One cannot sensibly talk about those things of which nothing can be said. — Banno

If the limits of our language are the limits of our world, then those things of which nothing can be said, must be within our world... what with us having just used language to refer to them.

One cannot sensibly talk about those things of which nothing can be said. — Banno

what cannot be said is of the highest import. (...) it is expressed in art.... (....). — Banno

Hmmmm......so if what cannot be sensibly talked about is of such high import, go ahead and write a song about it? Paint a picture of it?

In such an event, we are given an expression representing that which cannot be sensibly talked about. Instead of talking about that which cannot be sensibly talked about, it remains that we are talking about the representation of that which cannot be sensibly talked about. How familiar is THAT!!!!

Ahhhh.....so it must be the case that it is the artist himself that realizes he cannot sensibly talk about that of the highest import, so rather expresses it in his art. Then, of course, it is impossible for an observer of the expression, to correlate his interpretation of the of it correctly to the artist’s understanding of that which cannot be sensibly talked about, for which he has rendered a representation. The observer cannot say with any certainty the artist has addressed that of the highest import in any way at all.

And it is said there is no logical entailment in subjectivity. (Sigh)
————-

what cannot be said is of the highest import. Instead of being said it is (....) .....found in what folk actually do (...). — Banno

Ok, so now, that which cannot be sensibly talked about is to be expressed by what folk actually do, which is the same as general objective activity. One aspect of general objective activity is creating art, but that’s been covered, so some other things folk actually do is required, which reduces to.....what is it that a folk can do that expresses that of the highest import which cannot be sensibly talked about, that isn’t art, or artful?

Easier, perhaps, to ask what he cannot do, which is, of course....speak. Talk about. Without doing art (logically declared too subjective), and without doing language (theoretically declared impermissible), all that’s left is physical action. Stands to reason...... “found in what people actually do”.
(Any philosophy so easily dismissed, in this case, language, had no solid foundation to begin with.)

For the sake of simplicity (???) it shall be the limit that people do things by accident, reflex or reason. All things done by accident, reflex or reason are things people actually do. Accident or reflex cannot justify intentional acts, so either those must be eliminated as causality for acts of expression of that which is of highest import, or, intentional acts cannot justify expression of that which is of the highest import. The latter seems logical inconsistent, so tacitly grants authority to assert that acts expressing that which is of the highest import, to be necessarily intentional acts. Whatever it is a person does, in the expression of that which is of the highest import, he must do intentionally.

The expression of that which is of the highest import cannot be talked about, nor can it be successfully expressed in art, but can be found in peoples’ intentional acts. Intentional acts cannot be accidental not reflexive. Therefore, any intentional act is conditioned by reason as necessary causality.

That which cannot be talked about, that which is of the highest import, iff found in what folks do, must first be thought, insofar as reason is the only source of intentional acts**. It follows that thought cannot hold the same impermission as talk, with respect to that which is of the highest import, for it is the ground of whatever the intentional act is, which expresses it.

Ohhhhhh yeah hic sunt dracones. Not only to challenge one’s bravery, re: Da Vinci with his globe, but also to challenge one’s intellectual boundaries, re: That Other Guy, with his critique.

(**the connection of thought to reason would be necessary in a complete theoretical dissertation, which all this isn’t, so trust me....it’s been done)

Don’t mind me none. Sunday morning forum editorializing; been doing it here and there for years, however rhetorically.

Banno
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↪Aidan buk Here's where this discussion generally leads, Aidan. To a division between those who think there is something more to be said and those who think it can only be shown. — Banno

the idea of an intersubjective locus of meaning makes no sense without subjectivities that interact.
— Joshs

This is a misunderstanding of Wittgenstein, relying on meaning rather than use, while giving primacy to the subjective. You would maintain some variation of a private language, disguised as "subjectivities". Go ahead, but then you can say nothing interesting about them. — Banno

Im not relying on meaning in Wittgenstein’s sense, and I knew using that word would cause trouble here. For me there is nothing but use, and I also dont mean ‘subjective’ in the way you think I do. Showing is using , which is changing. This takes place before we can talk about a community of language users , because primordially we dont yet know what a community of people or voices or bodies is. Before any of this is the way temporality, prior to any constituted notion of community , throws me outside of myself. The
‘me’, the ‘I’ , the ‘self’ always returns to itself differently. It is already its own social outside prior to the concept of a language community. You can only think
of this as a subjective inside , a box with a beetle , if you are misunderstanding what it is that is supposed to be changed by temporality every moment. You would have to begin with something present to itself first, which is mot what I am arguing for.

Derrida discusses this relation between temporality and language games.

Derrida says all speech is ‘writing’ , so when I speak or write to myself, I am speaking to the other. This is the origin and only site of the social.

“That totally affects a structure, but it is a duty, an ethical and political duty, to take into account this impossibility of being one with oneself. It is because I am not one with myself that I can speak with the other and address the other.”


“From this point of view, there is no difference, or no possible distinction if you will, between the letter I write to someone else and the letter I send to myself. The structure is the same.”

In response to a question about the connection between time and language , he says:

“In the structure of the trace you have something that perhaps Wittgenstein would call 'public': , but what I would simply call 'beyond my absolute re-appropriation' : It is left outside, it is heterogeneous and it is outside. In short, then, perhaps there is here a possible link with Wittgenstein, but it will have to be reconstructed around the history of these notions of 'private ' and 'public', and I am too concerned with and interested in politics and history to use them so easily.

Now the next question, again a very difficult one, has to do with the distinction between the other and time, between alterity, intersubjectivity and time. Again, you make recourse to Wittgenstein in a way which I cannot address here.

. No doubt, for a meaning to be understood and for discussion to start, for literature to be read, we need a community that has, even if there are conflicts, a certain desire for normativity, and so for the stabilization of meaning, of grammar, rhetoric, logic, semantics and so on. (But, by the way, if these imply a community, I wouldn't call it a community of 'minds' for a number of reasons - not least those touched on In response to your last question regarding the 'inner' .)

But this is not really the context in which I connect the question about the other who is 'radically other' (that is, is another 'origin of the world' , another 'ego' if you want, or another 'zero point of perception') with that of 'another moment' in time (between this now and the other now, the past now and the now to come, there is an absolute alterity, each now is absolutely other ). So how do I connect the question of the constitution of time (and the alterity within the living present) and the question of the other (of the 'alter ego' as Husserl would say) ? Well my
quick answer would be that the two alterities are indissociable. A living being - whether a human being or an animal being - could not have any relation to another being as such without this alterity in time, without, that is, memory, anticipation, this strange sense (I hesitate to call it knowledge) that every now, every instant is radically other and nevertheless in the same form of the now. Equally, there is no ‘I' without the sense as well that everyone other than me is radically other yet also able to say 'I', that there is nothing more heterogeneous than every 'I' and nevertheless there is nothing more universal than the 'I'.”(Arguing with Derrida)

For Heidegger(1982), temporality as pure self-affection is not the essence of subjectivity but the essence of Dasein, which is not a subjectivity but what lies in between the subjective and the objective.

“The Dasein does not need a special kind of observation, nor does it need to conduct a sort of
espionage on the ego in order to have the self; rather, as the Dasein gives itself over immediately and passionately to the world itself, its own self is reflected to it from things. This is not mysticism and does not presuppose the assigning of souls to things. It is only a reference to an elementary phenomenological fact of existence, which must be seen prior to all talk, no matter how acute, about the subject-object relation.”
“To say that the world is subjective is to say that it belongs to the Dasein so far as this being is in
the mode of being-in-the-world. The world is something which the “subject” “projects outward,” as it were, from within itself. But are we permitted to speak here of an inner and an outer? What can this projection mean? Obviously not that the world is a piece of myself in the sense of some other thing present in me as in a thing and that I throw the world out of this subject thing in order to catch hold of the other things with it. Instead, the Dasein itself is as such already projected. So
far as the Dasein exists a world is cast-forth with the Dasein’s being. To exist means, among other
things, to cast-forth a world, and in fact in such a way that with the thrownness of this projection, with the factical existence of a Dasein, extant entities are always already uncovered.”

So here with Derrida and Heidegger we have the tow poles of self-world interaction; the anticipative protection outward from my past into experience, and the absolute novelty of what I anticipate into
Thus the self continues to be itself only by being absolutely other than itself to moment.

What we do by naming, using words, is telling stories.
— T Clark

Perhaps, but far and away too close to empirical anthropology, and very far from epistemological metaphysics. I have very little interest in the former, and great interest in the latter. I want to know how the method by which naming occurs, not so much the post hoc employment of it. The former makes necessary I understand myself, which I control, but the latter only makes possible another understands me, which I cannot. — Mww

I was thinking about this some more. It struck me that your response to my post is a good example of what I was trying to describe. Because of one word I used, "stories," you dismissed the rest of my thoughts as "empirical anthropology," rather than engaging with them. I wonder if I had just written "One of the things stories words do is apply human values to the world" you would have been willing to pay attention to what I wrote.

What we do by naming, using words, is telling stories. — Mww

Is the sharing of a perceptual image or a sound recording also the telling of a story?

Is the sharing of a perceptual image or a sound recording also the telling of a story? — Joshs

I think language is fundamentally different from other modes of expression. I got in a discussion with my physical therapist the other day. He plays jazz saxophone. I asked him if music means anything. He hadn't thought about that before. My position is that music, and visual arts, don't mean anything. Meaning comes with words.

dismissed the rest of my thoughts as "empirical anthropology," rather than engaging with them. — T Clark

Sorry. There just wasn’t a trigger in your comments sufficient to inspire me to engage with them. I did explain myself, which I considered to be enough, so.....

If the limits of our language are the limits of our world, then those things of which nothing can be said, must be within our world... what with us having just used language to refer to them. — Isaac

Indeed.

The interesting thing is that what cannot be said is of the highest import. Instead of being said it is expressed in art, and found in what folk actually do, as opposed to what the might say. — Banno

My position is that music, and visual arts, don't mean anything. Meaning comes with words. — T Clark

But don’t the components of a painting tell a
story? When we look at a written word, we begin with the geometries of lines and curves and angles , and then recognize letters , and then words, making use of context to anticipate the next word. Don’t we do the same
thing when we look at a painting, begin with geometries of line and shape and shadow and color and then piece
together larger meanings from these simpler perceptions, the story the painting tells?

I could describe in words da Vinci’s last supper, or show the painting. Could the words used to describe the scene ever convey more than the visual image?

The observer cannot say with any certainty the artist has addressed that of the highest import in any way at all. — Mww

Yep. IS that somehow an objection, or are you just elucidating what was said? A defence of Art History?

For the sake of simplicity (???) it shall be the limit that people do things by accident, reflex or reason. All things done by accident, reflex or reason are things people actually do. Accident or reflex cannot justify intentional acts, so either those must be eliminated as causality for acts of expression of that which is of highest import, or, intentional acts cannot justify expression of that which is of the highest import. The latter seems logical inconsistent, so tacitly grants authority to assert that acts expressing that which is of the highest import, to be necessarily intentional acts. Whatever it is a person does, in the expression of that which is of the highest import, he must do intentionally. — Mww

This is far from simple, and overly intellectualises actions in an almost Kantian way...:wink: by expecting actions to be the expression of explicit deliberation. They can be, but are not always; more often the explanation for one's actions is post hoc.

Eventually that sort of ratiocination comes to an end, and all there is, is "It's what i do".

Could the words used to describe the scene ever convey more than the visual image? — Joshs

That painting is full of symbols that relate to events before and after the Supper. I think you need words to convey past and future.

That painting is full of symbols that relate to events before and after the event. I think you need words to convey past and future. — frank

If only words convey past and future , how is it that visual images convey the present?

When looking at the painting, why couldn’t we deal with those symbols that come to mind relating to events before and after the event in either verbal form or via images of the past or future? We could
conjure in our heads extensions of the scene moving either backwards or forwards in time, just as we can verbalize such shifts in time

If only words convey past and future , how is it that visual images convey the present? — Joshs

Can visual images convey the idea of the present? How?

When looking at the painting, why couldn’t we deal with those symbols that come to mind relating to events before and after the event in either verbal form or via images of the past or future? — Joshs

The visual image of that painting doesn't tell you that there are symbols embedded in it, so how could they come to mind by simply looking at it?

Experiencing art is multilayered. With conceptual art, it's really not the visuals. You have to know how to access what people see in Warhol. That takes words.

Interesting to see you working through this. I still think that your friends are giving primacy to the subjective, and that this is a mistake. What is subjective is only understood in contrast to what is objective. Hence giving primacy to the subjective is inherently unstable.

But further, the style of analysis offered here is on a par with that of talk of being-in-itself in that it remains ungrounded... there's no way to determine the truth conditions for "temporality as pure self-affection is not the essence of subjectivity but the essence of Dasein".

Basically, I don't see much appeal in such verse.

:up:

I've shared this feeling that @Mww's comments are somehow incomplete.

The visual image of that painting doesn't tell you that there are symbols embedded in it, so how could they come to mind by simply looking at it? — frank

How does the visual image of the word ‘hello’ that you are looking at now tell you that there is a symbol embedded in it? What is a symbol? What is that that allows you to ‘decode’ a seemingly random pattern of dots into first a series of lines, curved and angles, and then further into letters, and after that into words? Isnt visual interpretation and thus symbolization involved every step of the way ? When we see a picture of a chair , aren’t we doing f something similar, beginning with the perception of a seemingly random spread of dots and from that we construct lines, angles and other shapes, and then finally recognize these features as all
belonging to a single object? Do we need a name for the object in order to recognize it as an object? How are lines symbolizing letters which in certain sequences symbolize words different from lines symbolizing pieces of a visual object which in certain combinations symbolizes the whole visual object? Isnt it symbolization the whole way down in both cases?

My position is that music, and visual arts, don't mean anything. Meaning comes with words. — T Clark

I'll agree with this, but add that it is by way of a definition of meaning. Music and visual arts can can of course still be profound. There is a strong sense in which setting out the meaning of a piece is detracting from it.

What is subjective is only understood in contrast to what is objective — Banno

Very true. Tell me more about how you transcend the subject-object binary. I don’t see it in any of your writings. Tell me how some of the cognitive scientists you are interested in do this.

Music and visual arts can can of course still be profound. There is a strong sense in which setting out the meaning of a piece is detracting from it.
3h — Banno

In coming up with my first original ideas in philosophy, I didn’t know how to articulate them in words. Why?Because they were still too tentative , to much like a loose sketch , to internally inconsistent and unfocused. It took me a few years before i could write down the first word to describe these ideas. Over time my vocabulary became richer and more precise. Dinthis detract from
the peofundity of the original ideas? On the contrary , the verbalization made it possible to make much more rapid progress in transforming what I began with. Eventually I abandoned a lot of my original
vocabulary , but this was only made possible by creating it in the first place so I could see more clearly what it was I was so enthralled with. I think creativity is a cycle beginning with tentative , incipient music-like intuitive stabs at the new. One hears a new music in one’s
head. If one is a musician one doesn’t have to take this process any further, but if one is a scientist or philosopher one warns to enrich, tighten and define what is at first only a feeling so that it becomes a coherent , clarified concept rather than remaining only a loose sketch.
I’m not saying the verbal is more profound than the musical , but neither is the musical more profound than the verbal, or the painterly.

transcend the subject-object binary... — Joshs

Just stop using those terms.

See Intersubjectivity;

also Subject and object:

Certain statements are labeled subjective because they set out an individuals taste or feelings. In contrast, other statements are called objective, as they do not set out an individual's taste, feelings or opinions.

So that I prefer vanilla to chocolate ice-cream is a subjective fact - or if you prefer, it is a subjective truth. It's truth is dependent on my own taste.

That this text is written in English is not dependent on my own taste or feelings. Hence it is an objective truth.

That's an end to it; don't allow the notions of subjectivity and objectivity to take on any more significance.

in particular, don't pretend that there are either only subjective facts, or that there are only objective facts. — Banno

I think creativity is a cycle beginning with tentative , incipient music-like intuitive stabs at the new. One hears a new music in one’s
head. If one is a musician one doesn’t have to take this process any further, but if one is a scientist or philosopher one warns to enrich, tighten and define what is at first only a feeling so that it becomes a coherent , clarified concept rather than remaining only a loose sketch. — Joshs

I don't agree - in so far as I understood this. One might be tempted to think the muso "hears" the way they want the song to sound, and engages in a fight with the instrument to make it so; but I rather think this a bit too romantic. Rather, they have an idea for a direction they want to explore, which becomes clear as the process proceeds.

I don't think the song is sitting in the muso's head, complete, just needing to be birthed. I think it develops as it is played. Embodied Cognition.

How does the visual image of the word ‘hello’ that you are looking at now tell you that there is a symbol embedded in it? — Joshs

I don't think it does. I learned to treat it as a symbol.

What is that that allows you to ‘decode’ a seemingly random pattern of dots into first a series of lines, curved and angles, and then further into letters, and after that into words? — Joshs

Or how do I tell that a mass of differing shades of green is a tree?

There's nothing in the visual that says "tree". It would seem that the idea is coming from me.

Do we need a name for the object in order to recognize it as an object? — Joshs

I think wording is important for long term memory, except maybe taste and smell, which are wired directly into the frontal lobe.

So information about an unnamed object will slip through your mind's fingers.

I learned to treat it as a symbol. — frank

So what is "hello" a symbol for? Are you claiming that "hello" names something?

that I prefer vanilla to chocolate ice-cream is a subjective fact - or if you prefer, it is a subjective truth. It's truth is dependent on my own taste.

That this text is written in English is not dependent on my own taste or feelings. Hence it is an objective truth.

That's an end to it; don't allow the notions of subjectivity and objectivity to take on any more significance.

in particular, don't pretend that there are either only subjective facts, or that there are only objective facts. — Banno

What does ‘my own’ mean? Empiricism and Idealism each have their own ideas about this, but in the end they are two side of the same coin. The social constructionism of Ken Gergen and Jon Shotter argues
that it is possible to conceive the relationship between two or more persons not in terms of "interacting" individuals, but of elements of an inseparable system in which the relationship precedes the individual psychologies.

I agree with them as far as this goes. But I still don’t know what subjective and objective facts are , assuming we allow for both. And I don’t know what a joint or shared interaction is. I see everything you just said about subject and object , and intersubjectivity , to apply to a dynamic that comes into play before we assume the notion of participants in a language game. How do you describe a participant in such a game ? Why is the joint action, the language game ‘public’? It certainly isn’t private. It isn’t located in a container or self-reproducing continuity. But public implies
at least two. Two what? Subjects? No that’s not right.
Dimensions of a whole? And what do these two or more share in the joint action of a language game? In the moment of the sharing is there a dissolution of the plurality into a singularity of sharing , a single sense distributed among the plurality?

So what is "hello" a symbol for? Are you claiming that "hello" names something? — Banno

The quoted word usually refers to use. We were talking about mention.

Plus I think it's probably time for your Ativan little buddy.

Sorry. There just wasn’t a trigger in your comments sufficient to inspire me to engage with them. I did explain myself, which I considered to be enough, so..... — Mww

I don't mind that you didn't want to respond. I was using your response as an example of the pitfalls of depending on language unselfconsciously.

I don't think the song is sitting in the muso's head, complete, just needing to be birthed. I think it develops as it is played. — Banno

Sure. What I said about the evolution of a philosopher’s new idea applies also the the musician. Within their own medium , in struggling to compose something new there is a move from the tentative and incipient to a crisp , clarified and focused musical product. I’m just saying that articulating their ideas in words is not a
necessary part of the process, unless the song includes lyrics. But just as forming a vague idea into words doesn’t lose the profundity of the ideas for the philosopher , turning a vague impressionistic inconsistent musical sketch into a finalized written score doesnt lose the profundity for the musician.

But I still don’t know what subjective and objective facts are — Joshs

Nor I.

But don’t the components of a painting tell a story? — Joshs

I've used this long quote about four times in the past month. Now I have to do it again. This is a quote from "October Light," by John Gardner. A French horn player describing what he hears when he listens to a composition. I've hidden the text to keep the post short.



Emphasis mine. Art is the same as music. It means nothing at all but what it is.

I could describe in words da Vinci’s last supper, or show the painting. Could the words used to describe the scene ever convey more than the visual image? — Joshs

No. The painting will always convey more. More importantly, what the painting conveys is different from what any interpretation provides.

I'll agree with this, but add that it is by way of a definition of meaning. Music and visual arts can can of course still be profound. There is a strong sense in which setting out the meaning of a piece is detracting from it. — Banno

Yes, I guess it comes down to what we think "means" means. In everyday language, "meaning" is often used to mean significance. That's not what we're talking about. So, yes, the best music and art is profound, even if it doesn't mean anything.