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... — Luke

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.

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. — Luke

I agree. I'm on the same page here.

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. — 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:

"Statements, all unto themselves" is a strawman that you have attributed to those opposing your view. — Luke

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. — 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 --

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. — 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.

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. — 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).

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? — Luke

It might be. I hope I've gone some way to addressing these questions in the above.

Here attempting to lay out more against the case that know-how is ineffable (at least in some absolute sense, though I've granted the relative sense when someone hasn't learned something yet, but could)

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.

I'd say bad things are done by ideologues, and there are plenty of those on both sides. — Janus

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.

Wow. That sounds interesting, but perhaps this is not the thread for such a provocative statement. — Tom Storm

Heh, yes. I have a habit of getting off topic. I try my best :D

An interesting and nuanced response. I tend to find myself thinking there is no such thing as phenomenology - there are phenomenologies - which would be congruent with the fecund approach it takes to personal experience. — Tom Storm

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.

Do you draw a distinction between physicalism or naturalism and materialism? — 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.

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)?

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.

But then, its not as if it's not a logical procedure. What is free of this? — Constance

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.

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. — 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.

I don't think this puts it right because I don't know what the "non phenomenological" is. — 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 ;) )

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. — 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?

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. — Hanover

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.

Morman seminary, at least. That's my background. And I lucked out and got the classes that focused on the bible, rather than the fictional accounts of Joseph Smith.

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.

Neither @Banno or me are saying those are the same. If I'm reading @Banno correctly at least.

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.

an I-thou interplay of guesses and corrections evolving into a patterned rhythm. — Joshs

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?

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus+32&version=KJ21

5 And when Moses saw that the people were naked (for Aaron had made them naked unto their shame among their enemies),

26 then Moses stood in the gate of the camp and said, “Who is on the Lord’S side? Let him come unto me.” And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together unto him.

27 And he said unto them, “Thus saith the Lord God of Israel: ‘Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbor.’”

All those years of seminary paying off... :D

Yeh, I'm still digging for the quotes I know are there...

but it makes me sad.

It was the fucking iron age — frank

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.

Man, I really miss https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/11715

I got distracted at the time, but it seems pretty close to all the ponderings we have going on here.

I actually had to dig through the thread to find your responses, too. I'm not sure why that's the case, but I can report similar . . . dare I say . . . experiences? :D

Phenomenology sets itself an impossible task. — Banno

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.

Like much of Wittgenstein, it's ineffable, understandable only through midrash. — Hanover

To be fair, this goes for most of the canonical philosophers too. I've joked that Marx scholarship is basically materialist Talmudic scholarship.

I'm going to midrash traffic signs. For real. — frank

Heidegger beat you to it ;).

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. — 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?

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. — unenlightened

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.

I don't know a blind person to ask. In fact this suggests they do indeed have visual experiences. — hypericin

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?

But my point is, how would you determine what they experience by asking them? — 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.

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 — Luke

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.

Oh, I'm still trying to, sir.

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. — Constance

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)

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). — 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).

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. — 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.

. 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. — Constance

:D

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. — 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?

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. — 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:

Why is value and ethics grounded in metaphysics? That is a hard question. — Constance

I'm thinking it's the reverse -- metaphysics is grounded in ethics.

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.

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?

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. — hypericin

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.

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! — Constance

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:

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.

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.

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. — 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.

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. — Constance

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.

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. — Constance

Must there be another explanatory means? Or might it be the case that we've tripped across the boundary of language?

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. — 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.

You know if you really wanted to undermine The Morningstar of Philosophy we could start a Husserl reading group -- then we could make smarmy remarks about how Heidegger is just misunderstood Husserl. ;)

Yeh, true.

People who like detail more than most people like detail more than most people... :D Fair enough.

I don't have a reason against starting there. At least not that I'm seeing up front. I think maybe you have more in mind, though.

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)

And since we do talk about our experiences, they are not ineffable. — Banno

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?

I read phenomenology because empirical science cannot address this simple yet all important question: how does anything out there get in here? — Constance

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)

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. — 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.

Yeh, in general, people aren't creative enough to see the connections between the abstract questions philosophers ask and the lives they live.

But people have beliefs on these things -- just usually indistinct. Philosophers, on the whole, prefer more detail than most people care for.

Was surprised by the overwhelming majority of people who believed in a priori knowledge. Though I bet, with a few questions, the majority could split up (a priori in relation to a posteriori, or a priori as defined, or a priori as general structures of the brain(EDIT:) or a priori as in "what else could math be?"...)

You know what's fine? Torturing human beings.

But what really gets my goat is when people believe ""Killing is wrong" is true" -- unforgivable.

As I see it, philosophy is going to be the new religion, and phenomenology will be its method. — Constance

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)

Yeh, I think you're right.

When I want to make safe meta-ethical claims, error theory is home base.

Just... you can only draw the conclusions @Leftist is drawing if you care about much more than the truth-aptness of statements within the formal category of "moral" :D

Hence my attack on caring -- but, maybe it won't connect. That was the idea, though.

You ever wonder if the bottle is amber? Something like a cave?

If there are no moral truths, every moral claim is false. — Leftist

What if the moral claims are simply not truth-apt? Like the fictional universe of Star Trek, we posit moral worlds (and, actually, Star Trek kind of does fit the notion of a fictional world that is particularly motivated by moral thoughts).

And if you were in the middle of watching Star Trek and told someone watching it "You know this isn't real, right?" -- well, it'd be a queer question. You'd seem to have missed the point of Star Trek.

And so it seems to me that you've missed the point of morality. Who cares that it's not "true"? That doesn't bother me. Nor does breaking the "rule" of non-contradiction, from time to time.

Not the utterances, so much, as the speakers. We can speak for our self, but we cannot speak for another's self.

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? — 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.

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. — 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.

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? — Joshs

I think that the classic notion of language assumes that, yeah.

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?

Yup. At least, for the kinds of creatures we are, we require repetition.

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? — 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?)

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? — 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.

Here might be the best, non-jargon category I can think of --

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.