That is, do you also agree with:
What the blind cannot do re color words is know what they are talking about.
— hypericin — Banno

The blind can know how to use the word, that color is often a property of objects, for instance. They also know that they don't know what it is in the sense of being able to see it.

Cheers.

They also know that they don't know what it is in the sense of being able to see it. — frank

They cannot tell what colour something is. But do they know the meaning of colour words?

I take the answer to be "yes", and that consequently the meaning of a colour word is not an association with the memory of some ineffable sensations.

What counts is the capacity to make use of the word in various situations - that rather than talk of the meaning of a word we would be better off talking about its use.

I understand your argument. I think most blind people would disagree with you.

As a child I would pretend to be blind, walking around with my eyes closed. To me, blind people are silent super heroes.

I understand your argument. — frank

Cool.

I think most blind people would disagree with you. — frank

Really? That surprises me. I associate with folk in the general disability community, where the implication that blind folk cannot understand colour words would be treated as offensive ableist crap, and suitably mocked.

Really? That surprises me. I associate with folk in the general disability community, where the implication that blind folk cannot understand colour words would be treated as offensive ableist crap, and suitably mocked. — Banno

If you stopped equivocating, they would say, "Yes, of course."

I finally found time to read that article and it says nothing I didn't already know; of course congenitally blind people can form some sort of concept of colours by hearing others talk about them, just as we do with microphysical objects, but that doesn't mean that if they suddenly regained sight that they would be able to say which names referred to which colours unless they related say blue to sky or green to leaves or grass. Red has no clear definite association like that. Underwhelming!

it says nothing I didn't already know — Janus

Good. So we agree that blind folk are able to talk about colours.

You have my sympathy. — Banno

You misunderstood, the frustration was at your mental block, not mine.

A blind person cannot see that the cup is red. But your claim was that there is something they cannot say - something sighted folk can say but not blind folk. — Banno

Again, you misunderstand. No one can say anything about the experience of red. It is ineffable.

I don't think you can, and again, that's because seeing red is something that we do, not something that is sayable. — Banno

There are a million things we do, the experience of which is perfectly communicable. I can describe perfectly well what it is like to fly in an airplane, so that someone who has never done so will have at least a rough facsimile of the experience. But not so of red, or of qualia in general. We cannot even begin to communicate their experience.

That's the sort of grammatical problem that comes from supposing that seeing red is some sort of private experience, as opposed to learning to use the word "red" — Banno

So you are committed to the claim that a computer, LaMDA for instance, that is trained to use the word red appropriately is "seeing red"? Maybe in your English, but not mine. I think most would agree that seeing red is absolutely a private experience.

No one can say anything about the experience of red. It is ineffable. — hypericin

No one can say anything about the experience of red, not because it's ineffable, but because it doesn't exist. Experiences are constructed by the brain post hoc, way, way after any processing associated with the wavelength of light reflected off an object. The 'experience' of red is a nonsense. We experience a red postbox, a red car, a red rose. No one experiences just 'red'.

No one can say anything about the experience of red, not because it's ineffable, but because it doesn't exist. Experiences are constructed by the brain post hoc, way, way after any processing associated with the wavelength of light reflected off an object. — Isaac

Even if it were true that conscious experiences are epiphenomenal, this is not to say they don't exist.

We experience a red postbox, a red car, a red rose. No one experiences just 'red'. — Isaac

What is the difference between experiencing a red apple and the identical but green apple? The experience of redness and greenness, about which we can say no more.

No one can say anything about the experience of red. It is ineffable — hypericin

Redness is always experienced as an attribute of a particular. Voilà, I said something about the experience of red.

Redness is always experienced as an attribute of a particular. Voilà, I said something about the experience of redness. — Heracloitus

And yet our blind friend is none the wiser to it.

What is the difference between experiencing a red apple and the identical but green apple? The experience of redness and greenness, about which we can say no more. — hypericin

No. There's simply no evidence to support such a notion. The parts of the brain which process colour are way back on the chain of processing they're not even consulted by the time we're constructing the difference between a red apple and green apple. We might later abstract the notion of a colour from two similar objects to describe what's changed and what's remained the same, but this would be a construction (a socially mediated one at that, therefore bound up with language). It's not an 'experience' in any sense.

How can I close my eyes and easily imagine the color red and green, divorced from any object? You will have to point me to the research that is informing you. But the question of whether color can be considered in isolation from objects seems tangential to this thread, and for it's purpose I am not committed either way. Both the experience of red in the abstract and red as a property of an object are equally incommunicable.

How can I close my eyes and easily imagine the color red and green, divorced from any object? — hypericin

By construction. Socially mediated.

Both the experience of red in the abstract and red as a property of an object are equally incommunicable. — hypericin

No. They're not. That's the point. What you're calling your 'experience of red' is a socially mediated construction. Therefore it is bound up with the language your culture uses and so can be reiterated in that language.

:up:

Do we….or do we not….still need to stipulate the criteria for determining how the unknowable isn’t a mere subterfuge? Seems like that would be the logical query to follow, “only the unknown cannot be put into words”. — Mww

Subterfuge is about deceit, in that we are being deceived in some way. Are we being deceived that the unknown is in fact known?

As @Javra writes, there is the unknowable in principle and there is the unknown in practice. The unknowable in principle cannot be put into words. The unknown in practice can be put into words but only after it is known, meaning that when unknown it cannot be put into words, but when known it can be put into words. It remains true that "only the unknown cannot be put into words"

Are we being deceived about the unknown or is the unknown just a fact of the limits of the intellect. Every animal has a natural limit to its intellectual powers, limited by the physical nature of its brain. Is the horse being deceived that allegories in The Old Man and The Sea will always be unknowable to it, no, it is just a fact. The human is an animal, and similarly, we are not being deceived that some things will always be unknowable to us, it is just a fact.

There aren't any words for the thing to be talked about, making people think that it can't be talked about, but really we're just free to make the words up. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, just as we do for every single word ever. Which leads inevitably to….under what conditions is it impossible for a word to be invented, such that the object the word would represent, remains impossible to talk about. Then and only then, does the notion of ineffability attain its logical validity.
——-

The word representing a universal conception won’t refer to a particular example of it.
— Mww

The issue though is why, or how. Suppose I write here, the word "box", and I tell you that this word signifies something, it stands for something. How do you know whether it signifies a particular which I have named, or whether it is a concept which the word refers to. You say it can't be both, but why not? — Metaphysician Undercover

That you are communicating with me presupposes congruent intelligence.

That being the case, and under the assumption I don’t know what “box” indicates, nevertheless, by perceiving the expression itself and alone, I immediately understand “box” presupposes a conception you have denominated, however arbitrarily, by that particular representation. Otherwise, I surmise you couldn’t have expressed the word, insofar as, due to our congruent intelligences, I couldn’t if it were me. If left at this point, I may or may not consider “box” a universal conception, because I don’t know what the word indicates.

On the other hand, if I already know what “box” means, I also understand it isn’t a universal conception, because I know it is a particular thing and the Principle of Complementarity tells me the one can never be the other.

If I say "get me the box", I refer to a particular, but you know what thing to get me because of the concept — Metaphysician Undercover

Not necessarily. Depends on the extent of my experience. As before, if I don’t know, without experience, you informing me that “box” signifies something, while reducing the conception to a particular in the class of things, doesn’t inform me as to what kind of particular thing in that class it is. So I wouldn’t know what to get merely from the signification of something.

And if I do know what the word “box” stands for, which means your signification and mine are congruent, I know what I’m expected to get.
————-

Suppose I write here, the word "box", and I tell you (what this word signifies) that this words signifies something, (what it stands for) stands for something. — Metaphysician Undercover

If you’d written the parentheticals rather than the crossed outs, I wouldn’t have that argument to make.

Every animal has a natural limit to its intellectual powers — RussellA

Yep, and overstepping those limits determines the extend of subterfuge….self-deception….and recognizing them prevents it.
———-

As Javra writes, there is the unknowable in principle and there is the unknown in practice. The unknowable in principle cannot be put into words. The unknown in practice can be put into words but only after it is known, meaning that when unknown it cannot be put into words, but when known it can be put into words. It remains true that "only the unknown cannot be put into words" — RussellA

We’ve already agreed it is necessarily true only the unknow-able cannot be put into words. Anything else is either redundant or superfluous, sustained by….

…..Unknown in practice is merely a condition of experience, susceptible to possible amendment.

…..Unknowable in principle is altogether unsusceptible to any condition of experience.

…..Unknown in practice, an a posteriori condition, and unknowable in principle, an a priori condition, are completely distinct from each other and have no business being intermingled.

……The unknown in practice is not conditioned by, and does not adhere to, the principle that the unknowable is impossible to conceive and thereby represent in words.

……The unknowable in principle absolutely cannot change its state by becoming known in practice, but the unknown in practice, can.

That lightning was not manifestation of the anger of the gods was not unknowable to the ancients in principle; it was merely a matter of unknown practical knowledge.

But none of that you didn’t already know. I’m just reiterating the maxims grounding an seemingly inconsequential conclusion.

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. — Moliere

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. 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).

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. 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.

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: — Moliere

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.

I agree that givens in the world just are. And if they cannot be spoken, then what does metaphysics have left to say? — Moliere

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.

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

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.

Beyond ↪javra's quite valid criticism of that phrasing, Cantor shows that what was previously unknown can indeed be put into words; putting it into words is the act of making it known. — Banno

Although @Javra rightly points out that there is the unknowable in principle and there is the unknown in practice, I don't agree that this renders my quote "only that which is unknown cannot be put into words" invalid. It cannot be the case that something that is unknown can be put into words just because at some future date it happens to become known. If something is known then it can be put into words, regardless of whether it was known or unknown at some date in the past, and where knowing precedes saying what one knows.

"Ineffable" is defined as something too great or extreme to be described in words, such as ineffable joy.

As regards the unknown in practice, at this present moment in time, no one knows the number of sheep on the hill behind the cottage. As the number is unknown, the number cannot be put into words. But as the number is not unknowable in principle, and as no one would say such knowledge is of great or extreme significance, ineffable would not be the correct word to use. As the unknown in practice can be put into words but only after it is known, meaning that when unknown it cannot be put into words, but when known it can be put into words. One can say that the unknown cannot be put into words, but in this case, the unknown is not ineffable.

As regards the unknowable in principle, although I know my pain, I don't know the pain of others. The pain of others is unknowable in principle. In this case the unknown cannot be put into words, and because of great or extreme significance is ineffable.

Therefore, neither the unknown in practice and the unknowable in principle can be put into words, though only the unknowable in principle may be defined as ineffable.

The problem is, how does one talk about the ineffable, that which cannot be described in words. As previously set out: i) remain silent about it, ii) ignore any referent, iii) treat it as a second-order predicate, iii) describe what it isn't, iv) not talk about it but experience it, v) treat it as a metaphor or vi) ignore any possible relevance.

Perhaps we should take the example of Cantor, who discovered the concept of transfinite numbers, numbers that are infinite in the sense that they are larger than all finite numbers, yet not necessarily infinite.

i) is incorrect in that we obviously don't remain silent about infinity
ii) is incorrect in that we don't ignore the referent, which is infinity
iii) is possible, in that the second order predicate "is infinity" designates a concept rather than an object.
iv) is not correct, in that we cannot experience infinity
v) is possible, in that language is metaphorical.
vi) is incorrect, in that we don't ignore any possible relevance of infinity.

This leaves treating "infinity" either as iii) a second-order predicate or v) a metaphor.

A metaphor is the application of a predicate that is not in the appropriate category for what is being referred to, allowing a hidden essence or attribute of the predicate to be made visible by allowing a category mistake. For example, "God the Father" is a metaphor as God can neither be the father of humans or a male. By giving the object "God" the predicate "the father", we are making a clear category mistake, but enabling us to experience the character of God more clearly. We could say "God is infinite", which is a metaphor. We could say "transfinite numbers are infinite", which is a metaphor. By comparing an unknown object with something else using metaphor, we get closer to what that object is.

But second-order predicates as part of language are metaphorical. The conclusion is that we use the word "ineffable" for those situations that are unknowable in principle, are of great or extreme significance and are described metaphorically.

Yes, just as we do for every single word ever. Which leads inevitably to….under what conditions is it impossible for a word to be invented, such that the object the word would represent, remains impossible to talk about. Then and only then, does the notion of ineffability attain its logical validity. — Mww

Having gotten that (this false ineffable) out of the way, we can now approach the true ineffable, with the issue of conception. If something never comes to your mind, you cannot put a word to it. So, let's assume the possibility, that there is a huge part of reality which is completely undisclosed to our senses, and never comes to anyone's mind in any conception, sense image, or anything like that. Would you agree that this logical possibility validates the notion of ineffability?

Further, we have mathematics which produces evidence of this large part of reality which is not sensed, nor has it entered into human minds, concepts like spatial expansion, dark energy and dark matter. Except, now we have an issue, the use of mathematics has allowed some of these ineffable things, those just mentioned, to enter the mind. Now they are no longer ineffable, because we see that although they were ineffable at one time, they no longer are now, they have some conception and words for them. So all we've done is produced another sense of false ineffable. It's not truly ineffable because for everything which hasn't yet entered the mind there is a possibility that it may.

One false ineffable was the things which no one has a word for, and that was rectified by creating a word for them. The other false ineffable was the things which have never entered into the mind, so they could not have a word for them, nor could we produce a word for them, because they were not there in the mind. However, we see that the application of mathematics and speculation bring some of these things into the mind, so they are not really ineffable in a true sense either. Is it possible, that there are such things which could never be brought into the mind, not even though the use of mathematics? This would imply that there are limitations to the mind, to the use of mathematics, and human knowledge in general, which would make it so that there are things out there, aspects of reality which cannot ever be brought into the mind. It would be absolutely impossible for the mind to apprehend them, by any means. That might be the true ineffable.

What would be the point in believing in the ineffable then? If the human inclination is to learn, advance knowledge, toward knowing all that there is to know, what would be the point in positing somethings which are impossible to know? That would be self-defeating. It would kill the desire to know, because we would quit the enterprise, believing that it is impossible to know these things. So I belief that the ineffable is a logically valid concept, but it is unphilosophical. Classically, it's said to be repugnant to the mind, because it validates unintelligibility, like infinite regress. It is contrary to the philosophical mindset, which is the desire to know, and therefore it is an unphilosophical concept. In reality, it amounts to an intellectual laziness; there are aspects of reality which we do not know about, but since we cannot ever know about them, there is no point to trying to understand them. This is the issue which Aristotle pointed to with the proposed apeiron, or prime matter. This is the proposal of a fundamental unintelligible base, upon which all the universe is supported. It is an unphilosophical principle which is self-defeating to philosophy because it stipulates that the foundation of the universe is unintelligible, thereby discouraging any attempt to understand the foundation of the universe. That is an unphilosophical metaphysics, to simply say that the universe is based in some fundamental randomness which is impossible for the human mind to grasp, or understand in any way, therefore forget about it and think about something else.

On the other hand, if I already know what “box” means, I also understand it isn’t a universal conception, because I know it is a particular thing and the Principle of Complementarity tells me the one can never be the other. — Mww

The point though, was that you know I am referring to a particular called "the box", not because I have not pointed out this particular and given it that name, but because you know the type of thing which is called a box. So in order for the word to do its job, you need to respect both, that "box" refers to a universal, and that it refers to a particular. And the need to know both is required for one specific instance of use.

And if I do know what the word “box” stands for, which means your signification and mine are congruent, I know what I’m expected to get. — Mww

But the congruency in many cases is a feature of the conception, rather than pointing out a particular, and the conception is what allows you to identify the individual. Maybe that example wasn't clear, so here's another. I pass you my car keys, and tell you to get my car, it is the black Civic at the far corner of the lot. I am referring to a particular, my car, but I lead you to it through an understanding of the conceptions, "black", "Civic", "far corner of the lot", not by physically pointing out the particular. So the words really have a conceptual reference in your mind, but through that conceptual reference you are able to pick out the particular which is the 'real' referent.

Is the mind and brain a Cartesian duality or a phenomenological unity. What is the relationship between the brain as form and the mind as content. If a Cartesian duality, how can the form access the content. If a phenomenological unity, how can the form be the content. — RussellA

Put aside historical references. It will only confuse. Think of the differences as they are laid out before you here, in the argument.

Protopanpsychism as the link between the form of the brain and the content of the mind
Consciousness is the hard problem of science. Whether consciousness exists outside the brain as some ethereal soul or spirit or can be explained within physicalism as an emergence from the complexity of neurons and their connections within the brain, protopanpsychism is not the belief that elemental particles are conscious, rather that they have the potential for consciousness that only emerges when elemental particles are combined in some particular way.

As an analogy with gravity, the property of movement cannot be discovered in a single object isolated from all other objects, but may only be observed when two objects or more are in proximity. In a sense, the single isolated object has the potential for movement, but doesn't have the property of movement. The property of movement emerges when two or more objects are in proximity with each other.

Similarly, the property of consciousness could never be discovered by science or any other means by observing a single neuron, yet the property of consciousness emerges when more than one neurons are combined in a particular way.

Protopanpsychism breaks Cartesian dualism by enabling both the brain and the mind to come under the single umbrella of physicalism. The content of the brain and the conscious mind emerges from the form of the physical brain.

If the mind and brain are two aspects of the same thing, and are part of a physicalist world, then this explains the epistemic connectivity between mind and brain. — RussellA

Yes, all very predictable. You simply have to move out of how science would defend materialism, and into how philosophy would (should) do this. The latter looks to the presuppositions of the former. Once again, you have to go to foundational assumptions. Before the world systems of thought can even be discussed, what needs to be discussed is the basic conditions of knowing things at all. And how an ontology can be possibly conceived.
I would ask you not to ignore this basic issue, basic to the question of ineffability. If you have ready to hand a long list of ready made responses quoting scientific journals, you are simply begging the question.

Heidegger wrote The Origins of the Work of Art between 1935 and 1960, whereby the "origin" of an artwork is that from which and by which something is what it is and as it is, its essence. The artwork has a mode of being that it is the artwork itself. The origin of an artwork is the artwork itself. An artist may have caused the artwork, but it is the artwork that has caused the artist. The artwork determines what the artwork will be, not the artist. The artist is just a facilitator. Art as the mode of being makes both the artist and artwork ontologically possible. Art unfolds the artwork. The artwork has a life of its own, independent of any maker. Heidegger's phenomenology emphasises the artwork as "Being", as he said "back to the things themselves".

On the one hand, to appreciate art one must start with an understanding of what art is, yet on the other hand we can only appreciate art from the work itself. A paradox described by Plato as "A man cannot try to discover either what he knows or what he does not know. He would seek what he knows, for since he knows it there is no need of the inquiry, nor what he does not know, for in that case he does not even know what he is to look for". This is a circle only broken by an innate and a priori knowledge of Kantian pure and empirical sensible intuitions, of space, time and the categories of quantity, quality, relation, modality.

An artwork has Being and is its own Origin, yet we can understand art from our innate and a priori knowledge of aesthetics and representation that precedes ant experience of art. We can understand the aesthetic form and representational content as a single unity of apperception as a holistic synthesis of form and content. — RussellA

Heidegger is NOT going to help you defend materialism. At any rate, here is a passage from his Origin of the Artwork:
What art is should be inferable from the work. What the work of art is we can come
to know only from the nature of art. Anyone can easily see that we are moving in a
circle. Ordinary understanding demands that this circle be avoided because it violates
logic. What art is can be gathered from a comparative examination of actual art works.
But how are we to be certain that we are indeed basing such an examination on art
works if we do not know beforehand what art is? And the nature of art can no more be
arrived at by a derivation from higher concepts than by a collection of characteristics
of actual art works. For such a derivation, too, already has in view the characteristics
that must suffice to establish that what we take in advance to be an art work is one in
fact. But selecting works from among given objects, and deriving concepts from principles, are equally impossible here, and where these procedures are practiced they are a
self-deception.
Thus we are compelled to follow the circle. This is neither a makeshift nor a defect.
To enter upon this path is the strength of thought, to continue on it is the feast of
thought, assuming that thinking is a craft. Not only is the main step from work to art a
circle like the step from art to work, but every separate step that we attempt circles in
this circle.

This "circle" is hermeneutical, not material foundational.

In language is the syntax of form and the semantics of content. Language is a set of words. A word is a physical object that exists in the world, as much as a mountain exists in the world. — RussellA

You do see the issue that comes out of this, fight? I mean, to refer to a mountain at all is to "say" or think 'mountain'. So in order to see how language stands to mountains and the like, one has to look to language first, that matrix out of which mountain is conceived. If it were the case that mountains and other objects directly confronted inquiry, as a direct communication it its "mountain-ness" that is apart from you and your existence, then you would have a kind of metaphysical logos, the "what they are" being "out there" and you there receiving it.
But what is this epistemic nexus that makes this even conceivable? If you can't even IMAGINE what this is, then the idea is unsustainable. This is the trouble with materialist thinking.

As mountain is being referred to by mentioning "mountain", as pain is being referred to by mentioning "pain", as it is asserted that the reference of "mountain" is identical with mountain, as it is asserted that the reference of "pain" is identical with pain, as the similarities between "mountain" and mountain, "pain" and pain are being clarified, then the linkage between a word and what it refers to fulfil all the requirements of a metaphor. — RussellA

It is an odd way to think of this. Metaphors borrow from one context to fit another, but it is not identity that is passed on; it is similarity. I am a real lion before my morning coffee, e.g. There is nothing of the desire to kill and eat live gazelles in this. But I am grouchy and ill tempered, a small bit like a lion's aggression.
And concepts are NOT what they refer to. If I say to you that I broke my ankle, I am not thereby transmitting to you a broken ankle. Words "stand in" for the world.
And the whole idea you present carries the assumption that we all know what mountains are. Of course, we do, but how does this occur, THIS is the question. Materialism, even something like Galen Strawson conceived in his Real Materialism, can't handle this.

As language is metaphorical, and as every known object in the world or known private subjective experience can be expressed in metaphorical terms, everything that is known can be said, whether concrete concepts such as mountain, abstract concepts such as pain, non-existents such as “The present King of France is bald.”, negative existentials such as “Unicorns don’t exist.”, identities such as “Superman is Clark Kent.” or substitutions such as “Taylor believes that Superman is 6 feet tall.”

Only that which is unknown cannot be put into words. Only that which is unknown is ineffable. If it is known, it can be put into words and is expressible. — RussellA

I see nothing but problems with this. How is it that material brain cells have a metaphorical relation with anything but brain cells? And if it is physical brains cells all the way down, how does physicality not reduce all that is said here to mere physicality? You can say, well, our experience is just what physicality does, but then you have to completely reconstrue what the idea means to accommodate perception, affectivity, values, thought, ethics, aesthetics, consciousness, and so on.

But then, meaning does not issue from what materialism can provide. One has to think again, completely reorient the approach, and this takes you only to one place: phenomenology, the "beginning" of things.

"Only that which is unknown is ineffable"?? We don't know how to send a rocket to another galaxy, yet. Is this an issue of ineffability?

Better to turn your chair to the wall. — Banno

But Wittgenstein was not turning away like this when he went to war. He wanted to know this experience, at the front line, something he made formals requests for.
You cannot speak the world, and I agree. But then, our words NEVER do this. I think Rorty and others right when they say that at root, truth is made, not discovered. But ethics has this extraordinary dimension to it which is value IN the presence itself. This is still given to the understanding in only the way thought can do this, but it is the residuum of experiential presence that sustains through to the end of the interpretative reduction. It will not be reduced to anything, and so philosophy needs to be very attentive to it. It is AS IF the world itself speaks: do not do this! Think of the default prohibition on assault: Why not! It hurts, and this speaks for itself. Hurting IS an interpretative term, contextually bound; but there is that certain ineffable "otherness' that is there.
The practical upshot of this is, well, extraordinary: Our ethical entanglements have a gravitas beyond what can be said.

For the most part I am not looking for metaphysical truth or foundational justification, just things that work. — Tom Storm

Okay! I can't help but argue though. For me, as I grow older, the matter is exactly the opposite. I simply must understand why oh why we are born to suffer and die. And this goes metaphysical in an instant.

What you're calling your 'experience of red' is a socially mediated construction. Therefore it is bound up with the language your culture uses and so can be reiterated in that language. — Isaac

Then please, demonstrate so. Unless you claim you have none?

Then please, demonstrate so. — hypericin

"That red postbox was very vibrant for a moment, it reminded me of blood for some reason, I think it was the horror film I'd just watched. Just as the sun caught it though, the colour was more muted, like autumn leaves, I felt a lot calmer."

This tells me a quality of the sensation (vibrancy), another color sensation it reminded you of(blood), and how it later made you feel(calmer). But nothing about the sensation itself. 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.

So, let's assume the possibility, that there is a huge part of reality which is completely undisclosed to our senses, and never comes to anyone's mind in any conception, sense image, or anything like that. Would you agree that this logical possibility validates the notion of ineffability? — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes. Validity of the notion, not the conception itself. Point being, the notion of impossibility carries the exact same implication as the notion of ineffability. Impossibility in turn, carries the power and weight of a pure categorical conception, whereas ineffability is a mere logical construct.

Further, we have mathematics which produces evidence of this large part of reality which is not sensed, nor has it entered into human minds, concepts like spatial expansion, dark energy and dark matter. (…) It's not truly ineffable because for everything which hasn't yet entered the mind there is a possibility that it may. — Metaphysician Undercover

Ok. This is elaboration of ’s knowledge in practice.

Is it possible, that there are such things which could never be brought into the mind, not even though the use of mathematics? (…) That might be the true ineffable. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yep. What I’ve been advocating. There’s even an example of what something like that would be. Those cannot be named as existents, simply from the thesis that our manner of naming things could not possibly be applied to them. It is tacit acknowledgement that we have no warrant to claim our intelligence is the only possible kind of intelligence there is, from which follows that we cannot declare such things are impossible in themselves but only that they are absolutely impossible for our kind of intelligence. And it isn’t because we don’t know how, but that we are not even equipped for it.

What would be the point in believing in the ineffable then? — Metaphysician Undercover

I can’t think of one. If a thing is already impossible, what’s the point in calling the same thing something else?
————

The point though, was that you know I am referring to a particular called "the box", not because I have not pointed out this particular and given it that name, but because you know the type of thing which is called a box. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, I know you’re referring to the box, but no, there’s nothing contained in what you told me that justifies I should have already known what the word you wrote, “box”, stands for. Dialectical consistency demands I work only with that which has been given to me, and from that, I couldn’t deduce the type of thing you’re talking about is something I should already know. I brought this to your attention with the parenthetical.

So in order for the word to do its job, you need to respect both, that "box" refers to a universal, and that it refers to a particular. And the need to know both is required for one specific instance of use. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, I need a universal in order for a particular to be possible on the one hand, and cognizable on the other. My contention is only that “box” isn’t it. Put another way, box is a conception itself subsumed under a more encompassing conception, e.g., “container”, hence cannot be a universal, which is not subsumed under a conception, insofar as there are none greater than it.

And if I do know what the word “box” stands for, which means your signification and mine are congruent, I know what I’m expected to get.
— Mww

But the congruency in many cases is a feature of the conception, rather than pointing out a particular, and the conception is what allows you to identify the individual. — Metaphysician Undercover

Ok, but being feature of congruent conceptions reduces to congruent understandings, which I hinted at by prefacing my comment with the necessity for congruent intelligences, which includes understanding.

I am referring to a particular, my car, but I lead you to it through an understanding of the conceptions, "black", "Civic", "far corner of the lot", not by physically pointing out the particular. — Metaphysician Undercover

And there it is: precisely the missing conceptual schema of “box”. And while the inclusive schema with respect to the car isn’t physically pointing, I have a much greater chance of locating it because of them. Besides….you didn’t point to the box either. You just told me to go get one.

Good stuff. Socrates would be happy.

This tells me a quality of the sensation (vibrancy), another color sensation it reminded you of(blood), and how it later made you feel(calmer). But nothing about the sensation itself. — hypericin

Those are all there is to 'the sensation itself'. You have evidence of something more?

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

@Banno has already disabused you of this misunderstanding. You could and would know exactly what I'm talking about by learning how to use the words correctly.