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.

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. — Luke

Alrighty, I was wrong then. Just attempting to make sense of things.

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. — 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.

If I'm reading you correctly @Luke, I think you and I and @Jamal and @Banno are thinking in terms of two different ways we can talk about "ineffable" -- Ineffable, as in unable to be spoken of in principle, and ineffable, as in different from linguistic competence. I think I'm thinking in the former, and you're thinking in the latter.

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.

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. — Luke

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?

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. — RussellA

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.

Attempting to compete with the thread on truth, eh? :) -- I'll admit this has been a thought in the back of my mind...

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?

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. — 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 ;) )

How long is a thread about what cannot be said? — Banno

Infinite. Isn't the ineffable, in its own way, the inspiration for these questions?

I feel that we are in a nihilistic position where we can't can justify any of our actions by reference to rules, objectivity or teleology. — Andrew4Handel

The topic would better be called 'Deciding what to be'. What to do follows from what one is. — unenlightened

More than the best you can do?

You're not happy with what you are doing. So do something different.

Me, I'm going out to trim one of the shrubs in the back yard, and work out where to plant the second lot of corn.

It really is that simple. And that hard. — Banno

I think my main question was supposed to be how is it possible to do the act of choosing? — Andrew4Handel

Me, I'm catching up on some of my self-assigned homework on a lazy lab day while looking forward to some time off.

I'd reiterate -- it really is that simple, and that hard.

I empathize with your line of questioning so, so much. There's a reason I like all those existential authors ;) -- but I think these are the answers I agree with the most. You really do just pick something and see what happens.

I registered and starting poking through today. I'm liking the sections on Descartes a lot, whom I've tackled and all but their presentation of him is so much clearer than I could put it.

Why did you do it? Where did you go? — hypericin

Far too many reasons to make sense of :D -- for me, looking back now, I'd say I probably didn't have much of a choice. I certainly wasn't happy with my life situation and job and such, though. But me-then wouldn't have put it in those terms, either.

Where I went -- all over. Also too long to list. Probably wouldn't help you make a decision either, to be honest.

I have no regrets.

But let's just say I know what I'm saying when I say 5 to 10 years down the line ;) That's the consequence you'd be looking at, more than likely, so it's one you should consider

Yes. Reason doesn't ever motivate. Rather, we perform motivated, driven reason. Our drives are animal, dressed up with reason after the fact. Reason is a tool to fulfill our drives.

But... if only it were so simple. We are blessed and cursed with the feedback loop that makes thought possible. Thoughts are cyclical.. we think them, then we react to them, by feeling, and by thinking. And then these feelings and thoughts are reacted to, and so on. These feedback loops can drive an anxious mind to distraction. — hypericin

I'm glad we can agree that reason doesn't motivate.

So I'm willing to grant we have knowledge of the future that's good. Else, I wouldn't be tempted to use words like "the collapse" -- I see that as a very real possibility. One which all societies, regardless of their political structure (from, at this point, monarchies, anarchies, theocracies, liberalisms, capitalisms, and socialisms) will have to deal with.

However, I'm going to highlight something I've said before in responding to this:

Both quite doubtful imo. — hypericin

Of course your opinion would say these are doubtful, else your words wouldn't make sense.

But are you willing to bank that doubt to a point where, 5 or 10 years down the line, you're broke and need to remember/relearn everything again to start an entry level position?

Because if I'm right, at least, that's your outcome.

Again, not from a place of judgment. Heh. That's basically what I did. Buuuut.... just noting, while I made that decision, it's still a big one to make. If you're already decided, really, then nothing I say will sway you, just as it didn't sway me.

Note that I have anxiety disorder, and have since early childhood. So, this looming doom affects me more than others. I wish it didn't, and I'm sure I'm not alone. — hypericin

I've tried to be open about my depression on TPF -- because I don't want others who I know feel alone to have confirmation of their loneliness. So -- you are not alone. Mental disability is a struggle.

While you are right that it'd be better to spend what you have if the future is bleak, I myself have to remind myself that the future is bleak -- to me. The future, however, is open. We have no knowledge of the future, really. We have good predictions, but it's happened so many times now that basically anything we believe could turn up to be wrong.

That's just a fact, in the sense of a true statement.

But true statements do not motivate us, as human creatures.

What motivates us are... something else that doesn't need to be defined, because defining it will already put it under the rubric of reason, and I'd generalize to say that reason is not our human-creature motivation.

***

In practical and blunt terms, I'd say that your years, no matter how young you are, will not lead to the catastrophe you fear -- unless you happen to choose to cut yourself off from the one source of material income you have. It'd be fun for awhile, and I cannot say I've made good decisions in these matters so this comes from a place of no judgment. But you'd have to ask yourself if you *really* need that "fun for awhile", and are willing to work your way back up after a break, because the collapse is still preventable and probably won't effect people who have decent work right now.

Ah, you're right. There wasn't a citation, even. Alas, reading is theory-laden, even on a forum post.

Is that what Kant is doing? Am I on the wrong track? — Srap Tasmaner

I'm also curious about the context now. Do you have a citation @KantDane21 ?



Eh, I think that Kant's use of "cognition" isn't that loose. A cognition is not merely to think of something, but rather to think of something within our faculties -- so we have concepts and intuitions(intuitions, itself, is a very specialized term within Kant's philosophy too), and noumena fall outside of both of those -- we can put a sentence together that looks truth-apt, but because of our faculties being what they are we are unable to judge that sentence. Hence, we cannot cognize the noumena "The soul is immortal", though we can posit it and desire to know its truth value.

Take for example Roman Jakobson's Functions of Language. — Dawnstorm

This was an excellent resource for me, so thank you. Just the sort of terms I'm looking for to think through my thoughts.

I've already assigned myself other homework, but in the spirit of continuing bad habits I'll assign myself more. ;)

But I have the desire to take some of the theories from that website and make it mesh with the question from earlier about counting phrases, but after I have your terms here down better:

Basically morphemes make words make phrases make clauses, and after that you get into text analysis and leave the realm of syntax. A phrase can be composes of words and other phrases and even clauses. For example, one way to count phrases, could be the follwoing: "the red apple":

1. Determiner Phrase: "the red apple"
2. Noun phrase: "red apple"
3. a) adjective phrase: "red"
3. b) noun phrase: "apple". — Dawnstorm

Then, apply it to one of the shorter poems we have here.

(in addition I'm still working through The Wasteland in order to provide an interpretation, but I don't have enough to share as of yet -- it's all impressionistic)