it's not always easy to say something meaningful. — Tom Storm

Yes!

So say something useful instead. After all, the meaning of an utterance is its use in a game.

Didn't you say much the same thing as I did here? I understood what I said... — Banno

Maybe I said the same thing, but what phenomenologically informed cognitive science wants to emphasize, in contra distinction to computational, representational models of cognition, is that there is no generic outside. What I experience as my outside ( the keyboard , chair , room, etc) is what is pragmatically useful to me relative to my goals as a functionally integral cognitive system. I’m not just talking about how I use objects but their very sense. Similarly, each organism is shaped by an environment unique to its mode of functioning.

In other words, my outside is constrained, shaped and co-produced by the anticipative directionality of my cogntive system.

If this is what you meant then we are in agreement.

I've found that a better question is to ask how the thing in itself is different from the thing. — Banno

When presented with a failing eye exam score the same issue is raised.

know (v.)
Old English cnawan (class VII strong verb; past tense cneow, past participle cnawen), "perceive a thing to be identical with another," also "be able to distinguish" generally (tocnawan); "perceive or understand as a fact or truth" (opposed to believe); "know how (to do something)," from Proto-Germanic *knew- (source also of Old High German bi-chnaan, ir-chnaan "to know"), from PIE root *gno- "to know."

It's an odd word. It might have been clearer if we had different words for knowing that and knowing how. If it can't be put into words, then we can't know that it is the case. And in that way we don't know anything that can't be put into words. Despite all that, we also know how to get on with doing stuff... here, let me show you...

Hence the Rule's end.

@Joshs; sure. but

What I experience as my outside... — Joshs

Why decided to experience it as outside? Why put in place the subject-object?

That's what is here:

The properties of the object and the intentions of the subject are not only intermingled ; they also constitute a new whole — Joshs

It's not that you are wrong to do so, but that it's not the only way to see things.

Kants thing in itself, direct notions of eternity, nothingness, etc, at first thought, seem to represent thing which are unknowable. — Aidan buk

What ?

Why decided to experience it as outside? Why put in place the subject-object?

That's what is here:
The properties of the object and the intentions of the subject are not only intermingled ; they also constitute a new whole
— Joshs — Banno

Not sure I follow. The subject doesn’t decide to experience an object as outside. The outside imposes itself on the subject. The ‘subject’ here isn’t an entity but merely a pole of an interaction.

As a kid I often use to think that words were like falsifications of thoughts - inchoate blocks used to construct a shared notion of experience - a notion that necessarily reduced or entrapped that personal experience in a kind of verbal prefabrication. It often seemed to me that when my thoughts become words they were heavily truncated or even diverted by the process. It led me to think that in the process of becoming verbal there's a concomitant loss of experiential wisdom. Maybe that doesn't make sense to others - words again... — Tom Storm

I think you're talking about just the insight that Lao Tzu, and I think Kant, were describing. And they're not the only ones. Many philosophies have a place for the unmediated direct experience of unspeakable reality. Words are used to shape those experiences into bite-sized, easily digestible pieces that will stack evenly on the shelves.

It might have been clearer if we had different words for knowing that and knowing how. — Banno

Certainly we cannot know that anything that cannot be put into words is the case. We know how to do many things the way of knowing of which cannot be put into words. So, I agree there is knowing that and knowing how, but I also think there is what I would call knowing with, the knowing of familiarity; an example being the biblical sense of knowing as expressed in "a man shall know his wife, and they shall become as one flesh".

The subject doesn’t decide to experience an object as outside. The outside imposes itself on the subject. The ‘subject’ here isn’t an entity but merely a pole of an interaction. — Joshs

Picture yourself in what nowadays is called a "flow" state; when you play so smoothly that there is no distinction between you and the guitar; when you cruise the corner perfectly, no distance between you and your chosen ride; when you look up to find that you've been coding for hours but it seems a few minutes.

Now you've got a threesome. In my experience that's going to get unmanageably complicated.

Think we need to simmer things down.

I think we know many things which cannot be put into words or at least definitively explained in words. Much of what we know is pre-cognitive, but I don't think that is the same as the different things the Daoists and Kant, in their different ways, were trying to get at. — Janus

Are there "pre-cognitive" things that can't be put into words that are different from what Lao Tzu and Kant are talking about? I don't think so, but I'm not sure of that at all. I'll think about it. And it's not that they can't be put into words, it's that when you do, they become something different. That difference between the Tao and the 10,000 things is at the heart of our experience of the world.

From the relatively little I know (compared to the specialist) of Daoist ideas I have formed the impression that they are positing, by hinting at, a universal movement of life and energy that flows as an undercurrent to our common life as it is conceived, in all of us. This universal dance of life will be intuited directly by those who are able to work effectively on their dispositions such as to quiet the dualistic mind that blinds us to its mistaken views. — Janus

There are more than a hundred translations of the "Tao Te Ching" along with dozens of commentaries written 2,500 years ago and last week. Each one of these has a different understanding of that Lao Tzu was trying to say. I've been in several reading groups and no one could ever agree. [irony]It is only through long study and meditation that I have finally reached an understanding which is clearly and unequivocally what Lao Tzu always intended.[/irony] So, no. That's not how I see it.

Kant, to my knowledge, denies the Spinozistic idea of rational intuition, which for Spinoza (and the Daoists) is the source of ideas of the eternal and the universal. — Janus

I don't know what "rational intuition" means, but it doesn't sound like anything I'd ever use to characterize the Tao as described in the Tao Te Ching. I don't know if Kant would have recognized Lao Tzu's ideas as similar to his. Probably not. I believe he was working about a century before eastern philosophical texts started to be available in Europe.

I wouldn't go as far as to say that our naming of things brings our world of things into existence, and I don't think Kant would either. — Janus

I'm certain you're right about Kant. Lao Tzu writes (Mitchell Verse 40):

All things are born of being.
Being is born of non-being.

Non-being generally refers to the Tao and being to the 10,000 things. I think this way of talking about reality makes sense, although I acknowledge it calls for a change in how we think about "being" and "existence."

Yes, but saying one knows them is also wrong. — Banno

I agree with this. It doesn't make sense to say I know or understand something if I can't put it into words.

It is the arts and poetry in particular that can deal with this kind of knowing I would say — Janus

I agree with this.

Picture yourself in what nowadays is called a "flow" state; when you play so smoothly that there is no distinction between you and the guitar; when you cruise the corner perfectly, no distance between you and your chosen ride; when you look up to find that you've been coding for hours but it seems a few minutes. — Banno

In a flow experience , am I melding with the object or is the object melding with me, or is it not necessary to choose one or the other option? I think in order to have this experience of timeless immersion there must be a unity of similarity linking one moment of the flow to the next. This requires that each new event have a sense of belonging to the previous as variations of an unfolding theme. What occurs fulfills my anticipating into it. The flow isn’t interrupted by the unexpected and this is what makes it appear timeless. The anticipative aspect is what drives this experience and keeps it unified , and this is the subjective contribution.

The three ways of conceiving knowledge, unlike human beings, are not afflicted with jealousy. Personally I think we need all three to cover all the bases. :wink:

And it's not that they can't be put into words, it's that when you do, they become something different. — T Clark

This!

You be the sort that talks about the music but don't feel it?

put into words... they become something different. — T Clark

The anticipative aspect is what drives this experience and keeps it unified , and this is the subjective contribution. — Joshs

Yeah, because it would seem that a loss of distinction between subject and object would be a loss of cognition.


It's also called "in the zone" It's a football allusion

↪Joshs You be the sort that talks about the music but don't feel it?
put into words... they become something different.
— T Clark — Banno

But feeling is already an expressing , and as such it IS a kind of talking.

But feeling is already an expressing — Joshs

How so?

The subject doesn’t decide to experience an object as outside. The outside imposes itself on the subject. The ‘subject’ here isn’t an entity but merely a pole of an interaction. — Joshs

All is half truths except for this sentence?[/quote]

That’s being in itself in a nutshell. Irreducible subject-object reciprocal relationality.
— Joshs
— frank

when you play so smoothly that there is no distinction between you and the guitar; when you cruise the corner perfectly, no distance between you and your chosen ride; when you look up to find that you've been coding for hours but it seems a few minutes. — Banno

How we conceive self and other is crucial metaphysically. @apokrisis is fond of evoking Howard Pattee's "epistemic cut". Pattee would say a cut ( a separation ) is necessary to separate the knower from the known, and thus maintain a subject object distinction. The counter argument is that a subject / object boundary has not been identified and so the cut is applied arbitrarily. Pattee acknowledges that the cut's location is arbitrary.

So the question becomes, what is the boundary of a subject ( self )?

In my understanding a self is a self organizing system identical to the body of knowledge (derived from information) that creates it, and this body of knowledge extends to a universe of some conception. So a boundary of self is related to the information a self possesses, which extends to the edge of a universe. This would mean that the object ( other ) is also contained within the boundary of self . The other thus becoming an object relative to self, within self, thus no separation possible. The other is understood entirely by a body of knowledge possessed by a self, so no separation is possible. No mind independent other can exist, so a self cannot be separated from other.


This conception of self has a central density of information then extends outward, similar to a hurricane, to wherever and whatever it has information of.

How would you conceive a self, and thus a boundary of "subject"?

But feeling is already an expressing , and as such it IS a kind of talking. — Joshs

You're changing the meaning of the word "talking." Talking uses words. This from the web:

Talk - speak in order to give information or express ideas or feelings; converse or communicate by spoken words.

Yes, but saying one knows them is also wrong. They just are the case; explanation stops here. — Banno

The word I use is "experience." I have many experiences that do not involve words. It's probably true that most of my experiences don't involve words. I think that's true of most people. Let me think about that.

But feeling is already an expressing , and as such it IS a kind of talking. — Joshs

You're changing the meaning of the word "talking." Talking uses words. — T Clark

I left something important out. I know that what I call experience, wordless awareness, is different from knowing or understanding using language. It feels different in a profound way. It uses different parts of me. If you don't feel that same difference, then there's probably not much further we can go with this discussion.

That doesn't mean you're wrong. It just means you experience the world differently than I do.

Should I just be satisfied with the unknown being these blanks, and leave it at that? — Aidan buk

The problem is in the claim to know as that already presumes cognition has the aim of accurately representing the outside world. All the epistemic quandaries arise because somehow whatever the mind is doing must be a faithful simulation of the reality beyond it, or else cognition is a kind of fiction - an untruth, a failure to correspond, a faulty description or mistaken belief.

But a pragmatic or embodied approach to cognition argues that the mind is a semiotic and action-oriented model of reality. We navigate the world via a self-made realm of signs - an umwelt. We don’t even want to know the thing in itself. We merely want to have some kind of map by which we can coordinate our behaviour and achieve a stable sense of being.

So the problem of knowledge is not about whether the mind knows the world as it objectively is - whatever that could mean. The goal is to operate with a model of the world in a way that seems to work - the chief product being the sense of being a self in a world where our purposes are served, our being is stable, and our uncertainties are minimised.

So we know from psychology that the redness of an apple is a subjective phenomenon. Physics has no colours. And a representationalist approach to cognition or knowledge could make that seem an epistemic crisis.

However being able to read surface reflectance as if it were a set of different hues is a way to make the hidden shapes of things pop out in noisy natural environments. The brain freely invents the experience. And yet the invention is more than useful. We can be super certain that the red apple and the green leaves are separate parts of the same tree even if the reflected wavelengths are almost indistinguishably similar from an energetic point of view.

In my understanding a self is a self organizing system identical to the body of knowledge (derived from information) that creates it, and this body of knowledge extends to a universe of some conception. So a boundary of self is related to the information a self possesses, which extends to the edge of a universe. This would mean that the object ( other ) is also contained within the boundary of self . The other thus becoming an object relative to self, within self, thus no separation possible. — Pop

The epistemic cut approach works better as it doesn’t try to reduce the world to the model anymore than it reduces the model to the world.

The world is the physical realm and so is the entropy rather than the information. A system of sign then connects this physics to workings of an informational model. The advantage here is that we have both the necessary separation - the one that produces a self - and yet also the bridge of a particular interaction. When a mind and world are in a meaningful interaction, the entropy (as information uncertainty) of the one decreases while the entropy of the other (as overall physical disorder) increases.

There is no flow of information or entropy from one side to the other - with all the philosophical confusion that one-sidedness creates. Instead, there is an interaction between a self and the world, an organism and an environment, where each has a specific reciprocal effect. The order in one is increased to the degree the order in the other is dissipated.

Pattee would say a cut ( a separation ) is necessary to separate the knower from the known, and thus maintain a subject object distinction. The counter argument is that a subject / object boundary has not been identified and so the cut is applied arbitrarily. Pattee acknowledges that the cut's location is arbitrary. — Pop

So the cut has been identified. Life and mind are divided from what they model by this contrast between the growth of stability, memory and habit on one side of the equation, and the increase in entropy production on the other.

This semiotic cut allows the boundaries of the self to be flexible - but not arbitrary - across all levels of life and mind. An immune cell works to protect what it identifies as part of the body’s self and dissolve what is deemed to be other.

Then I could carefully protect my favourite coffee cup - treating it as an extension of my self - or carelessly dispose of a beer bottle by smashing it against the nearest wall because I generally regard it and my environment as non-self - a realm of waste, an entropic heat sink.

In Kant, Thing-in-itself is to denote all the objects out of the boundaries of reason .i.e. the objects of intuition and faith.

Perhaps our resident Kant specialist Mww might weigh in on this question. — Janus

First......thanks for the vote of confidence. Second.....what’s the question? Perusing the posted comments, I come up with this:

Surely if you can think it, I can know it?
— Aidan buk

This is the heart of the question that Lao Tzu, and I think Kant, are getting at. How can you know something that can't be put into words? — T Clark

But then, this is two different questions. The first makes no sense, in that it is impossible for anyone to know of that which I merely think, which makes explicit I have made no objective expression of it. The answer to that question, then, is, no, you cannot.

From that, the second question elaborates by installing the common method of an objective expression, re: “put into words”, but at the same time, while reconciling the impossibility, fails to imply a communication, which is the sole raison d’etre for any objective expression. The answer to the second question then becomes....to know a thing it is necessary to conceive it, and to conceive a thing it is necessary to represent it, but the mere representation of a thing makes the naming of it only possible and not necessary.

Even taking into consideration what was really meant by the first question was, if you can tell me about what you think, I can know it, this is still not true, for I must first understand what you say before I can know what you mean by the words you use to express your thoughts.

By the same token, taking into consideration the second question really meant to ask.....how can I know you know something that can’t be put into words (or some kind of expression)....then it is the case I cannot. It remains however, I can learn things, on my own account, without ever using a word.

It behooves the modern philosopher to remember the human community requires language, but the human individual does not.

So.....let’s straighten out this switch-back laden mess, shall we?

They purport to represent things outside of human cognition. — Aidan buk

From the get-go.....this is wrong, from dedicated, strictly Kantian epistemological metaphysics, insofar as if a thing is represented, it is already cognized. Cognition is varied and distinctly sourced, but basically, if a conception is possible, a cognition follows. From this, the conceptions listed in the OP as “unknowable” are still cognitions, otherwise there is no means for the explanation of their representation in objective expression. The assertion would be truthful if stated as, “they purport to represent things outside of human knowledge”. And of course, “truthful” herein must be taken only as the logical conclusion derived from the speculative methodology employed to prove it.

But, surely, all there is is human cognition? — Aidan buk

This is also wrong, insofar as human cognition is absolutely necessary, but is in itself, insufficient. There is always an object of cognition, which makes explicit a vast manifold of possibilities that are not themselves cognitions. Cognition is pervasive, constant, all-encompassing, but is still not “all there is”. Cognition is always the rational means, but never only the ends. That being experience, or ignorance.

But, surely, all there is is human cognition? In such an instance, there is no unknowable, in the way it is commonly assumed, instead, the unknowable is always knowable. — Aidan buk

Having determined cognition is not all there is, if follows that the unknowable is still possible, as an end for which there is no object to cognize, or, the object that is cognized is in contradiction to some other cognition.

Which leads inevitably to the idea of knowledge itself. Knowledge as “it is commonly assumed”, is a posteriori and is called experience, in which the object cognized is a real thing in the world, and that thing has an apodeitically determinable relation to the subject that thinks about it. The other knowledge, just as common but unassuming and altogether a priori, having nothing whatsoever to do with experience, insofar as the object cognized is an impossible real object in the world hence can never be an experience. These are the objects of thought, conceptions the validity of which we know of but the reality of which we know not that.

In a very limited sense, therefore, it is true the unknowable is always knowable, but it is a different knowledge, under very different conditions, with altogether different ends, which makes explicit these must always be mutually independent. Simpler to say knowledge of is private only, knowledge that is both private and subsequently possibly public. And these are themselves merely the words substituted to placate those who find value in nitpicking in the subjective/objective dualism, which is, of course, exactly what they represent.

Simply put, I suppose, one can say he knows, e.g., transcendental objects are thinkable, but he knows he can never experience such a thing. In this way, one might be permitted to say he knows the unknowable. He doesn’t; he’s only misplaced subject/predicate in two propositions, arriving at differences he doesn’t recognize.
————-

I wouldn't go as far as to say that our naming of things brings our world of things into existence, and I don't think Kant would either. — Janus

“....If the question regarded an object of sense merely, it would be impossible for me to confound the conception with the existence of a thing. For the conception merely enables me to cogitate an object as according with the general conditions of experience; while the existence of the object permits me to cogitate it as contained in the sphere of actual experience....”

....and that should be sufficient to validate for your thinking.
—————-

I think our world of things is already precognitively implicit — Janus

Couldn’t be otherwise, could it, really? Yours goes to show the temporality of the human cognitive system, often ignored.

“....For, otherwise, we should require to affirm the existence of an appearance, without something that appears—which would be absurd....”
——————

I think language makes things determinate for us in highly abstract ways. — Janus

I might offer that reason makes things determinate; language makes determined things mutually understood.

Again.....thanks for the invite. I’ll show myself out. I mean....really. Where’s the good cognac, anyway?

So the question becomes, what is the boundary of a subject ( self )? — Pop

It's like the boundary between a mountain and a valley. We think of a mountain as an independent thing, not noticing how the concept is bound to it's negation. If there were no valleys, there would be no mountains and vice versa. We're bound to divide things up like that for the sake of explanations and narratives.

But if the concept of self is dependent on the concept of the external; it implies some independent thing, like a higher truth

So the question becomes, what is the boundary of a subject ( self )? — Pop

I think it is the consciousness and thought which is able to tell the subject and object, the internal and external, known, unknown, the objects and limitation of reason, and the objects of intuition and faith.