of a word (or any noise at all) with an expectation is mediated primarily by the hippocampus and just works by associating previous responses with a kind of 'mock up' of that response repeated (but not carried out). So if a human says "pass me the book", my motor circuits will be fired for all the muscle movements required to pass the book, by that expression, before I actually decide to pass the book. The last action on my part is sort of 'releasing the flood gates' of the potential to act that has already built up. Or in object recognition, it might be firing all the clusters related to some action on that object (naming it, using it, emotional response to it), connected, via the hippocampus, to the output of the various auditory cortices (depending on if it were a word or another sound type).
'Experience', as in the thing we later report as our conscious experience of the event, is constructed later out of those firings (plus a whole load of random firing which are happening all the time, and a load of extraneous firings to do with unrelated environmental variables). The task of the experience narrative is (partly) to sift out all that extraneous junk so that the memory of the event is clearer - next time's firing set is nice and neat, useful and clean of noise. It doesn't really play a role in the actual word-object linking in real time.
Quoting Mww
Another thread perhaps. The phrase stuck with me, this is the first time I've linked it to model-dependant realism. Perennially interesting thing about philosophy is where these crossovers are that one had never thought of.
Quoting Janus
No, that's not how it seems to me. Experiences are all post hoc constructions. What 'comes first' is not an experience. It's not something we can report, nor anything that we're even conscious of. It's just a load of neural activity which, as we should all know by now, does not have any kind of one-to-one relation with the sorts of things we talk about like balls, colours, or words. all of that is constructed afterwards as a way of explaining what just happened.
So it's not a case of "I threw a red ball" being an experience constructed out of the constituent experiences "throwing" redness" and "ball".
It goes...
1. {some collection of neural firing events} ->
2. "I threw a red ball" experience ->
3. (if necessary) - abstraction of 'red', 'ball' and 'threw' from that experience (2) according to the social rules around identifying those components
This is interesting. I'm not sure quite how best to answer using the terms you're using. But I'll have a go.
The way I see the relation between external and internal states is like a small mathematical data set say {2,4,6,8,10,12}. We could define that set as something like "double the value of the ordinal in the sequence". We could also define that set as "add 2 to the previous number in the sequence". Both are right, and with the sequence were given, neither are more right than the other.
We could extend it to something like {2,4,8,16} which could be "double the previous number" or ad to the previous number the sequence {2,4,8}. with what we've got, both are right, even though, if we had more numbers, the latter might be shown to be wrong.
But unlike the pragmatists, I'm not suggesting that we're merely having a 'best guess' given limited knowledge, I'm saying that the external states have functionally limited data sets. It will never be possible to determine between the two definitions. Both are right and always will be.
Would that be that the models are incomplete, then?
The original topic has for its subject external objects perfectly narrated (described/explained/viewed/comprehended). Responses to you, now, must address the topic having the narrative as its subject, which is a different topic.
Quoting Banno
……is true but irrelevant because the object represented as a sentence is not part of whatever object is being narrated perfectly as an external object, and second it is redundant because it’s already established that no ultimate narrative is possible whether there is an object such as that sentence or not. On the other hand, the sentence is false insofar as it is possible to narrate it perfectly, as an object in itself, merely by repeating it, as it the case anything constructed exclusively by reason can be perfectly reconstructed by reason.
There’s your contradiction. A manufactured causality, and thus sufficient reason, for the validity of the notion humans are very good at intentionally confusing themselves.
If I make the attempt to tell you all there is to know about a ‘57 DeSoto…..what the hell difference does “this sentence is not part of the ultimate narrative (of ‘57 DeSoto’s)” make? What is the sentence even doing there in the first place? I sure as hell didn’t include it in my narrative. This is what I mean by instigating an informal fallacy….you know, goalposts and moving them from the end zone clean out to the parking lot.
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Quoting Isaac
Yeah, true. I mean…even realism is a model, which reduces all models ever, to a purely subjective origin. It’s always amazed me how little the pure subject has escaped proper consideration. I know why, but I’m amazed nonetheless for it.
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Quoting Isaac
In cognitive metaphysics, hippocampus is experience, associating previous responses is reproductive imagination, and kind of ‘mock up’ is intuition. In effect, science has merely physically located that which speculative philosophy already understood as necessary. Metaphysics subjectively modeled; science objectively verified the model.
All’s well.
Quoting Isaac
You’re both right, but approaching “narrative” from differing perspectives. In the first, the narrative is from the perspective of recounting, which necessarily presupposes a system has done its job, in the second the narrative is from the perspective of accounting, which necessarily presupposes a system by which that same job is possible to do.
, in narrating for the object, presupposes but cannot immediately narrate for the system; , in narrating for the system, immediately accounts for the object but cannot narrate a recount of it.
For the irreducible proof, you ask? Simple: humans think necessarily, but not sufficiently, in terms of brain states, hence realism is false.
Ahhhh….but if that which is considered as mere thought is necessarily given from brain states alone, then idealism is false.
Oh dear. Whattodowhattodowhattodo…..
I mean, I can grant it -- but I'm going to say I'm not sure your ineffable is exactly what I had in mind. While experience and language aren't the same, and I believe we learn things from experience, I don't think I'd call that ineffable as much as this latter notion of what God couldn't even violate. For me, the fact that all I have to do is experience something in order to talk about it means that it's only ineffable at a certain time (in the sense that I couldn't speak the experience into myself, I'd have to get off my butt and go do something), rather than in principle. I guess I'm thinking, no matter what conditions you might put out there it will always be something that cannot be spoken of, whereas experience doesn't meet that criteria -- all you need do is experience something, then you can talk about it. Notions about the exact-sameness of experience are, I believe, inventions more than metaphysical barriers to speech, even though it is something of a philosophical puzzle, because we regularly share experiences with others. (Think of phrases like, "I know exactly what you mean!" -- when the stories aren't even the same stories, we still do!)
But others have said what I'd say in that regard, so I'll just note I'm not sure experience is what I was looking for, but set it to one side for now.
I'm pretty sure religion is what a lot of people have in mind when speaking on "the ineffable" -- more or less, if you can't talk about it, you can't criticize it. God works in mysterious ways (which is convenient when asked to explain why we do such and such...) -- so my invocation of God is to put a point to what I mean by ineffability: I'm not impressed with mysterious ways style ineffability. That's just ignorance, not some sort of in principle ineffability which I'd answer by asking about God's abilities -- what could God, the all-powerful and all-knowing (though certainly not all loving ;) ), not say?
For that I still think that God couldn't speak for you (and by extension, I couldn't speak for you, given that not even God could speak for you). Though I'm inclined to speak like this because I'm interested in a metaphysics that takes alterity, and the Other, as significant.
Another test case: The Ten Commandments. If a Moses came from God and told us, here's the rules -- would the rules mean "the good"? Or would you, as a person with freedom and judgment, have to evaluate those rules? And so, could any one person actually say "Here's the rules!" and be done with it? (If there is special knowledge, and he works in mysterious ways, then Moses might be the guy -- he did speak to God, after all, unlike us, though for purposes of this question I think skipping the middle-man wouldn't improve things because you can just ask God, "But is this right?", being a being with freedom and judgment) -- in some way, because we must judge things ourselves, "the good" is ineffable in a similar sense to the above, in that it requires input from many sources and always demands, of free persons at least, some sort of judgment (broadly speaking... a choice as a judgment, not necessarily all cognitive-style-in-your-head judgments). In order to speak on the Good, one must be open to another's speech. It is a dialogue, rather than a monologue -- which means there's a part of the speech which cannot be spoken by some of the participants.
God, being all powerful, could silence and destroy us -- but that wouldn't be asking us our opinion, that'd be destroying us. Even with all that power, God cannot speak for us just by the nature of a dialogue.
Cats also have a hippocampus, but tmk show no evidence of being able to associate words to concepts. So the presence of a hippocampus in a brain does not of itself provide a satisfactory explanation for why the average dog comes to associate certain terms with certain concepts. I say this with no quibble over the hippocampus’s importance to cognition - such as in word recognition, when a word's usage has become habitual, in at least humans.
At pith, though, was whether or not language - and hence narration - is requisite for concept formation. Expressed differently: Do concepts occur first followed by word association? Or are words, and thereby narration, required for concept formation?
Here's my underlying reason for the question:
If concepts can occur prior to word recognition - since concepts are abstractions abstracted from a plurality of particulars - the implications are that experiences can then take place prior to, or else in the complete absence of, narration. This conclusion would be entailed by the process of forming concepts from particular, narration-devoid experiences.
But if words are required for concept formation, I so far fail to see an adequate explanation of how dogs - which are by nature languageless - form concepts to begin with. To this could be added the question of why dogs can and cats can’t - since both, for example, have a hippocampus and are constantly exposed to words while around humans.
To emphasize: At base in the aforementioned question regarding concept formation is whether experience can occur in the absence of narration - this in lesser animals which are by nature languageless and, as would then seem to follow, in humans as well.
Quoting Mww
I could see that, granting that it’s as metaphorically narrational as a bee’s dance is linguistic - both having nothing to do with word usage.
Crap. Guess I wasn’t clear enough. I intended in ’s comment that the speaker is the narrator recounting some experience, but for ’s rebuttal, I intended that the system is the narrator accounting for any experience. Thus, the first mandates the use of words, the second not only does not, but cannot, use words at all.
Sorry about that….
How can the singularity become ungraspable, but recognizable?
“We are before this text that, saying nothing definite and presenting no identifiable content beyond the story itself, except for an endless diffèrance, till death, nonetheless remains strictly intangible. Intangible: by this I understand inaccessible to contact, impregnable, and ultimately ungraspable, incomprehensible—but also that which we have not the right to touch. This is an "original" text, as we say; it is forbidden or illicit to change or disfigure it, or to touch its form. Despite the non-identity in itself of its sense or destination, despite its essential unreadability, its "form" presents and performs itself as a kind of personal identity entitled to absolute respect “(Derrida, ‘Acts of literature’, p 211) Yes, we are startled and bonded by the ‘ultimately inaccessible, ungraspable, and incomprehensible’ event. But are we staying still before 'the text', endlessly, ‘till death’ anticipating the ineffable termination and admittance? Can this endless differance, unlimited suspense and postponement become an impetus to renewing our experience?
Quoting Joshs
Here, you consider a social engagement as an immanent cause of ‘my sense of my own identity’. How is that compatible with Derrida’s placing ‘what absolutely is not’ at the center of our temporality and the constitution of our being? “It is because of differance that the movement of signification is related to something other than itself, what absolutely is not… must separate the present from what it is not in order for the present to be itself, but this interval that constitutes it as present must, by the same token, divide the present in and of itself; thereby also along with the present, everything that is thought, every being, and singular substance or the subject”. (Derrida, ‘Margins of philosophy’, p 13). Shouldn’t we substitute Derrida’s interval of an absolute absence, for example, with Simondon’s notion of the transindividual? “The transindividual is the unity of two relations, a relation interior to the individual (defining its psyche) and a relation exterior to the individual (defining the collective), a relation of relations” (Combes, ‘Simondon and the Philosophy of the Transindividual’, p 26). The interval, an abyss of what absolutely is not could be transformed into the relation between the two heterogenetic orders. It could become possible to avoid the epistemological aporia while saving Derrida’s exposure to the unendurable loss of meaning.
I don't follow how you're making the jump from the particulars constituting concepts to 'experiences'. Why must the particulars be experiences?
Say there's concept a dog has which makes it more likely to, say, fetch its lead when it hears the word "walk", and say this concept is constituted of several linked concepts, I don't see why any of those linked concepts need be an experience.
What I'm suggesting is that all experience is post hoc. Everything we'd call an experience is made up after the mental events which that experience is attempting to explain.
So your dog's constituent neural activity is not an experience. If your dog has any experiences at all they'll be like ours, constructed after the event - possibly, with dogs, even using socially available narratives... Who knows I don't think it's out of the question.
So the fundamental issue here is not really the use of words. It is for humans, but maybe less so for dogs. It's about what kind of cognitive activity constitutes an 'experience' as opposed to simply some neurons firing.
I think the evidence is pretty strong now that there's no one-to-one relationship between neural events and our 'experience', so we must explain that epistemic cut somehow.
the above might clarify your otherwise felicitous distinction. It is indeed the system doing the narration, but not of experiences so much as of mental events. Does that make sense?
Quoting Number2018
First of all, it is important to remember that the ‘social’ here refers to the exposure to absolute alterity that temporal repetition implies. Such alterity can be the voice of another or one’s own outer or inner voice, the written words of another or my exposure to the perceptual features of my room. This is all discursive (textual) for Derrida.
Secondly, if what is ‘absolutely not’ is at the center of our temporality , then presence is equally so, within the same
moment.
“Nothing, neither among the elements nor within the system, is anywhere ever simply present or absent.” These two inseparable poles( the formal and the empirical, presence and absence, form a hinge in which neither side dominates the other.
Quoting Number2018
What would allow two orders to be heterogeneous to each other, other than some structural unity or center within each , opposing one to the other? Doesn’t this invoke the problem of the condition of possibility of formal structures? We would have to recognize the heterogeneity that already inhabits an ‘order’ and keeps
it from being closed within itself and simply opposed to another order.
For me “walk” is too ambiguous, since it’s something that can be learned via classical or operant conditioning. Haven’t checked but I presume pigeons could be taught to properly respond to this word by walking when so hearing - or else by fetching a leash, etc. The concept of “treat”, as first mentioned, seems to me far more apt for discussion. A typical treat can be a bone, a small serving of human food, a biscuit, or even a carrot if the dog so likes to eat. For the dog to understand the concept of treat it would need to abstract from a limited set of particulars such as those aforementioned to a generalized notion such as, here guestimating, “that which is given to me and make me greatly pleased”.
In presuming you’re not asking me why a dog must hold a first-person awareness rather than being a philosophical zombie of sorts (it does after all share enough CNS commonalities to our own to warrant making the issue moot, or so I'm thinking):
A dog can develop the concept of treat and associate it to the word "treat" only by a kind of inductive inference from a limited set of particulars of which it is aware of - this to the generalized notion as concept - by holding first-person awareness (to not further confound the issue by using the term “conscious awareness”) of things such as biscuits and bones. I presume we can both grant that, in typical cases, the dog has no word associations for each of these particulars it is aware of (e.g., so as to differentiate the word “biscuit” from the word “bone”). If so, then the dog uses unnarrated first person awareness of particular tokens to develop an unnarrated first person awareness of a type … Which it can then, however imperfectly, associate in semantic import to the English word “treat”.
None of this being possible if the dog were devoid of experiences pertaining to some particular treats.
Quoting Isaac
Roger that, as can for example be measured in milliseconds between raw sensory data from sensory organs and the after-the-fact result of the experience. But this can get knees-deep in murky issues: such as how it is that we come to hold first-person awareness of neurons and what they do in the first place if not via the experiences of first-person awareness. Besides, that experiences of a red apple, for example, are post hoc to the raw sensory data our sensory organs register does not of itself diminish the reality of us having immediate experiences of the red apple in our first person awareness.
For my part, though, I was here only questioning the appraisal that experiences need to be contingent on narration in order to manifest.
Quoting Isaac
Yes, this is a big and very loaded fundamental question. Don't intend to get into it on this thread. But so it's said, I again very much doubt that humans require words in other to experience.
And why are concepts like “mental event” and “constituent neural activity ” not themselves post hoc narratives? Because the only non post-hoc psychological events are third person empirical concepts? Instead of looking at experiences as attempts at explanation, why not see them as normatively anticipative patterns of performative interaction with a world? This eliminates the split between subjective experience and the ‘real’ outer world that your dualism between experiencing and neurological functions entails. Shifting our language from that of intentional narrative to third person neurological talk is then a move from one kind of experience to another. Tracing the evolution of one’s thinking from what you might be inclined to dub folk psychological to a scientific neurological account is not about replacing ‘post-hoc’ narrative with evidence-based fact. If anything it is the empirical account which is post-hoc in the sense that it is an elaboration and enrichment of the former. But neither is really post-hoc , since this would imply that our beliefs return from the world as it is, outside of and prior to our narrative about it. The distinction to be made is not between primary and secondary , more and less true knowledge about an external world , but the different ways in which our performative interactions with our world constructs niches that allow us to function anticipatively in the world we do-construct in the way that we do. Think of two different animals, both of which inhabits and functions within its own unique niche or ‘ world’. Let us say that one’s organism -environment niche is more complex and flexible that the other, giving it a more expansive repertoire of behaviors. If we can’t say that this more complex niche is a truer model of the way the world
really is, then we also can’t say that it is less ‘post-hoc’ than the simpler animal’s niche. Likewise, if a neurological account of psychological functioning constructs the world that it models in niche-like fashion, then the distinction between post-hoc experience and original event collapses.
Perfect sense. Brain system does its narratives of mental events, none of which is the mental event of “experience”, yet one of its mental events is the “conscious subject”, and that mental event is that which makes sense of mental event “experience”. Roundabout way of doing things, I must say.
Which gets us right back to the damnable but inescapable notion of ineffable. Anything so farging weird as mental events that apparently don’t do certain things, creating for itself events that apparently can do the things the system apparently doesn’t do, just has to be entirely ineffable, right?
Afterthought regarding your musings and Cantor.
Brain mechanism narratives: both inconsistent and incomplete. Inconsistent because it operates under the auspices of natural law but natural law cannot explain the conscious subject, and, incomplete because if natural law is sufficient causality for the conscious subject, the conscious subject should have empirical predicates, which conscious subject as such, does not as yet appear to possess.
Inconsistent and incomplete: the brain narrates everything except narrate how it does everything.
Ta-DAAAA!!!!
But
I’m not getting it. How does the brain make use of words to bring into being mental events, such as those of word recognition and usage?
I could get the affirmation that CNS cells, exemplified by neurons, communicate with each other. This affirmation presumes that neurons are of themselves living agents capable of giving and receiving information, replete with their own individual positive and negative valance … their own unicellular kind of autopoietic experience - such that they strengthen their synaptic connections when the information-conveyance is to their liking, and such that lack of beneficial information-conveyance results in synaptic decay. But even when so conceptualized, where is there word usage in the constitutional activities of brain systems?
There isn’t any. Believe it or not, it’s what I’ve been saying all along. Your bit on CNS cells just is the brain narrating itself, or to itself, in the form of mental states, wordlessly. I didn’t mention any particular methodology for it, seeing as how it can only arise in one way. Yours, in fact.
My clarification wasn’t clear, apparently. Dunno, maybe it can’t be.
———-
Quoting javra
Glad I noticed that. Gave me the chance to erase a two-paragraph clarification of the previous clarification, which would have been quite superfluous.
My bad. Should of added a smiley face or something. My post was tongue-in-cheek. No, I'm in agreement with you. :up:
... still maintaining that experience is not contingent on narrative. :wink:
This is not the same "gap" between knowledge and experience that you and @Banno spoke about earlier in the discussion. (I set out that gap/contradiction here. Banno has not yet addressed it, despite saying that he would.)
It is not merely that you can't talk about something before you experience it - you can. It is that, at least in some cases, you cannot put part of an experience into a set of instructions so that another can know how to do something from those instructions alone.
This is just a variation of Mary's Room. Does Mary learn all there is to know about colour perception from reading all the facts on the subject prior to her seeing colour? According to the Ability Hypothesis, what Mary learns when she sees red is not a new fact (knowledge-that), but an ability (knowledge-how) - she learns how to pick out red from other colours by sight. This is the same as what you and Banno are claiming: that the knowledge (how) that one learns from an experience cannot be entirely stated and recorded in every possible book on the subject (written by those who have had the experience); it cannot be included in "all the facts". Therefore, that part of knowledge is ineffable.
You and Banno did not specify that it is necessarily knowledge-how that cannot be included in "all the facts", or in the most detailed possible list of instructions of how to do something, but you have both previously implied, if not stated, that there is some ineffability in the knowledge that one gains from undergoing an experience.
"Double the ordinal" and "add two to the previous number" both give {2, 4, 6, 8, 10}. But so do "The sum of n and the reverse of its digit", and "The sum of n and the number of digits in n".
If asked to continue the sequence {2, 4, 6, 8, 10...} any of these will do. The first two are identical. Continuing the second two will result in different sequences: { 0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 11, 22, 33, 44, 55...} and {0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 11, 13, 15, }. So the first two are consistent with {2, 4, 6, 8, 10...} and with each other, while the second two are consistent with {2, 4, 6, 8, 10...} but not with the other sequences.
There are innumerable ways to "model" any "functionally limited data set" - taking "model" here as setting out some sort of narrative or rule. If instead we consider "model" as letting a neural network predict the next element in the sequence, will it always choose the same sequence?
Could we have two different, yet accurate and complete. descriptions of your ‘57 DeSoto? If the two descriptions are complete, then aren't they identical? And if we have two different descriptions, doesn't it follow that they are either incomplete or inconsistent?
All this by way of agreeing that we cannot have such a complete description.
____________________
So if we cannot have a complete description of the ‘57 DeSoto, doesn't it follow that there is something about the ‘57 DeSoto that cannot be said? Something ineffable?
I don't think so. It's not that there is something left unsaid, but that there is always more that can be said...
All good enough.
What’s the significant difference in the two parts of that compound statement?
It's incomplete yet consistent, as opposed to complete but inconsistent.
Heh, "asking", for me at least, isn't as literal as I'm reading you here.
Your link counts as "asking" for me. And if a textbook explanation suggests the blind have visual experiences... what does that suggest for your belief that the blind can't talk of red?
Quoting hypericin
I think I'd prefer to say that how I determine what they experience is by asking them. That's step 1 of the method I'd propose. And the textbook you linked seemed to be following that in roughly the same way.
I think what you're asking is how does dialogue communicate experience? -- which I'd agree is a good question I don't quite know the answer to.
But that it does -- well, it's questionable, but it's only questionable to me on the level of Cartesian doubt.
I'm still not following how you've jumped to 'awareness'. Why does the dog need to be 'aware' of bones and biscuits in order for the category {stuff that's nice to eat} to form a semantic memory. It seems to me all that's required would be some connections between the word-sound 'treat' and the neural networks associated with nice food. There are still specific networks that will be excited in response to categories, just perhaps fewer of them than with specifics.
In a sense, the dog collating mental events into category 'treat' therefore is social construction. The trigger for the association with a broad response such as nice food, rather than a specific one such as bone, has been built, not by the dog, but by the interaction with the owner.
So the confusion (my fault perhaps) that many seem to have gotten into from my comments is that they are...
Quoting javra
That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that without language we do not have experiences of 'red', not that we don't have experience tout court. To abstract an experience (a post hoc construction) as being one of 'red' one requires the definition of red. Without it, one has neither cause, nor capability to abstract, from the stream of experience being constructed, anything like 'redness'.
Well, they are, in that I experience them in a lab, but they're not in this narrative - the one we're talking about here where we're discussing how experience might be best modelled. It's like me narrating a story to you where the main character jumps out of a window and you say "but he can't jump out of a window, he's a fiction, just a figment of your imagination"
Say the entire world is a fiction. I assume, in talking to you as normal human beings, that you too are embedded in this fiction, and that in this fiction there are plot items called neurons, and brains, and that they have a history in this storyline, they've occurred in previous scenes. We're discussing what part the character 'experience' ought to play in this story. Someone says "oh, he could pick up the plot-item 'neuron' and throw it at the wall". I'm saying "No, he couldn't do that because, if you remember from scene 4, the plot-item 'neuron' was described as really, really heavy, and in scene 2, the character 'experience' was described as being quite weak. It wouldn't work to have him throw 'neurons' at the wall here".
All made up. Nothing having any better claim to be real than anything else. But things in the world have histories, they're tied to other things by logical and rational connections. A neuron is like one long Ramsey sentence, it starts with "If...", but to deny that first 'If' means the whole sentence must be undone and that unravels a ton of connected stuff.
We're constantly weaving narratives to explain the causes of our internal states, and yes, that process is not passive - we reach out to the external states and sometime try to change them to match the prediction rather than change the prediction... but either way, we're weaving a story, not arbitrarily, but with purpose. We want it to cohere, to make good predictions, to be consistent...
It still matters (to some) if the post hoc character we've made into 'neurons', makes sense when in the same scene as the post hoc character we've made into 'experience of red'.
Quoting Joshs
Case in point. You're drawing here a logical conclusion from two narrative points. You're saying that if we accept A and B, then C must follow, ie C must be the case. So some things simply must be the case once we accept their premises. That's all empirical sciences are claiming (or at least, that's all I'm claiming). If we accept A,B,C...etc about our interactions, our models thus far, then D must be the case. and if D is the case, then our previous E cannot also be. It's all hypothetical, it's all one long Ramsey sentence. There's no claim to ultimate reality there, just If-Then.
I don't know. I made a modest career doing my damnedest to eff it. But maybe...
Perhaps numbers were a bad example afterall, being famously infinite, and here I'm trying to give an example of a finite data set.
In my example, one should imagine the set {2,4,6,8} as the entirety of the external state - finite and discrete. So numerous models could be used to predict the full set from some part of it, and, being both finite and discrete, there'd never be a point where any one model could be shown to predict (or model) more accurately, the full set.
Like the duck-rabbit. It's never going to resolve the question of which it is.
I like that, two different ways of saying the same thing, used to demonstrate that you cannot say the same thing in two different ways, simply with the assertion of "it's not".
Unless you explain the "not" by giving reasons for it, then you are just begging the question by asserting something without demonstrating its truth. So how is it that "there is something left unsaid" says something different from "there is always more that can be said"?
Is it the case that "there is always more that can be said" is a statement of a general principle, and "there is something left unsaid" is a reference to a particular instance? So the difference between these two, which makes them not the same, is not a difference at all, it is the fact that there is a relation between them. That there is a relation between them is what makes them distinct, and this implies that that "no relation" means the same. A relation is a statement of difference, so by the identity of indiscernibles, the proposal of two things without relations is actual a proposal of one and the same thing. Then "different" means having a relation, which implies being part of a larger whole, so that being different means being part of one and the same whole.
But all that is a distraction from the real issue, which is the relation you've proposed between "there is always more that can be said", and the ineffable. How do you propose that this statement "there is always more that can be said" does not imply that the ineffable is real? "Always" implies that every particular situation will have the same general feature of "something left unsaid".
So the real issue is in the way that we understand the relationship between the general principle, and the particular situation. The general principle must always imply an "always" in relation to particular instances, or else it loses its credibility. But the particular must always have unique properties or else it cannot be said to be a particular. These two general principles establish that the particular is always in some way incompatible with the general. This is not an incompleteness, it is an inconsistency between these two general principles, one describing the general principle, and the other describing the particular..
Therefore we have accepted and employed general principles which establish that the particular is inconsistent with the general, through inconsistent descriptions of these two. That is the relationship between these, which we know and understand, a relationship of inconsistency. Furthermore, there is more than one way to deal with this problem of inconsistency, because we could designate a problem with our description of the particular, or we could designate a problem with our description of the general, or both.
The common, current, solution is to assign the problem to our description of the general, and adapt our understanding of the general in an attempt to make it consistent with our description of the uniqueness of the particular. To do this, we allow the general to lose some of its credibility, and replace "always" with a degree of possibility of "not always", thereby moving into an understanding of reality which consists of probabilities. The general principle has been adapted to replace "always" with a numerical value representing probability.
So you have moved from "experience is a social construct" to "the conceptualization and verbalization of experience is a social construct"? (Which we all knew.)
Do you now agree that the sensory experiences of 2 are ineffable, and are only communicable at all to those who have had the same experience?
Sure, if they have the experience. The real world medical condition of blindness is a red herring. What I was going for was "An individual who has no experience of color".
Quoting Moliere
The words for sensory experiences like color can only be learned by pointing, which links the experience with the associated word. You can then happily use these words with others who have learned these same associations, avoiding the impossible task of actually describing what it is like to have these experiences.
What is your opinion on the validity, and/or manifestation, of mental imagery?
Quoting Moliere
But then, its not as if it's not a logical procedure. What is free of this?
Quoting Moliere
I think phenomenology is one of two ways to discover presence as presence, for it clears perception. And I think it is an intellectualization of the process of liberation that leads to what they call enlightenment in the East. As I see it, it is important to understand that what is sought is not propositional knowledge, and I say this disregarding what is written in familiar texts: the "science" of describing the world of intuitive presence is incidental to the revelatory encounter. The real question phenomenology puts before us, I hazard, is, is it really possible for an encounter of "pure phenomena" to occur? It is not that one has to clear this with theory first, for it is really not a method to a propositional affirmation, though I am sure this is necessary part of the conscious act being conscious. The discovery of pure phenomenal encounter is a description of what is revealed. The theory, in my view, follows what is made manifest in the method. One is not, in the serious undertaking, just trying to make sense of ideas; one is seeking a new "sense" altogether. One is trying to dismantle the familiar world of spontaneous recognition in the "consummate ordinariness" of our affairs. This is the kind of rabbit hole I have in mind.
Quoting Moliere
I don't think this puts it right because I don't know what the "non phenomenological" is. Ideas are phenomenological presences as well as sensible intuitions. Indeed, there is nothing that is not. The phenomenon is what is there stripped of the belief that what we think in the usual way (the naturalistic attitude) is what reality is (see Caputo's Transcendence and the Transcendental in Husserl's Philosophy). When it is seen that what we have been "seeing" all along is not reality, we face the bare phenomenon. A moment of wonder and awe. I am saying (as does Caputo, I think) this is a threshold revelatory experience of Reality with a capital 'R'.
Quoting Moliere
I do see your point and it's a fascinating one: It is not as if at the moment of liberating perception from the multitude of suppositions that are as a matter of course, always already there, is a departure from the world of rocks, trees and stars and galaxies, but rather that this same world sustains through, but what is lifted is, well, let Caputo make a point. For Husserl, the transcendencies are the various things and ways of the world; they are " an inexhaustible otherness and fullness which consciousness now apprehends this way and now that. It is whatever manages to escape consciousness, to over flow it, to be too much for it at any one time. Transcendencies are mundane, empirical realities which give themselves to subjectivity in a complex of present and absence...(but) transcendental does not belong to the world at all.....but instead transcends the world. It is prior to the world, providing the ultimate subjectivity before which the world rises up as a phenomenon. the transcendental is not in the world,. nor above the world., but is a condition of possibility prior to the world.
This last statement needs to be examined. Phenomenology is what is there, presupposed by an engagement with the world of usual affairs. Phenomena are "prior", meaning always already there, but ignored thematically (as they would put it), i.e., just not talked about. Keep in mind that Kant was in the same mode of analysis, only in the search for the rational structure of thought and judgment. Husserl wants to make that analytical movement toward the phenomenological totality that is always there in the analysis of everydayness, not just rational structure. Kant says concepts without intuitions are empty and intuitions without concepts are blindd; Husserl says, let's make this synthesis of thought and sensible intuitions as THE landscape of the world as it is, omitting the idea of "representation". This before us IS what it is IS to BE. (Keeping in mind, as always, I have not read and absorbed the breadth if his thought. Never written a paper in Husserl).
A truly momentous move, rejected by most philosophers simply because it is so radical in its claim that the world as it is, is right there before you, realizable after the reduction intuitively and thematically removes talk about other things, the "petty" transcendencies of day to dayness. What Husserl calls transcendental, Buddhists call liberation, nirvana, no-self, and so on. I hold that philosophy's phenomenology is meant to be the final replacement of religion. It is a course toward an intuitive disclosure, not simply analytic philosophy's the empty spinning of wheels.
Quoting Moliere
I think the "untutored mind" is always a matter to deal with. Think again of Kant: His analysis assumes that one has empirical experiences in which the structures of reason can be revealed. No language and social transaction, no demonstration of pure reason. Also consider that while you music education can enhance appreciation, it you were born to an enviironment of classical music, you would take to it intuitively. Your infantile exposure would BE you education, ands this applies across the board.
I wonder if learning music theory, say, can really enhance the aesthetic experience. Some music is very intellectual, like atonal pieces. Sure, you CAN appreciate them aesthetically, and certainly tonal dissonances can be just gorgeous, but IN tonal contexts! I have an open mind, but the aesthetics of Anton Weber (see here, e.g. https://www.google.com/search?q=youtube+anton+weber+atonality&rlz=1C1GIVA_enUS965US965&sxsrf=ALiCzsZhkrviWDoQp5TK4QsU0-uxHgQuwA%3A1669479356704&ei=vDuCY5XRKsytqtsPptWd-AQ&ved=0ahUKEwiVn5Cgn8z7AhXMlmoFHaZqB08Q4dUDCBA&uact=5&oq=youtube+anton+weber+atonality&gs_lcp=Cgxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAQAzIFCAAQogQ6BAgAEEc6BwgAEB4QogRKBAhBGABKBAhGGABQrAZY2iNg2CZoAHACeACAAZsBiAHtDJIBBDEuMTOYAQCgAQHIAQjAAQE&sclient=gws-wiz-serp#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:6339fa33,vid:ctLLqVy_kB0
is challenging.
But music can be powerfully beautiful. A weird way to put it, those two words together, but there is that extraordinary rapture that that comes over one that can and should be the object of great philosophical interest. Alas, philosophers tend not to be aesthetes. But when one listens to, say, the first several minutes of Mahler's ninth, or Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin, or whatever, there is something extraordinary that steps forward. (But how about Brittany Spears' Oops!? This raises a very interesting question pretty much untouched by philosophy, which is the possibility of qualitative gradation of evaluation of the "pure" affectivity of music and art, looking into whether some music is simply, qualitatively better than another. How could this be determined? Solely on the listening event; but this goes to your point about education, enculturation, and how this makes appreciation possible. Play Beethoven to bushman, and I am sure there will be mostly confusion.
Anyway, I would say all music is received in an environmentally structured way, but this structure is not the aesthetic, just as, to borrow Kant's way, pure reason is not about which language or culture it appears in.
Quoting Moliere
Heidegger thought, I have read, that ancient Greek and German were privileged languages, and that Greek terms were a cure for centuries of bad metaphysics. And I have read about the culture of the 1930's that influenced a lot of thinking, a quasi mystical belief in early races that were pure, once, and needed to be made pure again. There was something of this in Heidegger, who thought historically of about ontology, and I think this is the basis of his brief but terrible tryst with Nazism. I think he said he was "disappointed" and never condemned what they did. But he thought he could lead Germany to a new era of "self invention" recalling that a major part of his thought was to take the inquirer to that understanding of one's freedom to make one self, and this content of oneself was, of course, always already there in one's historical throwness (geworfenheit). Germans were Germans, so all there is to do is make the perfect German! In a creative act of authenticity grounded in the grand historical conception.
This creepy thinking is dangerous, and all too familiar in recent politics; nationalism is born out of thinking like this. But his analysis of our "there being" is just breath taking. Can't read Levinas without him, or, you can, even without Husserl, but he really needs context. Heidegger said Husserl was just walking on water with his "pure phenomenon". What you call "language fused", I hold, should be understood in terms of Husserl's transcendentalism: he thinks that this recognition of our "captivity of unquestioned acceptance" of the world's events is more than stepping beyond Heidegger's throwness; it is an ontology in the old, pre Heideggerian sense, you might say, of real Reals, and it is here I think he is right, though to speak of it makes the whole thing instantly assailable. But ot me this misses something very important, which brings the matter of pure phenomena to the table. Pure? In what sense? Certainly, the everydayness is suspended, but then what happens, for we are still IN everydayness when we do this in a critical way, which is the foundational interpretative engagement of language.
Put Heidegger's historicity aside, I say, and now see where the epoche takes one. I hold the only thing that really survives is value. And this is a major part of my thinking: a value-ontology, which means the only phenomenological purity comes to us entangled, of course; but the less entangled we can see it, the more it reveals itself. This is where metaethics takes us.
Levinas' Totality and Infinity opens this door, but he does not, as I can see, affirm the primacy of ethics as in the givenness of value as such. the face of the Other conveys this, but what IS this that is so important, a nd how can it be determined in the reduction that moves to purity? This is witnessed in the pain and pleasure, agony and bliss AS SUCH. It is manifest in its manifestness. or, it is its own presupposition.
Reading Levinas? Quite a different world you are in. Makes us something of a cult of two. He, and others, take religion seriously, something Heidegger would complain about (he called Kierkegaard a religious writer, with an unkind intention, even though he owed him a great debt of thanks for some of his thinking). But Heidegger didn't see the primacy of ethics. He is always me, mine, my death, my (our, in the case of his nationalism/naziism) freedom.
Quoting Moliere
But it has to there: here is where ineffability lies, in the ethical and aesthetics of our world. A huge topic. My sources are too broad to mention (not at all that I am a master of these), but for the phenomenological reduction's theological "turn" see Being without God by Marion; too many others.
I like the intro to Michel Henry's works:
Henry’s phenomenology of life is radical precisely because it situates life’s original dimension beyond the realm of what is accessible to the natural sciences and even to objectivity as such, namely, by locating it in an affective immanence that escapes every attempt to objectify it.
This originarity of the "affective immanence" is striking. I want to stress that this dimension of affectivity is discoverable as a potency embedded in the revelation of absolute ontology. Of course, the rub lies with saying such a thing and not being misunderstood, for the problems that leap up at you are created by familiar language, even or especially philosophical language, that have no footing here, yet it is not as if the "something ineffable" about this can't be said. It can be said just as well as anything else, but that would take a system of language use in which this kind of affective immanence is common.
Quoting Moliere
In the all too busy comments I made above, all that you say here is relevant and poignant. Kant's old line of thinking is the jumping off place, because he did understand that there is something unnatural or noumenal that was intimated in phenomena. What he didn't see is that in order for this to be the case, then phenomena itself must be noumenal. The metaphysics he conceived drew a line. But this was wrong. There is no line; only being, and metaphysics has always been about the physics that stands before us. Nor did he realize, as the very fewest "philosophers" have, the the whole point of our existence is to be found in affectivity: the Good, says Wittgenstein, this is what I call divinity.
Aren't all variations of memory (e.g. short term memory and long term memory) the storage (however imperfect it may be) of what occurs in the present awareness of the organism? If not entertaining philosophical zombie scenarios, this is the only possibility I can currently think of. I for example don't find that we as humans can recall memories of events which we were never consciously aware of in some former present time. (EDIT: false memories excluded - but this exception only seems to evidence the point made in terms of true memories.)
As to category formation, at the very least all species of will animals will make active use of categories if they are to survive - e.g., those of predator and/or of prey - in manners devoid of word use. This will include solitary animals, such as is typically the case for felines. Which to me evidences that categories can and do form in the absence of word use. (In truth, I also uphold that some category awareness will be inborn in certain animals, becoming only fine-tuned via experience ... a duckling's indifference to a goose's silhouette overhead and fearing that of a hawk's comes to mind as one researched example (though not devoid of controversy) of such ingrained recognition of categories ... but this would greatly complicate the current issue.)
Quoting Isaac
My view is that no animal, humans included, forms connections between word-sounds and certain neural networks. Here I find a confounding of two different levels that concurrently occur in the same system. The animal would instead hold conscious awareness of the word-sound "treat" and would consciously associate it to, in my view, a category it is also in some way consciously aware of - most likely intuitively. And all of these activities that take place within the conscious awareness of the organism are then concurrently also manifesting in the workings of organism's neural networks.
Quoting Isaac
I can agree that without language we would likely hold no awareness of the culturally-relative, abstract, connotations which redness can imply. That of passion - be it anger or love - for example.
But it seems to me that all lesser-animal predators will be aware of red, for it is the color of blood, which prey evidences when injured or eaten. For a lesser-animal predator to not have an experience of red would be greatly detrimental to its survival - such that experience of this color is favored by evolution in at the very least predators (irrespective of how qualitatively different their experiences of redness might be in comparison to typical human awareness of the color). I mention this because, of course, lesser animals do not make use of language (when understood as word use) to have experiences of red.
Never mind; too overly-analytical of me.
I'm curious, especially if you find fault with what I've stated, but if you insist on my never minding, alright.
So, ‘the social” here is significantly reduced to what can be expressed by either discursive or the
apparent perceptual features of ’my room.’ Such reduction omits various social situations that directly affect my sense of identity without my conscious engagement.
Quoting Joshs
The problem of the impasse of a formal structure should not be limited by a classical apparent
structuralist approach. Despite an innumerate variety of significant interpretations, Derrida's differance and 'what absolutely is not' can be referred to discovered by Foucault our comprehensive contemporary situation of 'the cogito and the unthought.' "Man cannot posit himself in the immediate and sovereign transparency of a cogito… man extends from pure apprehension to the empirical clutter, the chaotic accumulation of contents, the weight of experiences constantly eluding themselves, the whole silent horizon of what is posited in the sandy stretches of non-thought." (Foucault, ‘The order of things’, p 351) Hasn't Derrida, instead of openness to the immanence of 'the unthought', erected an enclosed formal transcendental structure of the ultimate negative theology? Foucault, as well as Simondon and Deleuse, chose a different way. That is 'what would allow two orders to be heterogeneous to each other: we are impacted not by 'what absolutely is not" but by 'the whole silent horizon of what is posited in the sandy stretches of non-thought.' Foucault distinguished between the order of powers to affect and to be affected and the order of knowledge as heterogeneous but immanent to each other. "Between technics of knowledge and strategies of power, there is no exteriority, even if they have their specific roles and are linked together on the basis of their difference" (Foucault, 'The History of Sexuality p 98). Similarly, answering to the situation of 'the cogito and the unthought,' Deleuze and Guattari asserted: "There is only desire and the social, and nothing else. "(D & G, ‘Anti-Oedipus, p29).
The sensation of red, of course.
If it, or anything, is ineffable, then you would expect circularity: "Which sensation? The red one. What is a red sensation? Redness. What is X? X-ness." Once the ineffable is reached, description stops, and its name can only be recited.
I concede I may be interacting with an automation or a p-zombie, with no notion of sensations, and so all this will be incomprehensible. If so, you can rest assured (whatever that may mean for you) that this incomprehension is a result of sensation's ineffability.
Quoting Banno
The problem with your insults is that you use them in lieu of arguments. They are not particularly clever either, but to each his own.
Quoting javra
Quoting javra
Quoting javra
I dunno….just seemed to smack of anthropomorphism. First to say lesser animals do not make use of language, then say they have red experiences, seems to attribute to them that which is reserved for us.
Lesser predators are not aware of red or blood, for those are conceptions that belong to language using intellects. Lesser predators are aware of that which triggers their instincts, I think is as far as we should use our language in describing beings that don’t.
I deleted because I understand what you mean; overly analytical because I think it misrepresented to say it that way. But alas…..we’re freakin’ married to our own words, and don’t employ a sufficient work-around when trying to show them impossible to use.
Not to worry….
You've cut the first quoted sentence short. I find the sentence important in it's entirety, including the part about "the culturally-relative, abstract, connotations which redness can imply". To me words facilitate the ability to form abstractions from abstractions from abstractions ... ultimately abstracted from experienced particulars. We may make use of the former while lesser animals don't, but I take it both experience the particulars. To be more blatant about things, while some mammals can visually associate the redness of inflamed genitalia with a readiness for reproduction, they will not be able to associate redness to, for one example, what the red circle in the Japanese flag symbolizes (the sun; power, peace, strength) - which is a culture-relative, abstract connotation that red can invoke.
Quoting Mww
This, though, denies the well documented reality that lesser animals can and do learn - including by forming associations. But I grant, my bias is not to deny lesser mammals the presence of any and all intellect, despite their lack of language and far less able cognitive faculties.
Quoting Mww
I get that, it's a little like a vicious circle. It's why I'm now leaning into ethology (animal behavior) in this discussion.
Thanks for the comments.
I think Deleuze was closer to Derrida’s approach to the relation between strategies of power than he was to Foucault’s. Deleuze was not happy with Foucault’s understanding of systems of power as motivating and constituting. Desiring assemblages can be differentiated from each other, but not in the way that Foucault presumes power systems to do.
“Which brings me to my primary difference from Michel at the moment. If I speak with Felix Guattari of desiring-assemblages, it's that I am not sure that micro-systems can be described in terms of power. For me, the desiring-assemblage marks the fact that desire is never a "natural" nor a "spontaneous" determination. Feudalism for example is an assemblage that puts into play new relations with animals (the horse), with the earth, with deterritorialisation (the battle of knights, the Crusade), with women (knightly love), etc. Completely mad assemblages, but always historically assignable. I would say for my part that desire circulates in this assemblage of heterogeneities, in this sort of "symbiosis": desire is but one with a given assemblage, a co-functioning. Of course a desiring-assemblage will include power systems (feudal powers for example), but they would have to be situated in relation to the different components of the assemblage. Following one axis, one can distinguish in the desiring-assemblage states of things and enunciations (which would be in agreement with the distinction between the two types of formation according to Michel). Following another axis, one can distinguish the territoritalities or re-territorialisations, and the movements of deterritorialisation which carry away an assemblage (for example all the movements which carry away the Church, knighthood, peasants). Systems of power would emerge everywhere that re-territorialisations are operating, even abstract ones. Systems of power would thus be a component of assemblages. But assemblages would also comprise points of deterritorialisation. In short, systems of power would neither motivate, nor constitute, but rather desiring-assemblages would swarm among the formations of power according to their dimensions.”( Desire & Pleasure,Gilles Deleuze.
trans. Melissa McMahon 1997)
What I'm suggesting is that the duck-rabbit is resolved in that we can talk of it being either a duck or a rabbit; we are not limited to one description. We have three: duck, rabbit and duck-rabbit.
But someone might come along and show us that it is also a sailing ship, that there is yet another description that we had so far missed. It's not that seeing the sailing ship is ineffable, since we now can talk about it. There was more that can be said. Because it can be said, it is not ineffable. ( )
Hence, the tail grows in the telling.
(edit: Ducking the dick.)
You are almost there. You almost grasped the circularity of defining red as the sensation of red.
The science of perception is built on confidence in our knowledge of the external world.
We can only speculate about why that confidence is so easy to come by, but we can't explain it by empirical or logical means.
OK, I can agree that it seems reasonable to think that the neural machinery operates prior to the experience, but that is irrelevant to what I am saying. The experience consists in the sensations, feelings and images of the body-mind. They don't all have to be conscious, or reflexively conscious, let alone reported.
So, I'm saying that what the dog sees; either the yellow ball or the blue ball, is different in each case. The dog is aware of the yellow ball or the blue ball, and can tell the difference, as evidenced by her responses.
Of course dogs and other animals may not be capable of the self-reflexive awareness of experiencing as humans are, since that ability may require symbolic language. Experiencing requires a perspective, and the neural machinery is not experienceable (in the sense that we have no awareness whatsoever of neural "goings on; it has no perspective).
Could you expand this? In what way Deleuze was close to Derrida's approach? Could you relate Derrida's perspective on power to your quote from 'Desire and Pleasure'? By the way, Deleuze entirely changed his position and reformulated the disagreement with Foucault in 'Foucault'.
I'll choose the dick-rabbit myself, therefore the option that there's always more options.
Quoting Banno
But, what I explained, the difference between "there is something left unsaid", and "there is always more that can be said" presents us with an inconsistency, which also necessitates the ineffable.
Your reply here indicates that because there is always more that can be said, what is referred to necessarily can be said, therefore nothing ineffable. However, since the phrase "there is always more that can be said" also implies that everything cannot be said, the ineffable is also implied.
That is the manifestation of the inconsistency I explained. If you look at it from the point of view of the particular, we have your conclusion, each and every instance has more to be said, but it can be said, therefore your conclusion. But from the point of view of a general principle, your statement says there will always be more to be said, therefore not everything can be said.
.
Maybe this is a little silly but just because a lot may be said 'about' a subject doesn't mean it is actually being spoken of. Sound and fury...? Talking to a priest friend of mine yesterday about God he made the following comment - 'We can fill many books and many thousands of hours in talk of god without ever making contact with the subject. We are just talking to ourselves - the nature of god remains ineffable.'
And reason is an abstraction, that is, something about our existence that is taken up in analysis. and all of our categories are like this. There is no knitting, no arboreal things, no lunch and dinner; everything you can think of is construct, and thinking cannot occur without these. But in its categorizing of the world, thought comes upon the world itself, and questions step forward: What is reality, reason, truth and so on, and so we have philosophy, but its categories are weird and intractable.
All disciplines tries to take what you call the messiness of the world and conceptualize them. So how can we conceptualize value. I first give Wittgenstein's answer: Don't even try. But it is not the messiness he has in mind. Just the opposite: value is a term exceeds the function of facts/concepts for it is, its is, as Sartre put it, this impossible superfluity, though he doesn't talk like this, a pure phenomenon, that cannot be fit onto the logical grid for logic in the world is contextually grounded, and "the world" is a-contextual. Again, I talk like this, not Witt, as I put the puzzle together, but I am sure this is a defensible interpretation. His insistence that we should pass over in silence that which cannot be spoken, is an insistence that goes to the vacuous claims about qualia (think the world qua world), and these are supposed to be pure phenomena.
This is where I begin my thoughts: I don't think at all that one can make any sense out of qualia, this "being appeared to" foundation of knowledge, when it comes to factual categories or "states of affairs" and neither did Witt. It would be like talking about the logical analysis of logic itself, using logic as a presupposition to analyze logic: logic as logic is not a "thing of parts" because the only parts you can imagine, the modus ponens, the disjunctions and conditionals, etc., are deployed in the analysis. "The world" is not a thing of parts, and in order for a thing to be analyzed, it has to have parts; analysis is, after all, taking apart of something. What is knitting? Its parts are all you can say, which is quite a bit. The world as the world has no of this.
So, if a thing has no analytical possibilities, we have simply to remain silent about it, and as I said, regarding qualia, the pure phenomenon, the presence qua presence of a thing is simply unanalyzable. But my agreement ends on value. It possesses an unanalyzable dimension the categorization of which makes for a truly unique and impossible category: that of the ethical right and wrong, good and bad. The "pure phenomenon" of "being appeared to redly" is a very different kind of phenomenon from being in pain. This is the premise that I claim to be an existential universality and apriority, impossible because it does not issue from logic, but from existence.
Quoting Tom Storm
But you are not allowing analysis its due. Take any given ethical issue ask what it is. It can be analyzed. My sister wants to borrow the car, but she has had her license suspended, but then, it is an emergency because someone has appendicitis and needs to go now, but again she could be lying just to get the car and have fun; but on the other hand; and so on .All ethical issues have their examinable affairs. Metaethics asks, but what is it that makes it ethical at all? Ask what makes a spoon a spoon, and you get the familiar features of spoons, and this has nothing to do with any particular case of using spoons. Only spoons as spoons. Same here. What makes ethics ethics at all. At the existential core of this is value. An ethical case must have something of value at risk. So what is value? Value is the strange stuff of the world, a given dimension of existence. Then, see the above.
You are looking at the general principle you stated, as if it only applies to one particular case. In that one instance, more can be said, and that which can be said is not ineffable. But if the general principle you stated is true, that there is always more which can be said, then it is impossible that all can be said. Therefore there is something ineffable.
That's the example Banno needs to look at. The fact that we can always say more, implies that not all can be said, therefore the ineffable.
This is much the same failure on your part that underpins your inability to grasp instantaneous velocity, limits, and such. I and others have tried to help you with this conceptual failing, but to no avail.
That there are things unsaid does not imply that there are things that cannot be said.
You are changing the subject Banno. Your statement was:
Quoting Banno
Can you see how "there is always more that can be said" implies necessarily that not all can be said?
But to demonstrate that some things are ineffable, you would have to conclude not "there is always more that can be said" but "there are some things that cannot be said".
You seem to think that one can step from "possible but not actual" to "not possible" without further presumption.
So? What do you do with all this 'analysis' apart from going around and around in circles?
I remain unconvinced that value is anything more than an understandable and mundane attempt by humans to rate objects, people or matters in terms of usefulness. Some of it is arbitrary, some of it transitory, some of it survivability. :wink: If you wish to call needing to make choices and act a process of transcendence that's fine, but I'm on a different bus.
My intuition tells me it's best to presuppose that the world is real and there are other people/creatures who share this reality with me and we must work out together ways of living/acting that are least harmful to overall wellbeing. Unfortunately this means taking for granted any manner of things you might well call a construction or artifice.
There's no question that philosophy can commit itself to analysis (analysis paralysis?) and to intense and deep speculative acts such as you have listed. But why? What are the results? You and I are not Kant and we're going to make any breakthroughs.
That's why I use "the ineffable" rather than "some things are ineffable". It's the difference between the general and the particular. We can talk about "the ineffable" as a general principle without mentioning which things are ineffable, therefore without negating the property of "ineffable" from those things which have that property. But to talk about the things which are ineffable is self-defeating, nonsense, because you identify particulars and say that they are ineffable. Likewise, it would be self-defeating to demonstrate ineffable things.
So you've just loaded the requirement so that it would be impossible to do what you ask for. 'Show me the things which are ineffable, so we can talk about them'.
Anscombe was professedly not a phenomenonlogist, and was an analytic philosopher. You think she is aligned with the outrageous things I said? Just for your recollection, I am looking at this from Witt:
[i]What is Good is Divine too. That, strangely enough, sums up my ethics.
Only something supernatural can express the Supernatural. MS 107 192 c: 10.11.1929[/i]
Of course, in his Lecture on Ethics, he was clear, talk of the nature of ethics was nonsense. Yet, the Good is at the very center of ethics. The implicit question was this, How is it that Wittgenstein was capable of, at once, a flat out denial of the possibility of talk about ethics; yet confessing this about the Good? Keep in mind that in the Tractatus ethics was transcendental. "The Good lies outside the space of facts."
You should see where this is going. Witt was struggling with the contradiction inherent in the confrontation with the world that one the one hand possessed logical delimitations, and on the other, intimated with such insistence that ethics and value were embedded in the intuitive presence of things (putting aside his own language limitation here, just to discuss) that he broke off with Russell on account of the latter failing to see that the essential point of the Tractatus was not what was revealed to be affirmed within the "state of affairs" of discourse, but rather just what it was that could not be said at all. This was the major thrust of the work.
The discussion in this thread is about ineffability. Wittgenstein has clearly given us an index to just this: ethics and aesthetics. I want to give this the full breadth of its analysis, a nd this brings Husserl's phenomenological reduction, which is a method of suspending "states of affairs" to use Witt's language, in order to release perceptual engagement from the intrusive knowledge claims that attend implicitly always, already.
The question put to you, who are interested in the matter of ineffability (this is your OP), is, what do you think of Witt's apparent dilemma? And what of the reduction toward a purifying of the familiar and spontaneous, toward a clearer understanding of what it is that should be passed over in silence, the key purpose of the Tractatus?
Here, I am looking exclusively of what I bring to bear on the issue. Other works have no bearing, that is, unless you have something in mind.
Well, not so sure about that. Ethics is the doing, not the saying, sure; but what is added by the oddly intractable predication of "transcendental"? Not much.
Wittgenstein's point looks to me not that ethics is transcendent, but that it is extremely practical: it is the doing.
This seems also to be what is getting at.
Quoting Constance
A difficult sentence. For Wittgenstein, ethics is not transcendent, but done. Looking at transcendence rather than action has mislead you, I think. So I disagree with Quoting ConstanceSuch an index would be a saying, not a doing. He does nto tell us what to do. Quoting Constance
I think the dilemma is yours, not Wittgenstein's.
It's not that ethics is ineffable, so much as that talking is the wrong sort of thing to do with ethics. There's a piece of apocryphal, that he was visiting a friend, who's wife came into the room to ask if they would like tea. The friend said "Don't ask, just do", to which Wittgenstein agreed, wholeheartedly. The good thing to do was to bring the tea in and make it available rather than talk about it.
As for phenomenology, it sets itself an impossible enterprise in attempting to suspending "states of affairs" as if they were distinct from "perceptual engagement". HenceQuoting Constance is ill-framed. The Tractatus is not about "purifying of the familiar and spontaneous". Phenomenology tries to escape language, like a clown cutting off the branch on which he sits. The enterprise undermines itself. And that seems to be what is saying with Quoting Isaac
You are almost there. You almost made a substantive reply.
Kidding, not close.
Yet I can state clearly that ‘and’ cannot be painted yet it is still ‘there’ in every painting when a conscious eye gazes on it. ‘And’ is necessary for consciousness even if there is no ‘worded’ term ‘and’ expressed in a common communicated language like in speech, signs or symbols used on a universal scale.
I gaze on a painting and my mind is touched by the principles of ‘and’ ‘or’ ‘why’ and even ‘of’ yet my minds tongue need never utter such delineations of conscious existence.
‘Ineffable’ I take to mean that there is a tenuous line between an experience and the ability to share said experience in any useful way worded terms that other people can easily grasp or that we can conjure up.
I agree that a high level of ability to take such experiences and shift human communication towards a slightly better way to approach such intangible experiences is precisely what great philosophers can do and many artists too.
It is tricky to fish for the exact fish you wish to catch if you have never seen it before.
No.
Quoting hypericin
No. The sensory experience at (2) is constructed from words and the concepts they define.
Quoting javra
That's just episodic memory, not semantic memory, and it's still how we'd talk (or internally recreate) the event. It's not what triggers such an account.
Let's say, hypothetically, I see a post box. My experience is of seeing a red post box, but in my brain there might be clusters firing which are commonly associated with red, and pillar-shapes, and posing, and letters, and nostalgia...When I recall the experience, I re-fire those clusters. Now I see a red car. Clusters fire relating to red, speed, driving, fear, Tom Cruise,... Recalling the experience re-fires those clusters. In both cases, clusters associated with red fire, so recalling them re-fires those clusters. In neither case have I experienced 'red'. I experienced a red post box or a red car. It's never the case that the only neural activity my experience is trying to explain is the firing of one cluster of neurons in V4. So the idea of 'red' must be abstracted from the full experiences, not the component parts. We never have conscious awareness of an isolated component part.
But, more importantly, even if that ever happened, we'd still interpret it (using the definition of 'red') because all it is is a few neurons firing, nothing more. And it's not even the same neurons. There's a lot of involvement in the superior parietal lobule and precuneus in colour recognition which is simply not a one-to-one correlate to wavelengths hitting the retina. There's no direct link there for us to be dealing with internally. We cluster together a set of different neural activity under the term 'red'. How do we learn which to bring into that cluster? The social experience of the the use of the word 'red'.
Quoting javra
This seems to be directly contradicted by the evidence. Am I misunderstanding your claim, or are you just saying that evidence from cognitive science is all wrong?
Quoting javra
There's no evidence that I know of which links either hippocampal activity or long-term potentiation with consciousness. Studies of both sleep and anaesthesia seem to both confirm that conscious awareness isn't necessary.
Quoting javra
They might be aware of blood. Why need they be aware of 'red'? There's a scene in a comedy film whose name I can't recall, where a prince is murdered. His blood is blue (the royalty joke). We don't all think "hey, what's that?", we think "blue blood".
Quoting javra
Again, they only need have experiences (if they have experiences at all) of red things. There's no need for an experience of 'red' other than to make proper use of the word 'red'.
Quoting Janus
If that's the definition of experience you prefer, then we definitely don't have experiences of 'red'. We just have some neurons fire. Else, which of them are the sub-conscious experience of 'red'? The V4 cluster? BA7? Parietal lobe? Which bits would be 'red'?
I like this. If I understand correctly, you're expressing a multiple-model interpretation as being a synthesis of all possible models (an exclusion of all impossible ones) such that there is a unitary truth of what is the case - that being it is the case that all these models are right, but these models are not. A kind of meta-model?
You mean like 'pictures in the mind'?
It's complicated (isn't it always?). I certainly seems as though the parts of the brain involved in creating mental images are the same ones as involved in interpreting visual stimuli from external states, so no less 'real' in that sense. Where I'd diverge from some folk interpretations though is that there's a tendency to think the brain 'produces' an image (say of the cup in front of me). I don't think the evidence justifies such a model. We might later recount having seen, or imagined, a cup, but interrogation of such an image often reveals gaps which we wouldn't have reported being there. Plus, recall, or recounting mental images seems to involve parts of the brain uninvolved in visual representation. we have routes through areas associated with semantic memory and language (obviously), but less involvement of episodic memory.
So seemingly we're more making it up on the spot "Had I imagined a cup, this is what it would have been like", than recalling something which happened "I imagined a cup, this is what it was like".
Ok, thanks.
It is absolutely fascinating, that it seems as though I myself….the entire sum of entitlement…. think in images, when in fact, there couldn’t really be any. I’m prepared to swear to a figurative High Heaven my brain presents both from and to itself a relative diorama of this or that, but in seeking for the substance or the means for all those images, it shall be found the substance of the brain contains not a single image much less a compendium of them, and the means by which the material brain functions, contradicts their very possibility.
Yet….there they are. I swear.
(Sigh)
This is consistent with how Plato originally explained "the good" in "The Republic". It is in a strange way, always outside of knowledge, therefore not truly knowable, making virtue something other than knowledge. But the good has a profound effect on knowledge, as what makes the intelligible objects intelligible, in a way analogous to the way that the sun makes visible objects visible.
Quoting Constance
This is the difference between the general principles which we apply, and the particular things or particular circumstances which we find ourselves engaged with, and requiring the application of general principles. This difference often creates a conundrum for decision making because the general principles often do not readily fit the particular circumstances.
The problem with "states of affairs" is that this terminology creates the appearance that a particular situation can be represented by general principles, and expressed as a state of affairs. The issue, with what cannot be said, is that there is a fundamental inconsistency between how we represent general principles, and how we represent particular situations. There are features of the particular circumstances, which by our definition of "particular" and the uniqueness assigned to "particular", which makes it so that the particular cannot be represented by descriptive terms, which we employ as general principles.
Yeah, could do. We talk about neural nets as having likelihoods of leading to certain reported mental events (or behaviours) because they're so prone to noise and stochastic fluctuations. That might make it difficult to pin down, but one might still be able to say that the statistically averaged sum of x collection of neural network functions across a time period represented some external state accurately.
Interesting line of thought.
Quoting Mww
Yeah. Try testing them yourself. This might be difficult with one as well-educated as your good self, but a little trick one can try to demonstrate the phenomena is to look at a complicated word, one you don't know how to spell, then shut the book and try to bring to mind the image of the word as it was written (typeface, page colour, book edges - the lot). You'll find (or at least you should - let me know if you don't) that your 'mental image' contains something of a blur around the specific letters that you don't know the correct order of. It won't 'fix' them in the image. Theoretically, this is because how to spell a word is semantic memory, not episodic. You don't actually 'recall to mind' the image you just saw of it written down, but you'll think that's exactly what you're doing (if the experiment works), you'll 'see' the page, the book colour, perhaps the desk it was on...but the word will remain stubbornly un-spelt, because you're actually constructing the 'image' as you go, not recalling it as a complete image, and you just don't know where those letters go.
*Of course, explaining the experiment does give us confounding factors. Don't try too hard to recall the spelling deliberately, that'll engage word-recognition parts of your brain which might hold it in short term memory long enough to be called on in reconstructing the image.
I think I continue to trip across this thought -- that talking about something makes it effable. I'm going to attempt to draw connections which addresses your concern that naming is the only reason experience is effable:
It seems to me that language is always growing, changing, and acquiring (at least, as we decide to use language to grow, change, and acquire). Whereas I can see laying a space for the sacred, the capitalist-scientist will poke the sacred until it, too, is under our control -- so my thought is, what gives people such faith that their minds and experiences won't be an object of knowledge? They are, at this time, at least objects of economy -- the economy already sells experiences, and commodifies identities (to be a good environmentalist, you should buy from these corporations, and not those...), and commodifies attention (the very "stuff" of consciosness!) -- these supposedly ineffable things are already blasphemed by our mode of production, are already constantly being operated upon through propaganda (advertisement, in a capitalist world), and many people come out of the process of socialization roughly similar enough that we don't even need explicit knowledge of the mind to manipulate people to do the thing which keeps the economy going. Their very interiority is a social product, known by those in charge (because how else do you build large hierarchies of dominance successfully than by controlling, and *knowing*, others' emotions?)
... I guess, to me, there seems to me to be a lot more going on than just naming. There's a whole history of thought and economy which "experience" is tied to that makes me doubt that experience is ineffable. It's just another product to be sold, in this world. To make it sacred wouldn't be to make it ineffable, it'd be to let it be. But we don't live in a world where people can just be. We live in a world where they can own things, and through that they find their freedom -- and experience is no different than any other commodity.
Sure sounds like:
Quoting Isaac
??
[i]It is clear that ethics cannot be put
nto words.
Ethics is transcendental.
(Ethics and aesthetics are one and the
same.)[/i] (Tractatus 6.421)
Quoting Banno
An index points, and leaves the exposition up to that to which the pointing intends. Very important to note this distinction: analytic philosophy wants to say that that which must be passed over in silence is about nothing. But this is directly contradicted by Witt. He says just the opposite in the above, and in Culture and Value where he states the Good being what he calls divinity. He does not emphasize this kind of thing at all, for he believed that the spoken word vitiates meaning, and on this he is on the threshold of apophatic thinking (what is called in the East neti neti), that is, silence is the negative approach to discovery of things that
[i]There are indeed things that cannot be put into words; They make themselves manifest.
In art it is hard to say anything as good as saying nothing.[/i]
Keeping in mind that he puts ethics and aesthetics in the same basket, for it is here that the the world "speaks" the ineffable: the Good and the Bad. No doubt for Wittgenstein, Beethoven "spoke" the Good. But what does the Good mean here? If you mention it, do you truly vitiate it, as he thought? Only if the words pull meanings down to mundane comprehension, but words can also elevate matters, as was done by religious metaphysics for centuries. Clearly, words language can distort and distract, which is why philosophers like Husserl wanted to make the whole affair of transcendental analysis into a science: what if words were reduced to their strictly descriptive function, as say a geologist does examining rocks and minerals, assigning values that try to adhere to observation? Husserl's famous, or infamous, reduction does just this, and thereby takes the question of ineffability to its finality: the terminal point where thought is suspended altogether. Even if this does not make sense on the surface of it, it has to be taken in the Wittgensteinian sense that even if you DO have a language in place that qualifies, conditions, this doesn't mean the apprehension of value is impinged. One simply has to shut up and listen, watch, feel, receive. Language interpretatively, implicitly attending to every intimation, but the bliss of it, the horror of it, is itself the original potency, and one knows this.
The importance of this is seeing that while ethics/aesthetics remains deeply indeterminate, one realizes that that which imposes these entanglements issues from eternity, so to speak. On this I stand with Wittgenstein, the Good is that which I call divinity.
Quoting Banno
Yes, he did want to quash talk about ethics. I think this exchange here would be addressed like this: It is better allow the original thrust of a kind act to play out than to mix this with a deflating discourse. But there is no question of the the event itself.
I think he was responding especially to Moore, who had written his Principia Ethica, stating that moral goodness and badness were non natural properties, and Witt just would have none of it. Goodness was self revealing. I am saying this kind of thing is exactly what the ineffable is about.
Quoting Banno
No, no. It is a compatibility in that states of affairs may usher forth true propositions, but therein, does not lie an impediment of intuitive realization. This is Witt's position.
Quoting Banno
Keep in mind that I am not defending all Husserl says, and so it is to no avail here to produce standard objections. I am saying value in ethics and aesthetics are qualitatively revealing, and Husserl's epoche gives these their existential clarity. Wittgenstein was no mystic, but he was threshold in his thinking about ethics and aesthetics in the Tractatus and elsewhere. But the argument here does not rest with what he said. I just bring him in because he was right on this.
Where ethics is statements that transcend all times and places, to speak these statements would require a vantage point that's unavailable. People still go on and on as if they do have this vantage point, though.
I don't think Wittgenstein's point is that we know ethical principles, but we just can't put them into words (ineffable). It's that we can't know these transcendent facts to begin with. That's the problem with ethical discourse.
I think that's your own personal Wittgenstein.
Like much of Wittgenstein, it's ineffable, understandable only through midrash.
…..agreed, I don’t recall to mind the exact image I just saw written, because I’m not familiar with it, so no I don’t think that’s what I’m doing. I have immediately understood the image from perception will not correspond to any image whatsoever I already have, insofar as otherwise, it wouldn’t have been unfamiliar in the first place. I don’t understand the word I’ve seen written, therefore, in the first instance of conscious reproduction of that writing, I can do nothing with it.
(Sidebar: buried in her mini-treatise, has make explicit why this is metaphysically so)
Quoting Isaac
No, I wouldn’t admit doing any of that. Those are not the things with which I am unfamiliar. I know them so I need not think about them. Peripherals make no impression on me when I’m presented with something I don’t know. While it is the case that things I know help me with things I don’t, there remains a categorical separation between empirical knowledge of things supplementing pure a priori knowledge in the construction of cognitions. Which is actually what I’m doing….trying to cognize something for which I have no experience.
But I understand what you mean here. There are times when recalling the where’s and what’s of the forgotten can jog the memory, but the forgotten presupposes that which is not contained in the altogether unfamiliar.
Quoting Isaac
…actually, I am recalling the complete image as a perception. This represents as just this thing, one of the same matter as many other things but of a completely different form. The perception of the word, even being unfamiliar, is a complete image, which is rather known as a sensation. That which I recall in mind is itself complete, so I don’t construct it as I go, except I must necessarily fail to relate the complete image recalled, to any of the recallable images of that which I know.
The recollected image will remain unspelt, yes. Or, which is the same thing, the initially perceived image in sensation and the recalled image in mind will not correspond to each other. But again, not because I’m constructing it as I go, but because I cannot construct it at all. I may try to construct, but on that I’d most likely give up. So I open the stupid book, rest on that stupid word until I become familiar with it. Or not.
Then….I’ll have to work on what the now familiar word actually means, in conjunction with another mind that already knows.
————-
Quoting Isaac
Right, I initially wouldn’t do that. First, I’m trying to recall a duplicate whole image, not the particulars of it. Second, subsequently having granted I can’t properly recall to mind the word, its spelling is therefore quite irrelevant. I mean….if I knew the spelling I’d be familiar with the word, but I’m not, so….
————-
Blurry letters? Probably so, in the strictest sense of the experiment. In attempting the recall of a whole, there’s little focus on the components.
Thing is, in the strictest sense of the attainment of the experiment…..as you say, the confounding factors…. I wouldn’t cease recalling the word at that point, although I might if I have no further interest, but rather, assuming there is an interest, I would continue by then focusing on its components. If the object of the operation is attaining the word, I have no choice but to recall the letters which comprise it, and furthermore, to recall the proper arrangement of them. The fewer components comprising the word, then, by their consequently becoming the focus, wouldn’t be blurry, but still does not address their relative arrangement with each other.
Generally speaking, I’d agree with your position, in that it is very difficult to exactly recall anything for which there is minimal familiarity. But I hear there are minds capable of it. Metaphysically, there just isn’t anything significant enough in the perception to relate it to a cognition that properly represents it. Perception gives me the word itself without equivocation, but does not give a relation belonging to it.
Thanks for the interesting experiment.
I hadn't heard of midrash. Can you midrash anything? Or does it have to be scripture?
It relates to scripture, but you can use the term sarcastically when someone is going to great lengths to make sense of something that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, especially when they've begun with the assumption that what they're interpreting must be really important and impregnated with all sorts of hidden meaning when really maybe it's just fragmented slop.
That's at least how I just used it.
I'm going to midrash traffic signs. For real.
Hopefully oncoming traffic will interpret the same way you do.
I do like this way of putting it, for it opens up the issue. Those in the cave facing the shadows on the wall turn around to see that actual figures producing these. This is an act of philosophical reflection, whereby one pulls away from mundane interpretations of the world. I would like to call this an engagement in the method of Husserl's phenomenological reduction, a dismissing of everydayness, or, the "naturalistic attitude". The light that illuminates all things is the Good.
You say it is outside of knowledge, and in a qualified way, I agree. Heideggerians and many others want to make the affective dimension of our existence of a piece with the language that makes it "unhidden" (alethea), but on the other, the language is "open" interpretatively, so the nature of what is there is an open concept to the understanding, thus we live in existential openness, our freedom. The move outside the cave is a metaphysical move. The question of ineffability begins here, I think.
I like to take ponderous metaphors like this, and bring them home: here I am, cat on sofa, clouds and trees and houses outside. Now, what IS the Good? It is here, in the actuality of the lived event that this question has its authenticity, I hold. To your point: If the good makes the intelligible, intelligible, then the good is logic and language, something Kantian? Plato is called a rational realist, and so I always thought along these lines. But the affectivity, this is happiness, joy, love, bliss, ecstasy, rapture, and other words that mean essentially the same thing. How does this "Good" effect knowledge, I want to ask. Not that it doesn't, but to characterize somehow is a worthy question.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I agree with this, but there one has to get by the difficulties. One is this: Consider states of affairs as a temporal dynamic, and not as a spatial one. Thus, what it means to have an encounter in the world at all has a temporal model to work out, for when we talk about general principles' failure to grasp the palpable realities before us, the "before us" is a "presence" in time, in which the past and the future are a unity where recollection (history) offers the basic existence conditions out of which a future is constructed, and this occurs as a spontaneous production of our Being There. In this, the present vanishes. All that lies before me is bound to this past-future dynamic. I don't see a tree in the mundane sense, for trees are forged out of education, habits and familiarities over years of experience, and this is what rushes in as I walk down the street "understanding" things? Being caught in this cycle of temporal production.
This kind of thinking places everything that crosses our path in a finitude, out of which there is no exist, for how can one even conceive of such a thing when conception itself is an historical event? Never spontaneously "there".
I say, true, yet put a spear in my kidney and the is not an historical event. Or listen to music, fall in love,, and all of the affective spontaneities that are always already there as well, and THIS declares the present., the Real with a capital 'R'. I defend a kind of value-ontology: the determination as to what is Real lies in the felt sense, and this sense of not epistemic; rather, the "raw feels" of the world are aesthetic. The "features of the particular circumstances" you speak of have their ineffability in the desire, the interest, the satisfaction, the gratification, and so on, that saturate experience.
Most emphatically. He cares little for moral principles in the way they replace the earnestness of real experience. Perhaps he is even close to Nietzsche on this, who said, I don't refrain from lying because a moral principle tells me not to do this. I refrain from lying because I am just not a liar. You see how this closes in on something genuinely engaging the world. Of course, N would have none of this talk about ineffability; nor would Witt., but he does point to it, mention it, bring it to light in order to disclaim it in meaningful talk. But again, N would never talk about the Good as does Witt. Interesting comparison.
And you are right about the vantage point: it is like talking about reality or the world, as these have no counterpart in a possible denial. A thing can make sense only if its denial makes sense. You can't question the validity of logic, say.
You’ve misunderstood. I’m saying that first-person awareness - such as of word-sounds - can be said to supervene upon neural networks but that this does not imply that neural networks are equivalent to first-person awareness. This just as a table is not equivalent to the molecules upon which it supervenes. And this irrespective of whether the supervenience that occurs in mental processes is strong or weak.
A word-sound only occurs relative to awareness. Otherwise, the issue would be about a certain type of vibration in air waves affecting some sensory receptors tied into certain neural networks. I'm saying that aspects of awareness do not form connections to neural networks, that this conceptualization holds a maybe subtle but very drastic category error, for all aspects of awareness supervene on neural networks.
Instead, I find it correct to conceptualize the issue in the following manner: certain neural networks form connections to other neural networks - while, concurrently, certain aspects of awareness which supervene on the first grouping of neural networks will form connections to other aspects of awareness that supervene on the second grouping of neural networks.
All this in the context of first-person awareness associating words to concepts.
But it seems clear we hold very different models in relation to minds. Since its not something that will be easily resolved, I'll try to step out of the overall conversation.
Deleuze’s concept of desire avoids the problem of resistance that Foucault had to deal with. Rather than starting from symbolic structures of power that must be resisted, Deleuze begins from change, becoming and resistance.
As Dan Smith writes:
“If resistance becomes a question in Foucault, it is because he begins with the question of knowledge (what is articulable and what is visible), finds the conditions of knowledge in power, but then has to ask about the ways one can resist power, even if resistance is primary in relation to power. It is Foucault’s starting point in constituted knowledges that leads him to pose the problem of resistance.
Deleuze’s ontology, by contrast, operates in an almost exactly inverse manner. Put crudely, if one begins with a status quo – knowledge or the symbolic – one must look for a break or rupture in the status quo to account for change. Deleuze instead begins with change, with becoming, with events. For Deleuze, what is primary in any social formation are its lines of flight, its movements of deterritorialization, which are already movements of resistance. “Far from lying outside the social field or emerging from it,” Deleuze writes, “lines of flight constitute its rhizome or cartography.” Resistance, in a sense, is built into Deleuze’s ontology, and for this reason, the conceptual problem he faces wound up being quite different from Foucault’s.”
This irreducible gesture of difference has proximities to Derridean differance, as Derrida noted:
“Since the beginning, all of his books (but first of all Nietzsche, Difference and Repetition, The Logic of Sense) have been for me not only, of course, provocations to think, but, each time, the unsettling, very unsettling experience – so unsettling – of a proximity or a near total affinity in the “theses” – if one may say this – through too evident distances in what I would call, for want of anything better, “gesture,” “strategy,” “manner”: of writing, of speaking, perhaps of reading. As regards the “theses” (but the word doesn’t fit) and particularly the thesis concerning a difference that is not reducible to dialectical opposition, a difference “more profound” than a contradiction (Difference and Repetition), a difference in the joyfully repeated affirmation (“yes, yes”), the taking into account of the simulacrum, Deleuze remains no doubt, despite so many dissimilarities, the one to whom I have always considered myself closest among all of this “generation.” I never felt the slightest “objection” arise in me, not even a virtual one, against any of his discourse, even if I did on occasion happen to grumble against this or that proposition in Anti-Oedipus…”
To be fair, this goes for most of the canonical philosophers too. I've joked that Marx scholarship is basically materialist Talmudic scholarship.
Quoting frank
Heidegger beat you to it ;).
Quoting Luke
Something ineffable in the sense that we can't talk it into our head, sure. Mary learns something, and we learn how to ride by riding while being guided by words and a tutor (or, if we are stubborn enough, brute trial and error) No matter how many facts -- as in true statements -- one believes, one doesn't know-how or learn until one does something. (Setting curious cases to the side, for now). I just don't think that makes for a metaphysical distinction. At least with Chalmers we get a clear definition of physicalism such that I understand what he means when he distinguishes consciousness from physicalism, and so I can understand the metaphysical distinction he's making (though I disagree, because of how I think about materialism). But here it seems a bit over the top to posit a whole metaphysical distinction between language and doing such that language isn't in contact with doing. Distinctions play into activity play into distinctions in a back-and-forth interplay far too much for me to believe that. Language sits in causal relations with our phenomenal world of experience, the so-called "manifest image". It's not reducible to language, but rather, language inter-penetrates (just as action and experience also influence language).
So for the ineffable I have in mind something like the very possibilities of any and all experience. Hence the invocation of God -- and not really a religious God, as much as the conceptual God of the philosophers (with its rather disappointing version of immortality as a conceptual being thinking forever). It may sound off to modern, secular ears -- but all this talk of the subject begins with Descartes, evil demons, and proofs of God. So the conceptual history for this line of thinking still references these old, post-scholastic ideas. (funnily enough, these days the scientist is seen as more plausible than God, with brains in vats and all that... ) -- the ineffable, for Kant, was invented precisely to preserve sacred ideas and separate them from human knowledge. For Descartes, given that God is good, we can be certain of our senses and nothing is ineffable, including the two substances that all of reality is made of.
That sort of talk I think Kant did a good number on -- the sort of metaphysics of Descartes. And it's that line that I have in mind when thinking on the ineffable: rather than asking "is everything language?", I'm asking, "What are the limits of language?" -- because so far, if the philosophers have said anything true, it seems like the mind can be grasped by language: and if it can be grasped by language, it can be made an object of knowledge, operated on, manipulated, engineered. Just like anything else in the world. What else would experience/activity be than this such that it's ineffable?
Here's the rub; Wittgenstein is an analytic philosopher. Hence there is a contradiction in your account.
Quoting Constance
...and do.
Quoting Constance
Why indeterminate? Unstated, experienced, enacted, perhaps, but not indeterminate.
Quoting Constance
In so far as the phenomenological epoché is in the first person, it is private, dropping like a beetle. It could not therefore be part of the public narrative. In so far as it is part of the public narrative, it cannot perform the intended task of setting out the experience exactly as experienced. We are embedded in a world that is social and real, and hence not only can one not bracket all one's experiences at once, one cannot bracket one's experiences at all. See @Isaac's comments above regarding the conceptualisation of colour involving those parts of the brain that use language...
Phenomenology sets itself an impossible task.
Quoting Hanover
Nothing so esoteric. Wittgenstein extolled use in the place of meaning; it would be absurd to think he dropped this in the case of ethics.
Quoting frank
Putting them into words is irrelevant. What counts in "ethical principles" is enacting them.
"The experience of riding a bike is/adds to one's knowledge of how to ride a bike."
No, it doesn't. The experience neither adds to, nor is, one's knowledge of riding a bike.
As if dreaming of riding a bike or riding a bike in a simulation added to or is riding a bike.
(I'd written this reply, but it got lost when I wrote something more interesting. I didn't notice that I hadn't posted it. It doesn't help that your posts do not show in mentions. )
Quoting Banno
Very interesting. Has there ever been a robust and critical thread on phenomenology here? I couldn't find anything useful. Seems to me there are so many intense personal takes on phenomenology that no two devotees seem to agree as to what it is and how it works. But if you're an 'analytic' guy, then this stuff is your traditional bête noire, right?
I would agree with Putnam, Cavell and Rorty, among others, that the later Wittgenstein is no longer an analytic philosopher.
Quoting Banno
Unless of course the public narrative is a derivative of the first personal vantage, the intersubjectively objective a constitutive accomplishment of subjectivities. I agree that setting out an experience exactly as experienced cannot be the goal of the epoche , if one expects to determine and preserve a specific content of meaning. If , however , one uses the epoche to uncover an irreducible structural invariant of experiencing, then this method is invaluable.
Isaac’s argument concerns the relation between conscious narratives of experience and the subpersonal processes which empirical research discovers. The epoche isnt in conflict with the results of neuroscience, since it doesn’t make any claims concerning specific contents of conscious experience or subpersonal mental events. Rather, its claims pertain to the formal condition of possibility underlying both conscious narratives of experience and empirical accounts of subpersonal neurological events.
Quoting Joshs
A misguided presumption. Why not think instead that the supposed first person vantage is a construct of the public narrative...? A hang over from Descartes' misguided attempt to find an epistemic foundation. The supposed first person vantage depends on there being a public discourse.
Quoting Joshs
The epoché is not a falsifiable notion, so it could not be in conflict with any empirical evidence. The epoché is more like a prayer.
@Isaac - just alerting you to your being mentioned.
You’re confusing Descartes’ self-enclosed subjectivity with a phenomenological self-world interaction. There is no Cartesian subject for Husserl. His ‘ego’ is merely a zero point of activity without any pre-assigned content. First personal vantage is not the vantage from a metaphysical soul, but the site of continual synthetic activity reinventing the nature , meaning and sense of the self in every intentional act. If we assume that the fist personal vantage is a construct of the public narrative, we completely miss the fact that this public narrative is a narrative construed and interpreted slightly differently from your vantage than from mine. That there is a public discourse from which each of us acquire our own vantages only means that each of us are constantly exposed to an outside, an alterity or otherness. But this publicness is not the identical public for each of us. That we can participate in the ‘same’ language games and the ‘same’ cultural conventions means that my public and your public, while not identical, must be recognizable and interpretable to each other.
Quoting Banno
Or one could say the epoche is more like Quine’s fact/value complicity or Kuhn’s incommensurability idea, a non-falsifiable notion not in conflict with any empirical evidence.
This should not be a surprise. They ask us to retreat into our inner private sanctum with the hope of emerging with all sorts of revelations to be shared. But the language they use is borrowed from the public realm, so if you to try to clarify, your are left with a feeling of wonder, puzzlement or suspension depending on your natural inclinations.
...I've no clear idea what to do with this. While superficially addressing my criticism, it instead goes off in a new direction. Again, why not suppose that the first person vantage is a construct of the public narrative?
Quoting Joshs
My objection is conceptual, not empirical. If you think you can think about you experiences without thinking about them, I'll leave you to it.
There may be a further objection based on neuroscience, if it shows that "experience" and language are inseparable at a neurological level. I'll leave that for @Isaac, if he cares to comment.
All this to simply say that I do not see any philosophical advantages in phenomenology.
On the other hand, concepts like “inner private sanctum” and “public realm” leave me with more of a feeling of puzzlement than do phenomenological concepts , which question the coherence of the former distinctions.
Give me an example of a public narrative and I’ll
try to show how it’s not public in quite the way you may suppose.
Not a fan?
I know a smattering about it but have read some essays and seen some lectures on Husserl and Merleau-Ponty and 2 or 3 by Dan Zavhi. It seems very interesting and some of it is quite seductive. I'd be interested to gain a better understanding, but life is short. @Joshs is a good advocate for the approach.
Are you so sure you know how I privately suppose it to be public? How could you?
Ok,
Quoting Joshs
I can see how this might work. But it's not much different than saying that we all have a unique take and perspective on life despite some overlaps (depending upon what community you hail from).
Quoting Joshs
Reasonable. How does this play out for us in terms of building 'community' or a shared moral framework? Surely there is some sense in which this must be almost impossible.
Indeed, but whenever I've tried to make sense of it, it seems to fall in pieces. I remain unsure if it's what is being said or how it is being said that is the source of the obscurity. But being a lapsed Catholic I have an allergy to esoteric writings...
Quoting Richard B
...and mostly suspicion. I will read with interest your chat with @Joshs, you are less likely to offend him than I.
Correction from the “public realm”…thats how it should be
And so goes the history of philosophy.... :D
EDIT: I suppose I mean, reading that again, that many philosophers set themself impossible tasks and try to do it anyway.
Seeing something red (and whatever else goes with that) is an impression, image or sensation, whatever you want to call it, experienced by the body-mind, You seem to be trying to look at it from the perspective of neuronal activity, which is a performative contradiction since there is no experience of neuronal activity and hence no neuronal "perspective". If I seem to be having an experience then I am having an experience: I can only see absurdity in trying to deny that; in saying "I don't really have an experience".
This contradicts what you said earlier in the discussion. I've quoted this a number of times now:
Quoting Banno
Despite having a highly detailed list of instructions on how to ride, you say we still wouldn't know how to ride. Why wouldn't we know? You clearly indicate here that "the riding of the bike" adds knowledge.
Quoting Banno
How can I change that? I quoted you here. Did you not receive a notification?
Yes. I'd recommend tertiary sources rather than PI or the Tractatus.
I don't see how. Yes, you have quoted it but not explained any contradiction. One is about the experience of riding a bike, which does not add to one's knowledge. The other is riding a bike, which demonstrates such knowledge. There's no obvious contradiction, so if you see one, set it out.
Quoting Luke
This is not what I have been claiming. I've said that having a detailed list of what to do is not being able to ride a bike. Riding the bike demonstrates that one knows how to ride a bike, but... (and here I will change approach, to see if it will chime with your view) saying that riding the bike "adds to one's knowledge" is a fraught phrasing. It shows that one knows, to be sure.
You said (earlier) that a person with an exhaustive list of instructions would still not know how to ride.
You also say (now) that no knowledge is added from riding the bike.
That is, one cannot know only from the instructions and no knowledge is gained from riding.
Therefore, no one can ever know how to ride.
You have yet to explain why a person with an exhaustive list of instructions does not know how to ride. Is there something missing from the instructions?
I am going to try to give this idea of “seeming to have a experience” some sense. But we will have to accept that a human is just a machine and that there is a world that we experience. Lets assume there is a color detecting machine. You place a red object in front of it and on its screen it will report what color the object is. The machine goes on working fine but one day it reports that the object is red when no object was placed in front of it. Do we want to say the machine seems to experience red? Or would it better to say it is broken and needs to be fixed? What about human making such a claim of experiencing red when there is no red object? Does the human seem to have the experience or is just broken?
No knowledge is added by the experience of riding the bike.
Having a list of what to do to ride a bike is not riding a bike, nor being able to ride a bike.
Quoting Luke
...but here knowledge is demonstrated.
Let's try rephrasing...
Someone might have the experience of riding a bike without riding a bike - in a dream , or a simulation, or an hallucination. Hence having the experience of riding a bike is not being able to ride a bike.
Someone might memorise everything that one does in riding a bike, and yet not be able to ride a bike - they are missing the needed balance, or their legs, or some such. They cannot demonstrate that they can ride a bike. One might phrase this as that they "know how to ride a bike" but can't; but there is no way to show that "they know how to ride a bike" in such a case.
Someone who memorised everything that one does in riding a bike, given a bike, would still have to take time to practice getting their balance and movement correct. There is more to riding a bike than just memorising the motions. This was my original point, long lost in the murk of the forum.
In this last case there is not something missing from the instructions. What is missing is the act of riding the bike.
Now, where is the contradiction?
Is there a point to this discussion? If so, it evades me.
(Edit: I guess, giving you the benefit of the doubt by trying to make your argument for you, one might say that what is missing from the list is the neural networking needed in a body that can ride a bike - the auto neural connection between eyes, inner ear and body that permits balance. Is your point that this could be included in the list?)
The feeling of mutual understanding varies quite widely depending of how superficial the shared activity is. Driving in traffic we normally co-ordinate our actions with respect to other drivers without any problem. We don’t have to know anything about their intentions outside of the general and generic indicators that act as cues for successfully driving on the road with other vehicles. The same is true for engaging in team sports or dancing with a partner. With these activities there seems to be a purely public exchange of signs and a melding of individuals into a group psychology. But in social interchange that involves a much more complex and specific set of ideas, such a politics , religion, philosophy or intimate personal engagement, we are constantly reminded that we are dealing with an other, that our expectations of their response to our communications frequently have to be adjusted , that there will be aspects of the relationship that will have to be less intimate than others, due to gaps in mutual understanding that will never be filled in.
Wouldn't you include "the needed balance, or their legs, or some such" in knowledge of how to ride?
Quoting Banno
This conflates knowledge with demonstration. We had this argument earlier. As I said then, Magnus Carlssen still knows how to play chess even while he is not playing chess. I know how to ride a bike even though I'm not riding a bike right now. Having "no way to show" that one knows how does not imply that one does not know how.
Quoting Banno
Wouldn't you include this in knowledge of how to ride? If one couldn't do these things then they wouldn't know how to ride, despite having read all the instructions. Therefore, there is something missing from the instructions - something known (by the authors) which cannot be stated. Something ineffable.
I got distracted at the time, but it seems pretty close to all the ponderings we have going on here.
According to Moses, God thought very highly of putting them into words. What did you name your religion?
Which is not a something. As if the list were only complete when we add as a final item:
Despite protestations to the contrary, the commandments were not a highpoint for meta-ethics.
Why not just specify the various ways in which objects are given to us in conscious experience, such as dreaming , imagining , perceiving , remembering? These are all modes of experiencing. My imagining or recalling a red color is not an ‘actual’ experience of red , but it is still a kind of experience. What all these modes have in common is an object emerging via a temporal structure, as a present ‘now’ linking a context of memory and expectation. A machine doesn’t have conscious temporally structured experience.
It was the fucking iron age.
And, after Moses found his wisdom, he came back from the mountain and condemned the people for doing what they had been doing to the point of recruiting one of the tribes to kill them all. "Thou shalt not kill... well after this" so saith the lord.
Not a high point even for ethics, on the whole, given all the murder that came after.
I missed that. Where in the text does this transpire?
Things havn't changes all that much.
Knowing things such as "getting their balance and movement correct" adds knowledge over and above the knowledge included in the instructions. One could not ride a bike without knowing them.
There is therefore a gap between the knowledge one can gain from reading the instructions and the knowledge required to ride the bike. Why is this additional knowledge not stated and included in the instructions? Because it is ineffable. Otherwise, it would be included in the instructions.
Let's not forget that it is your assertion that the written instructions do not give one all the knowledge required to know how to ride.
but it makes me sad.
It's not ineffable. It's "ride the bike".Quoting Luke
Yep. So for you adding "ride the bike" to the instructions is just a way of completing them.
Cheers, Luke. This is going nowhere.
Yeah, because you do not address the argument:
Quoting Luke
This gap in knowledge is not just "riding the bike". Riding the bike is what you can do after you read the instructions and after you learn...some additional ineffable knowledge that cannot be included in the instructions.
But you obviously want to ignore the argument.
But creeping along in a pleasing cadence. :nerd:
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus+32&version=KJ21
All those years of seminary paying off... :D
I know that I will have to adjust my expectations of your responses to the dialogue with me in ways that will differ from others responses. My adjustments will eventually reveal a pattern to your differences from others. Through these progressive adjustments of my expectations, what I will eventually ‘know’ of how you suppose something like the public to be will not be a matter of my reading your mind but of my making sense of your unique pattern of responses to me relative to the pattens of others. My ‘knowing’ you is a situated, perspectival unfolding of anticipative engagement, an I-thou interplay of guesses and corrections evolving into a patterned rhythm.
Quoting Banno
it was an attempt to point to the distinction between tacit and explicit knowledge and to show that tacit knowledge is not ineffable. Any tacit knowledge can be made explicit.
Quoting Luke
There is a gap between what is on the list and what is required to ride the bike. But whatever is missing can itself be put into words. Nothing here is unstatable; nothing ineffable. And yet there will aways be more that might be added to the list.
Indeed, turns out a thread on the ineffable runs to at least twenty pages.
That humans are "just machines" and that "there is a world that we experience" are not two necessarily conjoined ideas. The first is from a particular methodological perspective, namely that of science, and the second is common to all perspectives, that is no one denies that we experience (or at least seem to experience) what we call a "world". Leaving aside the question as to whether there really is a world, experiencing and seeming to experience are not distinct as far as i can tell.
So, you draw an analogy between someone claiming they have experienced red when they are hallucinating and a machine designed to detect and respond when red objects are placed in front of it, that has broken down, and responded inappropriately to some non-red object.
The difference is that the machine makes no claim and has no thoughts on the matter, but just responds inappropriately, and that seems to me to be a very great difference. In other words the machine does not think it is experiencing red, either correctly or erroneously.
Heh. This is where I believe @180 Proof and myself are currently at, at least mid-read. Is it an I-thou, or is it an I-it, or is it something else?
But I still take your point that your responses are based upon guesses from the other. Why else talk, after all, if you can figure it all out on your own?
As if "ride the bike" were the same as riding the bike. :roll:
Reading "ride the bike", the effable part, will not add an iota of knowledge of how to ride the bike. One has to ride the bike.
I think we're saying they're not the same. So it seems curious to myself, at least, that you'd include riding the bike as ineffable.
Then why isn't this knowledge included in the exhaustive list of instructions?
Quoting Banno
Why wouldn't we know how to ride after reading a list of instructions "to whatever detail we desire"? Unless there is some knowledge gained from riding the bike. But you say that there isn't.
Can "whatever detail we desire" include all the tacit knowledge (made explicit)? Then we would know how to ride a bike only from the instructions.
This is to
??
With all these biblical references I'm uncomfortable about your claim of "knowing" me...
Not without dinner.
But it seems you claim to know me only privately (on your own). Suit yourself. Even as to the rhythm.
But haven't you hereby made your private life public? Perhaps even over-sharing...
Did you actually go to a seminary? But yeah, as Christopher Walken said in that movie, "It was the iron age. You had to do a lot of bad stuff just to survive."
One last try. A list of "how to ride a bike" can never be completed.
And you had to do a lot of bad stuff to survive, but I'd go further and say you really had to care about things that weren't right to not only survive, but also have a written legacy that still influences the world.
Thing is, it ain't as different now as people like to believe. At least in my estimation.
Why not?
Human nature probably hasn't changed, but the need to write down moral principles would be much more important during a relatively chaotic time like the Iron Age. We take the stability of the global political scene for granted. We need no cultural anchor in the form of an arch of the covenant.
This ties in with what @Hanover pointed out in his thread on freedom of speech. Moses and God fiercely punish Hebrews for exercising religious freedom and freedom of speech. Moses has to control the narrative for the sake of the survival his adopted culture.
Quoting Banno
If they are not the same (which they are obviously not), the words "ride the bike" won't complete anything, when what is needed is riding the bike.
Quoting Joshs
These gaps in mutual understanding sound like they are almost insurmountable. Are there ways you recommend we manage gaps such as these, or perhaps some essay about this you can direct me to?
It sounds more the case that we have to manage ourselves in relation to other people with different values and worldviews. Which is challenging when they, for instance, stack the Supreme Court and fire away at the rights of minorities. This seems to be when the rubber meets the road and, perhaps, it's when the ineffable becomes a gun. :worry:
Quoting Luke
I stand corrected.
Now [s]fuck[/s] eff off, both of you. :kiss:
"eff off" is the preferred usage in this thread.
Quoting Banno
Great argument. Then I suppose the list of instructions isn't, as you stated, "to whatever detail we desire".
Either way, wouldn’t the full list be never completed, hence never expressed, hence remain inexpressible?
:razz:
... But there's always more to be expressed in relation to much ado about nothing, no doubt.
... Ever wonder if the frog thinks that everything worthy of expression can be expressed in croaks, this in principle if not in practice? Hmm, a humorous way of trying to draw attention to the possibility that a hundred thousand years from now they might be conveying information in manners that human words as we know them can't, thereby allowing for the public conceptualization of ideas we humans cannot conceive of.
But back to: if you think some things are inexpressible in words then prove it expressing in words that which you deem to so be inexpressible in words. :joke:
Thank you, but due credit to my interlocutors, who elicit such stuff; my comments are but a pale reflection of their brilliance.
Why, thank you. Very kind. It's true, many things seem odd to me that seem ordinary to others.
It just was unclear what your purpose was with that post.
Tea time.
Well, I did say that a list might be complete, yet we be unable to tell that it is.
As you say there may be forms of expression we cannot imagine.
Quoting javra
:lol: Should I waste my time trying to rise to an impossible challenge?
Quoting Banno
That's probably a good thing...don't take anything for granted.
I'm having tea as I type this, but I swear there is something inexpressible about the taste...
Dodging the argument again.
Quoting Luke
Actually, what makes the Hebrew Bible unusual is that argument with God is acceptable and even shown to be effective. Two prime examples are Genesis 18:16 to 33 when Abraham pleas for God to spare the inhabitants of Sodom and Gemmorah (he fails) and Exodus 32:9 to 14 when Moses pleas for God to spare the Hebrews from total destruction from building the golden calf (he succeeds).
And let us not forget Jacob's fight with the angel in Genesis 32:28 to 29. It was there he was renamed "Israel," which literally means to have fought with God and prevailed.
But I do agree, God doesn't permit the worship of idols or having other gods before him, both being violations of the 10 commandments.
Proto civil rights
Speaking truth to power.
One of my favorite verses -- when a man beats God at wrestling, God promises good stuff on one condition (or more than one, when you get technical)
Morman's didn't focus on that verse, for some reason.
I think "the good", in the Platonic tradition, is what is desired, or wanted, described by Aristotle as "the end", or final cause. It is the cause of knowledge in the sense that when something is wanted we learn the means to get it. So all knowledge is produced in this way, as the means to an end, even if that end is the quest for truth.
But the good, in itself, always presents itself as this or that particular thing, which is wanted, and in this way the good seems to be well known, I know what I want for dinner for example. However, like Aristotle explained, particular goods always end up being desired for the sake of something else, the means to a further end, so the true good escapes our grasp. And when we look for the meaning of "the good" in the general sense, as final cause, it escapes our grasp completely.
Quoting Constance
This is exactly where the difficulty lies, in the attempt to give states of affairs a temporal dynamic, in order to make them something real. Temporal dynamic, as active change, is fundamentally incompatible with a "state" which is static. So it's really impossible to consider states of affairs as a temporal dynamic, because of this inconsistency. And this is the same inconsistency I talked about, between the general principles, and the particular. General principles tend to state "what is", as a static principle, a truth, but in the particular situation, things are changing continuously.
Quoting Constance
This may be the case, that the present vanishes into a unity of past and future, as you say, but the analysis must be continued further. We call them by different names, "past" and "future", because they surely are different. And if they are different, then there must be something that separates them, so we are back to the logical conclusion of a present. Again, we have the same inconsistency rearing its head, from the one perspective the temporal model has the present disappear into a unity of past and future, but that very premise, that there is a past and future to be united, necessitates the conclusion of a present which allows them to be distinct in the first place.
Quoting Constance
This is the same conclusion I described, the present is the Real, and I derived this as a logical necessity. But then, what becomes of this unity of the past and future, which seems to make the present vanish? It is not just an illusion, the fact that past and future are unified in being, this is equally Real. So where does this leave us? The past and future are necessarily separated, due to the vast and substantial difference between the two. Yet equally, the past and future are united as one in the existence of what has being at the present. So it's a conundrum, how two things which are necessarily separated also exist together as a unity all at the same time, the present..
Your argument applies to any kinesthetic skill: who would claim to know how to play the guitar after reading "How To Play the Guitar", even if the last instruction were: "Now, go play the guitar!"
The problem is that even when you have the skill, you don't know how you do it, you just do it. Or rather, you don't know how to verbalize it.
Quoting Luke
He has a talent!
Yeah, I'd agree with that. Except that it's not my argument, it's @Banno's. He's the one who asserted that an exhaustive list of instructions won't give one the knowledge of how to ride a bike. The trouble is, he also says that no knowledge is gained from riding a bike. One can't know how to ride only from the written instructions and yet riding a bike adds no knowledge. It therefore makes you wonder how anyone knows how to ride a bike at all. However, the fact that people do know how to ride a bike shows that we don't need a completed list of instructions. Despite the insufficiency of the instructions, and the zero knowledge gained from riding, people somehow magically know how to ride.
The difficulty is that, despite making knowledge claims, Banno then refuses to talk about knowledge. He will only talk about performance/demonstration:
Quoting Banno
And then he pretends that I'm somehow at fault for talking about knowledge instead of demonstration. He forgets that his original claim was about knowing how to ride a bike, not about "what you need to do in order to ride a bike".
Quoting hypericin
Yep. Moreover, he seems to think that dodging the argument, or telling us to "eff off", is his argument.
Quoting hypericin
Hypericin gets it.
Quoting Luke
Indeed. :wink:
Yes indeed! You are arguing FOR ineffable knowledge. On the other hand, you claim nothing is ineffable. That's the contradiction.
Quoting Banno
Yep.
But it's not really about correspondence with an image you already have because it's the same spelling no matter what font it's written in. It's simply that when building the parts of the image (book, page writing) you don't know how the writing should look because you don't know how to spell it. You can't make an accurate prediction.
Quoting Mww
This is interesting. Topic for another thread though perhaps...
Quoting Mww
But you must have been able to construct it to some extent, otherwise you wouldn't have two images to compare?
Quoting Mww
That's it. That's basically how perception works neurologically too. You focus increasingly on salient parts of the external sate which you guess are going to give you the best information to predict the rest. The interesting part of this (for me anyway) is that those guesses, far from being random, follow almost exactly the guesses that would be made by someone carrying out Bayesian model selection.
Quoting Mww
Thanks for an interesting answer.
I think this seems similar to...
Quoting Janus
But I don't see how either are more than...
Quoting Banno
---
If I claim "I seem to have a memory of my childhood house" it doesn't then follow that I do, in fact, have a memory of my childhood house. Someone might take me there and show me how the details are wrong. I have a memory of something, but it's not my childhood house. I cannot claim both the memory and my current perception to be of the same thing, there's a contradiction there. That which it seems to me is happening in my mental processes, turns out to be wrong, not on empirical grounds, but on grounds of contradiction. I cannot be right both about my description of my memory and my description of my perception.
So this notion that if it 'seems to you' your mental processing follows some method, then it does (and simply must therefore merely supervene on any neural activity underscoring it), seems flawed from the outset. A modicum of lived experience tells us that we're frequently wrong in our assessments of what's going on in our mental processes and it doesn't require neuroscience, nor empirical investigation of any sort.
The mere recognition that many of our assessments are contradictory should be sufficient to tell us in no uncertain terms that our ability to determine our mental processes by introspection is rubbish. Far from resisting evidence from neuroscience as to what those processes might be, we should be fully expecting them to contradict what we thought was the case, knowing that our ability to divine our mental systems by introspection is crap.
Insofar as the contribution from empirical sciences to mental events like 'experiences' it's simply that the brain doesn't seem to have the component systems in the right order to reflect what we might say is going on. Having established that our introspected assessment of what's going on is frequently flawed anyway, I can't think of a single reason why anyone would be so resistant to updating their model... until something better comes along, of course.
The epoché is simply the bracketing of the question about the reality of the external world, so as to focus on the phenomena as they seem to present themselves to us, so Banno's comment seems oddly inapt.
Quoting Isaac
Our assessment of what seems to be going on is not flawed, and what, outside the context of neural activity, which we simply don't experience, could "what is really going on" even mean?
Quoting SEP
How will you show that my private first person experience is false?
How will you show that your private first person experience is false?
Think that makes my point. It's not falsifiable, and hence not empirical.
Hence
Quoting Joshs
is right. Phenomenology is not science. It's more like prayer.
Are we conflating ineffability with something else?
The OP lists a few possible uses for the word, but we now seem to be dealing with the supposed ineffability of private first person experiences - what ever they are.
And yet.. 3 comes after 2.
Is it even possible to achieve epoche? It sounds tricky and mystical.
Here's Dan Zahavi on epoche:
From: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11007-019-09463-y
Zahavi argues that phenomenology practised in psychology and the arts, and areas outside of philosophy generally ignore this transcendental expression of phenomenology.
Quoting Banno
So it seems.
Your argument is quite clear to me. I feel your frustration reading through the discussion, you might call it "The @Banno Experience".
Perhaps the missing keyword is "practice"? In order to learn to ride a bike, which I think we agree is a kind of knowledge (one "knows" or "doesn't know" how to ride a bike), one has to practice. The knowledge gained from practice is always ineffable knowledge, otherwise you wouldn't have to practice, you could just read.
Which part of this do you disagree with Banno? Or perhaps you could respond with misdirection, mischaracterization, insults, or some more of that clever "irony" of yours?
Quoting Luke
Here I thought that was his (ungracious, but what can you expect) way of conceding the point.
Then why don't you have a go at explaining it to us.
We agree that Quoting hypericin
and
Quoting hypericin
which as Luke says is my argument, so where to from there?
Does all this have anything to do with Wittgenstein's private language "argument"?
Ineffable means that which can't be put into words and I suspect this is meant to expose a language barrier impossible to break.
Ironically ineffable seems to have fecund interpretations. One obvious and fun one is the notion that there are facts or truths residing in some Platonic realm, say, which are beyond human comprehension and therefore language. Hence the ineffable nature of spiritual truth or enlightenment. So, it's not so much a 'language barrier' as it is ultra-linguistic - apophatic mysticism. The fact that we can't demonstrate this suggest it may be better not to try to talk about it. The mystics might crib Wittgenstein and say, 'Don't talk, do' ( shut up and meditate!).
Is there a phrase "pure experience"? What does it mean?
Anyway, you, I suppose, put it in a way closer to the truth with "ultra-linguistic" - the flaw is not with us but with ....
Mysticism, ex mea sententia, is the low hanging fruit - go for it by all means.
Suppose Betty, an aspiring guitarist, reads "How to Play the Guitar". She diligently reads and re-reads every word. We agree that Betty does not know how to play the guitar yet. Call her guitar knowledge at this point KG1.
She then practices her instrument 8 hours a day, for 15 years, until she is a master guitarist. Call her knowledge at this point KG2.
At KG1 she does not know how to play the guitar at all:
KG1 ~= 0
The difference between KG1 and KG2 is huge: it is the difference between tyro and master.
KG2 >> KG1
Call it KGI:
KG2 - KG1 = KGI
KGI is the Ineffable part of KG2. Betty could only gain it by practice. Even if she had read every book on playing the guitar, she would still be more or less at KG1. Now, at KG2, she can write her own books. Unfortunately her readers will only thereby attain roughly KG1. All books can really teach is how to practice, not how to play. The bulk of Betty's knowledge, KGI, can only be learned by practice, not by reading, as it cannot be put into words: it is ineffable.
But what could possibly constitute such a 'focus'? Things appear to us as they appear to us. If you look harder you don't get to some 'more real' version because you've got no external reference against which to measure this quality.
How things seem to you might be a starting point of an investigation, but one can gain nothing more than other ways things seem to you without bringing in external referents.
Plus...
Quoting Banno
... seems to cover the same complaint I was raising with 'experience of red'. You don't somehow 'find it in yourself' to have had an 'experience of red' you wouldn't even know what 'experiences' or 'red' were unless you were embedded in an external world of language users and that external world of language use imports all the real-world matter of wavelengths, brains, objects, neurons... You can't bracket them out, but the keep the words they are connected to. The words then become unmoored from anything.
Quoting Janus
I've just got through demonstrating how it is, indeed flawed. You've not addressed that argument, just gainsaid it. As to "what is really going on", I refer back to @Mww's (forgive the paraphrasing) "whatever you like so long as you don't contradict yourself".
You don't need to afford empirical science an special place, but simply by accepting it (the evidence of the lab) you have a contradiction to resolve between models. your folk model and the empirical model don't knit together. You could have one or the other, but not both.
Quoting hypericin
Yes. I'm not sure where you're going with this. Both 2 and 3 are constructed. The fact the 3 comes after 2 doesn't seem to prevent either from being constructed.
Construct to some extent, yes. Two images to compare, no.
The construct to some extend you’re referring to, in the case of perceiving an unfamiliar, is for me a metaphysical phenomenon, which you have posited as scientific “blurry letters”. The senses tell me there is something but is not the place for the telling of what the something is. Phenomena just inform the mind there is about to be something for it to work on. The blurry letters say there is a word for the brain to work on.
In the strictest sense of the word, therein is a construct in the physical system, in that one form of energy in the sensory apparatus is transformed into another kind of energy for transfer along the nerves. So too is there a kind of construct in metaphysical apparatus, in that the matter of the perceived object is arranged in accordance with its given external space. The tail of a dog is placed on the butt end and not the nose end, legs point down….and all that. In the case at hand, that it is a word being perceived is familiar because a succession of letters which are the necessary composition of any word, is part and parcel of the perception as a whole, but the unfamiliarity of the word is not given from this arrangement of these letters, for the simple reason there is as yet no conscious awareness of it as such.
Ever onward. Just as there is no conscious awareness of the information in sensory stimuli traversing the nerves on its way to the brain, there no conscious awareness of phenomena in intuition on its way to understanding. So for the sake of logical consistency it can be said there is a pre-cog construct, but is useless as such to conscious awareness, being necessary, only for the brain, in determining which neural pathway leading to which area of the brain, or similarly, only for metaphysical comprehension, in how the perceived object is to be understood.
So…because I am not consciously aware of the phenomena in my metaphysical system, I do not consider it a construct insofar as I have no knowledge or thought of it at all. In fact, I can say “I” haven’t yet constructed anything. That there is an unconscious part of my metaphysical system that does stuff for which the conscious part is entirely oblivious, is exactly the same as the physical system doing things for the brain with which neural networking has no part.
As the physical system uses electrical energy for its means, the metaphysical system uses phenomena for its means; just as the physical system uses chemical energy for its ends, the metaphysical system uses understanding for its ends. Both in their respective domains are necessary for the other, but neither in their domains can substitute for the other. It follows that the information in nerves is necessary but not sufficient for mental events in the brain, and phenomena are necessary but not sufficient for understanding in conscious awareness.
Now, after progressing from the unconscious nerves/phenomena to the conscious mental event/understanding, the question arises…do I have two images to compare. I had, up to this point, only a indeterminate something, a representation of whatever has affected my senses. As far as the brain is concerned, all there is, is some data, some electrical information that has not been subjected to the area of the brain that is capable of doing something productive with it.
And the separation in domains now becomes apparent. In the scientific system, we don’t know specifically where conscious awareness is born, but in a metaphysical system, conscious awareness is born in understanding, which we call thinking. The phrase we both used, “recalled to mind”, means just to think, to be consciously aware of something I’m supposed to do, in the case at hand, do something with an unfamiliar phenomenon. And what I’m supposed to do, is understand the unfamiliar word. I do that by comparing to what I already understand. In the physical system, the brain must direct the information along certain pathways determinable by the conditions of the information itself. In a metaphysical system, the understanding must conjoin the phenomenon with a conception, determinable by the conditions of the phenomenon itself. In each case a relation is formed: in the brain a mental event occurs; in a metaphysical system, a cognition occurs.
Now comes the time of unfamiliarity, manifesting as the understanding that the letter arrangement does not permit a conception to be conjoined to it. In the brain, the information does not enable a suitable pathway. No sense can be made of the letters, hence the word is uncognizable; no pathway is enabled, no chemical reaction occurs. I have constructed no image relating to the phenomenon just presented, that matches any image already constructed as an image of familiar letter arrangements I can “recall to mind”, which is experience of words I know. No area of the brain is activated, or some area of the brain is activated but it is not suitable to the information. There are extant images to compare by (there do exist energized pathways) but no immediate image to compare with (the information does not meet the criteria of the pathway it’s on), from which follows an empty experience of a word I don’t know (the brain returns its unused energy to whatever its depository for such energy is).
If it is true that two separate and distinct methodologies having such manifest similarities must have a common ground, is sufficient reason to ask what it would be. Here, I must say I don’t know.
Before I get into the substance of what you've replied here, I need to clarify something at the outset. Are you here posting what you conclude must take place (logically, rationally, whatever), or are you describing what you sense takes place (interoception, self-awareness, etc)? In other words, is this the result of the investigation or the data for it? I can't quite make out which and it obviously makes quite a difference in how to understand what you're putting forward.
Quoting Banno
No, not really. Analytic philosophy began WITH Wittgenstein, following Russell. Russell thought Witt was a mystic and they parted ways on this matter of that which should be passed over in silence.
And btw, your response has nothing of the content that was presented to you. Curious. What do you think of the issue at hand regarding Witt and ineffability and Witt's statement about value and ethics, specifically in the Trac5atus, the Lecture on Ethics and in Value and Culture?
Quoting Banno
Indeterminacy is simply where inquiry takes all matters that may come up. But the approach to understanding this has three, as I understanding it, courses of proceeding. Consider Derrida's deconstruction and Quine's Indeterminacy of translation. The former goes directly to the failure to produce a contextless center for meaningful talk. In order for anything meaningful to be said at all requires context, the "gathering" of regionalized ideas in which a given idea is set, and from which the given idea gets its individualization. There are NO stand alone meanings. A cat is not a cat because there are cats out there that bear their own meaning as cats. A cat is a cat, at the basic level of analysis, only as a "play" of relevancies: and then, what about this very explanatory position itself? Yes; it too is a play of relevancies. Nothing escapes this. Heidegger's existential analysis of time, say, is itself hermeneutically indeterminate: He doesn't think he has found the final answer, only that this is best that can be done in the contextual possibilities of our world. Quine, the second I referred to, was defending the same in his naturalism, but note, he always came back to a naturalistic foundation, and in doing so had to reject the thesis of meanings of terms. He writes,
[i]Within the parochial limits of our own language, we can continue as always to find extensional
talk clearer than intensional. For the indeterminacy between “rabbit,” “rabbit stage,” and the rest
depended only on a correlative indeterminacy of translation of the English apparatus of individuation—the apparatus of pronouns, pluralization, identity, numerals, and so on. No such indeterminacy obtrudes as long as we think of this apparatus as given and fixed. Given this apparatus,
there is no mystery about extension; terms have the same extension when true of the same things.
At the level of radical translation, on the other hand, extension itself goes inscrutable.5
the third is but my thinking the most extraordinary: the indeterminacy of intuitive encounter.[/i] (Ontological Relativity, p 32)
You see, Quine, too is destined to admit that at the end of a persistent inquiry, indeterminacy of meaning looms large.
The third, most powerful, for me, is simple and intuitive: Experience the bare exposure to indeterminacy of time, space and Being. This goes directly to the isseu to ineffability. Alas, it is hard to discuss. One has to go there, simply put.
Quoting Banno
Public narrative? The question here is the public narrative embodied in the subject, the historically constructed individual, the center of institutions embedded in language and culture that we call a self--what happens when this kind of entity examines the foundations of being a human being. We encounter phenomena first. Period. The social and the real are first order terms that begs the further foundational questions.
Funny you should mention it. In this essay I summarize the recent history of approaches to blame , anger and ethics in philosophy( free will blame, modernist blame skepticism, postmodern blame, Heideggerian blame) , and offer my alternative to blameful justice:
https://www.academia.edu/87763398/Beyond_Blame_and_Anger_New_Directions_for_Philosophy
https://youtu.be/1ycD55Zp634
My approach is consistent with my reading of psychologist George Kelly:
https://www.academia.edu/44497152/Personal_Construct_Theory_as_Radically_Temporal_Phenomenology_George_Kelly_s_Challenge_to_Embodied_Intersubjectivity
No, not must. That’s a empirical knowledge claim to which I’m not entitled.
Quoting Isaac
If to sense is to form an opinion, then I admit to that.
Quoting Isaac
Investigation. Of the data in topically restricted books, texts, papers. Conversations.
I’m just philosophizing, from a well-versed platform perhaps, but philosophizing nonetheless.
If 3 comes after 2, how is 2 constructed from 3?
Well, thanks for that - nice try.
So you have KG1, where betty has read all there is to read on guitar playing.
And KG2, where Betty has practiced and can actually play.
And the claim is that the difference between KG1 and KG2 is ineffable.
Yet you have clearly explained that the difference between KG1 and KG2 is that in KG1 Betty cannot play the guitar, while in KG2 she can.
But the difference is that Betty can play the guitar.
You explained exactly what that difference is, you put it in words, and hence it is not ineffable. The difference is that betty can play guitar.
Yes, Betty gained the ability to play guitar by practice, and yes, that ability is not found in guitar manuals, but is demonstrated in the playing.
____________
Going back to the beginning, I was responding to @Frank:
Quoting Banno
Following through with
Quoting Banno
The "list of instructions" corresponds to your KG1, the "what is missing" corresponds to your KGI. You have repeated my argument.
The missing part is exactly the riding of the bike or the playing of the guitar. There is a way of showing one can ride a bike or play guitar that is not found in answering questions about bikes or guitars but in the riding and in the playing.
And we have just set that out in words. Again, what appeared to be ineffable is exactly the doing.
As Moli put it:Quoting Moliere
________________
I don't expect what I've said here to make a difference to your opinion. So I will grant the following: Being able to play guitar is not sayable in much the same way that chalk is not democracy. There is a difference in kind between chalk and democracy, and a difference in kind between guitar instruction books and playing guitar. Thank you for pointing out this difference. But it was something of which we were already aware.
The difference between KG1 and KG2 is also a difference in knowledge (hence the ‘K’ in KG).
Why is KG2 not included in the instructions in the first place, especially since you say that we can list the instructions “to whatever detail we desire”?
It’s not just that Betty can play guitar; it’s that Betty knows how to play guitar. And you say she does not know how to play guitar from the instructions (KG1) alone.
Quoting Luke
I don't think I've grasped what you are getting at.
Here's what I understood.
First, you think Wittgenstein was not an analytic philosopher. Well, I and the rest of the world count him an analytic philosopher because he did his philosophy by using logic to analyse the language of philosophical problems.
Next, you think that I have not addressed the "content" presented. Doubtless this is because I have been unable to grasp what you are getting at, but so far as I have understood it, I maintain that Wittgenstein thought that any value in ethics was in the doing, not in ethical theory.
You seem to think that Quine showed the indeterminacy of meaning, rather than the indeterminacy of reference. Roughly, I agree, but think that Davidson deals with the issue better, and that, following Wittgenstein, the mooted indeterminacy is an outcome of meaning being the use to which we put language as we do things.
And I continue to think that the "phenomenological epoché" cannot be made coherent.
The difference, KGI, is a knowledge difference. It comprises a vast amount of information, all encoded in Betty's brain, which is the goal and the end result of her practice. That is not "Betty can play guitar". That is just 4 words, almost no information at all.
Can you see the difference there? That one is trivially expressible, the other not at all?
Quoting Banno
But there is no difference in kind between the knowledge in guitar instruction books and the knowledge in Betty's head that lets her play guitar. They are both knowledge.
EDIT:
Before you reply: "a vast amount of information, all encoded in Betty's brain" is not a vast amount of information, encoded in Betty's brain. It is a mere description, and a trivial amount of information on your screen. One is perfectly effable, the other, not at all.
“We encounter phenomena first. Period.” Wow, this sounds so definitive. Can’t be argued without sounding absurd. Let me try. What do we humans encounter first? I would say a very hostile world in which we need to survive. We encounter objects that we need to run or hide from, we encounter objects that will aid in our survival. To call this ‘phenomena’ sounds like a cold abstract thing that is ruminated on rather than experienced.
“…examines the foundations of being a human being”, is this discovered like a pair of shoes hidden in a closet? Or just created by a phenomenologist that gets everyone to go along with it? Or maybe its just what Wittgenstein said about “absolute simple objects”: “But I do not know whether to say that the figure described by our sentence consists of four letters or nine? And which are its elements, the type of letter, or the letters? Does it matter which we say, so long as we avoid misunderstanding in any particular case? PI
I'd say that narrative is not logical -- or, at least, narrative brings with it its own logic, if we wish to logicize a narrative. Something along the lines of "with each sentence time progresses", or whatever -- but then there's always a storyteller out there who notices that people are logicizing stories, then changes it up to thwart the logic.
Borges comes to mind.
Quoting Constance
I can get along well enough with phenomenology-talk that I don't feel the need to clear it with another theory. One starts somewhere, after all. My doubts aren't based in a notion of what philosophy ought to be, as much as based in particular experiences of people claiming to have so-called special knowledge.
And sometimes phenomenology is very grounded and attending to our experience, and sometimes it goes off the deep-end and claims that everything is consciousness correlated to the special ideas the phenomenologist can see.
It's the latter that I think goes off into what Kant called noumenal speculation. Maybe to the speaker, they can see something special. That's what mystical experience is about -- seeing something others cannot, and purportedly attempting to translate what cannot be translated for people who do not have that mystical experience. And, religiously, perhaps that flies -- but I've yet to make sense of such talk in a rational manner, at least -- though I remain interested.
Quoting Constance
I think that's a warning sign, for myself at least, that I've fallen into a transcendental argument -- it's valid, but it's also easy to construct and usually based on an unstated feeling (what, Kant acting on unstated feelings?! He's a being of pure reason! ;) )
When I feel I don't know what the negation of some philosophy is, I'm focusing on some universal idea -- a totality, one might say, that encompasses, explains, relates, feels, connects, guides, and soothes. Something like God, but in a phenomenological world -- so God can be replaced by Man, ala the Enlightenment, or something else, but it's all religion at the end of the day. Magical beliefs, big-M Meaning, the mystical -- these things are more important because they make life worth living.
And so the transcendental argument springs forth -- how does anyone really do/experience/say/be anything at all? Phenomenology is the only possible way we live our actual lives, and clearly we do live actual lives, therefore phenomenology is the way. To bolster the first point we must first list all the possible alternative ways, and defeat them until Phenomenology is the one that stands -- then say, abductively, "See if you can come up with a better explanation"
The problem being -- it all relies upon what sounds good to the speaker. It's just as easy to set up the exact same argument with materialism. It follows the same pattern (and is akin to the moral arguments for God's existence):
How does anyone really do/experience/say/be anything at all? Materialism is the only possible way to explain our lives, and we clearly do live ("some of us, anyway" scolding the eliminative materialists), therefore materialism is the explanation at least until something better comes along, but all these other explanations are bad for these reasons.
(EDIT: Oh, I forgot to point out -- the difference in emphasis between these two ways of seeing. One wants guidance in the life they live, the other just wants an explanation. a teleologically guided inquiry on a similar phenomena, but both sides speak past one another because of the desire)
I'm not going to claim this is the best set-up of the antinomy, but as far as I can see the phenomenological/naturalism debate follows a pretty similar pattern to the antinomies Kant pointed out in his day, but with some Hegelian patterns where people find common ground. But this time with a more complicated argument, since the transcendental argument is basically a wholesale invention of Kant's -- a progress in logic (or, for some, a deviation ;) )
Quoting Constance
Don't tempt me with Kant interpretation. :D
I decided to skip to the end because, oi, so many threads of thought -- and I'm the same way, so no worries. It's taking willpower not to go off on tangeants about Heidegger, the aesthetics of music, more Levinas, etc. :D But I'm trying to reign it in a bit here.
I'd like an answer to one of the questions I asked, though, because I think it does get to the heart of the matter: What is the ethical dimension to Husserl's thought?
Quoting Isaac
The epoché doesn't purport to be falsifiable, because it is simply the setting aside of a question in order to focus on other things. It is analogous to science which is not really concerned with the metaphysical questions concerning the reality of the phenomena it investigates.
So, in making that statement and asking the inappropriate questions about the "falsity" of first person experience you commit a basic category error.
Phenomenology is simply an investigation into how phenomena are experienced; I don't see what it has in common with prayer as traditionally conceived which consists in "petitioning the Lord", although you could say it has something in common with meditation. I suppose.
Quoting Isaac
There is a difference between noticing how things appear to us, and analyzing the results to form general principles, and simply carrying on with life, which doesn't necessarily involve noticing the general ways in which things appear, as opposed to simply reacting in accustomed ways, to appearances.
Quoting Isaac
Merleau Ponty, for one, took into account and used scientific results in his investigations. Phenomenological results may or may not be in accord with "folk models"; and they don't contradict empirical results simply because they are from totally different perspectives; the first and third person perspectives respectively. You seem to be making the same rookie error as @Banno, in assuming that there is only one "correct" perspective. only one all-encompassing "truth".
Quoting Tom Storm
I can't help you with that, mate; you won't know until you try, and if you are not prepared to try, then there is no point asking the question. It's like asking whether it is possible to understand QM, since it is so difficult and counter-intuitive; you won't know whether it is possible for you unless you attempt it. I'm not prepared to attempt QM, so I don't ask the question.
Quoting Tom Storm
Husserl's approach is not the only one, and has been modified and critiqued by other phenomenologists, notably Heidegger. Also bear in mind that the epoché and the transcendental reduction are not the same thing.
Quoting Moliere
Do you draw a distinction between physicalism or naturalism and materialism? And do you hold materialism as a 'tentative hypothesis' given our reality presents itself to us as material (even with some modest epoche it's hard to get away from this)?
Hmmm. I actually think it is possible to ask questions just to get other's perspectives based on their experiences. :razz: Can I do epoché is not the question I was asking. I was wondering if others could here and whether it paid off for them (to use a crass expression).
Quoting Janus
Do you think there's a potential thread in epoché?
Good point.
I agree, I think there are multiple general-experience categories -- and that we can continue to invent them. Not only can we continue to invent them, we must do so because the world changes. And as the world changes, so does experience.
Most of the time, given how abstract the topic is and how often it is close to our personal lives, I think the guesses are true in context, but false in the intended sense -- it's intended to be universal, at least if I'm understanding what I read. But as we bring context to a given phenomenologist it's not hard to see differences. Levinas, for instance -- who I've intimated I'm a fan of ;) -- is very much a masculine phenomenologist, and some of it, being honest to his own time, will not fly now. I can understand it, from a distance, but it's kinda the whole thing I didn't want to do -- so I disagree :D
But I don't know if that should count against phenomenology either. It is, after all, a philosophy rather than a scientific treatise. Science demands intersubjective agreement. Philosophy seeks it, but doesn't require it.
Quoting Tom Storm
I did at one point, but now I'd rather say that I can. The terms just need clarification in any given conversation, and can be used to make distinctions in a conversation, but that's about it.
I wouldn't go so far as to say it's a tentative hypothesis. That'd make it an object of knowledge. I think it's a good idea, is about it. I feel like I like both spiritualists and materialists, and that makes things awkward :D -- well, for thems who are attached to either side, at least. I genuinely just get pleasure out of thinking about this stuff.
But I'll say materialism is "winning" in my mind at the moment. And mostly for ethical reasons, rather than the usual debates. But I know materialists have done bad things, too, so.... ever and forever thinking back and forth.
Quoting Tom Storm
OK, fair enough: I guess it depends on what is meant by "doing epoché". If it means simply not focusing on the metaphysical question concerning the independent reality of phenomena, I don't see how that could be so difficult. As I said I think scientists for the most part, ignore that question: "Shut up and calculate"; in any case the question certainly doesn't seem to be a necessary part of scientific practice.
If it were taken to mean something like a radical alteration of consciousness, as, for example, satori is understood to be in Zen Buddhism, where the independent reality of phenomena might be said to be no longer unreflectively presupposed, then that might be more of a challenge, and you would need to try for yourself.
Quoting Tom Storm
I don't know, it might turn out to be a very short one.
Quoting Moliere
I'd say bad things are done by ideologues, and there are plenty of those on both sides.
Aren't there 'fine people' on both sides? (sorry)
Wow. That sounds interesting, but perhaps this is not the thread for such a provocative statement.
Quoting Janus
I hear you and it is a fascinating matter - to me anyway. I have heard it argued that epoché is like some accounts of meditation or prayer. Do you think this is fair for some forms of epoché? You seem to be suggesting this in the second para above. I've often thought of meditation as an attempt to encounter the ineffable.
Heh, yes. I have a habit of getting off topic. I try my best :D
Back, back foul demon! I'm trying to remain on topic! :D
I agree that's true.
But, of course, I'd complicate it. It's philosophy, after all.
Yes, I have no doubt there are. The 'fine people' makes me wonder if your question is tongue in cheek, but I've answered it assuming it was not.
Quoting Tom Storm
I'm also fascinated by the possibility of altering consciousness, and prayer and meditation are considered by many to be suitable anthropotechnics* for the purpose. To be transformative it would seem the epoché would have to be more than just an intellectual exercise of bracketing and shifting focus.
I do see meditation as a technique to be used for "encountering the ineffable". Hallucinogens are another 'shinkansen' way, but don't seem to yield permanent results, as meditation is claimed to be able to do by some.
As I've said, I think our experience in general is ineffable, where 'ineffable' means 'not susceptible of adequate propositional expression'..We experience particularities and speak in generalities.
* This term was coined by Peter Sloterdijk, and I encountered it in You Must Change Your Life (well worth reading).
:up:
I guess this quote is from Derrida's memorial note, written after Deleuze's death. Is it from 'I have to wander All Alone? The text's tone is understandable but does not shed light on their remoteness from each other, primarily due to their different perspectives on immanence and transcendence.
Quoting Joshs
“The concepts of difference that Deleuze develops in ‘Difference and Repetition’ –“difference in intensity, disparity in the phantasm, dissemblance in the form of time, the differential in thought”
( DR, p 145) – have a very different status than a notion of differance Derrida develops in his essay
“ Differance”. For Derrida, differance is a relation that transcends ontology, that differs from ontology…Deleuze aim, by contrast, is to show that ontology itself is constituted by a principle of difference” (Smith, Essays on Deleuze, p 275).
Quoting Joshs
I will reconstruct Deleuze's disagreement with Derrida using the question of power and desire, using their reading of Kafka.
"The law as such should never give rise to any story. To be invested with its categorical authority, the law must be without history, genesis, or any possible derivation. That would be the law of the law. One does not know what kind of law is at issue—moral, judicial, political, natural, etc. What remains concealed and invisible in each law is thus presumably that which makes laws of these laws, the being-law of these laws. The question and the quest are ineluctable, rendering irresistible the journey toward the place and the origin of law. To enter into relations with the law which says "you must" and "you must not" is to act as if it had no history or at any rate as if it no longer depended on its historical presentation." (Derrida, 'Acts of literature. Before the Law' p 192)
Derrida's account of 'The law as such', differance, has an apparent affinity with Kant's moral imperative. 'To enter into relations with the law,' one must obey and to act without any critical distance, following exclusively practical reasons. It is precisely the Law with a necessary, unconditional authority, without being true. The truth of the Law cannot be theoretically demonstrated, but its unconditional validity should be nevertheless presupposed. In Derrida’s interpretation, Kafka's scene of 'Before the Law, operates similarly to the Althusser’s scene of interpellation. The submission to the law through an acceptance of its demand for conformity should be awarded by the acquirement of a sense of "I" and social identity.
Differently, Deleuze and Guattari ultimately rejected any use of Kantian law: "Where one believed there was the law, there is in fact desire and desire alone…An unlimited field of immanence instead of an infinite transcendence...The transcendence of the law was an image, but the law exists only in the immanence of the machinic assemblage." (Deleuze and Guattari, ‘Kafka’, p 51.)
Here, desire is not conceived as an irresistible drive to enter the ineffable space behind "Before the Law'. By contrast, it animates the productive immanent field, coextensive with the singular social organizations. Machinic assemblages of desire exercise their power operating several syntheses inherent to both the mind and the social.
Quoting Banno
Nevermind
Regarding the first, of course it sound definitive. I think there really is a definitive approach to the discovery of what a human being is at the level of basic questions. This doesn't mean at all that I think God just sent me a memo; it simply means that there is a method, grounding, from which more organized thinking issues. I mean, this is what it means to have a considered point of view, a defensible set of ideas. Ironically, my view emphasizes indeterminacy, not anything definitive.
The encountering first? Look at it like this, ask a scientist what existence is, and she will put the answer in the range of material substance, naturalism, the stuff atoms, quarks, and so on are made of, etc. This is a scientist's ontology. A phenomenologist will say terms like this are fine in contexts where they are common and make sense, but for philosophical ontology material substance has no meaning. I mean, what is it? for there is nothing there to fill the explanatory space. It is really just an extension of a scientist's vocabulary into a philosophical claim, but it has no empirical presence.
Phenomenology, the way I see it, simply takes what appears before us as the foundation for philosophical inquiry. In doing this, it grounds theory in what is there, simply put. Its historical precursor is Kant's "concepts without intuitions are empty; intuitions without concepts are blind."
Absolutely. It's certainly an interesting take, I'm just not sure I fully follow how you're getting there but...
Quoting Mww
This sounds like exactly what I mean by 'construct' an image in that I'm talking about a set of mental processes, rather than, say, looking at a photo (which would be more presenting an image).
Quoting Mww
Yep. This sounds like a mirror image of the neurological process (except for one important distinction in that neurologically, what's served up is done sone probabilistically, with data noise, because of the limitations of the wetware. I doubt there's room for probability in this metaphysical process?)
Quoting Mww
You're saying here that the entity, or prompt, you end up with isn't a 'construct' because it's been constructed by sub-conscious (sub-cognitive?) processes? Is that right?
Quoting Mww
Sounds a fair enough analogy. Again, I'd say that the stochastic nature of mental processes is the main standout as a difference here.
Quoting Mww
And I think here is where that probabilistic nature may cause us to diverge in methodologies. There's no such stopping point in neological events, it's a continual process of prediction, data-harvesting (or manipulation of external states), re-prediction... It's all about a constant stream of best guesses with those 'best guesses' directing behaviour aimed at improving the match between that guess and the external state it's guessing. Your system seems to have understanding as almost binomial (is there a link or isn't there). Is that a fair summary?
If you're to claim "It seems to me that X, therefore X" then there's no investigation. The answer is already fully presented to you. That's the point I'm making.
An 'investigation' requires, by definition, that you accept things might not be as they first seem to you to be.
It isn't.
But science is useful. Phenomenology is philosophically unproductive and useless.
[math]\frac{3}{3} + \frac{3}{3} = 2[/math]
Based on Deleuze's text 'Desire and Pleasure,' it is not difficult to oppose Deleuze and Foucault's ontologies. Yet, in 'Foucault,' Deleuze entirely changed his position. The question of resistance
should not be reduced to a tenuous epistemological scheme: "he begins with the question of knowledge (what is articulable and what is visible), finds the conditions of knowledge in power, but then has to ask about the ways one can resist power." "There is no diagram that does not also include, besides the points which it connects up, certain relatively free or unbound points, points of creativity, change and resistance, and it is with these that we ought to begin in order to understand the whole picture."
(Deleuze, ‘Foucault”, p 37). Starting from "The History of Madness," Foucault became the leading figure between philosophers of his generation not because he 'began with the question of knowledge.’ By contrast, it happened due to his relation to the outside, his discovery of 'certain relatively free or unbound points, points of creativity, change and resistance,' embedded into the whole social field. Therefore, it is incorrect to assert that 'Foucault begins with a status quo – knowledge or the symbolic,' while 'Deleuze instead begins with change, with becoming, with events.’ “Foucault writes a history, but a history of thought as such. To think means to experiment and to problematize. Knowledge, power, and self are the triple root of a problematization of thought… In Foucault, everything is subject to variables and variation" (Deleuze, 'Foucault,' p 95).
I usually take “construct” to imply intentionality, and no sub-conscious faculty can be imbued with it. Perhaps it is that construct isn’t so much the wrong concept, but just not the better one.
There’s a hidden benefit in a subconscious facility. Because the representation by definition cannot be exactly the same as the given object, otherwise it wouldn’t be a representation, we can say even though we absolutely cannot prove anything about how matter is arranged into a useable form, at the same time we can say it is absurd to suppose it isn’t.
Science eventually solved this speculative impossibility by proving any change in the form of energy means some will be lost, justifying the notion that representations are never the same as…..dare I say….the thing-in-itself. Just the empirical proof that, metaphysically alleviates the necessity for the proving how. Which is good, because it’s already been understood it couldn’t be done from a metaphysical domain anyway, seeing as it’s all sub-conscious. It is logically sufficient to say the phenomenon contains all the sensation gives it, the sensation contains all the perception gives it, but the perception does not contain all that the real object has to give.
(Sidebar: hence the birth of phenomenology. Some people just could not abide with the idea there is a very important aspect, veritably the very ground, of empirical cognitive metaphysics that is nonetheless inaccessible to the conscious investigations.)
————-
Quoting Isaac
Not really. Metaphysics proper is the ways and means for knowledge acquisition. For the proverbial Man on the Street, Joe Cool, Mr. and Mrs. Rural America, they don’t want to probably know. Probably knowing gets folks killed, or at the very least, makes them look like an idiots. I imagine even the theoretical physicist, in the development of his thesis, won’t come up with experiments which would probably support it.
No……apodeictic certainty rules the day, caveats and all. Euclid understood it, re: geometric necessity; Aristotle understood it, re: three laws of rational thought; Descartes understood it, re: negation of irreducible doubt; Kant understood it, re: synthetic a priori truths.
————-
Quoting Isaac
Neither of us can describe these distinct systems as far as they go; we’d become stuck in the minutia which only works if the major premises are accepted across the board. The brain works physically due to the subtleties of its parts, we think metaphysically due to the subtleties of the faculties that make thinking possible. Neurology works with transmitters, gaps and receptors; understanding works with synthesis, judgement and reason. In short, understanding links, judgment says the link works this time, reason says whether it works in all times. Or, in other words, understanding conjoins according to rules, judgement follows those rules, reason says some principle has been violated by that judgement therefore those rules weren’t the proper ones to use in this instance. Think…mirage. Think….clouds that look like some object. Think…the duck/rabbit picture. That stupid dress or the shadow on the checkerboard.
Regarding the unfamiliar word, then, and in the interest of brevity, I said understanding couldn’t construct an image, but technically, it is that for every image it does construct, judgement will admit, but reason will overrule as being inadmissible. I did that in order to simplify, to circumvent the obvious question which would have followed if I’d said understanding does construct an image of an unfamiliar word.
And here is the system in all its speculative metaphysical glory. I did say “nothing is cognized”, implying no image made it out of that faculty to become knowledge. If understanding had so constructed, judgement did admit, and reason did say all’s well….the word would then be cognized as something, the word would be known, hence would not be unfamiliar….blatantly contradicting the given perception.
To say of a thing that it is unfamiliar, just is to say the cognitive system has already done its job. If this were not the case, every single perception ever, would be either always and only become knowledge or always and only never become knowledge, but not ever changing from one to the other. Either we’d know everything or know absolutely nothing, and, we’d never actually learn.
————-
Quoting Isaac
I can see that. Assuming 1 x 10^11 neurons, each with 1 x 10^4 connections between them, (Nguyen, Thai, 2010), it would seem to be quite busy up there, yes. Given that exact measurement is rather impossible, with numbers that great it doesn’t make much difference.
This is a good example of the disregard for ontological predicates with respect to the physical world. All the mind….reason, properly speaking…..needs is that which is given to it, and although there very well may be infinite possibilities for things, a very finite quantity of them will be given. It follows the metaphysical mind doesn’t need to be as stochastically busy as the scientific brain, thus can escape the notion of probabilities in general. Or, perhaps, more accurately, reserve probability for particular things perceived by the senses. In other words, the mind doesn’t ask, what are the chances the thing I’m perceiving is this thing or that thing, but rather, asks, how shall this perceived thing be known as.
Quoting Number2018
In ‘Deleuze, a Split with Foucault’, Mathias Schönher argues that in ‘Foucault’, Deleuze is trying to be generous to his old friend without really altering his critique from 1977:
“Whereas in "Desire and Pleasure" Deleuze ends his confrontation with Foucault's position in aporia, after Foucault's death he indicates an alternative, declaring that Foucault's books analyse a variety of historical situations and invent their own specific means to this end. However, this takes into account only half of Foucault's work, as Deleuze points out most clearly in "What is a dispositif?," a lecture from 1988: "Out of a sense of rigor, to avoid confusing things and trusting in his readers, he does not formulate the other half." Foucault formulated the other half "explicitly [only] in the interviews."
The alternative Deleuze exhibits here thus appears to consist of presuming an unwritten doctrine. In actuality, such a presumption would probably have been unthinkable for him, regardless of whether Foucault had really given such great importance to his interviews. As far as Deleuze is concerned, after all, the unwritten half of Foucault's work must be that which opens up access to the fundamental interplay of forces.
What Deleuze considers Foucault to have left out of his books is none other than philosophy, which, with its creative thinking, turns against the historical situation by setting out the starting points for the transformation of our society and our experience. To Deleuze, the alternative to the problems with which he is confronted by Foucault's thought can be none other than to presume that his own philosophy represents the outline of that plane that Foucault also viewed as having laid the foundations for the field on which the network of power was constituted, and to which Foucault attested in interviews.”
Especially this:Quoting Moliere
It would however be an error to think the analytic approach does not address issues of action.
Quoting hypericin
Tacit vs. explicit.
How things appear is not always, or even mostly, obvious. So, phenomenology calls for paying attention to experience, reflecting on the results and synthesizing insights from that process. If you've ever tried to draw or paint "from nature" you'd understand what I'm talking about. the arts are predominately phenomenological pursuits.
The empirical investigations of science are in some ways analogous and in others very different. To seek to hold one way of investigation up as the 'true one" which trumps and corrects all the others shows a narrow polemical way of thinking; it is one of the ways of the ideologue, as I see it.
All I can suggest to help you understand better is to take up meditation, or painting and drawing, or writing poetry, or music, anything to free you from a dualistic, objectivist. machine-like mentality, and perhaps try reading some phenomenology, so you at least understand it before deciding to criticise it..
If, after sufficient investigation, you find it's not for you, that's fine, but that would say more about you than phenomenology
Quoting Heracloitus
As a phenomenological philosopher, I have a hard time finding this comment useful. Neither would contributors to journals like Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences.
I'm wondering why you even bothered to take the time to respond to such a vacuous, facile comment.
Tacit means unstated; not effed.
If this tacit knowledge is effable, then why is it not included in the explicit instructions? Will you ever answer this question?
Edit: Furthermore, you’ve told us that the explicit instructions alone are insufficient to know how to play and that no knowledge is gained from playing, so how does one gain this tacit knowledge?
Quoting Luke
I have, multiple times, to you and in anther more interesting discussion with @Moliere.
I'll try again, this time with an example. I've spent a few days trying to get the lick for Mannish Boy right. I'm after something like the the Johnny Winter sound, but have a Gretch semi rather than a Fender. Playing with the gain I can get a satisfactory sound, but it's missing something, which I think is an overdub of a bass run. Or it might be keys.
While I haven't found quite what I want, it's not that I can't talk about it - it's tacit, but is made explicit in both the twiddling of various knobs and the discussion.
Is there something about the lick that cannot be said? I don't see what.
Tacit knowledge is communicable. Hence not ineffable.
(Harmonica?)
Don't hurt me, don't hurt me now.
It just seems like if one acknowledges that meaning is use, one would want to downplay the aboutness of language. Why even care about reference if it's just action that matters?
There's no keys mentioned in the notes, so it must be a harp.
What this whole discussion misses is the interplay between the words and the world; it's not that the tacit knowledge is off by itself somewhere, but is there in the "a bit more gain, and a little reverb", said or done.
That can be determined by finally answering my question: if tacit knowledge is effable, then why is it not included in the explicit instructions in the first place?
Quoting Banno
This does not at all answer my question.
What does the lick have to do with your tacit knowledge of how to play?
I asked you about your tacit knowledge, which you distinguished from the knowledge contained in the explicit instructions. I did not ask you about any tacit knowledge that the lick somehow possesses.
Telling me that you don’t possess knowledge of how to play a lick or - worse - of how to perfect a sound, is a poor attempt at distraction.
:rofl:
Less than I'd like. It's only six notes, but it's a bitch.
Perhaps @Banno could be persuaded to record a performance of "the lick" for us as a fitting capstone to this effing thread. I have a feeling the performance would be "ineffable" :rofl:
Yes, what you described does not answer my question. The reason is because I asked about tacit knowledge and you described a situation in which you lack knowledge. Did you think that “tacit knowledge” meant a lack of knowledge?
And I can go back to insults? That’s rich. I’m not the one telling people to “fuck off” as a substitute for an argument, Banno. That’s you.
Yet from my vantage he understands his own question just fine, it is you that are missing it.
Quoting Luke
How exactly does a description of some knobs you are considering fiddling with answer this question?
I think Quine's point was that there's nothing in your knob twiddling that stands as evidence that what you mean by 'gain' coincides with what the engineer who designed the amp meant by it.
It's not a matter of imprecision. It's that everything is actually ineffable. Speech with a lack of clear reference is never about anything in particular.
But tacit know-how is, if not stateable then demonstrable. So, , it’s entirely doable for someone else to twiddle ones knob satisfactorily, perhaps with instruction.
Not stateable = ineffable.
A truly worthy first entry to my "Favorite Quotations"!
First explain in what sense either of them are tacit knowledge.
These seem like things which - if known - could be included in the explicit instructions of how to play. So why wouldn’t they be?
If it can be stated, then it can be included in the explicit instructions on how to play.
If it can’t be stated, then it’s ineffable.
Recall you asserted that the explicit instructions alone are insufficient for one to know how to ride/play.
Therefore, there is something that cannot be stated, in principle, according to you.
Otherwise, everything necessary to know how to play could be made explicit and included in the instructions and the instructions would therefore be sufficient for one to know how to play.
So why do you assert that the explicit instructions alone are insufficient to know how to play? What knowledge is missing?
Bear in mind that the act of riding or playing is not knowledge. You might say this demonstrates knowledge. Okay, then what knowledge does it demonstrate that cannot be made explicit and included in the instructions on how to play/ride?
Hence that which is tacit is not thereby ineffable.
That was rather the point. I had taken the argument to be that the tacit was an example of the ineffable. That was hypothesised back on page one:Quoting Banno An argument later considered and dismissed, since it is a simple issue to state things that have hitherto been unstated. Quoting Banno...or that roll-on to two strings, not one as is more common, with an immediate pull-off... so that the fourth string is muted.
Check it:
This dude shows the roll (at 1:15) but misses the hammer on, bending instead (at 3:00). I prefer the hammer on.
Yep, we are talking about stuff that is also tacit, hence what is tacit is not ineffable. The whole thing could have been shown, rather than discussed.
But none of this helps if you are Luke, and begin with the assumption that the tacit is ineffable,...
So we again get no further. I'm going to maintain that at the least the tacit can be made explicit, and that the video above does just that.
You seem to keep forgetting that we are discussing tacit knowledge. I have never denied that tacit knowledge can be made explicit. The question I've put to you numerous times now is why that knowledge is not included in the instructions.
You made the dubious claim on page 1 of this discussion that the explicit knowledge given by the list of instructions could be "to whatever detail we desire" and yet we still wouldn't know how to ride/play:
Quoting Banno
Quoting Banno
This has nothing to do with knowledge. The "riding of the bike" is not knowledge. As I said in my last post:
Quoting Luke
Again, if it can be included in the instructions, and we can have those instructions "to whatever detail we desire", then why wasn't it included in the instructions in the first place? If it can't be included in the instructions then it's ineffable. Your dubious assertion implies that not everything can be included in the instructions, because the instructions are insufficient for knowing how to play/ride. There is some knowledge missing from the instructions, otherwise they would be sufficient for knowing how.
Such as...?
A bit of know-how that cannot be understood...?
What does this look like?
And I've answered you, repeatedly, with examples, that it can be, and that's what makes the tacit knowledge explicit.
Then why can we not know how to ride a bike despite having a list of instructions to whatever detail we desire? As you said yourself:
Quoting Banno
You say that no matter what level of detail we have in the instructions we still wouldn't know how to ride, but you also say that riding a bike adds no knowledge. So what knowledge is missing from the instructions?
It occurs to me that if reference is inscrutable, and one takes all of meaning to be referential, then Quine pretty much renders language inscrutable.
I'd been taking Quine as a criticism of the referential theory of meaning. But if one supposes that meaning just is reference, then he shows that language can't work.
Is that what you are suggesting?
None.
What's missing is the riding of the bike.
That was my point way back on page one.
:meh:
I'm sorry you are finding this so hard.
(Edit: That is, if we assume the instructions are complete then by that very fact there is nothing missing from them; but we can add that a set of instructions may be incomplete, or incompleteable, in accord with Wittgenstein's talk of rules... But that's another level of complexity.)
That has nothing to do with KNOWLEDGE. You made a KNOWLEDGE claim. You said that the KNOWLEDGE (know how) provided by the instructions is incomplete no matter the level of detail.
I'm sorry you are finding this so hard.
I'm not surprised you don't read me very closely, but I am surprised you don't read yourself very closely:
Quoting Banno
Quoting Banno
Now remember, the riding of the bike has nothing to do with knowledge. And your claim was about knowledge.
Transparent attempt to get me to say what cannot be said.
So, how can one demonstrate or justify that there are "aspects of know-how that cannot be understood, much less expressed or shown"?
No. That all you've got? I don't know, Banno; I'm a bit worried about you; you seem to be going the way of the troll.
Excuse my scepticism.
Such things are not learned via words and cannot be taught, although it is possible to encourage others to take certain directions in practice that make the acquisition of such know-how more likely.
If skepticism proceeds from ignorance, or lack of experience, it is excusable, so if that is the case then no need to apologize..
Why not simply retract the claim that you made about incomplete knowledge back on page one (which I've quoted ad nauseum) since I've demonstrated it to be inconsistent with your claims about effability?
1. If no knowledge is ineffable, then all the knowledge required to know how to play/ride can be made explicit and included in a list of instructions. That is, a list of instructions can be completed.
2. However, you claim that a list of instructions cannot give one knowledge of how to play/ride, no matter the level of detail. That is, a list of instructions cannot be completed.
Contradiction.
Whose translation is this?
I think he means that it's just a folk theory that language refers. It's a theory that ignores the limits of knowledge vis-a-vis beetles in boxes.
I don't know what you're thinking about. All I know is the way you behave. So Quine is arguing against meaning internalism, and for some sort of behaviorism.
In a behaviorist context, ineffability doesn't mean much. There is no aboutness to language in the first place. To cling to ineffability is to cling to some kind of internalism.
Is a recipe know-how? Or is it just an aid to knowing-how?
Still going along my materialist thought line . . . knowledge is in the body. It's a conjunction of . . . well, whatever experience/language/activity/being is such that we are enabled.
If that be the case, then statements, all unto themselves, are never knowledge. Rather, they are enablers, aids, or parts of knowledge. In the toy model of knowledge they roughly correspond to "beliefs", but given that we don't need to believe the statements to know-how that's not quite right (because knowledge is in the body, rather than a set of true statements/propositions believed and justified -- but also because we need to be able to consider statements before believing them, but we are still able in spite of the state of consideration.)
After all, when learning your first recipe you pretty much follow it to the letter. But, with the more recipes you learn, the less you rely upon the words in the book (unless baking, which is more like chemistry-lite ;) ). You look at the ingredients, and their rough proportions, and usually you have enough techniques down that you don't have to follow the instructions to the letter. You can even "improve" upon the recipe, to your own taste at least, knowing that this and that will have such and such an effect on the food.
So why doesn't this count as ineffable, if we aren't even tied to the words really, but just use them to enable? I think it's because these things can be taught to others. I can refer to my knowledge, and show it to someone, and they can learn. So, at least, there's a connection of some kind between us in the transfer of knowledge. And while transferring knowledge to others, at least, I cannot do it without words.
Even in teaching someone to ride a bike, which is primarily a know-how with scant words, I'd still use words to transfer that knowledge to someone else. I could, as an exercise, attempt to teach without any words whatsoever, but it'd be much harder than if I'd just communicate while showing.
Now, if riding a bike were ineffable, I couldn't teach it to someone -- or, perhaps, words themselves wouldn't aid me in teaching someone. So the mystics say they cannot tell you what they see, but they can attempt to use the imperfect medium of language to translate their experience. And, given that knowledge is in the body it's also relative to the body, so for some it is ineffable. They cannot ride the bike. The ant will never understand what it's like to be a bi-pedal creature keepings its balance on a bike with eventual ease. But for most creatures like myself it's only ineffable prior to the doing. After the doing, they can speak about it because now they have the knowledge in their body.
Is riding a bike really the same as mystical or metaphysical claims? I guess that's really the thing that seems more pertinent, unless we're trying to claim that consciousness is metaphysically distinct from the natural world. Maybe it is just as mysterious, and I'm just not seeing it, though it seems to me that these are not the same.
Maybe this foolish claim needed to be nipped in the bud back on page one.
What's missing is not "the riding of the bike". What's missing is learning, [I] learning[/I] to ride the bike.
More unnipped gems from p1:
Quoting Banno
Someone else learning history does not count as you learning history. Yet, you don't have to learn history on your own. It is not "just another grammatical point".
Quoting Banno
Yet here I am sitting on my ass, knowing how to ride a bike yet not riding a bike.
That, indeed, seems to be what is claiming... or reporting. He is trying to tell us of something of which he cannot tell us. And like the beetle it must drop out of the conversation. So one could not claim, for example, that one is following in the footsteps of other phenomenologists, because to do so would be to say that there was something shared, or at least something similar, in the face of the claim that despite this it is ineffable. So that internalise is esoteric, mystical.
Now that's not so far from Wittgenstein, except that the phenomenologists seem to insist on continuing the impossible conversation were Wittgenstein would be silent, choosing instead to enact, and perhaps show by enacting.
There is a contradiction in Janus claiming both that what "cannot be taught" yet one can "make the acquisition of such know-how more likely", but perhaps it's much the same point as I just attributed to Wittgenstein. Janus would then be saying much the same thing, just less clearly.
@Janus, @Constance and @Joshs apparently see a place for discussion of phenomena, via a somewhat esoteric method, that somehow permits the effing of the ineffable. Perhaps @Moliere is tempted to sympathy with that idea, but the problem here is that such a method becomes a beetle in a box.
@frank and @Moliere also remind us of the broader picture, that all such discussions take place in, for want of a better expression, a "form of life", in which the learning (@hypericin) takes place in an interplay of conversation and enacting; as when one sits with a guitar tutor, listening to their words, watching their fingers and hearing the result; or like changing a recipe based on the reaction, spoken and otherwise, of those sampling your cooking. Language use is embedded in our daily lives, enacted in what we do minute by minute. Meaning is not something seperate from this, but created by the process.
And that interplay is open ended, with new interactions and word uses coming in to the form of life as it proceeds.
My present conclusion is that the notion of the ineffable, if taken seriously, fails to acknowledge this interplay. So we are left, from the list in the OP, with the ineffable as an alternative term for metaphors and honourifics, or to mark a topic as out of bounds for discussion. These are the roles that "ineffable" can take in our language games. Beyond that, it fails.
How're you traveling, @jgill?
Well put. I eagerly await the response. As I wait, I shall meditate.
:razz:
I've meditated enough to have experienced that state of "no-thought".
Funny thing is, I'd heard of it before I achieved it, and recognised it.
Hence, it, too, is not ineffable.
No, you're still misunderstanding. I am telling you that there are things I cannot tell you, not trying, per impossibile, to tell you what I cannot tell you. And of course the things I cannot tell you cannot be part of the conversation, but the fact that there are things I cannot tell you can be, and should be an important part of the human conversation.
Also you misunderstand phenomenology, since it doesn't deal with the ineffable, but with what can be told about personal experience..The observations, analyses and syntheses of phenomenologists do not purport to be empirically testable (obviously) but offer you something only if they speak to your own experience. If you don't have the kind of experience being explicated or don't notice that you have, or reject the whole notion for ideological reasons, then it will mean little to you.
Quoting Banno
Again there is no contradiction. Think of Zen as an analogy; enlightenment cannot be taught as factual disciplines can, by rote, but the techniques that might get you there can be taught. Exactly the same applies to the arts.
Quoting Banno
Really? Not ineffable, eh? then you should be able to tell us what it's like to be in the state of "no-thought".
Of course you are. And the reply is that such things cannot count as things.
Around and around.
What think you, ?
Quoting Banno
I was talking about Quine. I'm afraid there's a field of incomprehensibility surrounding him. You've been deflected by it and stumbled into Janus. :sad:
Quoting Banno
Witt did say that Heidegger was trying to do the impossible, but that had nothing to do with enacting anything. That's your bugaboo resulting from your immense laziness. Probably.
Sure, they are not determinate things, else they could be talked about, but they are not nothing. You seem to be developing the nasty habit of picking up the fruit which has already fallen; not a habit conducive to fruitful conversation.
Of course. I was making an attempt to bringing the disparate parts of this chat together. Quine's stuff on reference is not dissimilar to Wittgenstein's stuff on silence. Too much animosity for such a discourse, is seems.
I think it's fairly dissimilar unless you take all of Witt's ideas and dump them into a blender with some Tequila.
...despite all this we do make use of words, one way or another. The knob gets to the right spot. How can that be so, unless reference is not as important as it might seem?
Quoting Janus
It has more sugar, and so makes better jam.
Log jam in the conversation.
Quoting Banno
How low can you go? Now you're picking up what's left of the fruit after it has already been eaten.
It was you who left the not-nothing-and-yet-not-something lying around. It's still there. Tell us some more about the ineffable.
It would be a waste of time,
like trying to describe colour to the blind,
or casting pearls before swine.
Phenomenology as it was begun by Husserl was about finding our way past preconceptions to the formal conditions of possibility of experience, to what is irreducible, indubitable and universal in experience and thus is communicable and intersubjective . For instance, time consciousness, the fact that every moment of experience is a synthesis of retention, presentation and protention. This means that the now is a blend of expectation and memory. Phenomenology can’t capture any content that is immediately present. To retain a momentary content is to reflect back on it, thereby changing what it was. No particular content repeats its sense identically.
This means that what we experience in its uniqueness is ineffable to us as well as to others, in the sense that it doesnt hold still long enough for us to repeat its essence, duplicate it, record it , reflect on it, tell ourselves about it. This does’t mean that we can’t communicate our experiences to ourselves , only that in doing so what we are communicating is something similar rather than identical to what we experience in it’s never-to-be repeated immediacy. So self-reflection is as imperfect as communication with others. The phenomenological method reveals to us the structural patterns that intentional synthesis consists in, such as the constitution of higher level phenomena like persisting spatial objects out of the changing flow of perceptual data.
In short, the content-in-itself of the contingent , relative, ineffable ‘now’ is not useful or meaningful via its role in the formal , communicable aspects of experience .
Maybe, but an impression or memory of a phenomenal experience is still similar in kind to that experience. As opposed to when we attempt to translate that experience into words, where its phenomenal character is destroyed. A being who hears those words can only attempt to reconstruct it if that variety of phenomenal experience is already familiar to them. Words can refer, but words themselves are not a medium that can convey phenomenal experience. And so I still maintain that phenomenal experience is ineffable.
I agree with this, but not everyone would. I need to reflect on my experience in a certain way to find "the formal conditions of the possibility of experience" (Kant in this respect was arguably the first major phenomenologist). There are those of a logical postivist bent who will say that such a priori knowledge is not really knowledge ( because untestable) or is not really a priori (Quine).
Quoting Joshs
Yes, what we are reflecting on in such investigations are generalities. It seems to me that all our knowledge consists in generalties, and particularity is thus ineffable, because it is really subverted by generalization. Generalizing is the attempt to capture what is common and unchanging in particularity, so that we can bring it to conscious determination and communicate about it. Which seems to be pretty much the same as what you say here:
Quoting Joshs
Quoting Joshs
Yes, we experience only fleeting images, impressions and sensations, and out of that common experience we construct the collective representation which is the world of stable objects and entities.
Keep in mind that the original, immediate experience of a ‘now’ content , being itself an intentional synthesis of past , present and future, is not the exposure to an external objective datum , but a sense conditioned by my expectations. The moment we refer back to that original experience through reflection, we are intending a new sense, thus changing the phenomenal character of the original phenomenon. In this respect, reflection is like relating to another through language.
“... the immediate "I" performs an accomplishment through which it constitutes a variational mode of itself as existing (in the mode of having passed). Starting from this we can trace how the immediate "I," flowingly-statically present, constitutes itself in self-temporalization as enduring through “Its" pasts. In the same way, the immediate "I," already enduring in the enduring primordial sphere, constitutes in itself another as other...Thus, in me, "another I" achieves ontic validity as co-present [kompräsent] with his own ways of being self-evidently verified, which are obviously quite different from those of a "sense" perception.”(Crisis, p.185)
Even if it is true that reflection "changes the phenomenal character of the original phenomenon", both sides of the comparison, immediate experience vs. reflection, are phenomenal. Whereas, when phenomenal experiences are verbalized, an attempt is being made to transform them into something that is not phenomenal whatsoever, leaving aside whatever phenomenal medium is being used to convey the language.
Since the end result seems to be some variety of philosophical addlement I personally wouldn't bother.
Ok! Still wanna read. Banno, are you reading this?
Or look for Kenny's Wittgenstein instead.
I mean something much more basic: there is nothing that is free of logic, simply because to have an idea at all, fact or fiction, is to have this within the framework of logic. For example, "Oh, my offense is rank" is, among other things, an affirmation, a logical category.
Quoting Moliere
As to Kant's noumena, what I think is clear now is that Kant's grudging affirmation of something on the radical objective and subjective side of things that is the invisible ground of all things. I say, there is nothing invisible about it. Noumena is a concept that has its grounding right before one's beholding the world. What we "see" before us is a radical indeterminacy in everything. This is how phenomenology takes, not drawing lines, but making a setting for discussion to embrace this indeterminacy. Husserl has his intuitional affirmations, Heidegger has interpretational foundation, which is really, a foundation if indeterminacy. I lean Husserl, not because we do not live in an interpretative ontological unity of thought and actuality, but because the epoche takes one to a reductive process where the world "appears" in a startling new way. And it is here that propositionally vague but meaningful words that have little use in everydayness truly rise to the occasion: words like profundity, sublimity, holiness, divinity, the absolute.
This takes philosophy beyond its proper category. I say, philosophy's proper category IS the onto-theo-philosophical examination of our "thrownness" into a world, and the center of this inquiry is ethics/value, in an metaethical and metavalue exposition.
Why value? Because all propositional pursuits of philosophy reduce to this, I argue. Truth is indeterminate, and to the extent talk about value is "language" talk, it, too is indeterminate. But value talk possesses the, what I will call, direct (a risky term) "indexical" pursuit of value, so called.
Tough to talk about, but then, religion has never understood itself, so mired in bad metaphysics.
Quoting Moliere
But put Kant's dividing line aside. The transcendental issue is embedded in phenomena. Put bluntly, one does not "divide" eternity. The reason we have to talk this way is because we face it in everything we can conceive. The question really goes to why we have warrant to give any priority to this, and this is a value issue. Analytics (like Davidson) assume truth is not value (he says this), but Dewey is closer to being right: everything that transpires before us IS value; the separation of cognitive functions occurs in analysis only. The philosophical problem has never been about rightly determined propositions, but rightly determined propositions in the disclosure higher affectivity.
Only Buddhists, Hindus and various mystics talk like this.
Quoting Moliere
I think the is very important nail's head hit very hard by this. But God is not God, nor are daseins, daseins in the context of this thinking. Not is the sun the sun, and so on. Such things fall away. I see concepts not as labels tagged on to objects, but as powerful dynamic world makers, Heidegger's temporal dynamic is an extraordinary exposition. I think of it like this: what is left after past-present-future is divested of its existence making process? the argument is, this cannot be done, hence the complaint against Husserl, who thought "pure" phenomena could "appear" in the epoche. For pure phenomena to make sense at all, one would have to "turn off" the world itself.
I disagree, of course. One can turn off the world and be in the world at once. Not unlike what Kierkegaard has in mind with his Knight of Faith. At heart, K was an irrationalist, which is why he fought so against Hegel. One did not have to read Kant or Hegel or even Kierkegaard to make this extraordinary movement toward affirmation, a yielding to God, in theological terms. Where I disagree is in the irrationality, where terrible mistakes allow for distortion, dogma, and moronic authoritative thinking to undermine the whole enterprise. Philosophy's "job" is to steer through such things.
Quoting Moliere
The answer to this lies in the epoche, I claim. It is a method, first, not a thesis, first. The most radical form of this is found in meditation, when seriously undertaken, which really amounts to expunging the contents of the world.
When you talk about living our actual lives, you suggest phenomenology has practical wisdom. I don't see how philosophy has this dimension apart from the way it can be applied, and what comes to mind is Heidegger, who was briefly a Nazi, and this does seem to follow from his ideas of history, freedom and self realization.
On materialism: it is not as if this concept has no meaning, even though it has no properties, as all vacuous metaphysics goes. It carries, however, an unmistakable connotative meaning, which is due to its being lifted from contexts found in natural science, and thus, when this term is used, it implicitly endorses scientific settings for philosophical thinking. What I mean is, when we think of material substance, we think the underlying substratum of all physical objects, and so we are directed toward objects, their physical analyses, their localities in space and time, their causal relations with other objects, etc. Phenomenology takes a term like material substance and registers its significance in "predicatively defined regions" of the naturalistic attitude. It is a term, like all other terms, and its meaning is context dependent, and so it is NOT a foundational term for ontology. Husserl thought philosophy had its true calling in the foundational intuitions of the world. Heidegger did not share this. I am in between.
Quoting Moliere
Well, phenomenology has come along. Materialism is not a philosophical concept, as I see it, because philosophical questions go deeper than science can conceive. One must make subjectivity the center of inquiry. Ask, what is it one is confronting in the world, in actuality? It is the what appears before us. To take materialism as a philosophical idea is pure empty metaphysics based on an extension of what science thinks about regarding what is NOT material at all.
Quoting Moliere
I should say, I am don't defend Husserl, Heidegger or anyone else in full. Husserl and empathetic relations is interesting, but it is not a metaethical account (though I would have to read more on it). My take on the discoveries of ethics via the epoche issues from reading of Michel Henri and others, but I was first struck by G E Moore's non natural property of ethical matters. He was talking about the Good and the Bad. I won't go into this unless you want to, but it is a big issue, basic to my thinking: Suffering stands as its own presupposition, that is, the badness of suffering is not bad because there is a discursive exposition of it being so. AS SUCH, suffering is a stand alone feature of our world. It is an absolute. Nothing more axiomatic than this. Arguable, granted; but in the end, not really to be gainsaid.
Is there an issue?
Wittgenstein PI 304 "And you again and again reach the conclusion that the sensation itself is a nothing.- Not at all. It is not a something, but not a nothing either. The conclusion was only that a nothing would serve just as well as a something about which nothing could be said. We have only rejected the grammar which tries to force itself on us here."
and PI 293 "The thing is the box has no place in the language game at all; not even as a something for the box might even be empty.-No, one can divide through by the thing in the box; it cancels out, whatever it is. That is to say: if we construe the grammar of the expression of sensation on the model of 'object and designation' the object drops out of consideration as irrelevant." (The box in this case is some inner world of sensations.)
Quoting Janus
Yes, the important part of the conversation is the language game that gives rise to such conversation, the language and actions that take place in the stream of life.
I believe you have this backwards. First, we come to learn a language from our follow human beings in world of stable objects and entities. Afterwards, we begins to learn more sophisticated concepts like images, impression and sensation against this stable background.
Allow me to try a different tack which may clarify the issue. Let's say I agree with you and @Banno that nothing is ineffable. Firstly, let's define "ineffable":
Dictionary.com defines "ineffable" as: "incapable of being expressed or described in words."
This is the sense with which I have been using the term.
Now, I agree that nothing is ineffable, including knowledge. However, I disagree with you and Banno in your shared claim that a list of instructions cannot give one knowledge-how, no matter how detailed the list. I find this to be inconsistent with the view that nothing is ineffable.
I will attempt to demonstrate this in response to your post.
Quoting Moliere
It's unclear to me what you are granting "in the relative sense" here. If someone hasn't learned something yet, then they don't have the knowledge (or know how) yet. Are you granting that their lack of knowledge is ineffable? They can't say what they don't know?? That's a bit trivial...
Quoting Moliere
What is effable (or what is effed) is that which is said or written down in a public language - in the world - among a community of language speakers. What could be more materialist than that? I have no qualms with that.
Quoting Moliere
"Statements, all unto themselves" is a strawman that you have attributed to those opposing your view. I don't recall anybody saying that nobody would be using the list of instructions. My criticism has been wholly in response to Banno's claim that an exhaustive list of instructions will not give one knowledge of how to ride a bike. I don't believe that Banno meant or implied that such a list of instructions is supposed to exist independently of any language users. I had assumed that an expert on bike riding would write them, and someone who didn't know how to ride would read them and attempt to learn how to ride using them.
Quoting Moliere
That's why I have tried to restrict the preceding discussion to knowledge. It's mainly because Banno's original claim was about knowledge, viz. that a list of instructions cannot give one know-how. But it's also because knowledge has a close relation to beliefs, statements and therefore to effability; to what can be stated. For some reason, you and Banno tend to shy away from talking about knowledge when it comes to effability.
Quoting Moliere
You are supposed to be making a case for effability, or against ineffability. A set of statements/propositions - i.e. explicit knowledge - is something that is clearly effable (or effed). Unspoken knowledge which may or may not be "in the body" is not clearly effable.
Quoting Moliere
As you appear to recognise, you are making a case for the opposition, for ineffability, instead of making a case that all knowledge is effable.
Quoting Moliere
You appear to imply that some knowledge can only be shown and can't be said. The part of the instruction which needs to be shown is unspoken; uneffed. I believe this was Wittgenstein's distinction between showing and saying in the Tractatus. If it is necessary to show it to someone, because it can't be said, then it is ineffable.
Quoting Moliere
Saying that you "cannot do it without words" is vastly different from saying that you can or can't do it entirely with words; which is the point I've been disputing with Banno, and which is relevant to establishing whether any knowledge is ineffable.
Quoting Moliere
I don't see how this supports the argument that no knowledge is ineffable. You say here that you might be able to provide instruction without language, but I don't see how that helps since effability requires language.
Quoting Moliere
This is why I'd prefer to restrict it to knowledge. I don't understand what "riding a bike is ineffable" means. However, I clearly understand what "knowing how to ride a bike is ineffable" means. It means that the knowledge of how to ride a bike cannot be put entirely into words or into verbal/written instructions, such that another person can learn how to ride a bike from those instructions alone. And that's precisely Banno's claim - he is claiming that knowing how to ride a bike is ineffable.
Quoting Moliere
Yep. Why do you say it isn't?
Quoting Moliere
Are you saying that the knowledge of how to ride a bike is ineffable prior to learning how to ride a bike? Or - assuming that you have already learned how to ride a bike - are you saying that you don't know how to ride a bike while you aren't riding it?
The former makes some sense, I suppose, since you don't have the knowledge in order to verbalise it. The latter, however, makes no sense at all - you have learned how but you don't know how.
Quoting Moliere
Meh, the specific argument I'm making in relation to knowledge doesn't require any mystical or metaphysical claims. My argument is against Banno's contradiction, not for either prong of that contradiction (i.e. neither for ineffability nor for a completely effed list of instructions).
Until this point, I realise that I have not addressed the issue of actually riding the bike. The exhaustive list of instructions purportedly contains all the knowledge of how to ride the bike but does not provide one with the knowledge of how to ride. That extra piece of knowledge can only come from the actual riding of the bike. But wait. Does that mean that the list of instructions does not contain all the knowledge of how to ride? Is there some knowledge missing from the instructions that one gains from riding the bike? That can't be right because Banno said that riding the bike neither adds nor is knowledge. I wish one of you could tell me what knowledge is missing from the list of instructions or why one cannot learn how to ride from the list of instructions alone. Perhaps the part that you are unable to tell me is ineffable?
I was saying they can't say what they don't know. And, yes, I agree that this is trivial. But I was trying to mark what seemed to me to be a mundane case of ineffability from what might be an interesting case of the ineffable, like what mystics claim.
Quoting Luke
I agree. I'm on the same page here.
Quoting Luke
Ahhh, OK. This is clicking something in place for me.
I believe an exhaustive list of instructions will not give one knowledge of how to ride a bike, because I'd say that we do have to actually do something in order to learn. I have read my piano books, but practicing them everyday is how I learn (in a more perfect me, at least)
But I also want to say that this doesn't make it ineffable -- where you say an exhaustive list will give someone knowledge, I'm hesitant because I'm thinking about how practice seems to be needed too.
"incapable of being expressed or described in words."
Step 1: put your left foot on the left pedal
Step 2: swing your right foot over the triangular seat. if it feels awkward, adjust the parts to fit yourself.
Step 3: get in "the stance": one foot on a pedal in the furthest downward position, and the other on the ground, both hands firmly grasping the handle bars. you're about to take off!
Step 4: push forward with your foot on the ground and try to get your balance by gliding. you can keep your foot close to the ground while figuring out how to balance yourself. take your time, you'll get it eventually
Step 5: once you are comfortable balancing with your foot off the ground, put your pusher foot onto the other pedal.
Step 6: push the pedals around in a circle to speed up, stand still to glide, and go in reverse to engage the brake to slow down.
Working my way through an example-- anyone who didn't know how to ride a bike, supposing this was a good list of instructions, would upon reading it now know how to ride a bike. Hence, it is effable, by your account. Right?
And, yeah, I wanted to work through an example with the dictionary.com definition -- I don't see anything ineffable by that definition in the above list of instructions. I think, given the dictionary. com definition, I've been the one using a strange notion of "ineffable" -- or at least one which has some philosopher's ideas in mind, rather than just the dictionary definition.
So I agree to your point here:
Quoting Luke
Quoting Luke
I'll attempt to be direct here.
I don't think I have a handle on knowledge such that I could, from my knowledge of knowledge, make demonstrative cases. If anything, I'd be tempted to say that defining knowledge is ineffable, but I'd rather say that this is an exercise of judgment, and that such definitions don't really define knowledge as much as try to pin down how it is we judge sometimes.
Which, as you note --
Quoting Luke
So what I think I'm doing is attempting to resolve "hard cases" -- and suggest that the hard cases of ineffability, to use an old philosophical distinction, are apparently ineffable, but actually effable.
Heh, it's not easy to do, though.
Quoting Luke
Right! I think what I want to say, though, is that after being shown, what was ineffable is no longer ineffable. And, if that be the case, it suggests that we could continue this process of turning what is, right now, ineffable to us -- into something which is no longer ineffable. The process of knowledge-production is like this. At one point we don't know, and no one knows, and then we produce knowledge, and some people know. So I think what I want to say is that after we know what had been ineffable is no longer. Before learning how to ride a bike it was apparently ineffable, but after learning it I find it was actually effable.
If that be the case, how can we tell which of the entities are ineffable, even after we come to know them, and which aren't? What standard of judgment could we suggest? Wouldn't we just have to know everything in order to be able to say, definitively, this is what can be said while gesturing to what can't?
I guess I'm seeing "the ineffable" as something of an organic category, in that case, and also why I'm invoking the exercise of judgment. There's no rule we can state which tells us, for any case someone might present, this is ineffable. We have to make a judgment call based upon much more limited capacities, though (or, at least, recognize that judgment can't make that call).
Which suggests a case for the ineffable, right? But then there's the case of coming-to-know, and knowledge-production, and that we can learn.
So I think I want to use "the ineffable" in a specialized way to mean that which cannot even be learned by creatures like us. Immortality is the case I like to use because it's clear-cut -- in order for creatures like us to learn if they are immortal, we have to die. If we die, we're no longer a creature. Therefore, a creature like us will never learn if we are immortal. It's ineffable.
I want to say this specialized case is different from the case of learning how to ride a bike. How to ride a bike, in the dictionary . com definition way, is ineffable. But immortality, in this specialized sense, is ineffable in principle (again, for creatures like us).
Quoting Luke
It might be. I hope I've gone some way to addressing these questions in the above.
What about the not-ideas?
Facts and fictions are composed of words, I'd say -- language, rather than logic. Rather than focus the copula and the categories I'd say that language is more powerful than these logics, that language is what makes logic comprehensible in the first place rather than the other way around.
But, it'd be a transcendental argument. It'd sound good to me.
Quoting Constance
I look at philosophy anarchically. Each philosopher defines for themself what is important, and ranks things in accord with their philosophy. Philosophy is one of the most unlimited disciplines. Only institutions, I'd say, have notions of what is proper to philosophy. And that is important, because philosophy is actually difficult, and it's difficult to teach, and to learn we need standards put before us. But eventually, we are simply free.
So, from that vantage, I see onto-theo-philosophical examination of our "thrownness" into a world as very interesting. Each philosopher defines their own project, really, and that's the whole point. It's why it's mind-expanding.
But I don't see it as being any more proper than any other way of doing philosophy.
Quoting Constance
I agree that religion has never understood itself, and I find that pursuit to understanding religion very interesting. It's pretty clearly connected to how human beings function in the world, given how it's literally part of every culture ever and secular thoughts are relatively new, in the scheme of all written history.
I'm not sure I'd say value-talk is less determinate than truth-talk, though. I'd say that value-talk ends in convictions, rather than in values. And convictions, given that people have different ones, lead to conflict, but for all that, we still cling to them.
Quoting Constance
Where you say "we have warrant to give any priority to this", what does "this" mean? Like, what would take the place of the word in the sentence?
I think I addressed this above in speaking about philosophy anarchically.
Quoting Constance
Cool. I agree that adhering to rationality is a distinctive feature that makes philosophy, philosophy -- but like all creative endeavors, the masters can break and bend the rules. (ala Keirkegaard)
Though by masters I mean those who are good at the craft of philosophy, which I think that it is. Just as one gets good at painting, so one gets good at philosophy and, eventually, can master it as a discipline. And the masters make their mark on a discipline by creatively iterating previous rules, or inventing them wholesale.
I think Being and time is interesting, but I mostly read him as a requirement than because he speaks to me.
Quoting Constance
As a method, though, the results differ. Yes? So I'd say the answer may be there, but we'll find different ones -- one of which may be materialism, the other which may be phenomenology. I'd say these are convictions.
Quoting Constance
I'd say Levinas is a good example of phenomenology with practical wisdom. I'm sure you're really surprised. ;)
And Heidegger is a good example of how phenomenology isn't always good, in the ethical sense, even while it seems to invoke these ideas. At least if you get along with the argument that his phenomenology is linked to his political life. I think that it does, but I don't think ignoring it is right. If anything, if his philosophy has even a clue to what causes a person to turn to fascism, it's all the more valuable to study.
But I think philosophy, generally, can contribute to practical wisdom since it all bottoms out in judgment, for me. And the more we are exposed to the better judges we will be.
Quoting Constance
I'm going to quote Epicurus' Letter to Herodotus:
One argument I've come across that I find interesting is that the ancient Greeks are a great resource for phenomenology. That's why Aristotle, for instance, was so convincing and held close for so long. He paid attention to his experiences and wrote them in the most direct way that he could. But, at a minimum, they are interesting specifically because they do not think like us. They provide a contrast point to what we might mean by terms like "materialism" or "the soul".
I like Epicurus' account because he doesn't deny mental phenomena, or even the existence of Gods, but rather grounds it in an account of nature. Not nature as in our modern, scientific project, but just nature like the study of nature -- a kind of naturalism, and one which is closer to a phenomenology of "the things themselves" without knowing what we know.
Not that it's in depth, anymore. Just fragments of a different way of looking at the material world -- the categories are constructed of these "fine particles", as is the soul -- and the soul is this union of body and mind which interpenetrates, rather than something immortal.
It's in this sense that I mean a naturalism which is philosophical, rather than scientific.
I think this goes some way to addressing this:
Quoting Constance
I don't think that there's really a question of deeper than science or shallower than philosophy. What is "depth", other than the desire for meaning in life?
When I ask, what is it I am confronting in the world, in actuality, I see a natural world. And meaning in it is had by living happy lives with others for the time you get. There's not a grand answer to it all -- we simply are born without purpose, and die without reason. Everything we care about is just that -- what we care about. In actuality, I think there are no deep mysteries.
But, then, there are the mystics who claim elsewise. And I don't think they are lying either. So it is curious.
Quoting Constance
Cool. Then the question is moot, after all.
Moore's concept of ethics is super interesting to me. I'd say he's right, and that there are no non-natural properties, and therefore, there are no true moral statements. Goodness is what we care about, and it is our human responsibilty to act on it, or to not -- we get to choose. If we care about it, we can pursue it. But if we stop caring about it, then we can choose not to. Hence, the natural world, especially as we gain more power over it, is our responsibility exactly as it is. But it's still natural for all that. And it's a collective responsibility, not an individual one.
Yes. Your translator’s reading doesn’t match any of the four of mine. It’s a technicality for sure, but in a system built on them, such ambiguity is either confusing or destructive.
Try making this statement on the dualism and conservation of energy thread. They will act as if you are a troll, and make fun of you like you are a fool.
Quoting Banno
It's called the mind, and it's not the fault of the other participants in the thread that you refuse to recognize its existence, and therefore ignore everything written about it. You represent "the beetle" as if it is non-existent, and therefore we ought not talk about it, even though it is a named thing, and you talk about it. If the beetle were non-existent, implying that we ought not talk about it, this would be because talking about it would be deception. That's the point with the possibility that there might not be a beetle, deception is possible. So the beetle (what's in the box) only ceases to be relevant in the act of deception. In honest discussion, the thing in the box called "the beetle" maintains relevance because there id no such deception. And here, you talk about "the beetle" as if it is not relevant, implying its non-existence, then you are the one engaged in deception.
That's about it, "knowledge" in that specialized epistemological sense, JTB, which is expressed in words, is just a special type of "knowledge" in the more general sense, which is still a form of know-how. Even Banno is accepting of this principle, but Banno has a very muddled idea of what know-how is, having been misled by a poor reading of Wittgenstein.
Quoting Moliere
I agree that the key to understanding the nature of knowledge is in understanding the process of learning. There is much misunderstanding here, and the reading group of Wittgenstein's "Philosophical Investigations" which we held a few years back, seems to have permanently stalled out when we approached the critical part of this book, where he analyzed this process of learning.
Your passage here is rife with error. First, it is a misrepresentation to say that there is a "transfer of knowledge" between people. We have two possible representations of "knowledge", one as a communal entity, and the other as the property of individuals. The former, knowledge as a communal entity, rules out the possibility of a 'knowledge transfer', knowledge is a communal property which we share in. Therefore there would be no 'transfer'. However, "knowledge" as 'know-how' is inconsistent with "knowledge" as a shared entity, because know-how is unique and proper to the individual.
This is where Banno goes astray, trying to make "knowledge" as know-how consistent with "knowledge" as a shared, communal entity. I believe that a true reading of Wittgenstein demonstrates that Wittgenstein actually places knowledge into the individual, as a property of the individual, which we call "know-how".
From here, we have to account for the process of teaching, which you call "the transfer of knowledge". There is no transfer here, as the uniqueness of each person's know-how demonstrates. Each person individually goes through a process of learning, and "construction" of one's own capacities called "know-how". Therefore we must represent the learning process as something other than a transfer of knowledge. It is instead, better described as a process of acquiring the capacities through observation along with trial and error. This is what Wittgenstein alluded to when he spoke of the possibility of learning the rules to a game simply through observing the game, without the rules being stated in words. And, we see this type of behaviour in all sorts of animals, how the young learn from the adults through observation, without the use of words.
Quoting Banno
See above.
Quoting Banno
There is no such relationship between what can and cannot be taught, and what is ineffable. That is because teaching and learning extends far beyond the use of words, as animals demonstrate to us, and using words is just a form of showing, as knowing-that is a form of knowing-how. So we can teach and learn things by showing instead of speaking, but since such activity is prior to the use of words, and words come later, it in no way implies that we cannot put words to that teaching process. To invert the logical priority here, to propose that learning with words is prior to showing, is to propose principles not consistent with reality (false). And, if there are things which currently can be shown, but not described in words, this does not imply that they will forever be this way, in the future.
I perused the thread, read some of your links. I wasn’t aware of the refutation of conservation laws, as the links stated.
As far as I’m concerned, energy loss in one exchange is a simple concept, but energy conservation in system-wide exchanges is complicated.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Conventionally speaking, it does seem that way. Technically, however, abstract systems internally complete and independent from each other, cannot exchange their individual means or ends.
I don't think that's true, because we can know-how, collectively. That's basically the whole process of production -- to analyse a process, divide up the labor and specialize to form a social organism. We know how to do many things together. Individuals must play their part, but they must play their part in an ensemble, and we do so very frequently.
Further, the process of learning, at least in the industrial world, is transferred -- that's what socialization is all about. And, for creatures like us, given how long it takes for our offspring to become productive, and how much education it takes to make us productive in our societies, we intentionally transfer knowledge to the young all the time. It is taught. There is a teacher, and a student, and the students are given rules to follow -- including the social organization of the school itself, teaching children to behave in an industrial society.
The individual, as far as I can tell, is something which people are also taught. They're taught to believe they are unique, that they have something special about them, and then we form identities to confirm that and differentiate ourselves.
--- basically I think knowledge-production is wholly social, and learning is institutional. There's a sense to our individuality, but we are not epistemic Robinson Crusoe's of either a scientific or phenomenological bent. We need one another to learn things.
Your account of the ineffable refers to the formal phenomenological structures and our conscious experience. It is a correct but incomplete presentation of our time consciousness and discursive performances. Thus, it lacks ontological heterogeneity and uniformizes diverse regions of being. In our social and cognitive environment, we instantaneously take part in various intensive apparatuses whose principles of organization and processes evade our control and recognition. Varela defines a machine as "the set of inter-relations of its components independent of the components themselves." 'A higher level of phenomena' is constituted by a relational machinic complex, effectuated before and alongside intentionality, discursive, and subject-object relations.
Quoting Number2018
John Protevi writes: “Deleuze lets us go “above” and “below” the subject; “above” to politics, and “below” to biology. We live at the crossroads: singular subjects arise from a “crystallization” or “resolution” of a distributed network of natural processes and social practices.”
Of course , it’s not just Deleuze who lets us go
above and below the subject. Embodied, enactive approaches in cognitive psychology have similar aims.
Shaun Gallagher says “…intersubjective (social and cultural) factors already have an effect on our perception and understanding of the world, even in the immediacy of our embodied and instrumental copings with the environment.”
The problem I have with these attempts to naturalize phenomenology is that they lose what I see as the most radical aspect of Deleuze and Merleau-Ponty:
Deleuze provides a reciprocally causal account that has many features in common with those of the embodied community. But within his formal account any difference of degree, any quantitative repetition, any numeration qualitatively changes the sense of what counts at every quantitative repetition.
Deleuze's(1994) concept of intensive magnitude succeeds in deconstructing the quantity-quality binary by establishing a ‘ground' (as metamorphosis) in difference that is neither qualitative nor quantitative, and thus a basis of number that does not measure.
“Let us take seriously the famous question: is there a difference in kind, or of degree, between differences of degree and differences in kind? Neither.” “In its own nature, difference is no more qualitative than extensive”
“The number is no longer a universal concept measuring elements according to their emplacement in a given dimension, but has itself become a multiplicity that varies according to the dimensions considered (the primacy of the domain over a complex of numbers attached to that domain). We do not have units (unites) of measure, only multiplicities or varieties of measurement.”(Deleuze 1987, p.8)
“If there exists a primitive "geometry" (a proto-geometry), it is an operative geometry in which figures are never separable from the affectations befalling them, the lines of their becoming, the segments of their segmentation: there is "roundness," but no circle, "alignments," but no straight line, etc.” (ibid, p.212)
“A multiplicity has neither subject nor object, only determinations, magnitudes, and dimensions that cannot increase in number without the multiplicity changing in nature (the laws of combination therefore increase in number as the multiplicity grows). ... An assemblage is precisely this increase in the dimensions of a multiplicity that necessarily changes in nature as it expands its connections.” (Ibid, p.8)
Interesting to note that 'logic' is itself a particle of language. Interesting because when drawing distinction between words and logic, one has to be in words, so to speak, to do this. But you do say this, don't you: "language is what makes logic comprehensible in the first place rather than the other way around." It reveals the primacy of hermeneutics in laying out the bottom line for knowledge claims. See how Heidegger affirms this in his Origin of the Work of Art as he discusses how the art work and the artist define each other:
[i]Thus we are compelled to follow the circle. This is neither a makeshift nor a defect.
To enter upon this path is the strength of thought, to continue on it is the feast of
thought, assuming that thinking is a craft. Not only is the main step from work to art a
circle like the step from art to work, but every separate step that we attempt circles in
this circle.[/i]
You can see how he relishes the "game" of the combinatory power of language, and how in this is the cutting edge of the freedom to reconceive oneself.
For me there is the inevitable encounter with the world apart from language, which is conceived IN language. Take causality: I can't imagine my cup moving by itself. This is an intuitive impossibility, but it is not as if by assigning a term and then more terms to inscribe in our understanding a principle, makes it entirely understood. There is an openness inherent in the concept, as there is in all concepts. The world in language is taken AS what we interpret it to be. So this language taking up the world AS (Derrida said language does not stand for things, but "stands in" for things. No doubt a gift from Heidegger) does not contain it, and this applies to all we can think, even hermeneutics.
The trouble with all meaning being bound to contextual interpretation is that it makes for a concept of freedom and openness that is closed in its delimitations to the historical possibilities of a language.
That is where my thoughts about indeterminacy run. One has to be made free from language, even though language leads and controls the conversation in acknowledging just this. Fascinating to behold the world unhinged from the categories of ordinary thought. Mystical.
Quoting Moliere
But this movement, call it (Kierkegaard called it that) from first order ordinariness to acknowledging one's throwness is universal, belongs to the structure of conscious awareness itself. Granted, from this, one can go different ways. I find myself doing serious reading in the so called French theological turn, with Jean luc Marion, Michel Henry, Emanuel Levinas and others examining Husserl's reduction and epoche and its radical disclosure once we realize that that great Kantian division in being is all wrong: the appearance IS being.
Husserl, then Heidegger then all the post Heideggerian thinking (that I certainly do not keep up with; you know, I have another life) leads some extraordinary revelations that are not contained within discussions of ordinary language, but are found outside of these, in the world; and then back to discussion.
But with analytic thinking, extraordinary revelations are simply off the table, which is why it has been in crisis for a long time now. It has run the course of everyday language possibilities. I object to materialism because this term carries considerable baggage in its exit from scientific contexts to metaphysics. Heideggerian/post Heideggerian thought pulls emphatically away from this.
Quoting Moliere
Quite right, I think. Value talk is, after all, talk, and talk has this historical dimension that creates the possibilities for meanings. But value, I argue, tells of an extraordinary feature of the world, that when said carries a weight of a wholly other order of existence, which is the ethical/aesthetic good and bad. Surely we are when speaking thusly, taking the world AS value, ethics, etc. But this is not like being appeared to redly, say, a vacuous sensuous intuition. It is about the depth, the intensity of meaning of feeling and thought (which are one prior to our abstractions of analyses). Or, if causality, say, is a taking up the world AS causality, the principle, the expository account, there is in this the intuitive impossibility of a thing's movement being its own cause and this intuition exceeds the language that would explain it. But, as with the color red qua color, it is a trivial acknowledgement in itself (of course, the quantitative dynamics of causality in physics is very useful, but that is not the point. In itself, it is trivial). Value, on the other hand is a stand alone meaning that is not trivial at all, evidenced by the our thrills and sufferings.
Quoting Moliere
I don't know anyone who says science has no value. It would be absurd. But the depth of science is limited to the reach of its paradigms, and science's paradigms are empirical/theoretical. Phenomenology steps away from this in a dramatic philosophical move that derives its themes from a second order perspective.
Quoting Moliere
But ask Husserl about this. When you confront the world phenomenologically, you are NOT seeing a natural world at all. You are witnessing phenomena. Have you read his Cartesian Meditations? Levinas' dissertation was on Husserl. His phenomenology is, by anglo americam standards, just off the charts. Almost no one wants to think like this, because it is downright spooky. I say, sorry; the world IS spooky, and ignoring this is just sticking your head in the sand. All that analytic philosophy holds dear is indeterminate, and they don't see this because analytic philosophers tend not to be aesthetically endowed.
Quoting Moliere
I would never disagree that goodness is what we care about. I would ask that the question go one step further: what is it t care about something? What is the anatomy of a care, for it has parts: I care about my cat being free of fleas. Now, analyze this phenomenologically you find an agency of caring, me, and that which is the object of my caring, my cat, but what do I care about specifically? I am looking for the essential feature: just as Kant looked for the essential feature of a rational judgment, and pulled away from particulars to generalize, so I am looking for the essential ethical feature, the kind of thing that, were it absent, the ethicality would vanish as well. What I care about is my cat's suffering (as well as mine having to deal with fleas around the house). What makes this a care all is the value, the measure of pain and pleasure and joy and suffering and everything in between, that is in the balance, at risk, whatever.
It is a transcendental argument, just like Kant's, for it serves as an index to transcendence. Where Kant's CPR was an index to pure reason, Here I postulate the idea of pure value, adding quickly that I by no means think there is anything such as a pure anything. This kind of thinking only serves to underscore a feature of an unknowable primordial unity.
Destructive or confusing in what way?
I wish to cross-reference. If I can’t do that, because I can’t get what I need for it, I’ll stick with what I know. Destructive because, as far as I know, that was not what he said.
It is what he said.
You think like this because you likely think like Quine and his ilk think, that scientific models of what things are and how to talk about them are models for philosophical thinking. One has to think, if you will, out of the box.
Quoting Constance
I’m wondering if you are familiar with the ways in which Husserl and Heidegger, respectively, burrowed within the grammar of formal logic to expose it as a derived abstraction of more fundamental constituting performances ? For instance, are you aware of how Husserl, in Formal and Transcendenral Logic, took Frege and Russell’s starting point in the propositional
copula and traced it back to a developmental sequence of constituting intentions?
“ “Since Aristotle, it has been held as certain that the basic schema of judgment is the copulative judgment, which is reducible to the basic form S is P. Every judgment having another composition, e.g., the form of a verbal proposition, can, according to this interpretation, be transformed without alteration of its logical sense into the form of the copulative bond; for example, “The man walks” is logically equivalent to “The man is walking”.
And Heidegger derives S is P from the hermeneutic ‘as’ structure, showing where we went astray in following Aristotle.
“If the phenomenon of the "as" is covered over and above all veiled in its existential origin from the
“ hermeneutical "as," Aristotle's phenomenological point of departure disintegrates to the analysis of logos in an external "theory of judgment," according to which judgment is a binding or separating of representations and concepts. Thus binding and separating can be further formalized to mean a "relating." Logistically, the judgment is dissolved into a system of "coordinations," it becomes the object of "calculation," but not a theme of ontological interpretation.""If the kind of being of the terms of the relation is understood without differentiation as merely objectively present things, then the relation shows itself as the objectively present conformity of two objectively present things.”
I suspect that your search for a primordial ground for caring and value is linked to the way you distinguish logic and value. Examining how Husserl and Heidegger deconstruct formal logic may clarify things.
Ok then.
I think Quine would think that philosophy is continuous with science, but in a more general way. So his “ilk” would be Einstein, Newton, and Bohr.
No, I don't think that scientific models of what things are and how to talk about them are models for philosophical thinking. I've argued avidly against science encroaching on philosophical thinking, in various places, over many years.
I haven't been arguing for what you think I've been arguing. It is simply not the case that there is a binary choice between science and phenomenology. Which is just as well, since phenomenology remains vexed.
Here's were that is from:
Quoting Banno
Suppose I had instead said,
"suppose someone had a list of the instructions for riding a bike, to whatever detail we desire. Would they then be a bike rider? Well, no. So what is missing? Just, and only, the riding of the bike. But that's not something it makes sense to add to the list!"
What would you make of that?
Quoting Richard B
So, prior to learning a language nothing at all is experienced?
And so what is missing in order to ride the bike? Just, and only, the learning to ride. But that's not something it makes sense to add to the list either! Because what is learned is knowledge that cannot be verbalized.
No.
Quoting Banno
These are not the same.
You're deflections, one-liners, non-arguments approach ineffability themselves.
"Whereof one cannot argue, thereof one must be silent."
.
If you want a discussion, be interesting.
I am asking myself, do I want to read Formal and Transcendental Logic? Yes. But do I have it. No, but I'll get it. I'll read it and get back to you. As always, so appreciative of your references, etc. It motivates.
Get back to you....I'll keep it short.
Not silent. "Whereof one cannot argue, thereof one must distract, insinuate, cast aspersions, baldly assert, pontificate or utilize some other deflection designed to blind oneself and/ or others from the vacuity of one's [s]position[/s]".
No.
Quoting hypericin
These are not the same.
Hey, this is easy!
Quoting Banno
There is no topic, or at least none to speak of; it drops out of the conversation.
"The Insufferable?"
Why are you asking me to suppose this? How about you reply to my previous post instead? But fine, I'll play along.
Firstly, what counts as a "bike rider"? Is it someone who knows how to ride a bike or is it someone who is riding a bike? Presumably it's the latter since you are now trying to distance yourself from your contradictory claim regarding knowledge.
So your question then becomes: "suppose someone had a list of the instructions of riding a bike, to whatever detail we desire. Would they then be riding a bike?"
No. Obviously, it doesn't follow that a person with a list of instructions is riding a bike.
Quoting Banno
So, in conclusion, riding a bike is not something to add to the list of instructions. So, what was your original point supposed to be? I can't make sense of the quote if it isn't about knowledge.
Quoting Banno
I would wonder why you asked whether a person with a list of instructions is riding a bike. I would also wonder what that has to do with the present discussion on ineffability.
Furthermore, I now wonder why you are trying to pretend as though your point was not about knowledge when it clearly was.
For example, prior to the above quote, in your second post to this discussion, you said:
Quoting Banno
The only reason I can see for you now backpedalling on this knowledge issue is because you have finally realised that the original quote (at the top of this post) is indefensible and inconsistent with your beliefs about ineffability.
Yeah, I get "distracted" when you make contradictory claims.
Do you believe it's impossible for someone to learn something only by telling them how? If I tell you how to turn the television on by saying "press the big red button on the remote control", do you think it impossible to know how to turn the television on?
Because it gets to the intent of the post, without the "knowing" that confused the issue so. But suit yourself, you are not under any obligation. Quoting Luke
That riding a bike is not something to add to the list of instructions. I kinda said that, a few times.
Look, the point could have been expressed more clearly, Thank you for point this out. Now go back to the original post and look again.
Or go do something else. As you will. :roll:
Okay, so what was the original intent if it wasn't about knowledge?
The question then is, do Einstein and the rest provide an explanatory basis for philosophical questions? No, I say, simply. His naturalism leads to statements like this:
[i]the terms that play a leading role in a good conceptual apparatus are terms that promise to play a
leading role in causal explanation; and causal explanation is polarized. Causal explanations of
psychology are to be sought in physiology, of physiology in biology, of biology in chemistry,
and of chemistry in physics—in the elementary physical states[/i]
Causal explanations in scientific settings, moving down the line to physics, which is the resting place for inquiry. How THAT can account for things like value and knowledge I would like to know. How is a causal relationship an epistemic one?
Yup.
That is not a collective know-how, it's a collective production. Each individual involved in the production has one's own know-how necessary to play one's own part in the production, but there is no single know-how which is proper to the whole, only a product. The product is proper to the whole, as a product of the whole, but there is no specific know-how which is proper to that product because the same product could be produced in different ways. That the same product can be produced in numerous different ways, i.e. the same end can be reached with different means, is evidence that there is no specific type of know-how which can be directly related to the end product. "Know-how" refers to the means not the end.
Quoting Moliere
This, I believe is a misrepresentation, for the reason explained above.
In order for you and I to do something together, I must know how to do my part, and you must know how to do your part. Since what I am doing would be completely different from what you are doing, it is very clear that your required know-how would be completely different from my required know-how. And, neither of us could be playing both roles at once. Since no-one can play that role of multiple positions at one time, this purported 'act of the whole' cannot be accounted for as a type of know-how.
Therefore there is no such thing as the know-how of both of us together, because no one could be able to do both parts at once, so this needs to be called by a name other than "know-how". The unity of parts working toward a common goal, what you call doing something together, is clearly not a form of "know-how" but something distinct. That is why Plato classed "the good" as distinct from knowledge, as Constance and I discussed earlier in the thread. And the "just" "State" was described as the state where each person did one's own thing without interfering with others. Notice that the State is a state, and acts are proper to the individual members of the state. And know-how is proper to acts, not to states of being.
Quoting Moliere
Your missing the point Moliere. If knowledge is a property of the whole, then it is not transferred in the act of teaching and learning, because it's not a property of the individual, to be transferred from one to another. You can't have it both ways, arguing that knowledge is a property of the united whole, as you do above, and then turn around and say that knowledge is a property of individuals, which is transferred from one to another. You are talking about two distinct things here, one, the property of the whole, the other the property of the individual. If one is "knowledge", the other cannot be, because the two are completely different.
Let's consider this from Quine (from Two Dogmas), " As an empiricist I continue to think of the conceptual scheme of science as a tool, ultimately, for predicting future experience in light of past experience. Physical objects are conceptually imported into the situation as convenient intermediaries - not by definition in terms of experience, but simply as irreducible posit comparable, epistemologically, to gods of Homer, and not in Homer's gods; and I consider it a scientific error to believe otherwise. But in point of epistemological footing the physical objects and the gods differ only in degree and not in kind. Both sorts of entities enter our conception only as cultural posits. The myth of physical objects is epistemologically superior to most in that it has proven more efficacious than other myths as a device for working a manageable structure into the flux of experience."
So how does Quine come to such a position. (From the Pursuit of Truth): "From impacts on our sensory surfaces, we in our collective and cumulative creativity down the generations have projected our systematic theory of the external world. Our system is proving successful in predicting subsequent sensory input." And thus we have the start of Quine's naturalized epistemology. In a nut shell, our information about the world comes only through impacts on our sensory receptors. In contrast, I presume, phenomenology starts with appearance of things, or things as they appear in our experience, from a first person point of view, then attempt to define the phenomena on which knowledge claims rest or achieve some sot of knowledge of consciousness.
I've never argued against the fact that "we do have to actually do something in order to learn". I take it that a person with a copy of 'The Dummy's Guide to Riding a Bike' will actually get on the bike in order to learn how. In fact, I assume that would form part of the instructions.
Quoting Moliere
Of course practice is needed. Is actually doing the activity to be learned something that would be omitted from the instructions? Does your recipe book not instruct you to pre-heat the oven and combine certain ingredients together, etc? Is there some knowledge not included in the recipe for (e.g.) how to bake bread, in principle? In what way does a recipe book not give you knowledge of how to bake bread? What knowledge is missing from the recipe (i.e. the list of instructions for how to bake bread)?
Quoting Moliere
Right.
Quoting Moliere
If nobody verbally expressed what was shown, and if it can only be shown and cannot be said, then I don't see how it is no longer ineffable. How has it become effable?
Quoting Moliere
Do you need to know everything in order to know how to play the piano or how to bake bread? If the knowledge of how to play the piano or how to bake bread cannot be entirely contained in a list of instructions, then you might say that at least some of that knowledge is ineffable.
Quoting Moliere
This is all knowledge-related.
Quoting Moliere
Okay, then not all knowledge is effable.
Quoting Moliere
I don't follow why you believe that knowledge of how to ride a bike is not also at least partially ineffable (knowledge) in principle, especially given your hesitation to concede that an exhaustive list of instructions would give one knowledge.
If you doubt this, just consider that all of our ways of experiencing the world might be basically identical, or they might be radically different: we each might experience our own private sets of colors, sounds, smells, or our ways of perceiving might be more profoundly different in ways that are difficult to conceive without taking serious drugs. But we will never know, one way or the other, because lacking the words we simply cannot describe our internal state.
There is no possibility of inventing a language to describe sensations. We can have words for sensations because we can point to things that invoke the sensation. But we cannot point to the sensations themselves, as they are internal. Therefore we can never assign words to features that would describe them. And so they will forever remain both immediate and indescribable.
I agree sensations are entirely ineffable. As are feelings, and for much the same reasons.
But if you’re right, what is it about objects that can elicit descriptive terms from sensation?
Yes, and I agree with the forward looking pragmatist's thinking on truth, knowledge and thought. But he knew where this kind of physicalist talk takes one. From Ontological Relativity:
[i]When . . . I begin to think about my own verbal behavior in theoretical or semantical terms, I am
forced to admit that, here too, indeterminacy reigns. Philosophical reflection upon my own
verbal behavior, concerned with hunting out semantical rules and ontological commitments,
requires me to make use of translational notions. [u]I then recognize that the intentional content of
my own psychological states is subject to indeterminacy: semantical and intentional phenomena
cannot be incorporated within the science of nature as I would wish[/u].2[/i]
He knew, as Heidegger did, that foundationally all roads lead to indeterminacy. I am inclined to believe that when we encounters this, it is generally handled by the basic inclinations of analytic philosophy in a resort to naturalism, and is evidenced in his confession above. And naturalism simply cannot proceed at all. What is happiness, misery, and all the "semantical and intentional phenomena"?
Of course, this kind of talk leads to none other than a phenomenological turn.
Quoting Richard B
You likely know how this goes. As Rorty put it, and Quine well knew, causal relations are not epistemic relations, or, as Rorty put it, " I no more know the world (the "out there" things science and everydayness talks about) than a dented car fender knows the offending guard rail." Quine knew full well that not just knowledge issues, but everything that constitutes being a person simply goes unaddressed because this cannot be fit into a naturalistic schematism.
All we ever really see, encounter, understand, deal with intellectually, pragmatically, and so on, is phenomena.
Hence, the turn to phenomenology.
All I have ever asked of analytic philosophy is to simply tell me how foundational matters are worked out. Because materialism, even Strawson's Real materialism (or naturalism, or naturalistic materialism, or physical naturalism, or any other useless distinctions) falls flat is it capacity for discovery.
Or perhaps you can disabuse me on this.
More than tempted :). I full on like phenomenology. Sometimes it speaks to me, and sometimes it doesn't. Even so I think it a good philosophical method, even with the esoteric connotations. (or, with respect to understanding religion, the esoteric connotations are better -- how else could one understand religion, rather than write it off ala Russell?)
I think I've said it before, and it relates to my belief that the mystics are not lying -- what are people doing when they talk about God?
And, if we are direct realists, and believe that people aren't lying when they talk about their mystical experiences, how do we parse reports from people of totally different experiences from us?
I pointed out to @Constance how I approach philosophy anarchically. I want to say the same here. I believe the so-called rebels of analytic philosophy are closer to the concerns of continental philosophy than they want to believe, mostly for institutional reasons. I mentioned earlier how these aesthetic concerns are necessary for teaching and propagating an institution, but can you imagine being a professor of philosophy -- with tenure -- and being asked to not know one, but TWO traditions at once?! Maybe the department, as a whole, can cover that -- we'll hire our token continental philosopher to pass on the knowledge, just in case...
:D
Obviously I'm on the outside of all that, it's just what it looks like from the perspective of a person who identifies as a worker, in his soul, and simultaneously was really just educated by continentals, while having the scientific-analytic bent in his mind.
Since I have anarchic feelings towards philosophy, though, I'd say there's nothing bad in trying different ways. Wittgenstein was right, yet so are other people. Especially the people we meet in day-to-day life who don't have that education, but do have the experience -- there are different ways to express things, but usually they speak the truth in the situation, even if persons with a philosophical bent will nit-pick the words used.
This to go some way to tempt you to read the deep, dark, unfathomable phenomenologists :D. Husserl, at least, is very direct. I need to read him more than I have, and I am put off by his style, but he still makes very clear points and distinctions. He's earnest. And he takes on the subject unlike philosophers who write that off -- which I think is important. Even if Descartes is a hangover, he's a hangover with a lot of influence. Dropping it is good for institutions who want to progress philosophy in a certain way, but engaging with Descartes is good for us who just like this stuff and probably read too much ;) -- at least as a way to connect.
I add two to the traditional five senses for feelings: bodily feelings and mental feelings. Feelings are akin to senses but point inward.
Quoting Mww
Objects interact with the world in ways we are attuned to: they emit and reflect light, cause variations in air pressure, sublimate chemicals. Our sense organs and then our brain translate these into sensations. We are trained to bind together the relevant features of objects and their corresponding sensations with symbols, words, and so we have descriptive terms. (this is why sensory terms are a little peculiar, they always have two meanings: the sensation and the feature of the world that produces it).
This is where I disagree, I think.
We can't know that sensations will forever remain both immediate and indescribable.
I think Merleau-Ponty goes some way to undermine this thought, with his https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomenology_of_Perception
Maybe I can't imagine a language which makes every little thing I experience describable, but that's more about what I'm able to do than what really is the case. There's some people who can make that language, I think -- at least potentially? To [s]to[/s]do the biggest reach of philosophy.
It just doesn't seem like something which will never be known to me. To rely on phenomenology a bit. I can't tell you yet, but I'm not so confident that we'll never be able to tell each other these things.
Quoting Joshs
It is unclear how this ‘the most radical aspect of Deleuze’ that you embrace is compatible with your
perspective on phenomenology and the ineffable. As you wrote before:
“Phenomenology as it was begun by Husserl was about finding our way past preconceptions to the formal conditions of possibility of experience, to what is irreducible, indubitable and universal in experience and thus is communicable and intersubjective . For instance, time consciousness, the fact that every moment of experience is a synthesis of retention, presentation and protention. This means that the now is a blend of expectation and memory. Phenomenology can’t capture any content that is immediately present. To retain a momentary content is to reflect back on it, thereby changing what it was. No particular content repeats its sense identically. This means that what we experience in its uniqueness is ineffable to us as well as to others in the sense that it doesn’t hold still long enough for us to repeat its essence, duplicate it, record it , reflect on it, tell ourselves about it”
Deleuze’s concept of intensive magnitude implies that only difference returns and is never the same. Anything identified as the same, as something that can be the same, can never return. The differentiating return transforms the return circuit into a departure from the self so that a sense of self only emerges in this gup. Therefore, what is rejected here is not just the anthropomorphism of any discourse that thinks a time in general for man in general, but also the prevalence of the internal, that is valid in all times and all places. Referring to singularity, to the event of becoming, is ultimately incompatible with the phenomenological approach. By contrast, a multiplicity, an assemblage, implies that “Untangling the lines of apparatus means, in each case, preparing a map, a cartography, a survey of unexplored lands…One has to be positioned on the lines themselves…We belong to these apparatuses and act in them. The newness of an apparatus for those preceding it is what we call currency, our currency. The new is the current. The current is not what we are but rather what we become.” (Deleuze, 2007, ‘What is a Dispositif’?) Our self (our subjectivity) is one of the lines of our current assemblage. Together with other lines, that of knowledge (epistemological) and power (ethical), we are not, but we become. What holds an assemblage, an apparatus, together? What makes it a multilinear, opened whole? The ineffable is the relation of what we experience to our assemblage. We need to grasp the dimensions of its processual creativity. Likely, the most radical aspects of Deleuze and Guattari's philosophy are notions of the machine, the abstract machine, and the machinic unconscious as ways of explaining the operational unity of assemblages.
Ok, thanks. While I agree sensation is ineffable, I cannot isolate ineffability from sensation with your description here. If one of the meanings of sensory terms derives from sensation, hasn’t some language been used on it? And if I read you correctly, it begs the question as to how conceptions, by which all objects are described, arrive at purely physical structures such as sensory devices.
I think it more the case sensation merely informs our representational faculty, sometimes called intuition, as to which physiology has been affected by some real object, but provides nothing descriptive per se with respect to it. This is given from the fact we are often affected by some object’s sensation, but have no immediate idea what it is. Knowing we are affected says nothing descriptive of that affect.
But this is grounded in a dualistic philosophical paradigm, so…..maybe you’re right in some other way.
Quoting Number2018
Quoting Number2018
There are many interpreters of Deleuze these days, so each of us have to choose our preferred interpreter. It might be helpful to my understanding of your interest in Deleuze if you could mention which current writers you think get him right. With regard to the relation between singualeites and ordinary points, between the quantitative and the qualitative , difference in degree and difference in kind, there is divergence between two prominent readers of Deleuze, James Williams and Dan Smith. Are you familiar with their disagreement? I agree with Williams over Smith.
Williams writes:
“Dan Smith gives no prominence to Deleuze's work on time for the determination of the new in Deleuze. This presents two difficulties through the critical question of whether Deleuze's work on calculus should be taken as a starting point for his work on time, as opposed to my focus on synthetic processes, and through the related question of whether the role of singularities in the philosophy of time should be understood through a mathematical understanding of the term:
‘The singularities of complex curves are far more complex. They constitute those points in the neighborhood of which the differential relation changes sign, and the curve bifurcates, and either increases or decreases' (Smith, 2007: 12).
My reservation about the mathematical model is its dependence on an opposition between ordinary and singular points. In terms of Deleuze's philosophy of time, there are no ordinary points in ordinary time, since the processes of time are all dependent on multiple singularities and their relations (in the living present, in the pure past, in eternal return and in the caesura that come with the new). In that sense, then, at least for the philosophy of time, my view is that the new is better defined in a more formal metaphysical manner. So I would rephrase the following sentence from Smith's work, avoiding the terms ‘ordinary', ‘constant' and ‘perpetual': ‘Every determinate thing is a combination of the singular and the ordinary, a multiplicity that is constantly changing, in perpetual flux' .The version closer to Deleuze's account of time would be: Every determinate thing is a combination of singularities, forming a multiplicity that is changing in multiple ways according to the syntheses of time and led by the work of dark precursors and the eternal return of difference, the eternal return of the new.”(Gilles Deleuze's Philosophy of Time)
Another noted reader of Deleuze is John Protevi. Are you familiar with his work? He says that in contrast to certain forms of phenomenology, “Deleuze lets us go “above” and “below” the subject; “above” to politics, and “below” to biology. We live at the crossroads: singular subjects arise from a “crystallization” or “resolution” of a distributed network of natural processes and social practices.”
This sounds like your claim that Quoting Number2018
But is Protevi’s reading doing justice to Deleuze? He argues that “a sophisticated approach to phenomenology does not see it as reducing experience to what appears to a subject but rather as proceeding from that appearance to an understanding of what must underlie it.
Taken that way, Deleuze's transcendental empiricism, which seeks the conditions of real rather than possible experience, lies at not nearly as far a remove from say, Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of the lived body, as many have thought.”
When we look at the way that Protevi wants to rethink enactivist, embodied cognition, however , we find his brand of Deleuzianism to be merely a more reductionist form of embodied cognition. For instance , his understanding of Deleuzian affect incorporates cognitive and neuroscientific approaches like Lisa Barrett, Griffiths, Panksepp and LeDoux, and he associates the anthropological work of James Scott with Deleuzian thought. I see these approaches as not particularly compatible with Deleuze.
Peotevi and Massumi are the only Deleuzian writers I know of who engage with phenomenologically informed enactivist approaches to cognition, motivation, intersubjectivity and affect. In their hands, Deleuze is less useful than the models offered by Varela, Thompson, Gallagher and others. How, specifically, does your Deleuzian reading improve on an enactivist psychology?
To my (very limited) understanding phenomenology aspires to what the title suggests, an account of the "phenomenon of perception", of what it is like to perceive, in the abstract. Perhaps you can illustrate your point with a quote? I can't see how an abstract accounting like this can bridge the gap I described.
If a language capable of describing perception were achieved, conversations like this would be possible:
"Hi Bob, I was thinking, my subjective experience of my perceptions are like this (...). What about you?"
"Wow Sam, that's crazy! Mine are exactly like yours, except when you smell cinnamon I smell your cardamom, and when you hear the violin I hear your piano!"
Humans have been playing at language for a long time, and afaik such a conversation has never happened. Forgive my skepticism at phenomenology ever achieving some kind of linguistic breakthrough that would allow it. The reason, I believe, is fundamental: internal states cannot be pointed to, so no language can ever develop.
Reference? Thx.
This seems to be a common confusion. Words are labels which are attached to sensation. But this doesn't make sensation any less ineffable. Imagine as a child you were trained to associate buzzes with animal pictures, so that one buzz is associated with a dog, two for a cat, and three for a horse. Do the buzzes then describe the animals? No, they merely symbolize them. But the buzzes are to the animals as sensory terms are to sensations.
Quoting Mww
Please restate, I don't get the question.
Quoting hypericin
The only way I can see it bridging the gap is when, due to our generally similar ways of experience, an account may speak to our own experience, and thus gain our assent.This cannot be empirically demonstrated, of course.
For me the arts are like this and being linguistic in form, poetry in particular.. If you take 'effable' to denote 'capable of being expressed in propositional form' then only that which can be expressed in empirically and logically grounded forms would be counted as effable.
On a looser definition, perhaps there is little that is completely ineffable; which would mean effability/ ineffability is on a continuum, and not strictly a "black and white" matter.
I'll eff off now...
So move past the Tractatus and on to On Certainty. Instead of looking for what it makes sense to believe, look to what it makes sense to doubt. This post, here, now?
And yet we do talk about them.
How can that be?
And yet science continues to make successful predictions and enhance understanding.
Quoting Constance
Maybe to phenomenologist, and for Quine sensory surfaces, but most scientists they continues doing what they are doing without worrying about phenomenologist's subjective content, or Quine's cultural posits, pragmatically speaking.
Because "about" means concerning or referencing, but doesn't mean conveying, which would mean transferring actual content.
:up:
Do we talk about them? Or do they drop out of the conversation as irrelevant?
Ok, so how does this differ from, say, talking about a tree? Can you convey a tree by talk? Quoting MoliereHow is talk of leaf and branch different to talk of smell and touch? See how the tree has a similar leaf to the Oak? See how the desert has a similar smell to coffee? Or see how the desert brings about a similar sensation to the coffee? Why aren't I here talking about the sensation? That's not conveying actual content? Or, if it is conveying actual content, then it's not about the sensation? Or what?
But you can't say, because it is ineffable.
And around and around... Quoting Banno
Quoting Luke
Exactly. Somehow sensations are supposed to occupy some middle (@Moliere) ground, private, ineffable, yet somehow despite that, the foundation of our understanding (@Constance).
You clever folk all agree, but can't explain it. I call bullshit.
I am very tempted with the notion that words are metaphors and I know you have already stated this leads to solipsism. Are we all in the thrall of Kantian metaphysics?
You said that we do talk about sensations. However, Wittgenstein says of his beetle that "The thing in the box doesn’t belong to the language-game at all". If the beetle in the box represents sensations (as @Richard B suggests here), then it seems like you are advocating both positions?
Lakoff's "Metaphors We Live By" makes this point, a book I've both seen and read.
Prose differs from poetry in form, not substance.
Quoting Hanover
Did it have a good cover?
What do you make of the criticism that if words are metaphors we risk slipping into solipsism?
When it comes to objects of the senses we can refer to attributes which are visible, audible, tangibly available and so on, to all, but this referring consists in generalizations; it is only in seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting or touching what is referred to that the particular comes into play.
The particular is not conveyed by language, but merely referred to. Regarding sensations like pain or pleasure, no such mutual apprehension of particularity is possible, and even in the case of sensory objects mutual apprehension is really an illusion.
Quoting Tom Storm
Why would we have to "slip into solipsism" on account of that? Just because I cannot fully share other's experience, does that logically entail that I should doubt their existence? Seems like a bogeyman to me.
To convey indicates the transporting of my thought to your thought, a metaphorical movement through space, akin to a mail delivery, and of course that cannot be done actually. That is why it's ineffable, and that is why we talk "about" things. Aboutness (a part of intentionally) would be the mental state and the word ithe speaker's representation of the mental state. What is conveyed is my word representation to be compared to your word representation, which offers you an opportunity to see what my experience is like, but not what it is.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/intentionality/
Meh.
Quoting Tom Storm
That I can't know the specific contents of other minds doesn't mean I only know of my own mind.
I would agree with the observation that ultimately, with enough questioning of fundamental beliefs and given assumptions, that soliipsism, meaninglessness, and moral relativism eventually follow. Poetically speaking, all roads out of Athens lead to solipsism. All roads out of Jerusalem, to meaning.
AKA - atheism leads to nihilism?
Quoting Hanover
Them's fighting words. :wink:
Just that at some basic level, theistic or not, you're not going to get any where starting with Cartesian doubt. So posit what you need to and build from there, but don't get bogged down with criticisms of eventual solipsism. Just proclaim you take as a given that you're not the only mind in the universe deceived into thinking there are other ones.
Call it faith, pragmatism, foundationalism or whatever, but at a basic level you've got to just accept certain things as givens.
I hear you. Brute facts.
I find that rather unresponsive. No, I've read it, but I'm not going fishing because you can't find a fitting response. If you have a position, state it.
Not sure about the point. Obviously, science's problems are not philosophy's. Scientists continuing "doing what they are doing"does nothing to address philosophical problems. The questions here are philosophical.
The fact that scientists can proceed so independently of what philosophy has to say is simply evidence that the two lines of inquiry are entirely distinct. Ask a scientist how it is, for example, that an object like a brain, an absolutely epistemically opaque thing, can generate experiences "about" other things. She will simply dismiss this. But then, such a question is central to philosophical interests.
Quoting hypericin
In phenomenologist Merleau-Ponty’s hands, language is not the product of a meeting between private perceptions inside individual minds but of a primary intersubjectivity.
” My friend Paul and I point out to each other certain details of the landscape; and Paul's finger, which is pointing out the church tower, is not a finger-for-me that I think of as orientated towards a church-tower-for-me, it is Paul's finger which itself shows me the tower that Paul sees, just as, conversely, when I make a movement towards some point in the landscape that I can see, I do not imagine that I am producing in Paul, in virtue of some pre-established harmony, inner visions merely analogous to mine: I believe, on the contrary, that my gestures invade Paul's world and guide his gaze. When I think of Paul, I do not think of a flow of private sensations indirectly related to mine through the medium of interposed signs, but of someone who has a living experience of the same world as mine, as well as the same history, and with whom I am in communication through that world and that history.”(Phenomenology of Perception, p.471)
“ In the experience of dialogue, there is constituted between the other person and myself a common ground; my thought and his are inter-woven into a single fabric, my words and those of my interlocutor are called forth by the state of the discussion, and they are inserted into a shared operation of which neither of us is the creator. We have here a dual being, where the other is for me no longer a mere bit of behavior in my transcendental field, nor I in his; we are collaborators for each other in consummate reciprocity. Our perspectives merge into each other, and we co-exist through a common world. In the present dialogue, I am freed from myself, for the other person's thoughts are certainly his; they are not of my making, though I do grasp them the moment they come into being, or even anticipate them. And indeed, the objection which my interlocutor raises to what I say draws from me thoughts which I had no idea I possessed, so that at the same time that I lend him thoughts, he reciprocates by making me think too. It is only retrospectively, when I have withdrawn from the dialogue and am recalling it that I am able to reintegrate it into my life and make of it an episode in my private history”. (Phenomenology of Perception, p.413)
To say that science needs a foundation that only phenomenology can supply because there appears to be a "philosophical problem"-yet science manages to successfully march forward with progress- is itself the problem you should examine. Your longing for foundations is due to what Wittgenstein said "when language goes on holiday"
"Philosophy may in no way interfere with the actual use of language; it can in the end only describe it. For it cannot give it any foundation either. It leaves everything as it is." Wittgenstein PI124
Well, you should know that Wittgentein's falling out with Russell was all about the latter's failure to understand that the Tractatus' importance was in that-which-should-be-passed-over-in-silence, and not the prohibitive delimitations analytic philosophers are so fond of. Russell thought he was a mystic! Witt thought he and Russell should sever correspondence on their difference regarding the matter of the question of value in ethics and aesthetics. Consider further that Witt's favorite philosopher was Kierkegaard, whose foundational longings are legendary (and terrifying to theologians). Did you know Witt held that divinity was found in "the Good"?
You should take a hard look at the simplicity of this, which I repeat: All anyone has ever witnessed is phenomena. This isn't contestable, and science is not in competition with this. What alternative is there to this, materialism (one form or another)? Pure metaphysics, materialism. Naturalism? Better. Dewey, Quine, Rorty were in this camp (in their own way), but note, the pragmatism that underlies this is what hs to be called pragmatic phenomenology.
Wittgenstein himself has been called a phenomenologist in his Tractatus. States of affairs are not a scientist's conception. A fact is a logical entity, which reminds us of the grandfather of phenomenology, Kant.
And yet, there are all those occasions where he acknowledges what is "there" to be left "as it is". This is why I take him up in a discussion about ineffability. He rarely comments on it, but this is because it is too important to do so. One can infer a strong claim about the primacy of ethics/aesthetics/value that cannot be spoken: certainly what ineffability is all about.
Then there is Husserl. And here your objections may have their relevance. But then, phenomenology certainly does "leave everything as it is." It is a descriptive account. Any foundation Husserl posited was simply there, to be acknowledged.
See my responses to Richard B
Dualism. Human nature.
The system, in its proper modus operandi, is knowledge. That’s what reason is for. With respect to objects, then, sensation has no cognitive power, is not of that part of the system which cognizes what object shall be known as. Here, sensation is nothing but the alarm, the trigger for the knowledge system to initiate its operation.
“… For, otherwise, we should be required to affirm the existence of an appearance without that which appears, which would be absurd…”
Hence it is not given the attribute of conceptual schemata, the very root of its ineffability, which is to say the system doesn’t consider what sensation in general is, nor what sensations in general are, but only that by means of them alone, a representation of the object as it is perceived is possible, and that by means of the mode, re: the sensory apparatus, by which the sensation is delivered.
Talk of the form sensation is given, such that the effability of it is supposed, the sting of a bee, the taste of Lima beans, is still nothing but a post hoc recollection, in which reason has already judged the relation between the perception and the phenomenon which follows from it, because of the affect the sensation provided. In fact, albeit theoretically, what’s accomplished here is the assignment of a property or attribute to an object that relates that object in a non-contradictory fashion, to the sensation, but is mistaken as a condition by which the sensation itself can be named. See the conversation between myself and , pg 23, for a taste of the scientific/metaphysical cognitive dichotomy.
This systemic methodology goes back to Plato, reiterated with various names through Locke, Hume, Kant, Russell, et. al.. Knowledge of/knowledge that. Knowledge a posteriori/knowledge a priori. Knowledge by description/knowledge by acquaintance.
“….intuition cannot think, and understanding cannot intuit. It is only by them in conjunction with each other, is our (empirical) knowledge at all possible….”
Dualists one and all. As humans are by their very nature. Or, perhaps, the very nature of their intelligence. And the later-modern advent of phenomenology becomes self-justified, in that no one likes the idea that we cannot immediately describe our own sensations, as early-modern metaphysics demands. Rather than wait for the system to complete its task as a whole, it is claimed as possible to circumvent half of it, yet still lay claim to knowledge. Abysmally short-sighted, I must say.
Quoting Banno
Of course language can't transmit sensation any more than it can trees. What it could do (but can't, for sensation) is describe.
We don't merely label trees, we have descriptive terms for them. If you only have labels, description is limited to
"What is an oak? It is like an elm, but not like a spruce? What is a spruce? It is like a pine, but not like an alder..."
Instead,
"An oak is a deciduous thick barked tree, growing to 100-200ft at maturity. It has broad, waxy, green, tri-pointed leaves. In autumn it bears conical, edible nuts with a fibrous cap..."
If I had patience and actually knew what I was talking about I could paint a picture in your mind of what an oak was like, without your actually ever seeing one.
But I cannot do the same for sensation terms. We only have labels for them, no descriptors. So while we can trivially use them in sentences "I have a red cup", we cannot describe them. At best we can only use impressionistic associations and metaphors ("Red is fiery", "Oak is majestic"). This lack of descriptive ability makes sense terms ineffable.
Frankly I don't understand what you are saying here. "The system... is knowledge"? "Sensation has no cognitive power"? "Dualism"?
Maybe we can find some common ground. You say that sensations are entirely ineffable. I point out that we do talk about sensations. Let's look at that, on the presumption that we are both right - that there is a charitable way of interpreting this discussion in which these statements are not contradictory.
So, I will presume that you agree that we do talk about bee stings and the aroma of coffee. I call such things sensations, and hence say that we talk about our sensations. I presume that you are using the term "sensation" in a somewhat different way.
You mentioned your chat with @Isaac. Is your claim something like, the action of a neural net in "registering" (looking for a neutral word) a bee sting or the aroma of coffee stochastic, rather than propositional?
This is the metaphor that holds sway with many here.
What if language is less like a mail system, more like a construction site. What if instead of passing thoughts from one private mind to another, we use language to build thoughts, together, in a shared space.
If thoughts are a shared construction, they are not ineffable.
You don't have a vantage point on thought itself. Therefore, your theory amounts to language on holiday.
Doesn't mean you can't continue to speculate. Just don't try to go further than that.
Nothing much stand on the choice of "thought". Narrative, dialogue, discussion, beliefs, would also do.
Without a thorough study of Enlightenment speculative metaphysics, there’s no reason you should, and for the oversight, you are hereby forgiven. (Grin)
Quoting Banno
Best I can do is caution against mistaking the operation of a system in situ, for discussions about it after the fact. In the former sensation is ineffable, insofar as that part of the system responsible for language use is very far from that part to which sensation proper belongs, but in the latter it is not, insofar as all parts of the system are treated equally by the language used to describe them.
I watch an Olympic diver, then he talks with me and explains how he has to twist and turn as he falls. Intellectually, it all make sense, but the actual experience is ineffable to me.
Relating something sensual is a matter of empathizing. Which shifts the focus away from the word "ineffable".
But this thread is going to 1,000 posts no matter what. :roll:
Quoting Joshs
I want to get back to my previous post. It may be my fault that I could not articulate my central point clearly; it is about the question of the ineffable. For me, your, Protevi or even Deleuze's position regarding phenomenology is less critical than resolving or clarifying the issue. I believe that Deleuze is right, and we live and act within our assemblage; when Deleuze wrote it, that was his one, and right now, we have a different one. Its essential characteristics, according to
Deleuze and Guattari is that "There is only desire and the social, and nothing else. "(D & G, 'Anti-Oedipus, p 29). Later, in 'What is dispositif?' Deleuse introduces the third dimension of self.
Massumi develops this assertion: "There are the nonconscious presuppositions implanted in the field as you brace into it, making the coming event nonoptional. This is the aspect of perceptual judgement: conclusions about the situation that pre-make themselves as the premises of the event and as an energizer of the movements composing it.
The affective intensity of the situation powers it's playing out. Effectively, all this is about desire occurring, not on the individual level… The rational aspects of the event – judgment, hypothesis, decision -were mutually included in the event along with all the other cooperating factors." (Massumi, 2015, p 47) Where is our conscious personal autonomy here? In what way our self emerges and immediately disappears in this gap? An instantaneous translation, reduction, and transformation of the event endlessly occur at a level of our conscious engagement. Since we must act here and now, in a brief moment of time, just a little complexity can be envisaged and processed. We rely on
our reduced cooperative behavioural patterns and apply ready-made, adopted narrations and self-esteem. Our perceptional, cognitive, and social incentives are directly embedded into our environment. The ineffable is that we continue to believe in our conscious, individual autonomy.
How do you see this assessment from the position of embodied cognition? Is there another way to conceive the place and the function of self between the affective and social registers?
Hiding in obscurity. Ok, disappointing, but I'll leave you to it.
You still don't have a vantage point on thought however you chose to define it.
‘S ok; I like it here.
My thoughts are in my mind, and your thoughts are in your mind. Yes, your thoughts may influence my thoughts, and my thoughts may influence yours, through communion or whatever. But you and I disagree with each other, and that's clear indication that the thoughts I am constructing are not the same thoughts which you are constructing. And of course, there are many other examples, like the reality of deception, which prove you to be wrong.
If think the analogy correct, but I'm not sure it solves our ineffablity problem. Your statements are created by you and experienced by me, just as I experience your gesture, your clothes, the tree outside.
We both look at the same tree. I see X and you Y. I trust X and Y are very similar, but experiences are complex and filled with perspective, opinion, emotion, variations in our perceptability, and even the lingering taste of the morning's breakfast. There aren't raw data to be received all the same.
So you tell me about the tree, I liken those comments to my prior perceptions, and we share in the exercise of communication, which certainly does create within me a perception, perhaps a partially accurate sketch of your perception.
If that's sufficient for you to avoid a charge of ineffability, then we have a resolution. I'd contend though that it invokes an indirectness of the object to the perception, and doesn't work under a direct realism stance. In fact, it extend indirect realism to communicative events.
That takes us back to noumena and phenomena, which necessarily demands ineffablity. The object can't be known for what it is. The tree is an object as much as a proposition about an object is an object, both subject to interpretation, and neither coherently standing alone as a desipherable noumenal thing.
That is, I can't know what the tree objectively is and I can't know what you're talking about in an objective way.
No no, Banno; you simply have it all wrong. The Tractatus is not a biography: "6.522 There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical."
His biography does, however, confirm the weight he gives this, and other things he says in the same vein. Perfectly honest?: I think you protest too much.
Wittgenstein also maintains in his later work that some knowledge is ineffable. From PI:
Well, that at least gave me a laugh.
How does a clarinet sound? Of course, you can describe this, but this would be a contingent description, relying other said things, each of which would present yet a new context that needed to be explained. Even the height of Mont Blanc moves like this through definitional routing and rerouting. Circular. Heidegger understood this. In his Origin of the Work of Art, he discusses What comes first, the work of art or the nature of art that informs us what art is? He writes,
[i]Thus we are compelled to follow the circle. This is neither a makeshift nor a defect.
To enter upon this path is the strength of thought, to continue on it is the feast of
thought, assuming that thinking is a craft. Not only is the main step from work to art a
circle like the step from art to work, but every separate step that we attempt circles in
this circle.[/i]
It is really well said-- this "strength of thought" is a true intellectual's delight through which art's meaning is wrought.
That I will yield to.
Yep, it is not that you can’t know, it is that you don't know. You don't know because you don't know what counts as a objective tree. And just because there are illusions and hallucinations does not mean there is something behind those objects that we are familiar with.
But I think this chase for the tree’s objectivity has another problem. There is the illusion of searching for something fundamental like searching for the bottom of the sea. This is not some empirical discovery but creation of a concept that humans give meaning to.
Yes, obviously you and I treat sensations differently, and no, it is not possible to reconcile the contradiction intrinsic to those differences. You ask how is it that we can talk about sensations, but I ask what is it about sensations that enable them to be talked about. Your question treats language use as subject, presupposing sensation as that which satisfies the criteria by which we can talk about anything. My question treats sensation as subject, presupposing only that we can talk about anything iff it meets certain criteria. Your question has always an affirmative response, but mine has always negative, hence the impossibility of reconciling the differences.
Reason hides in obscurity, but perhaps the science does not. Do you not see that it is not aroma as sensation that arrives in the brain? If aroma is a chemical form of energy affecting a certain sensory device in one way, but the energy changes form to electrical energy affecting the nerves in a different way, which merely represents the chemical energy, and it is then the case the chemical energy is never transferred to the brain…..how can it be the sensation that is received in the brain, to be talked about?
Furthermore, do you see there is no physiological sensory apparatus in a human being that inputs electrical or electrostatic energy alone, such that a 100% efficiency is possible to obtain in the transition between the energy in sensory devices and the information energy carried by nerves? From which follows necessarily that all outputs of physiological sensory devices are representational, and therefore not of the same form, and cannot carry the exact same informational content, as the originating perceptions.
If all language construction and use originates in the brain, and no chemical information given from the sensation of aroma is ever received in the brain, it cannot be aroma to which language construction and use is directed.
————
You want obscure? I’ll give you obscure:
(Figure of speech; I know you don’t actually want it. Just sayin’)
…..Science has advanced by leaps and bounds. The nerves transferring nose energy has been isolated. Some device is invented….or, hell, falls out of the sky…who cares….and it is figured out how it can be attached to those nerves. What are the chances the amazing device would output an odor? For shits and giggles, let’s say it does. What kind of device would that have to be, then? Why….wouldn’t it have to be a nose? Well, it couldn’t be a nose, for if it was it wouldn’t be some amazing device that just fell out of the sky. Which leaves the theory of irreversibility in self-contained thermodynamic processes in macrostates, which translates into the impossibility of any device attached to nerves outputting the exact same information inputted to them. So it is clear…..of course it is…..noses cannot deliver to the brain what the brain is actually using. And if all language use arises in the brain….yaddayaddayadda.
Odd, innit? The proper metaphysician and the scientist both use the same term for that which is untranslatable…..phenomenon. Between what the nose puts out as sensation and what the brain receives as mere information, the untranslatable gap between is a phenomenon. Physics and metaphysics doctrines alike both maintain the immediate presupposition that no human is ever consciously aware of either peripheral nerve activity on the one hand, and sensory output on the other, which grounds both empirically and logically, that sensation itself is never what is talked about.
See how simple it is, really? The opposite of obscure, which leaves you alone with your disappointment. But maybe now you can at least be entertained at the same time.
I propose that this is where we meet with the appearance of "the ineffable". Any time that we can make a statement about something, and the statement is reasonable (some of course will argue that the above statement with a "free will" is not reasonable), yet what is stated cannot be described without contradiction, then we have the ineffable.
Another example is if we try to talk about what happened prior to the beginning of the universe (Big Bang). Since there was no time at this time, it makes it impossible to talk about. So any time that we propose an activity which is not a physical activity (describable in the terms of physics), then we have the appearance of something ineffable.
Of course, this is only an appearance, and in truth we can avoid assuming the reality of the ineffable by adjusting the way that we look at, and describe things, by employing different principles. So for instance, when we adopt dualist principles we allow for the reality of activity which is not physical activity, and we bring this realm of activity, which appeared to be ineffable, into our domain of discourse by positing the principles which allow for that.
Why do we have to be made free from language? Would it even be desirable?
Mystical, yes. But true?
Truth is bound to language. And if the mystical is not true, because it is outside of language, in what way can we claim that it is reasonable?
I think that it's difficult to maintain some of these distinctions while seeking the mystical. If one has experienced the mystical then they can philosophize about it. But if one is seeking the mystical, to be unbound by language, then I think that's likely when we've hit the boundary of philosophy. (also, something funny here -- when mystics disagree)
The queerness of this being, since here we are talking about it, can we then predicate anything worthwhile of the beyond-language within language? There may be the mystical, the un-speakable -- but is all such talk about the unspeakable itself worthless, or not?
I think the mystics make a case that's interesting. However, what's really interesting is how common the paths to mysticism are. Usually they require people to dis-identify with their body, to abstain from certain desires, to undergo rituals, chants, group practices, and so on. So part of me believes, if there be a mystical that cannot be talked of at all, that there are some commonalities between mystical claims -- and so I'm hesitant to say it cannot be known. So there seems, given the thought that there is an unknown that cannot be said (and hence ineffable), there has to be a distinction between what is common to mystical claims and what is truly ineffable.
Should it be known? Maybe not. But I'm not sure that it cannot be known.
Quoting Constance
@Joshs already pointed out how, in the list of begats, both analytic and continental philosophy goes back to Frege. While that's not enough to say they are similar, what makes me say they are similar is how both traditions have people who identify with their tradition as the better way to do philosophy, and both traditions are also reactions to "failed" philosophy programs -- and in their various reactions to their shared history a lot of the philosophers began to converge, in spite of their independent traditions, on questions of the mind and existence and such.
I think the differences are institutional, and what's more what is institutionalized are aesthetics of reason. Aesthetics are a necessary component to human judgment, and certainly needed to teach human judgment -- but are they true? Are they the sorts of things which lead us to say, this is the one way to do philosophy? I think not.
And, further, having no personal institutional ambitions -- though I certainly benefit from the institutions -- I like to note how we're free to pick and choose how we want to. If the difference is more due to history and aesthetics, and the pursuit is roughly the same -- the ceaseless battle against human stupidity -- then the difference isn't worth pitting philosophers against one another in a kind of project to be the architectonic who knew all along what was going on.
Rather, given I don't even have institutional ambitions, philosophy is more personal, social, and connective. It is something done for pleasure, rather than a competition.
In that light, I'd say that neither materialism nor phenomenology are terms worth fighting over, because only people educated in this stuff would really get something out of the distinction, and it'll most likely be forgotten as interests change anyways. Marxism provides a whole other context for thinking about materialism other-than the modern scientific project. And by no accident do I quote Epicurus, given Marx's dissertation was on Epicurus, and there's a certain harmony between the two philosophies -- though they have different end-goals.
-- this all simply to complicate this narrative about continental and analytic philosophy. I think it might be doing you a disservice, here.
Quoting Constance
Husserl is one I've read selections from -- I have a reader I've read but I haven't done the deep work. So, yes I've read parts, but no I haven't read it all. He's someone I need to, but he's still far enough away from present interests that I've sorta just kept him there :D
How does he know what I am or am not seeing, from his vantage? How would we be able to differentiate a person who sees the world, when attending to experience as experience, not as a projection on a screen which emanates outward from a self, but as a world which encompasses and composes the self? Turn Husserl on his head, and what do you get? If the subject has a primacy, how could one differentiate a true from a false claim about what is seen?
Quoting Constance
Cool.
(EDIT: Just to be clear -- cool for sharing, and I'm glad you did. Just bookmarking the thought for now)
I'd say it's because it's teachable. It'd be more interesting to say something is ineffable because it's not even teachable, or not even learn-able, rather than because we don't know something.
"Ineffable" doesn't mean "not teachable". As per the definition I gave earlier, it means "ncapable of being expressed or described in words"; i.e. "not sayable".
Furthermore, I am not arguing that something is ineffable because we don't know it. Instead, I'm saying that it's ineffable when we do know it but can't express that knowledge in words; when we can't say it.
Didn't I already acknowledge this, in saying "sure, I'm using the word in a special way"? Surely we're still able to make distinctions?
But if it's really just down to what dictionary dot com says, then sure.
Quoting Luke
I'm following.
It's not clear what you are trying to say here. Phenomenology does not purport to investigate anything like "raw data" if that is what you were suggesting. Phenomenology consists in the attempt to reflect on experience, on the nature of perception, from the perspective of how it seems, and leaving aside the question of whether that "seeming" reflects any independent "objective" reality. It is, ideally, merely a descriptive discipline, a cultivation of our ability to pay attention to our experiences.
Sure we can make distinctions. I just thought we were discussing the possibility of ineffability according to its common definition, rather than your “special” definition.
The most important aspects of the practice of any art cannot be taught. So, they are not teachable, but they are learnable in the sense that you can, with practice, improve.
Same goes for meditation; you can be instructed as to how to sit, how to breath, how to hold your shoulders, your head, your tongue and so on, but that's it, the rest, the important part, is entirely up to you.
Isn't phenomenology a collection of different ideas, with some shared approaches, themes and influences? I thought the original project of Husserl's was to create a new foundation for certain knowledge - a kind of rationalist, Platonist approach befitting a mathematician. :wink:
I think I see teaching and learning as always involving practice. And, I'm hesitant to believe that the most important aspects of any practice cannot be taught, because of Stanislavski.
Stanislavski is the first person that comes to mind when I think of the teaching of art -- and sure Stanislavski acknowledges that the actor must continue to improve and grow and practice, he acknowledges that his method is open-ended (and written in the form of a dialogue for that very reason), and yet he wrote it to teach actors how to act, and it's still used to this day, among other works, due to the open-ended nature of teaching acting, or teaching art more generally.
Is meditation a craft in this way? Probably not. So there'd be room for another distinction of effability -- a the thousand plateaus upon us :D
But I think philosophy is closer to a craft like art is a craft. So in asking after the ineffable, I pretty much have in mind things like the limits of language, the limits of reason, the limits of knowledge -- that sort of thing. And the mystical provides interesting cases for different preferences of inference.
Thank you for a considered response.
Is your claim that a methodological difference leads to incommensurability? That would be odd. One of the things I'm asking is what sort of thing we talk about when we use words such as "sensation"; that's the same as the question you give yourself: "what is it about sensations that enable them to be talked about". It's no answer to that to reply that sensations are not something we talk about... you are talking about them.
We do talk about the aroma of coffee.
It's not clear what your nose-machine example is attempting to show. It is clear that there is a difference between talk of chemicals and talk of the aroma of coffee. However, it is the chemical composition of coffee that gives it that aroma.
- What Creates Coffee Aroma?
Quoting Mww
Language use and construction does not "originate in the brain" but in the interaction of multiple brains within a shared environment, which includes coffee. Chemicals do cause the aroma of coffee. And we do talk about that aroma, which might rather eccentrically be worded as "it is the aroma to which language construction and use is directed".
If you like, and by way of putting in place something in contrast to what you appear to be saying, the aroma of coffee is at least in part a social construct and is based on the chemistry of roasted coffee beans.
But, perhaps by way of a partial reconciliation, I will add that the aroma of coffee is not reducible to chemistry. There is an aspect of it that is not mere chemistry, but involves ritual, pleasure, anticipation, awakening, and so on.
These are also not ineffable: we are talking about them.
Hence something along the lines of anomalous monism is taking place here, where there are two distinct ways of speaking about the same thing, for what of a better differentiation, one chemical, the other intentional.
Husserl was criticised by Heidegger for, according to the latter, falling back into a kind of Cartesain dualism and concern with epistemic certainty, so yes, there have been different phenomenological approaches.
On the other hand we cannot be more certain of anything than how things seem to us, but the only possible inter-subjective corroboration of a phenomenologist's findings is the assent or dissent that comes with recognizing that what is presented does or does not accord with one's own experience.
Quoting Moliere
I'd say that of course pointers can be given, but no explication of a set of rules to follow that, if followed, will make one a good actor is possible in my view. So, although I know nothing about Stanislavski, I suspect that his teaching would consist more in showing than in saying. The student then either "gets it" or doesn't. You cannot teach how to become a good painter or poet, although you can teach certain basic techniques.
This also brings me to think of aesthetics; you can't teach people to see beauty, or harmonious composition, and you can't explain what beauty or harmonious composition is; people either see it, come to see it, or they don't.
Quoting Moliere
I agree with this.
Cool.
At least I see where our disagreement lies. I believe these things are teachable, but yes it involves showing rather than saying.
I guess what it comes down to, then, is that which is shown ineffable?
Or, more subtly, in what cases is that which is shown ineffable, and why?
Well phrased, again. Mysticism is then nonsense, but it is an error to read "nonsense" here as a pejorative.
Improving is a public enterprise. It can be seen, or it amounts to nothing.
I don't believe that what can only be shown, not said, is effable, because I understand the word to denote that which can be clearly explained.
Think of a culinary recipe, for example. If it is exhaustively set out and followed rigorously, results are guaranteed. To my way of thinking that would be an example of effability. No such definite instructions can be given for how to paint a picture, compose a musical piece or write a poem, because the requirement there is analogous to creating your own unique culinary dish.
Quoting Banno
The personal experience which leads to improvement is not at all public, although of course the results may be.
Quoting Banno
Better to say 'non-sense' instead in order to avoid that error.
It would also be an error to read nonsense as a synonym for ineffable?
As if, having shown the duck-rabbit, we could not discuss it.
*although nonsense can't be true...
I'm not sure what I'd want to construe teaching as, but it's what comes to mind when thinking about if something counts as ineffable -- if it can be taught, then it's not ineffable.
Institutionally, I'd say that the transfer isn't between minds as much as generations. Knowledge is transferred on to enough people that they can continue doing things together -- itself defined by the knowledge. In this sense, for what @Constance mentioned earlier, churches and such could count as store-houses of knowledge in the same way that universities are since they are institutions which transfer that knowledge down from one generation to the next. But then I'd say it's not ineffable -- strange, perhaps, to a naturalistic worldview, but not ineffable.
I think I'm hesitant with things like "behaviors" more than "public" -- I agree that it's public. But what counts as public may not always be behaviors.
What is it that is seen when we publicly observe a behavior? Is the public appearance of the behavior the moving of something from the behavior to each of the minds who are witnessing it, unmediated by individual interpretation?
Well, I think that explains our collective confusion. :D
Notice the metaphor. It easily becomes reified.
What is transferred? In teaching someone to play, they become able to move their fingers in a certain way. In teaching someone to add, they become able to participate in a group of language games such as sharing, bookkeeping, calculating change. It's the action that counts, after all.
Quoting Joshs
No.
Quoting Janus
If someone has the personal experience and yet does not demonstrate the act, we say they talk the talk but don't walk the walk. Like someone who has read the book but never picked up a guitar.
Yes, we do. We also talk about swimming like fish, flying like birds, going to the ends of the Earth.
Quoting Banno
Eccentrically indeed.
————
Quoting Banno
Yep, sure is. All those chemicals you took the pains to research? Nary a one of ‘em ever registers on the brain as a sensation.
Quoting Banno
Than what was the point conveyed by listing the chemicals as the source of the aroma of coffee?
Quoting Banno
Yes, these are aesthetic judgements concerning human feelings, rather than the discursive judgements concerning human experience. More dualism.
————
Quoting Banno
I can think of a better one: mine is one of the abstract, yours is the reification of the abstract. Mine is trees, yours is…..ehhhh, you know.
Your argument is that talk of sensations is metaphorical? "The coffee is too bitter" is about a sensation, but is not a metaphor. I don't agree that your counter-instance works.
Quoting Mww
That'll be, so far as it is true, because you are mixing the physical brain with the intentional sensation. And so far as it is false, the chemical 2-methylpyridine is responsible for the roasted notes of the aroma.
Quoting Mww
To point out that despite the aroma of coffee not being reducible to chemistry, it is caused by chemistry.
Quoting Mww
The dualism here is not metaphysical, but two different ways of talking about the same thing. Not unlike the piece of paper being a dollar bill.
Right, is there a public appearance of anything over and above the appearances to each of the individuals who constitute the witnessing public? Are each of those individual appearances identical? Of course they are, presumably,all appearances of the 'same' thing, but what exactly does that "sameness" consist in if not abstract generalization?
Upon learning how to play a person should be able to play, and able to judge, and set on a path where the student doesn't need the teacher but can progress in their own way.
So, yes, it's the action that counts. And it's public. "Behaviors" just has a connotation from psychology I'm not so sure about. Abilities might go better for me. I agree that one teaches others to be able. But part of that isn't just an ability, but just because of the way we are, part of it is how to live. A teacher rubs off on their students. So not only is ability transferred, but so is some ethical component.
I'll not push the point.
Quoting Moliere
Not transferred, as nothing moves from brain to brain; the ability is developed, perhaps?
I would just add that ‘action’ should be specified even more finely in terms of sense of meaning rather than via general terms like bookkeeping and calculating. The action counts not as a token of a general conceptual category, and not in Quine’s understanding of behavior in objectively causal terms, but as belonging to a partially shared situational inter-action.
For instance, in PI Wittgenstein analyzes the word ‘calculating’’ in terms of actual use( rather than ‘in the head’’), showing that there is no such general meaning , only a family of context-specific senses. How do we know that someone is calculating? By way of actions within a contextual language game that determine always freshly what calculating performs , how it is used.
What about all the internal behaviour, which can't be seen? This is what is commonly called thinking. A person learns one thing here, another thing there, and something else from someone else, not necessarily displaying anything publicly yet, of what has been learned in these various places, though keeping the teachings in mind as considerations. Then through a process of synthesis, the person mixes up a bit of this with a bit of that, along with some of the other thing, also throwing in some innovation, and displays something original and unique to the public. The critical aspect here is the synthesis, and this is a private enterprise. Sure, improvement can be seen if it is displayed in public, but where it occurs is within what is private.
(30 pages worth of comments, apparently- an amusing irony)
But a solid showing of what ?
I guess that's the crucial question here, right? The ineffable?
Or are you telling me that after 30 pages you guys still don't have it sorted out? :wink:
Don't look at me. I tried to discourage the reams of babble that emerged early on, to no avail.
Enough rope.
Yup, that works for me too. The ability is developed.
Sure, I'm on board. Interesting cases only.
I think we can't be taught a unique thing, but that character is developed in such a way that a person is set up to be creative.
To teach how to paint a picture we begin with the elements and principles of art, and those are similar enough rules that both masters and students use. And one's aesthetic sensibilities are developed by attending to the history of the art, both in terms of technique and in terms of movements.
So, yes -- it's an interesting case, but I think creativity can be taught. An uncreative person can be shown how to be creative. Or, at least, more creative than they were. So, we probably couldn't come up with a regimen which will be guaranteed to develop a Picasso, but we can teach people to be creative in the art for all that.
Quoting jgill
:D -- I just embrace it. It's somewhat beautiful that we can babble on.
Quoting Luke
Do you intend to address these questions, Banno? I understand if you don't since it took you over 20 pages to acknowledge the contradiction I pointed out to you. Even then, you brushed the contradiction off merely as something you "could have...expressed more clearly" and didn't address it.
While learning to play a piano we develop an ethics of practice (hence my lamenting my lack of character)
While learning to read the Bible, there are many more ethical teachings which are about developing character to be a certain way.
And it's interesting to note, here, I think -- each discipline has a certain boundary of what's appropriate to say. A kind of ineffability, but only by way of collective practice. So it'd be inappropriate to develop much more than an ethics of practice when teaching the piano, it'd be inappropriate to develop an ethics of selfishness in teaching someone how to operate in a union, it'd be inappropriate to not address concerns about living life in a church (well, depending on the faith group -- it varies greatly, but is still developing people's ability to live their life)
But, also, I want to note how it's only because I care about others being free that I think a person should be developed to flourish on in their own way. It's an ethical commitment.
Quoting jgill
Quoting Luke
Behold! We are not done yet! They want more!
Then, as Emperor Palpatine says to the increasingly agitated Anikin Skywalker, soon to become Darth Vader, "there are ways ... "
Does that mean you are going to address my questions?
Quoting Banno
We talk about this, we talk about that. We talk about all sorts of stuff, some of it eccentrically. Which is just another word for irrationally. What about that doesn’t work?
————
Quoting Banno
What’s the difference? That which is caused by only this, is reducible to this for its cause. A tautology. True insofar as its negation is a contradiction.
————
Quoting Banno
Talk of these types of judgements are not talking about the same thing, just as talk of, e.g., “right” as direction, is not the same as talk of “right” as correct. And irrelevant with respect to your analogy, insofar as there is nothing whatsoever contained in talk of a piece of paper by which talk of a dollar bill must necessarily follow from it. While it may be true the conception of a dollar bill is contingent on the conception of a piece of paper, it is not the case the conception of a piece of paper is contingent on the conception of a dollar bill.
Language. An affront to the dignity of philosophy itself, and justified by being the single human condition completely unnecessary for having an opinion.
……says the guy who must use language in order to voice an opinion on how evil it is.
(Sigh)
Come on jgill, a thread on the ineffable could be nothing other than babble (a typical Banno thread). Why discourage them? Just let them play their games. Consider the infinite monkey theorem, something meaningful is bound to pop up once in a while.
The mystical cannot be true or false because this is a feature of propositions, not states of mind or existential encounters. It is what is said about these that can be true or false. So what if God actually appeared before me and intimated HER eternal grandeur and power? Language does not prohibit this; it is the content of language that prohibits this, that is, what is familiar and usual. Language is entirely open and even the Wittgensteinian Tractatusian prohibitions are not categorical. They rest on intuitions about logic, and these are, in Heidegger's terms, taking up the world AS: When logic speaks of logic's own delimitations, this is an imposition that occurs within the finitude of logic's application.
Quoting Moliere
They do. On the one hand there is Meister Eckhart who prays to God to be rid of God, in his apparent frustration with the way familiar finitudes seem to bar the way to actual realization. then there are the tibetan monks who, as I read in an intro to the Tibetan Book of the Dead, would talk freely of their "subterranean" experiences. And pseudo Dionysius the Areopogite in The Cloud of Unknowing reveals a remedy:
[i]How a man shall have him in this work against all thoughts, and specially against all
those that arise of his own curiosity, of cunning, and of natural wit.
AND if any thought rise and will press continually above thee betwixt thee and that darkness, and
ask thee saying, “What seekest thou, and what wouldest thou have?” say thou, that it is God that
thou wouldest have. “Him I covet, Him I seek, and nought but Him.”
And if he ask thee, “What is that God?” say thou, that it is God that made thee and bought
thee, and that graciously hath called thee to thy degree. “And in Him,” say, “thou hast no skill.”
91
And therefore say, “Go thou down again,” and tread him fast down with a stirring of love, although
he seem to thee right holy, and seem to thee as he would help thee to seek Him. For peradventure
he will bring to thy mind diverse full fair and wonderful points of His kindness, and say that He is
full sweet, and full loving, full gracious, and full mercifu[/i]
It is not an event in a reaffirmation of the ordinary forms of knowing, but of something outside of this, and yet, accessible? Of course, this is generally taken as a bunch of religious drivel, but this is the spirit of empirical science talking. It reminds me of something Quine famously said:
“As an empiricist I continue to think of the conceptual scheme of science as a tool, ultimately, for predicting future experience in the light of past experience. Physical objects are conceptually imported into the situation as convenient intermediaries-not by definition in terms of experience, but simply as irreducible posits comparable, epistemologically, to the gods of Homer. For my part I do, qua lay physicist, believe in physical objects and not in Homer's gods; and I consider it a scientific error to believe otherwise. But in point of epistemological footing the physical objects and the gods differ only in degree and not in kind. Both sorts of entities enter our conception only as cultural posits. The myth of physical objects is epistemologically superior to most in that it has proved more efficacious than other myths as a device for working a manageable structure into the flux of experience.”
Extraordinary!
Did he say the "myth" of physical objects? He is right, isn't he, in this pragmatic epistemic view?: All that "comes to us" is, well, mystical. Wittgenstein wrote (inspiring Quine?): "The world is the totality of facts, not of things," and, "It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists."
Of course, not included in this statement is the possibility that the "that it exists" could be presented in deeper more profound ways, the kind of thing Eckhart was looking for. As an empiricist philosopher, Quine was bound to a scientific consensus, but he knew this simply fell apart when examining, let's call it dasein: "semantical and intentional phenomena cannot be incorporated within the science of nature as I would wish," add to this the entire range of human experience. And again, ALL we ever encounter in the world, is phenomena. Materialism, a derivation and kind of embodiment of science's objective claims, is just, to borrow from Quine's own critical words, epistemically inferior in accounting for all we actually witness!!
Quoting Moliere
I do disagree here: Philosophy does have its grounding, which is firmly there before inquiry. This is the foundational indeterminacy of all things. It appears to us as trivial because we are all like Quine, at the basic level of analysis: full of certainty and faith regarding our societal collective knowledge claims. All inquiry ABOUT these claims leads to indeterminacy. Philosophy's job, I argue, is to bring this to the fore and understand it.
This opens, not avenues into empty space, logical or otherwise; but value revelations. I.e., wha has been traditionally called God, here, divested of its "myths" as Quine put it.
It is an interesting way to think. But the "institutions" are in some relation of connectivity to actualities, even though the very idea of an actuality is itself part of the institutional construct. This is not to think in correspondence terms, not as if our words somehow slink up with "things". It is rather to think as Quine does, that language is a tool. I have thought this right for some time now: the "scientific method" is a forward looking confirmation of a "theory" about the world, and this is at the most basic level, like walking down the street. the foot moves forward, anticipating the resistance of the sidewalk, descends, carries the weight to the next step, and so on. All knowledge claims at the basic level are like this; temporal events of problem solving.
But there is always the impossible "givenness" of the world that is intractable to the understanding. Always keeping in mind that this pragmatic view itself is conceived in this abiding indeterminacy. My position is that philosophy is right to the extent that it serves to disclose foundation. The spirit of empirical science simply DOES NOT possess this capacity for disclosure. It is not even ABOUT the world we experience. At the level of ontology, it is just bad metaphysics.
Language does not prohibit hallucinations either.
Quoting Constance
So if p then q, p, therefore q is based on intuition. I don’t think we are using “intuition” correctly.
Quoting Constance
No, I would say he was bound by the success of make predictions of future stimuli.
Quoting Constance
This is incorrect, we encounter trees, apples, humans. Also,it does not make sense to say ALL we ever encounter in the phenomena, is phenomena.
Quoting Constance
In science, there is a certain inaccuracy with measurements. Is this a concern? Should it impede progress? No, they march forward. They apply the measurement, where there is practical gain, and live with the uncertainty, or strive to improve. Some philosophers could learn from this example.
Hmmm, true. But just because it is not a popular issue doesn't help here. All that we know and accept as true was once not popular.
Quoting Moliere
You know, it really does take the reading. Consider that empirical science was there at the beginning of our acculturation and we were, in those early years, exposed to nothing but, through high school and beyond. Phenomenology is a radical departure from this, beginning with Kant and onward. A monumental task it was for me to finally understand why it is so important: it is about the totality of our being here, and it is able to look closely at the metaphysics, if you will, of our existence. It is not confined in any way. It does not deny science at all, but simply understands that this is not the revelation of our existence at the basic level that philosophy seeks.
Then that'd be between you and God, yeah? And whomever else saw her.
Maybe what you say of her is true. And, if I believe you, in the same vein, I'd have to believe others who say otherwise if I'm going to remain consistent (i.e., reasonable, like the practice of philosophy would have me do). And then it's pretty easy to see how people experience these things differently, upon listening to them. In some way I'd have to accommodate the apparent inconsistency. God is feminine, God is masculine, God has no gender -- since the purpose is guidance and consolation, it depends on the speaker's conviction of God rather than some fact of the matter. In fact, for someone who wants a person like themselves to be in charge of existence, it's better to think of God in that way.
But it's not consistent. And so it seems we've left the standards of reason behind in seeking to speak truth about the mystical, when the mystical is neither true nor false.
Quoting Constance
I think it's the familiar and usual which enables one to speak at all -- though we are free to re-tool language as we see fit (insofar that we are, in fact, free at least). There's not a strict prohibition on creative uses of language. That's the only way that it could be worthwhile -- because as the world changes, so does language, and vice-versa.
Really, the familiar or the exotic are a matter of perspective. If you're born in a Morman household, now, evolution isn't exotic. When I was growing up, however, it was. It was a strange thing that should be shunned because it conflicted with faith. Exoticism or everydayness is just a pattern of difference and habit.
And, for the most part, people are creatures of habit.
I'd hazard that in learning how to live habits are what are passed on. Rituals. That sort of thing.
Things which people hold dear.
But if a philosopher wants to call them true, then there's some work cut out for them in trying to resolve the various inconsistencies -- the Euthyphro, the naturalistic question, the mind-body problem, God's existence (and, thereby, all existential claims). . . it's kind of a huge project. And you wouldn't be the first philosopher to try. And, as it turns out, the philosophers -- even with the best of intentions -- sincerely disagree with one another in their attempts to apply reason to the problem.
And, for the most part, no one actually cares about "Religion within the bounds of reason alone" -- they want something beyond reason. Reason is seen as somehow not supplying a person with what they need. They need something beyond reason, something beyond language, something greater than themself.
So one wonders what the point is if you'll just be left there with your cathedral in the sky that makes sense to you, but that's about it.
For me, I still like to think about the anthropology of religion, and why it is so compelling. The idea that it will just fall away is simply naive, though. I'm pretty sure the traditions and practices will be preferentially selected among the religious over a philosophical product.
Quoting Constance
Heh, that might be a agree-to-disagree. We can mark our departure, at least. If philosophy has a grounding, I do not see it. Maybe it's firm. But I think it just goes back to an individual's convictions and desires (themself a social product of the process of life).
Quoting Constance
Yeh, but here I'm saying -- bury the hatchet. This distinction will be forgotten because it's just a blip in the history of philosophy.
Quoting Constance
This probably goes some way to our disagreement, too, and goes some way to elucidate what I mean by everyday/exotic experience.
I was raised in a very religious household. I figured out science later. The arguments from experience and all that were my bread and butter, and I've seen how people in communities react to and use such arguments "in the wild", outside of the philosophers concerns. My skepticism in such things is based in experience -- hence my doubts about phenomenology leading one to God, but rather, from my story, it leads one to nature.
But hallucinations aren't God. It's a supposition, so one has to play along.
Quoting Richard B
How do you know the conditional works at all? Or the disjunction? It comes and is not analyzable, not reducible, this intuition qua intuition, for any analysis that would be brought to bear on this would beg the question given that it would itself presuppose just that which is being analyzed. Heidegger would give an historical account of this, but this dismisses the ineffable intuition as ineffable. Witt affirmed this as mystical (in the Tractatus).
Quoting Richard B
Which is the litmus for establishing the consensus.
Quoting Richard B
Phenomenology is a second order of analysis. It first takes the encounter of trees, apples, etc., then gives analysis of the presuppositional claims that go to the totality of the claim, and not just an aspect of it. But it no more conflicts with encountering trees and apples than does Newtonian physics. It simply says something ABOUT encountering trees and apples. That they are, at the level of basic questions, phenomena.
Quoting Richard B
Don't make objections where there is no claim to make them about. These phenomenologists do not take issue with scientific progress, I mean, not even by the wildest sane interpretation. It is simply another order of thinking. Either one is interested in this kind of inquiry or not. Regarding phenomenology, it is almost always the case that one has no interest because one has not done the reading. Understandable, as it is difficult and alien to what is familiar, but it makes criticism vacuous.
Well, it seems to me that if we talk about something, then that something is not ineffable....
Hence if we talk about sensations - the aroma of coffee being the case in point - then the sensation is not ineffable. This, going back a half-dozen posts, stands as the argument I used against your Quoting Mww
You say "but we can't put the smell of coffee into words!". Of course not, it's a smell, not a sentence; but this is a point of grammar, pretending to be profound philosophy.
That's 's point, Quoting Moliere
and my reply to , repeating a point made on page one:
Quoting Banno
We can't put the tree or the smell or the bike ride or 's olympic diver into words. they are things in the world, not sentences. If you like, call them ineffable, but don't make the mistake of thinking that we can't therefor talk about them. We can, and we do.
Having been an art student myself and having been involved in the arts for many years, I find myself disagreeing with this. My point was that there is no reliable set of rules that can be laid out like a recipe to achieve the certain result of developing creativity and aesthetic sense. "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make her drink".
Sure, exposing people to artworks and familiarizing them with art history are necessary, but by no means guarantee results, because it all depends on what people see when they look at artworks and study art history, and that is down to personal experience, which is unpredictable and ineffable.
Personally, I find it incredible that some (not you, Moliere) want to deny that there is any aspect of private experience which cannot be made public, and seem to have some weird, politically correct fetish for making everything public,and insisting on their dogmatic, and even worse insuufferably boring, version of correctness in all matters philosophical, which to me is objectionable and raises the horrible spectre of Groupthink and universal ennui. Beyond my opposition to the dogmatic thinking of such ideologues, I have no interest in the trivialized question of effability vs ineffability if it turns on mere definitions.
Quoting Moliere
You seem to have forgotten your Spinoza: "Deus siva natura" : God is nature.
Maybe all we need is a few more pages of discussion in order to finally land on an acceptable (written/linguistic) account of the ineffable (!!) :roll:
Cool.
I see the tough cases as ones of motivation. You can lead a horse to water, but if they don't want to drink they won't.
That's true of teaching any subject, though. Students will be students, in the end.
And yes, I'm not interested in trivial cases, either, where it comes down to a definition. Interesting cases only.
Quoting Janus
I think it's more a matter of trying to figure it out philosophically than anything. The demands of reason, and such. Maybe there's something private, but it might be outside the bounds of philosophy at that point. Also, given that philosophy seeks agreement -- at least I think it does, else why talk at all when you could just live? -- those are the sorts of appeals one makes in looking for agreement, or at least understanding.
Also, while it may be weird, I think it worth noting if something is private by way of a groups decision vs. something being private in some sort of universal sense. At least, from the philosopher's vantage. I can understand that sacred things may be kept out of the hands of philosophers (by choice, because it's inappropriate, or because all the philosophers disagree with one another anyways ;) ) -- it's not that everything is public, but philosophy is public just because of the rubric of reason. (though, of course, philosophers play with that, but generally speaking... naw)
Don't give up the ship, mate !
At 1,000 posts all will be revealed. The difference between effable and ineffable is ineffable, or is it effable? I can't wait !
Well, that's what it says on the label: The Philosophy Forum.
Quoting busycuttingcrap
...just... a few more... pages... and Banno... will agree... with me...
Quoting Moliere
True, if they don't want to drink they won't, and nor will they if they don't know how to drink, and there is no guarantee they can learn to drink either.
I don't think it's the same for all subjects; if learning a subject is a matter of learning a bunch of facts or formulas, then there is a definite process of teaching which will definitely yield results if the student is willing and has the necessary intellectual capacity. Of course, being creative in any subject is another matter and is more akin to the arts and cannot be reliably taught.
Quoting Moliere
Right, but I don't think there is any one philosophically correct answer to any question, so I am not arguing for some standpoint, but rather arguing against any purportedly universally correct position.
Reason just consists in validity; in being consistent with your basic presuppositions, which are themselves groundless. I also don't see philosophy as seeking agreement, but as creatively explicating diversity of perspective for the sake of interest, insight and development of the imagination.
:lol:
An inquiring mind is a springboard to creativity.
I agree with this.
Also, probably shows some of the shortcomings of my proposal of using teaching as a stand-in for the ineffable. It was just an honest answer to the original bike question, i.e., why I would not count riding a bike as ineffable. My answer being, because it's teachable, so it just seems like not a very interesting case for philosophers.
Quoting Banno
Hawt damn, I managed to stay on topic for once! :D
:up: Yes, you do need the interest, but I'm not sure that alone is any guarantee of capacity.
Quoting Banno
I’m trying to recall how Davidson thinks about this, since you relate to his work. I believe he posits perceptual experience , such as the aroma of coffee, as non-conceptually causal. Wouldn’t he argue that not only my attempt to communicate the smell of coffee to someone involves language, but my thinking about the experience in my own head requires a propositional articulation of the causal event? This of course, makes the causal sensation , or whatever it is, not only inaccessible to others but also to me in a certain sense. At the very least, there is a gap between the causal event and my thinking to myself, and to talking to others, about it.
I would just say at this point that this gap seems to be a product of Davidson’s insistence that perception is non-conceptual while language is conceptual This led Mcdowell to comment that Davidson makes language into a “frictionless spinning in a void”.
Thanks….made my day.
The rest of it…..ehhh, anti-climatic.
Seems to me that we can have two descriptions, one listing the chemical and physiological reactions of my brain in the presence of coffee, and another saying that I smell coffee, and that these are two different ways of saying much the same thing. @Isaac?
But Mcdowell would have us think there is a gap between these two.
Is that what you are suggesting, Josh? I'm not seeing it.
(Davidson would have us think that the physiology causes the belief. I'm not in complete agreement with that.)
When Davidson says the physiology is a cause, he seems to mean something other than a direct relation between it and a belief. McDowell is trying to get him to make sensory cause into something more ‘visible’ without quite turning it into a proposition.
Davidson and Mcdowell discuss this very issue here
Let me know how you interpret the discussion. Start at 22:20
My present position is different to Davidson's, since as I said I do not agree that physiology causes intentional states - that the relation is like that between colliding billiard balls - I'm not comfortable using the word "cause" here, for reasons that are discussed in Causality, Determination and such stuff. My view on causation is closer to, say, Midgley, Anscombe and perhaps Wittgenstein.
Of course such a view comes with its own issues, but McDowell 's misplaced criticism of Davidson is not amongst them.
Hence:
Quoting Banno
Which also seems to me to be an alternative way of understanding anomalous monism. Sorting all that out is one of my mooted doctoral topics, so I will not say I have a complete answer. More a rough outline.
I don't see this. Other people see things differently, true. But this doesn't mean there is no objective basis for comparison. My view is that phenomenology gets overlooked due to the overwhelming privileging of empirical science in our society. If one has any philosophical inclinations at all in an anglo american setting, one is simply not introduced to Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Husserl, Heidegger and so on.
Philosophy struggles with acceptance, and the continental tradition seems too fuzzy compared to what is popular, which is in our time the kind of thing that makes cell phones work. What they, philosophy departments, have done is sacrifice content for clarity. So people in the profession are clear headed and logical, e.g., read Rorty's The Social Hope. He was logically gifted and really, could have done anything academic. He chose philosophy because it suited him. Just that. there are lots of puzzles and localized problematic entanglements, but, as I have seen, little of broad thematic works of continental philosophy. It has all moved away from the Husserl and the Heidegger and the rest because in the age of reason, science rules.
And they were sick of over a hundred years of Kantian based thinking. But idealism was never refuted. Complained about, certainly, with good cause, the the idea that the world is phenomena is not refutable'
Quoting Moliere
But again, true and false are propositional terms. Reason has no biases and nothing to say; it is an empty form of judgment. Not reason, content of culture.
Quoting Moliere
I know you think like this, and all I can say is, it isn't true that just anything is okay and that philosophers are just talking about themselves and their cultures. If I ask you one of my favorite questions, How does anything out there, get in here (in one's brain)? I am not asking about what one should wear for a wedding in Kenya. The former is objectively demonstrable, the latter is made up in historical affairs. There is, however, a dividing line, but take Quine, the quintessential analytic philosopher and consider my previous quotes. You can see that his thesis indeterminacy in translation is actually very close to the kinds of things Derrida says! And for this, you would have to read these guys (not that I am so well read myself, remember. I mean, I am an amateur philosopher, like most others here. But I have read the things I talk about).
Frankly, I don't see your point on this at all.
Quoting Moliere
Grrrr. It's not a blip. Phenomenology holds the key to the final resolution of the human religious condition. Buddha was the ultimate phenomenologist. As popular religions' narratives lose standing, the essential religious situation will rise to awareness, and then, basic questions, rid of the burden of myths and history, will be clear.
Heh, heh....you'll see. Or, no you won't, because it will never happen in our life time.Quoting Moliere
But God in the "household" meaning of the term is instantly assailable. Religious households are the worst places to discover phenomenological inquiry. Worse than empirical science classrooms, perhaps. Tell me you were raised in a household where Kierkegaard's arguments with Hegel were discussed regularly, say, then you will have been somewhat prepared.
Are you sure?
The household meaning is the important meaning -- not the philosophers meaning. It's the household meaning that holds the house together, that connects the family to the community, that provides consolation and guidance and a means for talking about and to one another so that the family can live its life in economic productivity and safety.
Or, at least, that'd be one way to put it. And reason feels cold in relation to such luxuries.
But those important ideas of family solidarity are incidental to God as a concept. It could be sort of thing that works like this that holds people together. The idea here is, is it an idea that is defensible when brought before inquiry. This is an important question, as, for one thing, religions have a great deal of influence on how we deal with our general affairs, and foolish beliefs can engender prejudice and impaired judgment in social issues. For another, clear thinking about religion can actually bring about startling insights.
I am in a minority position in holding that there actually IS a Truth with a capital T, so to speak, notwithstanding how this sits with modern thinking.
Yes, but the key thing that some miss, I think, is that there's no one-to-one relationship between the two, such that a small and variable number of 'chemical and physiological reactions of my brain in the presence of coffee' might be described by us as "I smell coffee". There's no one set of neural goings-on which correspond to 'smelling coffee', we estimate, make up, narrate, story-tell... We make a Bayesian inference that what's going on fits with the story that "I smell coffee". Which, of course, is where the unavoidably culturally-embedded nature of 'experiencing coffee' comes in, since we wouldn't have the rules, the criteria for what sorts of mental goings on might fit the narrative 'smelling coffee' without learning the words 'smelling' and 'coffee' (or the non-linguistic equivalent, for the dumb, or the deaf).
If there were a direct one-to-one correspondence between some neural goings on and us wanting to say "I smell coffee", then I think the 'ineffable' crowd might have a better argument (though still flawed). They might say, "well, those neural goings-on is what 'smelling coffee' is and you can't tell us exactly what's going on there". But there is no such correspondence, so they can't. We 'assign' narratives to the various neural happenings according to some rules-of-assignment, and those rules almost exclusively come from our culture.
But such an argument seems lost here, among the phenomenologist's bizarre claims.
I do think, however, that there's a possible (more charitable) interpretation of the 'gap' here which might be something more like a gap between my identifying the neural activity as 'smelling coffee' and my being inclined to describe it thus, verbally. I suppose it's possible that I might choose to do otherwise at that juncture, but I can't see what ontological consequence that might have.
Correct, and the existence of this gap means that there is a lot missing between these two. Within that gap is the ineffable. We know there's more to it than what we say, from either side, but we haven't the words to say it even if we try.
What. I don't see anything missing. There's some neural activity and there's the name we give it. What's missing?
You said there's a gap between the two. What do you think constitutes a "gap"? How is there a gap between the two descriptions, neural activity and I smell coffee, unless there is something missing between these two descriptions? "I smell coffee" is not the name we give to neural activity, "neural activity" is the name we give to neural activity. And "it smells like coffee" is not the name we give to neural activity.
I didn't, you did. I said there's no one-to-one correspondence. several patterns of neural activity could be given the same name, and the criteria for such naming might change over time.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It is. Your not knowing that it is doesn't change that fact. If you name your car "bob" then you are naming (in part) a carburettor even if you don't know what a carburettor is because there's one in your car and you named your car. Your personal awareness of what you do does not exhaust all it is you do.
"Gap" is your word. Look.
Quoting Isaac
But it's not a semantic issue. If two separate descriptions of the very same thing cannot produce a one-to-one relation, then something is missing, whether you call it a gap or whatever.
Quoting Isaac
You utter nonsense. To name a car is not to name an engine, or any component of the engine. That is simply ridiculous. That my name is MU does not imply that my heart or my lungs are named MU, that's a division fallacy.
Yes, but that says there's a gap between my narrative and my my speech, not between my neural activity and my narrative.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
What? You claiming it doesn't make it so. what is missing. I can, at any point, declare some book from my library to be 'my favourite book'. Such a collection might change at whim, it might, be constituted of a different book, but always from the same collection of books. there's nothing missing. the books, my name for them. that's all there is.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No, but that's not the claim I made is it. If someone we to say ask to which person your spleen belonged, the answer would be "MU". That would be the correct category even if you didn't even know you had a spleen. Naming you "MU" creates a category of stuff which is something like {all the stuff inside this layer of skin}, so it includes a whole load of stuff the people naming you didn't even know was there. What you term 'my brain' is made up of elements you're not even aware of by naming the whole. It still contains those elements and they still form part of what you've called 'my brain' even though you're not aware of them.
Maybe a clearer explanation...
Imagine you have a box in front of you but you don't know what's in it. You refer to the contents as 'the contents of that box' If I then throw that box on the fire, you might say "Isaac has just incinerated the contents of that box". At no time need you know what's in the box, but if you later find out it contained a notebook, then you know that all along you were referring to a notebook (that's what was incinerated) even though you didn't know it then. The actual contents of the box is not affected by your knowledge of it. Likewise the causal relationship between your neural activity and the ideas you form about your experience is not affected by your knowledge of it.
That's exactly the point. There's a gap between what "neural activity" means, and what "I smell coffee" means, which indicates that the two do not refer to the same thing. If we assert that the two do refer to the same thing, then our supposed understanding is missing all the reality of the difference between what these two actually refer to, which manifests as the real difference between them. That is to say, all the aspects of reality which constitute the difference between them is not being described, so asserting that they refer to the same thing denies the reality of that difference, but recognizing the gap acknowledges the difference between them.
It seems to be your intention to recognize the difference, by talking about the gap, and the fact that there is no correspondence relation between the two modes of description, yet assert that the thing refer to by each is the same thing. If so, that's simply contradiction.
Quoting Isaac
You said "If you name your car 'bob; then you are naming (in part) a carburettor". That's nonsense, by way of division fallacy, face it.
Quoting Isaac
Sure, the supposed parts make up the whole, but to name the whole is to name the whole, and this in no way names the parts. That's simple, and to try to stretch this into a case where the person naming the whole, is also naming a multitude of completely unknown parts, is a serious epistemological mistake.
To deny the correspondence is to deny the brain as the singular source of all mental activities. Flawed insofar as to merely affirm the correspondence is not to prove it, and the correspondence itself does not lend itself to being proven. We are left with the impossibility of it being otherwise, given the undeniable validity of mental events themselves, but cannot isolate and thereby verify the relation we insist must be the case.
Quoting Isaac
So epiphenomenalism then? Just because a correspondence has yet to be empirically demonstrated does not mean there isn’t one. The “ineffable crowd” merely grants the necessity of the correspondence as a function of natural law accorded to all physical substances, and simultaneously the impossibility of proving the form it must have, as a cause/effect relation, so ending up with the very epitome of the conception the crowd endorses. From which is derivable the principle, for that which is granted as necessary but at the same time impossible to describe in the same terms as the necessity requires, nothing for that can be said.
———-
Quoting Isaac
Exactly right. But does this not leave us with a bigger problem than being unable to demonstrate how physical conditions permit non-physical activities, iff such is in fact the case? You should have already determined what all you just said means, before you can proceed with actually doing it. And for the particular you…in this case because you said it….so it is for all you’s in general, which is precisely the same as any “me” in general. Wherein lay the problem.
Yeah :) -- though, to be honest, there are others here who believe in such things, too. And, I have to note, I've been absolutely loving this conversation. But I think we've probably reached the last stop, and we're a far cry from the opening (not that I mind such things, but I try my best to not go too far down my various rabbit holes that are easy to distract me into)
My criticisms are meant as encouragements for a more developed line of thinking and warnings to ward off disappointment -- hopefully they weren't too discouraging, because you got something to say, and while I sit on the anthropological side of religion (rather than the practitioner's side), I do actually enjoy the project of "religion within the bounds of reason alone" -- so hopefully we'll get to touch on these ideas throughout the threads.
But for now, I think it best to leave things here, and think the thoughts that come.
Is there a one-to-one relationship between a small and variable number of chemical and physiological reactions of my brain and cultural rules of assignment?
Quoting Isaac
Does this sound like a bizarre claim to you?
From phenomenologist Merleau-Ponty:
” My friend Paul and I point out to each other certain details of the landscape; and Paul's finger, which is pointing out the church tower, is not a finger-for-me that I think of as orientated towards a church-tower-for-me, it is Paul's finger which itself shows me the tower that Paul sees, just as, conversely, when I make a movement towards some point in the landscape that I can see, I do not imagine that I am producing in Paul, in virtue of some pre-established harmony, inner visions merely analogous to mine: I believe, on the contrary, that my gestures invade Paul's world and guide his gaze. When I think of Paul, I do not think of a flow of private sensations indirectly related to mine through the medium of interposed signs, but of someone who has a living experience of the same world as mine, as well as the same history, and with whom I am in communication through that world and that history.”(Phenomenology of Perception, p.471)
“ In the experience of dialogue, there is constituted between the other person and myself a common ground; my thought and his are inter-woven into a single fabric, my words and those of my interlocutor are called forth by the state of the discussion, and they are inserted into a shared operation of which neither of us is the creator. We have here a dual being, where the other is for me no longer a mere bit of behavior in my transcendental field, nor I in his; we are collaborators for each other in consummate reciprocity.
Our perspectives merge into each other, and we co-exist through a common world. In the present dialogue, I am freed from myself, for the other person's thoughts are certainly his; they are not of my making, though I do grasp them the moment they come into being, or even anticipate them. And indeed, the objection which my interlocutor raises to what I say draws from me thoughts which I had no idea I possessed, so that at the same time that I lend him thoughts, he reciprocates by making me think too. It is only retrospectively, when I have withdrawn from the dialogue and am recalling it that I am able to reintegrate it into my life and make of it an episode in my private history”. (Phenomenology of Perception, p.413))
K:blush:
Worth pointing out, although as you can see those who don't grasp the notion of family resemblance or who adhere to some form of essentialism will have trouble following that discussion. Add to that the non-representational nature of neural networks and you have Buckle's chance of achieving some sort of understanding.
Thanks for your comments.
Is this your response to my questions? I can possibly overlook all that you said about knowledge on page 1, including the set of instructions specified to whatever detail we desire, and accept your explanation that you did not intend for that example to concern knowledge. However, that only covers one of my questions. You did not answer this one:
Quoting Luke
In case it was unclear, the "both positions" I was referring to were your claim that we do talk about sensations, but also (what Wittgenstein seems to imply with his beetle) that sensations do not belong to the language game at all. How can it be that we both talk about sensations but that they do not belong to the language game at all? I will proceed to attempt to sketch a case for the latter, as I see it in PI.
At 244, W gives us a possible explanation of how a child learns sensations words, such as "pain". His story is that this occurs by association with the child's natural expressions of pain. For example, an adult sees the child crying and asks them if they are "in pain". The child gradually learns to associate the meaning of the word "pain" with their own external behaviour (and presumably, also, with their own internal sensation).
W proceeds with the private language argument against the possibility of having a private language that can only be used with respect to an individual's private sensations.
At 304 (and elsewhere), W distinguishes between pain and pain-behaviour. W notes that we can have pain-behaviour either with or without pain.
W does not deny that we have private sensations or that we can concentrate our attention on them (e.g. see 258, 305, 306), only that our public language does not work by describing them.
At 272 W does not deny the possibility of inverted spectra, or that we might each have a different "visual impression" of the colour red.
W is an expressivist regarding sensations, i.e. we express pain; we don't describe it. At 244-245 "the verbal expression of pain replaces crying, it does not describe it."
At 307: "“Aren’t you nevertheless a behaviourist in disguise? Aren’t you nevertheless basically saying that everything except human behaviour is a fiction?” — If I speak of a fiction, then it is of a grammatical fiction."
This all demonstrates that our sensation words/language do not describe something internal, but instead refer to external behaviours. I cannot describe my own personal "visual impression" of red because that's not how language works. Like Wittgenstein's beetle-in-the-box, my personal visual impression of red "doesnt belong to the language game at all" (293). Like inverted spectra "it would be quite possible for everyone to have something different in his box" (293). My personal visual impression of red "drops out of consideration as irrelevant" (293). As you yourself note, Banno, a blind person can learn to use colour terms.
This is why private sensations are not a Something but not a Nothing either. Since language only works with respect to public external behaviours - expressions of pain - and does not describe private internal experiences, then an individual's private internal experiences are ineffable.
FWIW, "the deaf" also use language. And I wouldn't say "the dumb" in public.
This is confusing to me, maybe in part because the sensation of smelling coffee is not distinguished from the verbal utterance "I smell coffee".
There are really three things:
1/ Neural activity in response to smelling coffee
2. The subjective sense of that neural activity: (smell-of-coffee)
3. The verbalization "I smell coffee"
* No one is claiming a one-to-one relationship between 1 and 3.
* No one is claiming even claiming that between 1 and 2: for all we know many distinct neural activities correspond with 2.
* No one is claiming that the relationship between 2 and 3 is not culturally bound
* No one is claiming that 1 is not expressible with language, at least in principle.
What is claimed is that the contents of 2 are not expressible with language. We can express we are having the sensation with "I smell coffee", but we cannot express what it is like.There is a state of affairs where A's (smell-of-coffee) is the same as B's. There is a state of affairs where A's (smell-of-coffee) is same as B's (smell-of-feces), and vice versa. There exists no verbal exchange between A and B which can tell them which state of affairs holds. because 2 is inexpressible. The can only express the culturally bound mapping from 2 to 3: "I smell coffee".
That's your claim. It's not what I've said.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It's not missing. The difference is that one's a name and the other is aQuoting Mww
collection of neurons firing.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You've misunderstood reference. 'The apple' refers to the apple. They're two different things (one an expression, the other a fruit). They don't both 'refer' to different things. 'The apple' refers. The apple is just an apple.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Of course it does. Your spleen is in the group {parts of MU}. That group was christened by naming something MU which was not a simple. You christened that group by naming the entity MU even though you do not know it's actual constituents. The point of all this being that you don't need to know what makes up the sensation 'smelling coffee' in order to name it.
Quoting Mww
Indeed, but denying a one-to-one correspondence is not, I think, the same as denying a correspondence of any sort.
What I'm saying is that we group some loose collection of neural activity as 'smelling coffee' so whenever any activity which falls into that group occurs we're inclined to think that we're smelling coffee.
It's like saying "any collection including 2, 3 and, 5 shall be 'Set A'. It won't matter if we get {3,4,5,2} or {2,3,4,5} they'll both be considered Set A because they both meet the criteria. A correspondence, but not one-to-one.
Quoting Mww
But it has been empirically shown that there probably isn't one (demonstrated being too strong a word). We have quite a lot of empirical evidence showing that more than one set of neural goings on elicits the exact same reported experience.
I think maybe my poor writing is creating some confusion here. In arguing that there's no one-t-one correspondence, I'm not arguing there's no correspondence at all, but rather as suggests, a 'family resemblance'.
Quoting Mww
Eh? Sorry, you might have to unpick that a little. Are you pointing to the problem of self-referential interpretation?
Quoting Joshs
I assume so (the alternative being that such cultural rules are random, which seems unlikely given their coherence). Like with perception in general, the models we come up with are constrained by the external states they're trying to model because we want them to act in some way upon those external states so not just any model will do.
Quoting Joshs
To be honest, yes. I can't make any sense of it at all, but that may just be my unfamiliarity with the text. The 'bizarre claim' I was actually referring to was the one implied by an 'investigation' into they way things seem to us without (bracketing out) the question of reality (external states). I just don't believe one approaches the question of how some thing seems to one with a blank slate. I think given almost any question at all one will have preconceptions about it.
Quoting Banno
So it seems ^.
Quoting hypericin
Yes. I understand the nature of the claim. I'm disputing it. I'm claiming that the evidence we have thus far points to such a lack of neural criteria for the collection of the various activities at 1 into the grouping of 2 that we must have learned those groups. There's no other biological mechanism or cause for us to group such a range of neural activity into the category 'smelling coffee' other than by having learned culturally to do so.
We've no apparent biological reason to group the various neural goings on in the way we do. No reason to have the collection 'smelling coffee' at all, other than for communication. All other biological responses do not seem to require them to be grouped thus.
In addition to communication, what’s common to many instances of the collection ‘smelling coffee’ is the smelling of coffee.
That argument is circular. If you decide that some collection of neural activity is called 'smelling coffee' then obviously 'smelling coffee' is going to then be common to all, you defined it that way.
If I say "all these items in front of me are going to be called 'bob'" it's not a further discovery that they share to say "hey, they're all called 'bob'". Of course they are, I just declared it so.
Yeah, maybe me too. I didn’t mean, and I didn’t take you to mean either, by one-to-one correspondence that for each sensation there is only one network by which the brain tells us about it. Makes sense, though, that sommeliers may have the ability to reduce or localize correspondences closer to one-to-one, if it is true they can distinguish all those minor sensations contained in the major. I dunno….I can’t do it myself.
On the other hand, it seems like there must be some method by which a sip of this liquid gives the experience with this name, and no other, which is a form of one-to-one correspondence. And while it may indeed be a language condition that says this sensation is of coffee and not gasoline, it is hard for me to understand why the brain needs coffee or gasoline to inform that one sensation is not like the other.
————-
Quoting Isaac
Agreed. No biological reason, yet we do it anyway. So we have physics that doesn’t answer, we have metaphysics that does answer but doesn’t satisfy.
What an odd bunch of creatures we are, huh?
Husserl’s epoche, otherwise known as the phenomenological reduction or ‘bracketing’ of presuppositions, gets a lot of flack. But the general
principe here is one that is widely applied both in philosophy and in the sciences. Notions of folk psychology, naive perception, the relation between the personal and the sub-personal or your distinction between experience and mental events all involve a ‘bracketing’ of appearance and pre-supposition i. favor of a more fundamental truth. As a realist, you believe in the independent existence of a world outside of our interaction with it. For you this is an indubitable , or founding presupposition, and it is what orients the bracketing by science of naive appearance and preconception.
For Husserl the existence of the world as an independent fact is not a founding presupposition but a preconception which can be bracketed. When one does this one has the opportunity to reveal a more fundamental grounding for science and philosophy in the irreducible interaction between subjective and objective poles of experience. Thus, no independent subject and no independent world.
Just the structural a priori that makes preconception possible.
You keep referring to this trove of evidence without citing it. Your account raises far more questions than it answers.
* How do you account for novel sensations? If you smell something new, it smells like something. How can this be, if we haven't learned how to group it?
* We have immense neural machinery to process sensory data. Did all this come after language use? Then why do other animals have it too?
* Every animal recoils from pain, and manifestly finds it unpleasant. Only humans have to be taught this?
* Animals and babies are deemed to be unaware? In spite of having the behaviors we correlate with awareness?
* How would we learn anything, starting from a point of undifferentiated neural activity? Both auditory words and what they are pointing to would be mere neural noise.
It is far more reasonable to believe that sensations are abstractions of specific neural activities, and that this abstraction is built in.
Quoting Isaac
My dog strongly disagrees. Scents carry information on where food is, what is safe to eat and what is not. The purpose of being aware of your environment is not to just communicate, it is to be able to act on it, in a manner more sophisticated than reflexive instinct.
Moreover, even if your account were accurate, which I don't agree with at all, there is still something sensations are like, for us adults. Socially constructed, or no. You can argue that it is an illusion, that is, it is not what it seems, but not that it doesn't exist. I argue that they exist with the same strength of "I think therefore I am". For this something to be communicable, you need to demonstrate how to differentiate between cases where smells are swapped, colors are inverted, etc, and where they are not.
I never said it was some collection of neural activity.. I can only imagine that the findings that there isn’t a one-to-one correspondence comes from testing subjects’ neural activity while they are smelling coffee (or while they are “in the presence of coffee” as you originally put it). Therefore, what is in common to them all is that they are smelling coffee. They all need to be smelling coffee in order to find that there is no common neural activity while doing so, I take it.
And yet...
The contention that the aroma of coffee cannot be described in words is blatantly wrong.
Coffee is a complex and varied aroma, and can have overtones of other aromas depending on the variety. At the center of the wheel should be the smell of coffee itself. Show me someone who can look at that and know what coffee smells like, without having smelled it before.
If the scent of coffee is describable why is this impossible:
Quoting hypericin
What's that, then? What exactly is "the smell of coffee itself"? @Isaac - here's the essentialism mentioned earlier - as if there were one essential aroma of coffee. The transcendental argument implicit in hypericin's view seems to be that we use the word coffee, therefore there must be some one thing to which the word "coffee" refers - the essential smell of coffee. There has to be a something in the middle of the wheel.
But there isn't.
Instead, the aroma of coffee is a family resemblance, a way in which we talk about a group of things that have nothing specifically in common.
Notice the grammatical resemblance between "the smell of coffee itself" and the nonsense phrase "the thing-in-itself"? Here's that mad view that we can never see things as they are in themselves, but only as they appear to us. Stove's Gem, again.
And again, here's the reason this thread can go on indefinitely. Each time an ineffable is mooted, some fool thereby tries to tell us what it is. And as I said in the OP,
Quoting Banno
Enough rope.
The use of "the smell of coffee" is no different than the use of the smell of any of the other overtones in your wheel. There are phenolic compounds common to roasted coffee we identify as coffee smelling. Coffee just confuses the issue because it is very complex. What about "the smell of ammonia?"
Quoting Banno
Nothing specifically in common? Not much of a "family resemblance".
Quoting Banno
Who's claiming we can see things as they are in themselves. Talk about nonsense phrase.
Instead of going off about the red herring stoves gem some more why don't you answer: Quoting hypericin
@Isaac, you might be interested in my comments here and here, which address why I think this characterisation of science misguided.
Quoting Joshs
Realism is just supposing that statements are either true or false, that this is the correct grammar to adopt in taking about how things are, that the appropriate logic is bivalent. Talk of "the independent existence of a world outside of our interaction with it" is irrelevant, misleading philosophical twaddle.
If that's good enough for you why bother with a thread in the first place? "Yggzavil is effable. Hey, I mentioned it, after all. "
You can mention anything. The point is that you can't describe anything.
Because I've not been able to make sense of that supposed question.
Quoting hypericin
...and yet we do describe things. Such as the joy of offering enough rope.
That sentence seem to imply that you have not quite understood what a family resemblance is.
Quoting SEP
Notice the rejection of forms that goes along with this anti-essentialism. The concepts we use are constructed by us for our purposes, not found floating in some ideal void. They need have no centre.
What you said is that there is a lack of one-to-one correspondence, and then you described this as a gap. I can remove "gap" if you want, and say that the lack of corresponds presents a "difference". This implies that the two are not the same.
Quoting Isaac
So, the difference implies that the named thing is not the same thing as the described thing.
Quoting Isaac
You have this wrong. It is not me misunderstanding, I fully understand, that you are producing a bad misrepresentation. This is not analogous to "apple" and "fruit", where "fruit" refers to the type of thing which the apple is. "Neurons firing" refers to a completely different type of thing than the named thing, "smell", and cannot be said to be a type of smell.
If your proposal is that the named thing is "neurons firing", and a special type of neurons firing constitutes a smell, then we might have something to work on. But the proposal that "smell" is the named thing, rather than the descriptive term, and "neurons firing" is the descriptive phrase rather than a named thing, is simply nonsensical, and cannot take us anywhere.
Quoting Isaac
You've changed the name from "MU" to "parts of MU". Of course the name "parts of MU" name the parts, that is explicit. But the name "MU" does not name any of the parts, which was your claim that it names the parts.
Quoting Isaac
No Isaac, that's still nonsensical, logic does not work that way. Naming a thing such as "MU" does not imply that you've "christened" a group named "the parts of MU". That's a basic category mistake. You ought to distinguish between naming an individual thing, and naming a group, collection, set, or type, of thing. If the thing named is supposed to be a group, then this must be made explicit in the naming, as you do with "the parts of...". But if you just name a thing "MU", you are naming one individual, not a collection of things.
Quoting Isaac
Isaac, in order to say that a specific collection of neural activity corresponds with smelling coffee, this must be a one-to-one correspondence. Otherwise that activity could sometimes signify something else, or smelling coffee could occur without any of that neural activity. It makes no sense at all to say that this neural activity corresponds with smelling coffee, but it's not a one-to-one correspondence. If it sometimes corresponds, and sometimes does not, then we cannot make the general conclusion that this neural activity corresponds with smelling coffee.
Quoting Banno
Yeah, judging by your wheel of aroma, it can be described in pretty much whatever words anyone wants to use. And something that can be described in whatever words anyone wants, is pretty much the same thing as something that can't be described with words at all.
On your argument, the copy of Joyce's Ulysses sitting next to me on the bookcase is two different things, a novel and a block of cellulose.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Of course it can be described with any word one wants to use, and provided this functions as part of the task at hand, that's fine. That's how words work.
Brilliant, we are capable of using words arbitrarily; it's a revelation!
Why do think that? Have the same drinks not given you different experiences at different times? Did wine taste the same to you at five as it does at 50? Does water give you the same experience when thirsty as it does when added in excess to your whisky?
Quoting Joshs
This is the issue. One cannot 'reveal' something one did not previously think without the concept of one's thoughts having previously been wrong on some matter. If it is possible to be wrong on some matter, there must exist some external state against which one is comparing one's thought to determine it's wrong.
It's not about 'external worlds', it's about external states - information, not matter. It's merely a description of a system. Any defined system must have internal states and states external to it (otherwise it's not defined as we can say nothing about it - it's just 'everything'). Any complex networked system must also have boundary states (otherwise it would either be a single node or linearly connected). This means that internal states have to infer the condition of external states from the condition of boundary states. We've just described a system. There's no need for any commitment to realism, all this could be taking place in a computer or a field of pure information. It's just derived necessarily from the description of a system.
Phenomenology appears to me to be saying that the internal states can infer the condition of other internal states. They could, but there'd be no reason to change any first inference. There's no 'revelation' no 'investigation'. You might one day feel one way, another day, feel another. There's no reason to prefer one over another. One is not 'investigating' anything, one is merely changing one's mind arbitrarily.
Quoting hypericin
Just restating the claim doesn't make it true. This is the central claim that I'm denying. Smells don't 'smell like something'. There's no other thing. There's the smell, there's your response to it. Nothing else in between - no 'experience of coffee' in addition to the coffee and your response to it. We've looked really quite hard and failed to find any such thing. I don't know what more evidence you want.
Quoting hypericin
No. Why would it?
Quoting hypericin
No. Firstly, we don't recoil from pain. There's zero evidence we recoil from pain and in fact, I can pretty much trace the signal from nociceptor to muscle and prove to you that we don't recoil from pain. We recoil from stimulated nociceptors. We decide afterwards that what just happened was 'pain'
In fact we don't even need a cortex at all to recoil from nociceptors, we can recoil from nociceptors and have not the slightest idea that anything has just happened at all. You're better off trying to make 'essence of coffee' a thing than you are 'essence of pain'. 'Pain' is definitely not a thing. There's no doubt about this at all. People's reports of being in 'pain' involve interactions between at least eight different major brain regions, three of which aren't even cortical, and there's no consistent pattern of involvement in any combination of these regions, fro example the anterior insula can even create 'pain' in the absence of any nociceptive stimuli, the valence of pain has even been experimentally shown to be modulated by areas as obscure as the face-recognition areas of the fusiform face area via the amygdala. There's absolutely no one-to-one correspondence between the 'experience of pain' and any neural goings on. We infer that we're 'in pain' from a whole ton of unrelated interocepted signals, and most of that inference is culturally modulated.
Quoting hypericin
There is a difference between being 'aware' and being 'aware of..'
Quoting hypericin
It's nothing to do with 'reasonable', it's to do with ignorance. It was 'reasonable' to believe the sun went round the earth... until we found out it didn't.
Quoting hypericin
And what need is there for any groupings in this description of behaviour?
Quoting Luke
Nope. Thinking of coffee does it too. Smelling something you think is going to be coffee but isn't, expecting coffee...
Quoting Banno
By coincidence, I've just replied to @Joshs in almost exactly those terms... I put it in terms of information systems theory - no need even for a material world to exist, it would be the case inside a computer too. Any defined system has to have states which are external to it and to resist entropic decay, it has to infer those states to act in a distribution gradient against them. Internal states merely investigating other internal states makes no sense at all.
It seems to me little more than laziness. Science gets complicated so people recoil and think they can 'investigate' stuff they're less likely to be wrong about. But I'm increasingly uncharitable at my age...
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Nope. Read again.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Indeed. It does exactly that.
Does what too?
You're not quite right there Banno, because "novel" and "block of cellulose" are both descriptive expressions, and neither names a particular thing like "the copy of Joyce's Ulysses sitting next to me on the bookcase" does. The latter is the name you have given to the item, indicated by the definite article "the". The other two are descriptive terms used to describe the item, that is evident from your use of the indefinite article "a" rather than the definite article "the".
Therefore in your usage neither "a novel" nor "a block of cellulose" name a thing, as indicated by the indefinite article. So your statement that these are "two different things" is fundamentally ungrammatical, and simply employed as a trick of sophistry for the sake of a failing argument. Those are just two different descriptive expressions which could be used to describe one and the same thing, the named article. Neither "a novel" nor "a block of cellulose" name a thing, and you practise deception by suggesting that "two different things" are named here.
Quoting Banno
The point though, is that anything which can be described with any word that one wants, (i.e. there is no degree of correctness or wrongness to the description, and absolute arbitrariness is allowed for), will actually not be described at all, when that arbitrarily chosen word is applied. This is because the consequence of designating the thing as describable by any word, is to designate that there is no correct description. And this designation is not itself a description, it is a statement about the thing which does not describe it. In "talking about" a thing, we can go beyond description to say something about the thing which is not descriptive. That allows us to say, about the thing, that it cannot be described, without self-contradiction.
This is part of the reason why "the ineffable" is so difficult, and appears as sort of a paradox. "Description" is a limited expression, it implies a certain type, or way of saying something about something. "Description" is bounded to allow that we can say more about a thing than the concept of "description" allows. This implies that "description" is a part of a larger category "talking about".
Then we have "naming" of the thing, which is categorically different from describing it because it is meant to identify without saying anything about the thing. That's why naming can be absolutely arbitrary, it does not necessarily say anything about the article. So as a basic philosophical principle, "naming" does not say anything "about" the the thing, it is categorically distinct from "talking about". We can apply a name without saying anything about the named thing.
However, we can twist and distort the concept of "naming" to fit it into the category of "talking about". We can say that naming is to say something about the thing, to say that it is the thing which bears this name. (The problem though, and keep this in mind, is that this is deception, because simply naming a thing does not actually show which thing bears that name.) Now we have created a form of "talking about" a thing which is distinct from describing, yet in the same category (through the means of that deception). The categorical separation between "talking about" and "naming" has been annihilated.
So we use "the ineffable" to name (notice the definite article) the thing which we cannot talk about. And if we maintain the categorical separation between "naming" and "talking about", there is no problem with the concept of a named thing which cannot be talked about. But when we make "naming" a form of "talking about", then even to name a thing as the ineffable is contradictory, creating the appearance of some sort of paradox. But this is really just the result of that faulty procedure which describes "naming" as a type of "talking about".
Quoting Isaac
So, before you explicitly said there is no one-to-one correspondence, now you explicitly say there is one-to-one correspondence? What are you really saying?
How could it, if I call it the same drink? And conversely, if I have different experiences, how could I say such experiences are of the same drink?
————
Quoting Isaac
No, but there is a significant categorical distinction herein. These are aesthetic judgements on an object already perceived, not the sensation itself given from objects themselves as they are perceived. They belong to me as a perceiving subject, not to the perceived object. How the taste of wine manifests in me as a sensation is not the same as the sensation that wine manifests from its being a thing. It’s the difference between the kinds of taste there may be, which I decide, rather than the taste there is, which the kind of wine decides.
Of course, the kind of taste I decide I can talk about; the taste the kind of wine decides, I cannot. By the same token, then, the sensation of the satisfaction water gives belongs to me, but that sensation by which water satisfies, belongs to it. Pretty easy to see why coffee lacks the sensation of curing my thirst, but satisfies the same basic criteria as the experience of water.
Phenomenology begins by bracketing notions like ‘state’ and patterns of ‘information’, which are not as much of an improvement over the concept of matter as many think. The problem is that they put identity before difference and try to derive differences from the relations is among identities. The assumption of identity is the idea that there exist states whose identity persists over time (even if only temporarily).
“no need even for a material world to exist, it would be the case inside a computer too.” No need for a material world in order to have a real world. Realism depends not of physicalism or materialism, but on this assumption of at least temporarily persisting self -identity. The real is that which endures as itself. Thus there are all kinds of real objects, including patterns of informationn.
Phenomenology shows how the ‘illusion’ of self-identity is constituted out of the flow of appearances of changing sense, how systems, states, real pattens of ‘information’ and correlations are constituted, founding our mathematics, formal logics and sciences.
Supposing that statements are either true or false , a logic of bivalence, leads us down the rabbit hole of the meaning or role of ‘truth’ and ‘falsity’, which has been investigated in recent threads here. Davidson and Putnam thought that truth was a concept worth keeping, despite Putnam’s conceptual relativism . Not coincidentallly, both of them rejected value-relativism. I don’t think you’ll find among those philosophers ( Rorty, Rouse, Heidegger, etc) who are both conceptual and ethical relativists, any enthusiasm for the usefulness of propositional truth.
So I think one can justifiably argue that a belief in a world that is independent of our concepts or ethical values is a a necessary pre-condition for supporting the usefulness of bivalent logic.
Triggers one of a number of neural networks associated with reports of 'smelling coffee'.
I'm baffled as to why this is causing such confusion.
Several different neural events result in us reporting we experience 'smelling coffee'
There's no single thing connecting all the different events other than that they all happen to result (sometimes) in reports of 'smelling coffee'
Since there's no biological link, and no external world link, the only conclusion we can reach is that it's our own post hoc construction to conceptualise any given neural event as 'smelling coffee'.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Read more carefully. I can't comment of stuff I haven't said.
Quoting Mww
I meant the same as in 'wine', or 'beer', or (on topic) 'coffee'. To claim there's such an entity as 'the smell of coffee' requires that coffee produce a consistent experience, but it doesn't seem to.
Quoting Mww
Where is that sensation? What are we using as evidence (rational or empirical) that such a thing exists? It's certainly not identifiable in the brain. I don't find it through interception. I don't even find myself to have an intuition that it exists. It doesn't seem to need to exist rationally. Is it just a gut feeling?
Quoting Joshs
How can phenomenology 'show' anything? The term denotes the revealing of what's 'really' there, but if there's not right or wrong it cannot show. It can only invent, same as everything else. No better, no worse.
You can't have it both ways. You can't claim there's no 'way things are' and then say "the way things are is that there's no way things are".
If your claim is that phenomenology correctly shows us how things are, then there must be some way things actually are, some true propositions opposing false ones.
Go back to the original point:
Quoting Banno
We can have two different descriptions of the very same thing. We can have two names for the very same thing. We can have a description and a name that both refer to one thing.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You failed to note "provided this functions as part of the task at hand". Look to the use. The meaning of a sentence is found in its use.
Why not? We use the word "red" for sunsets and sports cars and blood, but these things are not the same colour. Perhaps all they have in common is that we sometimes use the word "red" to describe them. Different blends of coffee taste different; different baristas will produce different tasting brews from the very same beans and machine.
Here again is the fallacious essentialism, the transcendental argument:
If one looks instead of theorising one will see that we use the same word for things that have nothing in common. The second assumption fo the transcendental argument is false.
There are so many wonderful ways in which humans beings can talk about what matters to us , what is relevant and how it is relevant. For instance , harmonious, integral, intimate, consistent, similar, compatible, intelligible. Of all of these, ‘true and false’ are
particularly narrow and impoverished.
“It is no more than a moral prejudice that the truth is worth more than appearance; in fact, it is the world's most poorly proven assumption. Let us admit this much: that life could not exist except on the basis of perspectival valuations and appearances; and if, with the virtuous enthusiasm and inanity of many philosophers, someone wanted to completely abolish the “world of appearances,” – well, assuming you could do that, – at least there would not be any of your “truth” left either! Actually, why do we even assume that “true” and “false” are intrinsically opposed? Isn't it enough to assume that there are levels of appearance and, as it were, lighter and darker shades and tones of appearance – different valeurs, to use the language of painters? Why shouldn't the world that is relevant to us – be a fiction? And if someone asks: “But doesn't fiction belong with an author?” – couldn't we shoot back: “Why? Doesn't this ‘belonging' belong, perhaps, to fiction as well? Aren't we allowed to be a bit ironic with the subject, as we are with the predicate and object? Shouldn't philosophers rise above the belief in grammar? With all due respect to governesses, isn't it about time philosophy renounced governess-beliefs?” – The world with which we are concerned is false, i.e., is not fact but fable and approximation on the basis of a meager sum of observations; it is "in flux," as something in a state of becoming, as a falsehood always changing but never getting near the truth: for--there is no "truth" ('Nietzsche, Will to Power.)
If that is so, then so much the worse for these misguided folk.
Quoting Joshs
Well, then present the argument. What is it?
Why think when you can quote...
Relate this back to the ineffable, if you can - are you claiming that one needs a non-classical logic in order to understand the ineffable? If not, then what?
Quoting Banno
Here’s the argument from Putnam’s perspective:
“Without the cognitive values of coherence, simplicity, and instrumental efficacy we have no world and no facts, not even facts about what is so relative to what. And these cognitive values, I claim, are simply a part of our holistic conception of human flourishing. Bereft of the old realist idea of truth as "correspondence" and of the positivist idea of justification as fixed by public "criteria," we are left with the necessity of seeing our search for better conceptions of rationality as an intentional activity which, like every activity that rises above the mere following of inclination or obsession, is guided by our idea of the good.
If coherence and simplicity are values, and if we cannot deny without falling into total self-refuting subjectivism that they are objective (notwithstanding their "softness," the lack of well-defined "criteria," and so forth), then the classic argument against the objectivity of ethical values is totally undercut.”
Bivalent logic is a type of two-valued logic, which means that it only allows for two possible truth values: true or false. In other words, something is either true or it is false, and there is no in-between or middle ground. In this sense, bivalent logic does not necessarily require that the world be independent of our concepts. Instead, it simply requires that there be a clear distinction between true and false statements, regardless of how those statements relate to the world or our understanding of it.
Quoting Banno.
Let me compare bivalent logic to what I will call a bipolar sense. A bipolar sense differentiates itself from its contextual background ( the contrast pole) via a unique dimension of similarity and difference. A bipolar sense isn’t just something that happens to be the case. It is something that happens to be the case in a particular way. No bipolar sense ever duplicates its exact content. To apply bivalent logic to a bipolar sense is to always come up short. That is, whenever we ask whether a particular bipolar sense is the case , the answer will be no, simply because the exact sense doesn’t repeat itself.
Bivalent truth and falsity are irrelevant to bipolar senses because the former presupposes the persistent identity of that meaning one is inquiring about.
In other words, bivalent logic must have context-independence. It must apply to truth-apt concepts that are independent of our actual situational sense of what is the case.
What? Are you reaching for some sort of dialectic?
Quoting Joshs
I don't know how to make sense of those sentences. Bivalent logic applies to what is the case, and to what isn't, and it apples to truth-apt sentences. I don't know what a "truth-apt concept" is, and hypothesis that a concept that is neither true nor false might not be that useful...
ALl this to say, I;ve no clear idea of what your argument here might be.
What could similarities consist in if not similarity of form? Similarities of form are thus essential, if not, obviously, perfect. That is there are no perfect similarities in this world, because a perfect similarity is a sameness, and one thing cannot be the same as another except in a generic, "fuzzy" sense.
Quoting Janus
The point is that there need be no similarity for someone to be counted as part of a family.
No idea what you are talking about.
Quoting Banno
"Family resemblances"—remember? There is no resemblance without similarity.
Many of your posts do not show in the mentions alerts. Hence they get missed.
Quoting Janus
Hence the rope example. No single thread runs through the whole rope, and yet we treat it as one thing.
Or Austin's example of "grey".
I am trying to understand the test that brought about the results that there isn't a one-to-one correspondence between smelling coffee and some common neural activity among subjects. I presume that you would get the subjects to smell coffee while monitoring their neural activity, and then find that there is no common neural activity associated with smelling coffee. The only way to find this is to have them all smell coffee.
Rather than confirm this, you said "Thinking of coffee does it too. Smelling something you think is going to be coffee but isn't, expecting coffee..." When I asked what it does too, you said that it "Triggers one of a number of neural networks associated with reports of 'smelling coffee'".
That's beside the point.
Thinking about coffee and expecting coffee may also have no one-to-one correspondence with neural activity, but in order to find that there is no one-to-one correspondence between neural activity and smelling coffee, the test subjects needed to have smelled coffee. I'm not disagreeing that there isn't a one-to-one correspondence, only that in order to conclude that there isn't, then the test subjects needed to have smelled coffee.
All you've done is introduce the fact that people also say "I smell coffee" even if they are only thinking about or expecting coffee, which is to say: even when they aren't smelling coffee. Excluding those who are only thinking about or expecting coffee, the common factor among those who report "I smell coffee" is that they smell coffee.