Of course it can be described with any word one wants to use, and provided this functions as part of the task at hand, that's fine. That's how words work. — Banno

Brilliant, we are capable of using words arbitrarily; it's a revelation!

Cheers Tom, you ask good questions, and provide some good answers yourself. and I appreciate your interest in the ideas of others.

Sounds right. Do you think idealism is a coherent ontology, or is it largely a product of the limitations of direct realism and philosophical naturalism? — Tom Storm

I tend to think that idealism and religion are generally seen as being more closely allied than religion and materialism; I'm not sure the latter are easily made compatible. Then when you think about the general human search for meaning and the common idea that without religion, ethics and morality are without ground, then idealism as a philosophical position begins to look like it is inevitably bound to idealism in the more ordinary sense; that is idealism seems to be inevitably idealistic (as opposed to realistic).

So, if idealism is an idealistically imagined ontology that reflects our aspirations, rather than a more realistic ontology that aligns with our actual ordinary, everyday embodied material experience, then I suppose you could say idealism is incoherent in that it doesn't cohere with that ordinary experience.

On the other hand we have the ordinary experience of freedom and moral responsibility that, on the face of it at least, seems more in accord with idealism than it does with materialism. Just as we have the common notion of idealism as consisting in a concern with universal values, we have the ordinary notion of materialism as being a negation of values other than that of personal possession and material assets.

But then, is idealism better seen as being opposed to materialism or to realism, or perhaps to naturalism? All these isms take different forms and interact conceptually in different ways accordingly, so it seems to be a complex picture taking shape, which seems fitting since this "debate" in all its forms is pretty much the story of western philosophy from its beginnings to now.

That is the crux of the Realism vs Idealism controversy. Our common language is inherently concrete-based (realistic) because our mutual experience is of the (external ; objective) Real world. We only know of other people's mental models from their metaphorical expressions. Only the individual knows what's going on in their own psyche. So the Mind Doctor is working blind. — Gnomon

As I said above, apart from the experience of the "external, objective" world there is also the experience of freedom and moral responsibility, and although we don't directly experience what goes on in other minds, similarly we don't directly experience an external world either, although we do have plenty of experience that provides individual evidence that something exists outside of our skins, just as we have plenty of experience that provides evidence for the existence of other people..

I think the problem with any form of idealism is that we cannot adequately model what we imagine might be going on. We can model the physical because it is observable, but we can model mind only in terms of reasons (and along the lines of how we understand our own), it seems to me.

Could be. Kastrup describes his mind-at-large as a blind, striving and not metacognitive - this does resemble Will. He himself says Schopenhauer did most of the work for him. — Tom Storm

Oh right, I haven't actually read any Kastrup; but then that seems wrong because a "blind striving" would not seem to qualify as a mind or as being cognitive. Animals (at least some of the :higher" ones) are generally considered to have minds, to be cognitive and to be purposive, so it seems that a "blind striving" would be more like an amoeba than an animal.

You might even say by this that great mind plays the role of foundational guarantor - so beloved of the apologists. Are we essentially looking at an account of theism renovated using Plato and the world of Quantum speculations? — Tom Storm

Could a "blind striving" ever fulfill such a role? Kastrup's philosophy sounds like it's plagued with inconsistency from what I've seen (which admittedly is very little).

Jawohl. — 180 Proof

Es klingt so, als ob Kastrup zum Aufräumen der Fahrerlager gemacht werden sollte.

Bernado Kastrup's panpsychist-fantasy more resembles to me Berkeley's metaphysics than Schopenhauer's — 180 Proof

Berkeley's God (mind at large) is metacognitive, whereas Schopenhauer's Will is not and afaik is not thought of as "mind" or even as being cognitive at all, so Kastrup's notion looks like it resembles neither. If "mind at large" is not cognitive, how could it "attempt" anything purposive like creating humans beings in order to become metacognitive? Sounds like Kuhscheiße to me.

One way out of this is to dump linear causal
determinism for a dynamical reciprocal determinism. This is the route Dennett and embodied psychology take. Natural systems are non-linear and self-referential, creatively redefining the role and meaning of their constituents via the temporal evolution of the whole. — Joshs

Insofar as I understand them such non-linear, 'dynamic systems', 'embodied' approaches intuitively appeal to me in a kind of aesthetic way. Efficient, linear causation is the general, practical way we understand how things work, though, and the modeling it enables is relatively easy to grasp and thus seems to make good intuitive and practical sense.

This probably says more about the dualistic ways our minds work than it does about what is actually so. This intuitive ease of understanding and the difficulty of clearly grasping what's going on with the other approaches seems to make efficient causation a hard presumption to shake.

Determinism it giveth and it taketh away. — Richard B

"The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away"—Tom Waits

This can be applied to free will, where the "small print" of causal determinism makes it seem impossible, whereas the large print of personal experience makes freedom of the will seem certainly (if not always) so.

Which dictum you gonna believe? Is it even up to you?

An inquiring mind is a springboard to creativity. — jgill

:up: Yes, you do need the interest, but I'm not sure that alone is any guarantee of capacity.

You can lead a horse to water, but if they don't want to drink they won't.

That's true of teaching any subject, though. Students will be students, in the end. — Moliere

True, if they don't want to drink they won't, and nor will they if they don't know how to drink, and there is no guarantee they can learn to drink either.

I don't think it's the same for all subjects; if learning a subject is a matter of learning a bunch of facts or formulas, then there is a definite process of teaching which will definitely yield results if the student is willing and has the necessary intellectual capacity. Of course, being creative in any subject is another matter and is more akin to the arts and cannot be reliably taught.

I think it's more a matter of trying to figure it out philosophically than anything. The demands of reason, and such. Maybe there's something private, but it might be outside the bounds of philosophy at that point. Also, given that philosophy seeks agreement -- at least I think it does, else why talk at all when you could just live? -- those are the sorts of appeals one makes in looking for agreement, or at least understanding. — Moliere

Right, but I don't think there is any one philosophically correct answer to any question, so I am not arguing for some standpoint, but rather arguing against any purportedly universally correct position.

Reason just consists in validity; in being consistent with your basic presuppositions, which are themselves groundless. I also don't see philosophy as seeking agreement, but as creatively explicating diversity of perspective for the sake of interest, insight and development of the imagination.

:lol:

So, yes -- it's an interesting case, but I think creativity can be taught. An uncreative person can be shown how to be creative. Or, at least, more creative than they were. So, we probably couldn't come up with a regimen which will be guaranteed to develop a Picasso, but we can teach people to be creative in the art for all that. — Moliere

Having been an art student myself and having been involved in the arts for many years, I find myself disagreeing with this. My point was that there is no reliable set of rules that can be laid out like a recipe to achieve the certain result of developing creativity and aesthetic sense. "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make her drink".

Sure, exposing people to artworks and familiarizing them with art history are necessary, but by no means guarantee results, because it all depends on what people see when they look at artworks and study art history, and that is down to personal experience, which is unpredictable and ineffable.

Personally, I find it incredible that some (not you, Moliere) want to deny that there is any aspect of private experience which cannot be made public, and seem to have some weird, politically correct fetish for making everything public,and insisting on their dogmatic, and even worse insuufferably boring, version of correctness in all matters philosophical, which to me is objectionable and raises the horrible spectre of Groupthink and universal ennui. Beyond my opposition to the dogmatic thinking of such ideologues, I have no interest in the trivialized question of effability vs ineffability if it turns on mere definitions.

My skepticism in such things is based in experience -- hence my doubts about phenomenology leading one to God, but rather, from my story, it leads one to nature. — Moliere

You seem to have forgotten your Spinoza: "Deus siva natura" : God is nature.

What is it that is seen when we observe a behavior? Is the public appearance of the behavior the moving of something from the behavior to each of the minds who are witnessing it, unmediated by individual interpretation? — Joshs

Right, is there a public appearance of anything over and above the appearances to each of the individuals who constitute the witnessing public? Are each of those individual appearances identical? Of course they are, presumably,all appearances of the 'same' thing, but what exactly does that "sameness" consist in if not abstract generalization?

I guess what it comes down to, then, is that which is shown ineffable?

Or, more subtly, in what cases is that which is shown ineffable, and why? — Moliere

I don't believe that what can only be shown, not said, is effable, because I understand the word to denote that which can be clearly explained.

Think of a culinary recipe, for example. If it is exhaustively set out and followed rigorously, results are guaranteed. To my way of thinking that would be an example of effability. No such definite instructions can be given for how to paint a picture, compose a musical piece or write a poem, because the requirement there is analogous to creating your own unique culinary dish.

it would be wrong to treat teaching as moving something from one mind to another. It is better thought of as bringing about certain behaviours in one's students. Hence it is a public exercise.

Improving is a public enterprise. It can be seen, or it amounts to nothing. — Banno

The personal experience which leads to improvement is not at all public, although of course the results may be.

Mysticism is then nonsense, but it is an error to read "nonsense" here as a pejorative. — Banno

Better to say 'non-sense' instead in order to avoid that error.

Isn't phenomenology a collection of different ideas, with some shared approaches, themes and influences? I thought the original project of Husserl's was to create a new foundation for certain knowledge - a kind of rationalist, Platonist approach befitting a mathematician. — Tom Storm

Husserl was criticised by Heidegger for, according to the latter, falling back into a kind of Cartesain dualism and concern with epistemic certainty, so yes, there have been different phenomenological approaches.

On the other hand we cannot be more certain of anything than how things seem to us, but the only possible inter-subjective corroboration of a phenomenologist's findings is the assent or dissent that comes with recognizing that what is presented does or does not accord with one's own experience.

And, I'm hesitant to believe that the most important aspects of any practice cannot be taught, because of Stanislavski. — Moliere

I'd say that of course pointers can be given, but no explication of a set of rules to follow that, if followed, will make one a good actor is possible in my view. So, although I know nothing about Stanislavski, I suspect that his teaching would consist more in showing than in saying. The student then either "gets it" or doesn't. You cannot teach how to become a good painter or poet, although you can teach certain basic techniques.

This also brings me to think of aesthetics; you can't teach people to see beauty, or harmonious composition, and you can't explain what beauty or harmonious composition is; people either see it, come to see it, or they don't.

But I think philosophy is closer to a craft like art is a craft. So in asking after the ineffable, I pretty much have in mind things like the limits of language, the limits of reason, the limits of knowledge -- that sort of thing. And the mystical provides interesting cases for different preferences of inference — Moliere

I agree with this.

I'd say it's because it's teachable. It'd be more interesting to say something is ineffable because it's not even teachable, or not even learn-able, rather than because we don't know something. — Moliere

The most important aspects of the practice of any art cannot be taught. So, they are not teachable, but they are learnable in the sense that you can, with practice, improve.

Same goes for meditation; you can be instructed as to how to sit, how to breath, how to hold your shoulders, your head, your tongue and so on, but that's it, the rest, the important part, is entirely up to you.

Dualists one and all. As humans are by their very nature. Or, perhaps, the very nature of their intelligence. And the later-modern advent of phenomenology becomes self-justified, in that no one likes the idea that we cannot immediately describe our own sensations, as early-modern metaphysics demands. Rather than wait for the system to complete its task as a whole, it is claimed as possible to circumvent half of it, yet still lay claim to knowledge. Abysmally short-sighted, I must say. — Mww

It's not clear what you are trying to say here. Phenomenology does not purport to investigate anything like "raw data" if that is what you were suggesting. Phenomenology consists in the attempt to reflect on experience, on the nature of perception, from the perspective of how it seems, and leaving aside the question of whether that "seeming" reflects any independent "objective" reality. It is, ideally, merely a descriptive discipline, a cultivation of our ability to pay attention to our experiences.

How is talk of leaf and branch different to talk of smell and touch? See how the tree has a similar leaf to the Oak? See how the desert has a similar smell to coffee? Or see how the desert brings about a similar sensation to the coffee? Why aren't I here talking about the sensation? That's not conveying actual content? Or, if it is conveying actual content, then it's not about the sensation? Or what? — Banno

When it comes to objects of the senses we can refer to attributes which are visible, audible, tangibly available and so on, to all, but this referring consists in generalizations; it is only in seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting or touching what is referred to that the particular comes into play.

The particular is not conveyed by language, but merely referred to. Regarding sensations like pain or pleasure, no such mutual apprehension of particularity is possible, and even in the case of sensory objects mutual apprehension is really an illusion.

What do you make of the criticism that if words are metaphors we risk slipping into solipsism? — Tom Storm

Why would we have to "slip into solipsism" on account of that? Just because I cannot fully share other's experience, does that logically entail that I should doubt their existence? Seems like a bogeyman to me.

In certain meditative states one comes alive as pure will. I suspect this is considered a distraction in Zen, but in a type of lucid dreaming it is exhilarating. To experience will in isolation, unhindered by physical restraints, gives one a deeper appreciation of its role in one's life, its power to cause change. — jgill

What you say here is interesting, it reminds me of something I remember reading about Zen, although I can't recall where, wherein it was said that enlightenment is a shift, not of the intellect, but of the will.

I never had much success in lucid dreaming; following Don Juan's instructions to Castaneda, I once found my hands, but immediately fell into a pit of paralysis where I thought I would die. This was a kind of weird state, pretty much impossible to describe, I used to sometimes fall into when on the verge of falling asleep, instead of falling asleep.

Anyway I've gone off-topic, so I'll stop now.

:up: That seems close!

Perhaps you can illustrate your point with a quote? I can't see how an abstract accounting like this can bridge the gap I described. — hypericin

The only way I can see it bridging the gap is when, due to our generally similar ways of experience, an account may speak to our own experience, and thus gain our assent.This cannot be empirically demonstrated, of course.

For me the arts are like this and being linguistic in form, poetry in particular.. If you take 'effable' to denote 'capable of being expressed in propositional form' then only that which can be expressed in empirically and logically grounded forms would be counted as effable.

On a looser definition, perhaps there is little that is completely ineffable; which would mean effability/ ineffability is on a continuum, and not strictly a "black and white" matter.

I'll eff off now...

You got it!

have fun, chaps. Let us know when you want to get back on topic. — Banno

There is no topic, or at least none to speak of; it drops out of the conversation.

The meaning of words is shown by common usage, but new meanings are possible on account of the web of possible associations between words, concepts and things within any language. The creative imagination invents new meanings by extrapolating from, and extending this web.

"Whereof one cannot argue, thereof one must be silent." — hypericin

Not silent. "Whereof one cannot argue, thereof one must distract, insinuate, cast aspersions, baldly assert, pontificate or utilize some other deflection designed to blind oneself and/ or others from the vacuity of one's position".

:up:

I believe you have this backwards. First, we come to learn a language from our follow human beings in world of stable objects and entities. Afterwards, we begins to learn more sophisticated concepts like images, impression and sensation against this stable background. — Richard B

So, prior to learning a language nothing at all is experienced?

Phenomenology as it was begun by Husserl was about finding our way past preconceptions to the formal conditions of possibility of experience, to what is irreducible, indubitable and universal in experience and thus is communicable and intersubjective . — Joshs

I agree with this, but not everyone would. I need to reflect on my experience in a certain way to find "the formal conditions of the possibility of experience" (Kant in this respect was arguably the first major phenomenologist). There are those of a logical postivist bent who will say that such a priori knowledge is not really knowledge ( because untestable) or is not really a priori (Quine).

For instance, time consciousness, the fact that every moment of experience is a synthesis of retention, presentation and protention. This means that the now is a blend of expectation and memory. Phenomenology can’t capture any content that is immediately present. To retain a momentary content is to reflect back on it, thereby changing what it was. No particular content repeats its sense identically. — Joshs

Yes, what we are reflecting on in such investigations are generalities. It seems to me that all our knowledge consists in generalties, and particularity is thus ineffable, because it is really subverted by generalization. Generalizing is the attempt to capture what is common and unchanging in particularity, so that we can bring it to conscious determination and communicate about it. Which seems to be pretty much the same as what you say here:

This means that what we experience in its uniqueness is ineffable to us as well as to others, in the sense that it doesnt hold still long enough for us to repeat its essence, duplicate it, record it , reflect on it, tell ourselves about it. This does’t mean that we can’t communicate our experiences to ourselves , only that in doing so what we are communicating is something similar rather than identical to what we experience in it’s never-to-be repeated immediacy. — Joshs

The phenomenological method reveals to us the structural patterns that intentional synthesis consists in, such as the constitution of higher level phenomena like persisting spatial objects out of the changing flow of perceptual data. — Joshs

Yes, we experience only fleeting images, impressions and sensations, and out of that common experience we construct the collective representation which is the world of stable objects and entities.

More like trying to find a sow's ear in a silk purse...

Tell us some more about the ineffable. — Banno

It would be a waste of time,
like trying to describe colour to the blind,
or casting pearls before swine.

makes better jam. — Banno

Log jam in the conversation.

Has anyone else noted how much the conversation of phenomenologists looks like grooming? — Banno

How low can you go? Now you're picking up what's left of the fruit after it has already been eaten.

Take a walk on the wild side. — Banno

Or take a dork in the backside...

Why do you want to know — Janus


Maybe that's the best way of defining irony - by talking about what it's not. — T Clark

In case it didn't sink in the term you asked about is 'apophatic'. Not to be confused with crakaphatic.

Of course you are. And the reply is that such things cannot count as things. — Banno

Sure, they are not determinate things, else they could be talked about, but they are not nothing. You seem to be developing the nasty habit of picking up the fruit which has already fallen; not a habit conducive to fruitful conversation.

Hey, 180 Proof, what's that word for defining something by talking about what it's not? — T Clark

Why do you want to know, Apophatboy?

That, indeed, seems to be what ↪Janus
is claiming... or reporting. He is trying to tell us of something of which he cannot tell us. And like the beetle it must drop out of the conversation. So one could not claim, for example, that one is following in the footsteps of other phenomenologists, because to do so would be to say that there was something shared, or at least something similar, in the face of the claim that despite this it is ineffable. — Banno

No, you're still misunderstanding. I am telling you that there are things I cannot tell you, not trying, per impossibile, to tell you what I cannot tell you. And of course the things I cannot tell you cannot be part of the conversation, but the fact that there are things I cannot tell you can be, and should be an important part of the human conversation.

Also you misunderstand phenomenology, since it doesn't deal with the ineffable, but with what can be told about personal experience..The observations, analyses and syntheses of phenomenologists do not purport to be empirically testable (obviously) but offer you something only if they speak to your own experience. If you don't have the kind of experience being explicated or don't notice that you have, or reject the whole notion for ideological reasons, then it will mean little to you.

There is a contradiction in Janus claiming both that what "cannot be taught" yet one can "make the acquisition of such know-how more likely", but perhaps it's much the same point as I just attributed to Wittgenstein. Janus would then be saying much the same thing, just less clearly. — Banno

Again there is no contradiction. Think of Zen as an analogy; enlightenment cannot be taught as factual disciplines can, by rote, but the techniques that might get you there can be taught. Exactly the same applies to the arts.

I've meditated enough to have experienced that state of "no-thought".

Funny thing is, I'd heard of it before I achieved it, and recognised it.

Hence, it, too, is not ineffable — Banno

Really? Not ineffable, eh? then you should be able to tell us what it's like to be in the state of "no-thought".

I'm not claiming anything, just reporting my experience; I know there are countless aspects of experience I can't render into words, including many things both practical and creative I know how to do .

Such things are not learned via words and cannot be taught, although it is possible to encourage others to take certain directions in practice that make the acquisition of such know-how more likely.

If skepticism proceeds from ignorance, or lack of experience, it is excusable, so if that is the case then no need to apologize..

Was that post meant for the "irony" thread? — Banno

No. That all you've got? I don't know, Banno; I'm a bit worried about you; you seem to be going the way of the troll.

Obviously it cannot be empirically demonstrated, but I know from my own experience that it is so. If you don't see that I can't help you; I can only report from my experience and hope your experience accords; welcome to phenomenology.

Right, the outcome was unintentional then. That would be an example of situational irony as given earlier in a definition gleaned from somewhere on the net.

Of course, there is also conscious irony, where the apparent intention is not the real intention.

Such as...?

A bit of know-how that cannot be understood...?

What does this look like? — Banno

Transparent attempt to get me to say what cannot be said.

Tacit 'knowing-that' can be made explicit, there are aspects of know-how that cannot be understood, much less expressed or shown.

No, that's just duplicity. SOP for PR, business and some politicians - nothing that needs a special category. — Vera Mont

It's only ironic when the outcome is opposite to the intention because of the intention. — Vera Mont

So, you're saying that irony (the unintended outcome) is only ever unintentional, or what?

If so, that seems to be an impoverished definition of irony.

It's only ironic when the outcome is opposite to the intention because of the intention. — Vera Mont

Intention confusion? Perhaps "it's only ironic when the outcome is opposite to the apparent intention because of the real intention" ?

I often found it ironic how those I knew in Buddhist, mediation circles would talk about shedding attachments and getting closer to enlightenment whilst simultaneously bonking each other stupid, investing in real estate and buying luxury cars. — Tom Storm

Is it necessarily ironic? Perhaps they were not attached to those activities, but simply enjoyed them (and were not attached to their enjoyment, either :joke: ).

In Christian circles this used to be called hypocrisy and I wonder if hypocrisy, when viewed from a particular perspective, is just irony as praxis. — Tom Storm

Only if it's intentional. :wink: