My sense of my own identity is relentlessly, but subtly, formed and reformed through direct and indirect social engagement,
— Joshs
Here, you consider a social engagement as an immanent cause of ‘my sense of my own identity’. How is that compatible with Derrida’s placing ‘what absolutely is not’ at the center of our temporality and the constitution of our being? — Number2018

First of all, it is important to remember that the ‘social’ here refers to the exposure to absolute alterity that temporal repetition implies. Such alterity can be the voice of another or one’s own outer or inner voice, the written words of another or my exposure to the perceptual features of my room. This is all discursive (textual) for Derrida.

Secondly, if what is ‘absolutely not’ is at the center of our temporality , then presence is equally so, within the same
moment.

“Nothing, neither among the elements nor within the system, is anywhere ever simply present or absent.” These two inseparable poles( the formal and the empirical, presence and absence, form a hinge in which neither side dominates the other.

Shouldn’t we substitute Derrida’s interval of an absolute absence, for example, with Simondon’s notion of the transindividual? “The transindividual is the unity of two relations, a relation interior to the individual (defining its psyche) and a relation exterior to the individual (defining the collective), a relation of relations” (Combes, ‘Simondon and the Philosophy of the Transindividual’, p 26). The interval, an abyss of what absolutely is not could be transformed into the relation between the two heterogenetic orders. It could become possible to avoid the epistemological aporia while saving Derrida’s exposure to the unendurable loss of meaning. — Number2018

What would allow two orders to be heterogeneous to each other, other than some structural unity or center within each , opposing one to the other? Doesn’t this invoke the problem of the condition of possibility of formal structures? We would have to recognize the heterogeneity that already inhabits an ‘order’ and keeps
it from being closed within itself and simply opposed to another order.

I don't follow how you're making the jump from the particulars constituting concepts to 'experiences'. Why must the particulars be experiences?

Say there's concept a dog has which makes it more likely to, say, fetch its lead when it hears the word "walk", and say this concept is constituted of several linked concepts, I don't see why any of those linked concepts need be an experience. — Isaac

For me “walk” is too ambiguous, since it’s something that can be learned via classical or operant conditioning. Haven’t checked but I presume pigeons could be taught to properly respond to this word by walking when so hearing - or else by fetching a leash, etc. The concept of “treat”, as first mentioned, seems to me far more apt for discussion. A typical treat can be a bone, a small serving of human food, a biscuit, or even a carrot if the dog so likes to eat. For the dog to understand the concept of treat it would need to abstract from a limited set of particulars such as those aforementioned to a generalized notion such as, here guestimating, “that which is given to me and make me greatly pleased”.

In presuming you’re not asking me why a dog must hold a first-person awareness rather than being a philosophical zombie of sorts (it does after all share enough CNS commonalities to our own to warrant making the issue moot, or so I'm thinking):

A dog can develop the concept of treat and associate it to the word "treat" only by a kind of inductive inference from a limited set of particulars of which it is aware of - this to the generalized notion as concept - by holding first-person awareness (to not further confound the issue by using the term “conscious awareness”) of things such as biscuits and bones. I presume we can both grant that, in typical cases, the dog has no word associations for each of these particulars it is aware of (e.g., so as to differentiate the word “biscuit” from the word “bone”). If so, then the dog uses unnarrated first person awareness of particular tokens to develop an unnarrated first person awareness of a type … Which it can then, however imperfectly, associate in semantic import to the English word “treat”.

None of this being possible if the dog were devoid of experiences pertaining to some particular treats.

What I'm suggesting is that all experience is post hoc. Everything we'd call an experience is made up after the mental events which that experience is attempting to explain. — Isaac

Roger that, as can for example be measured in milliseconds between raw sensory data from sensory organs and the after-the-fact result of the experience. But this can get knees-deep in murky issues: such as how it is that we come to hold first-person awareness of neurons and what they do in the first place if not via the experiences of first-person awareness. Besides, that experiences of a red apple, for example, are post hoc to the raw sensory data our sensory organs register does not of itself diminish the reality of us having immediate experiences of the red apple in our first person awareness.

For my part, though, I was here only questioning the appraisal that experiences need to be contingent on narration in order to manifest.

So the fundamental issue here is not really the use of words. It is for humans, but maybe less so for dogs. It's about what kind of cognitive activity constitutes an 'experience' as opposed to simply some neurons firing.

I think the evidence is pretty strong now that there's no one-to-one relationship between neural events and our 'experience', so we must explain that epistemic cut somehow. — Isaac

Yes, this is a big and very loaded fundamental question. Don't intend to get into it on this thread. But so it's said, I again very much doubt that humans require words in other to experience.

What I'm suggesting is that all experience is post hoc. Everything we'd call an experience is made up after the mental events which that experience is attempting to explain.

So your dog's constituent neural activity is not an experience. — Isaac

And why are concepts like “mental event” and “constituent neural activity ” not themselves post hoc narratives? Because the only non post-hoc psychological events are third person empirical concepts? Instead of looking at experiences as attempts at explanation, why not see them as normatively anticipative patterns of performative interaction with a world? This eliminates the split between subjective experience and the ‘real’ outer world that your dualism between experiencing and neurological functions entails. Shifting our language from that of intentional narrative to third person neurological talk is then a move from one kind of experience to another. Tracing the evolution of one’s thinking from what you might be inclined to dub folk psychological to a scientific neurological account is not about replacing ‘post-hoc’ narrative with evidence-based fact. If anything it is the empirical account which is post-hoc in the sense that it is an elaboration and enrichment of the former. But neither is really post-hoc , since this would imply that our beliefs return from the world as it is, outside of and prior to our narrative about it. The distinction to be made is not between primary and secondary , more and less true knowledge about an external world , but the different ways in which our performative interactions with our world constructs niches that allow us to function anticipatively in the world we do-construct in the way that we do. Think of two different animals, both of which inhabits and functions within its own unique niche or ‘ world’. Let us say that one’s organism -environment niche is more complex and flexible that the other, giving it a more expansive repertoire of behaviors. If we can’t say that this more complex niche is a truer model of the way the world
really is, then we also can’t say that it is less ‘post-hoc’ than the simpler animal’s niche. Likewise, if a neurological account of psychological functioning constructs the world that it models in niche-like fashion, then the distinction between post-hoc experience and original event collapses.

It is indeed the system doing the narration, but not of experiences so much as of mental events. Does that make sense? — Isaac

Perfect sense. Brain system does its narratives of mental events, none of which is the mental event of “experience”, yet one of its mental events is the “conscious subject”, and that mental event is that which makes sense of mental event “experience”. Roundabout way of doing things, I must say.

Which gets us right back to the damnable but inescapable notion of ineffable. Anything so farging weird as mental events that apparently don’t do certain things, creating for itself events that apparently can do the things the system apparently doesn’t do, just has to be entirely ineffable, right?

Afterthought regarding your musings and Cantor.

Brain mechanism narratives: both inconsistent and incomplete. Inconsistent because it operates under the auspices of natural law but natural law cannot explain the conscious subject, and, incomplete because if natural law is sufficient causality for the conscious subject, the conscious subject should have empirical predicates, which conscious subject as such, does not as yet appear to possess.

Inconsistent and incomplete: the brain narrates everything except narrate how it does everything.

Ta-DAAAA!!!!

Blind folk can't talk about colour, and deaf folk can't talk about music.

But

Perfect sense. Brain system does its narratives of mental events, none of which is the mental event of “experience”, yet one of its mental events is the “conscious subject”, and that mental event is that which makes sense of mental event “experience”. — Mww

I’m not getting it. How does the brain make use of words to bring into being mental events, such as those of word recognition and usage?

I could get the affirmation that CNS cells, exemplified by neurons, communicate with each other. This affirmation presumes that neurons are of themselves living agents capable of giving and receiving information, replete with their own individual positive and negative valance … their own unicellular kind of autopoietic experience - such that they strengthen their synaptic connections when the information-conveyance is to their liking, and such that lack of beneficial information-conveyance results in synaptic decay. But even when so conceptualized, where is there word usage in the constitutional activities of brain systems?

where is there word usage in the constitutional activities of brain systems? — javra

There isn’t any. Believe it or not, it’s what I’ve been saying all along. Your bit on CNS cells just is the brain narrating itself, or to itself, in the form of mental states, wordlessly. I didn’t mention any particular methodology for it, seeing as how it can only arise in one way. Yours, in fact.

My clarification wasn’t clear, apparently. Dunno, maybe it can’t be.
———-

My bad — javra

Glad I noticed that. Gave me the chance to erase a two-paragraph clarification of the previous clarification, which would have been quite superfluous.

My clarification wasn’t clear, apparently. — Mww

My bad. Should of added a smiley face or something. My post was tongue-in-cheek. No, I'm in agreement with you. :up:

... still maintaining that experience is not contingent on narrative. :wink:

For me, the fact that all I have to do is experience something in order to talk about it means that it's only ineffable at a certain time (in the sense that I couldn't speak the experience into myself, I'd have to get off my butt and go do something), rather than in principle. I guess I'm thinking, no matter what conditions you might put out there it will always be something that cannot be spoken of, whereas experience doesn't meet that criteria -- all you need do is experience something, then you can talk about it. — Moliere

This is not the same "gap" between knowledge and experience that you and @Banno spoke about earlier in the discussion. (I set out that gap/contradiction here. Banno has not yet addressed it, despite saying that he would.)

It is not merely that you can't talk about something before you experience it - you can. It is that, at least in some cases, you cannot put part of an experience into a set of instructions so that another can know how to do something from those instructions alone.

This is just a variation of Mary's Room. Does Mary learn all there is to know about colour perception from reading all the facts on the subject prior to her seeing colour? According to the Ability Hypothesis, what Mary learns when she sees red is not a new fact (knowledge-that), but an ability (knowledge-how) - she learns how to pick out red from other colours by sight. This is the same as what you and Banno are claiming: that the knowledge (how) that one learns from an experience cannot be entirely stated and recorded in every possible book on the subject (written by those who have had the experience); it cannot be included in "all the facts". Therefore, that part of knowledge is ineffable.

You and Banno did not specify that it is necessarily knowledge-how that cannot be included in "all the facts", or in the most detailed possible list of instructions of how to do something, but you have both previously implied, if not stated, that there is some ineffability in the knowledge that one gains from undergoing an experience.

Both are right and always will be. — Isaac

"Double the ordinal" and "add two to the previous number" both give {2, 4, 6, 8, 10}. But so do "The sum of n and the reverse of its digit", and "The sum of n and the number of digits in n".

If asked to continue the sequence {2, 4, 6, 8, 10...} any of these will do. The first two are identical. Continuing the second two will result in different sequences: { 0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 11, 22, 33, 44, 55...} and {0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 11, 13, 15, }. So the first two are consistent with {2, 4, 6, 8, 10...} and with each other, while the second two are consistent with {2, 4, 6, 8, 10...} but not with the other sequences.

There are innumerable ways to "model" any "functionally limited data set" - taking "model" here as setting out some sort of narrative or rule. If instead we consider "model" as letting a neural network predict the next element in the sequence, will it always choose the same sequence?

Could we have two different, yet accurate and complete. descriptions of your ‘57 DeSoto? If the two descriptions are complete, then aren't they identical? And if we have two different descriptions, doesn't it follow that they are either incomplete or inconsistent?

All this by way of agreeing that we cannot have such a complete description.
____________________
So if we cannot have a complete description of the ‘57 DeSoto, doesn't it follow that there is something about the ‘57 DeSoto that cannot be said? Something ineffable?

I don't think so. It's not that there is something left unsaid, but that there is always more that can be said...

It's not that there is something left unsaid, but that there is always more that can be said... — Banno

All good enough.

What’s the significant difference in the two parts of that compound statement?

Same as between ( p v q v r) and ( p v q v r v...); it remains open. The point about family resemblance is that new members who do not conform can be added to the family.

It's incomplete yet consistent, as opposed to complete but inconsistent.

I don't know a blind person to ask. In fact this suggests they do indeed have visual experiences. — hypericin

Heh, "asking", for me at least, isn't as literal as I'm reading you here.

Your link counts as "asking" for me. And if a textbook explanation suggests the blind have visual experiences... what does that suggest for your belief that the blind can't talk of red?

But my point is, how would you determine what they experience by asking them? — hypericin

I think I'd prefer to say that how I determine what they experience is by asking them. That's step 1 of the method I'd propose. And the textbook you linked seemed to be following that in roughly the same way.

I think what you're asking is how does dialogue communicate experience? -- which I'd agree is a good question I don't quite know the answer to.

But that it does -- well, it's questionable, but it's only questionable to me on the level of Cartesian doubt.

A dog can develop the concept of treat and associate it to the word "treat" only by a kind of inductive inference from a limited set of particulars of which it is aware of - this to the generalized notion as concept - by holding first-person awareness (to not further confound the issue by using the term “conscious awareness”) of things such as biscuits and bones. — javra

I'm still not following how you've jumped to 'awareness'. Why does the dog need to be 'aware' of bones and biscuits in order for the category {stuff that's nice to eat} to form a semantic memory. It seems to me all that's required would be some connections between the word-sound 'treat' and the neural networks associated with nice food. There are still specific networks that will be excited in response to categories, just perhaps fewer of them than with specifics.

In a sense, the dog collating mental events into category 'treat' therefore is social construction. The trigger for the association with a broad response such as nice food, rather than a specific one such as bone, has been built, not by the dog, but by the interaction with the owner.

So the confusion (my fault perhaps) that many seem to have gotten into from my comments is that they are...

the appraisal that experiences need to be contingent on narration in order to manifest. — javra

That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that without language we do not have experiences of 'red', not that we don't have experience tout court. To abstract an experience (a post hoc construction) as being one of 'red' one requires the definition of red. Without it, one has neither cause, nor capability to abstract, from the stream of experience being constructed, anything like 'redness'.

And why are concepts like “mental event” and “constituent neural activity ” not themselves post hoc narratives? — Joshs

Well, they are, in that I experience them in a lab, but they're not in this narrative - the one we're talking about here where we're discussing how experience might be best modelled. It's like me narrating a story to you where the main character jumps out of a window and you say "but he can't jump out of a window, he's a fiction, just a figment of your imagination"

Say the entire world is a fiction. I assume, in talking to you as normal human beings, that you too are embedded in this fiction, and that in this fiction there are plot items called neurons, and brains, and that they have a history in this storyline, they've occurred in previous scenes. We're discussing what part the character 'experience' ought to play in this story. Someone says "oh, he could pick up the plot-item 'neuron' and throw it at the wall". I'm saying "No, he couldn't do that because, if you remember from scene 4, the plot-item 'neuron' was described as really, really heavy, and in scene 2, the character 'experience' was described as being quite weak. It wouldn't work to have him throw 'neurons' at the wall here".

All made up. Nothing having any better claim to be real than anything else. But things in the world have histories, they're tied to other things by logical and rational connections. A neuron is like one long Ramsey sentence, it starts with "If...", but to deny that first 'If' means the whole sentence must be undone and that unravels a ton of connected stuff.

We're constantly weaving narratives to explain the causes of our internal states, and yes, that process is not passive - we reach out to the external states and sometime try to change them to match the prediction rather than change the prediction... but either way, we're weaving a story, not arbitrarily, but with purpose. We want it to cohere, to make good predictions, to be consistent...

It still matters (to some) if the post hoc character we've made into 'neurons', makes sense when in the same scene as the post hoc character we've made into 'experience of red'.

if a neurological account of psychological functioning constructs the world that it models in niche-like fashion, then the distinction between post-hoc experience and original event collapses. — Joshs

Case in point. You're drawing here a logical conclusion from two narrative points. You're saying that if we accept A and B, then C must follow, ie C must be the case. So some things simply must be the case once we accept their premises. That's all empirical sciences are claiming (or at least, that's all I'm claiming). If we accept A,B,C...etc about our interactions, our models thus far, then D must be the case. and if D is the case, then our previous E cannot also be. It's all hypothetical, it's all one long Ramsey sentence. There's no claim to ultimate reality there, just If-Then.

Anything so farging weird as mental events that apparently don’t do certain things, creating for itself events that apparently can do the things the system apparently doesn’t do, just has to be entirely ineffable, right? — Mww

I don't know. I made a modest career doing my damnedest to eff it. But maybe...

There are innumerable ways to "model" any "functionally limited data set" - taking "model" here as setting out some sort of narrative or rule. If instead we consider "model" as letting a neural network predict the next element in the sequence, will it always choose the same sequence? — Banno

Perhaps numbers were a bad example afterall, being famously infinite, and here I'm trying to give an example of a finite data set.

In my example, one should imagine the set {2,4,6,8} as the entirety of the external state - finite and discrete. So numerous models could be used to predict the full set from some part of it, and, being both finite and discrete, there'd never be a point where any one model could be shown to predict (or model) more accurately, the full set.

Like the duck-rabbit. It's never going to resolve the question of which it is.

It's not that there is something left unsaid, but that there is always more that can be said... — Banno

I like that, two different ways of saying the same thing, used to demonstrate that you cannot say the same thing in two different ways, simply with the assertion of "it's not".

Unless you explain the "not" by giving reasons for it, then you are just begging the question by asserting something without demonstrating its truth. So how is it that "there is something left unsaid" says something different from "there is always more that can be said"?

Is it the case that "there is always more that can be said" is a statement of a general principle, and "there is something left unsaid" is a reference to a particular instance? So the difference between these two, which makes them not the same, is not a difference at all, it is the fact that there is a relation between them. That there is a relation between them is what makes them distinct, and this implies that that "no relation" means the same. A relation is a statement of difference, so by the identity of indiscernibles, the proposal of two things without relations is actual a proposal of one and the same thing. Then "different" means having a relation, which implies being part of a larger whole, so that being different means being part of one and the same whole.

But all that is a distraction from the real issue, which is the relation you've proposed between "there is always more that can be said", and the ineffable. How do you propose that this statement "there is always more that can be said" does not imply that the ineffable is real? "Always" implies that every particular situation will have the same general feature of "something left unsaid".

So the real issue is in the way that we understand the relationship between the general principle, and the particular situation. The general principle must always imply an "always" in relation to particular instances, or else it loses its credibility. But the particular must always have unique properties or else it cannot be said to be a particular. These two general principles establish that the particular is always in some way incompatible with the general. This is not an incompleteness, it is an inconsistency between these two general principles, one describing the general principle, and the other describing the particular..

Therefore we have accepted and employed general principles which establish that the particular is inconsistent with the general, through inconsistent descriptions of these two. That is the relationship between these, which we know and understand, a relationship of inconsistency. Furthermore, there is more than one way to deal with this problem of inconsistency, because we could designate a problem with our description of the particular, or we could designate a problem with our description of the general, or both.

The common, current, solution is to assign the problem to our description of the general, and adapt our understanding of the general in an attempt to make it consistent with our description of the uniqueness of the particular. To do this, we allow the general to lose some of its credibility, and replace "always" with a degree of possibility of "not always", thereby moving into an understanding of reality which consists of probabilities. The general principle has been adapted to replace "always" with a numerical value representing probability.

It goes...

1. {some collection of neural firing events} ->
2. "I threw a red ball" experience ->
3. (if necessary) - abstraction of 'red', 'ball' and 'threw' from that experience (2) according to the social rules around identifying those components — Isaac

So you have moved from "experience is a social construct" to "the conceptualization and verbalization of experience is a social construct"? (Which we all knew.)

Do you now agree that the sensory experiences of 2 are ineffable, and are only communicable at all to those who have had the same experience?

And if a textbook explanation suggests the blind have visual experiences... what does that suggest for your belief that the blind can't talk of red? — Moliere

Sure, if they have the experience. The real world medical condition of blindness is a red herring. What I was going for was "An individual who has no experience of color".

I think what you're asking is how does dialogue communicate experience? -- which I'd agree is a good question I don't quite know the answer to. — Moliere

The words for sensory experiences like color can only be learned by pointing, which links the experience with the associated word. You can then happily use these words with others who have learned these same associations, avoiding the impossible task of actually describing what it is like to have these experiences.

What is your opinion on the validity, and/or manifestation, of mental imagery?

Too much writing, I know. You can pick and choose. Some repetition here. I was busy and forgot what I was doing, a bit, when I came back to it.

Cool. If it's not a logical procedure, then I believe can get along with it well enough -- though by no means am I an expert on Husserl, just an interested bystander who likes to think about these things. — Moliere

But then, its not as if it's not a logical procedure. What is free of this?

Sentence 2 would have us go down the rabbit hole of phenomenology that I'd want to bracket, for the moment, in order to be able to differentiate phenomenology from not-phenomenology. Phenomenology, I'd say, is one way of talking about why it is we can differentiate language from not-language. But surely it's not the only way? (even if it happens to be, say, the one true way) — Moliere

I think phenomenology is one of two ways to discover presence as presence, for it clears perception. And I think it is an intellectualization of the process of liberation that leads to what they call enlightenment in the East. As I see it, it is important to understand that what is sought is not propositional knowledge, and I say this disregarding what is written in familiar texts: the "science" of describing the world of intuitive presence is incidental to the revelatory encounter. The real question phenomenology puts before us, I hazard, is, is it really possible for an encounter of "pure phenomena" to occur? It is not that one has to clear this with theory first, for it is really not a method to a propositional affirmation, though I am sure this is necessary part of the conscious act being conscious. The discovery of pure phenomenal encounter is a description of what is revealed. The theory, in my view, follows what is made manifest in the method. One is not, in the serious undertaking, just trying to make sense of ideas; one is seeking a new "sense" altogether. One is trying to dismantle the familiar world of spontaneous recognition in the "consummate ordinariness" of our affairs. This is the kind of rabbit hole I have in mind.

differentiate phenomenology from not-phenomenology — Moliere

I don't think this puts it right because I don't know what the "non phenomenological" is. Ideas are phenomenological presences as well as sensible intuitions. Indeed, there is nothing that is not. The phenomenon is what is there stripped of the belief that what we think in the usual way (the naturalistic attitude) is what reality is (see Caputo's Transcendence and the Transcendental in Husserl's Philosophy). When it is seen that what we have been "seeing" all along is not reality, we face the bare phenomenon. A moment of wonder and awe. I am saying (as does Caputo, I think) this is a threshold revelatory experience of Reality with a capital 'R'.

Because that might be an interesting focus for the debate on ineffability -- if we hold that we can differentiate between language and not-language, and we hold that we can "access" not-language without the use of language, AND we hold that we cannot access such and such with language THEN, and only then, could we say what is ineffable while not falling into the trap of saying what can't be said (and its attendant performative contradiction).
(I think, at least.... a first guess at some conditions for being able to state ineffability) — Moliere

I do see your point and it's a fascinating one: It is not as if at the moment of liberating perception from the multitude of suppositions that are as a matter of course, always already there, is a departure from the world of rocks, trees and stars and galaxies, but rather that this same world sustains through, but what is lifted is, well, let Caputo make a point. For Husserl, the transcendencies are the various things and ways of the world; they are " an inexhaustible otherness and fullness which consciousness now apprehends this way and now that. It is whatever manages to escape consciousness, to over flow it, to be too much for it at any one time. Transcendencies are mundane, empirical realities which give themselves to subjectivity in a complex of present and absence...(but) transcendental does not belong to the world at all.....but instead transcends the world. It is prior to the world, providing the ultimate subjectivity before which the world rises up as a phenomenon. the transcendental is not in the world,. nor above the world., but is a condition of possibility prior to the world.

This last statement needs to be examined. Phenomenology is what is there, presupposed by an engagement with the world of usual affairs. Phenomena are "prior", meaning always already there, but ignored thematically (as they would put it), i.e., just not talked about. Keep in mind that Kant was in the same mode of analysis, only in the search for the rational structure of thought and judgment. Husserl wants to make that analytical movement toward the phenomenological totality that is always there in the analysis of everydayness, not just rational structure. Kant says concepts without intuitions are empty and intuitions without concepts are blindd; Husserl says, let's make this synthesis of thought and sensible intuitions as THE landscape of the world as it is, omitting the idea of "representation". This before us IS what it is IS to BE. (Keeping in mind, as always, I have not read and absorbed the breadth if his thought. Never written a paper in Husserl).

A truly momentous move, rejected by most philosophers simply because it is so radical in its claim that the world as it is, is right there before you, realizable after the reduction intuitively and thematically removes talk about other things, the "petty" transcendencies of day to dayness. What Husserl calls transcendental, Buddhists call liberation, nirvana, no-self, and so on. I hold that philosophy's phenomenology is meant to be the final replacement of religion. It is a course toward an intuitive disclosure, not simply analytic philosophy's the empty spinning of wheels.

I agree that the taste of a pear is not a language event. And notice how often we indoctrinated in western philosophy reach for non-visual senses to get at the non-linguistic nature of experience? So there's something intentionally fuzzy about this notion, like it's defined as what cannot be said.

One experience I have to complicate this, though, is how I listen to classical music before, and after, reading about classical music. The more I'd read about classical music, the more my actual experience would change, even though it was an identical recording (like, literally, the same YouTube link :D Classical music is much easier to study than it used to be...)

I attribute this to the analytical and conceptual things I learned from reading. That is, the more I knew about the basic experience, the more the basic experience changed -- but in a way that was enhanced rather than dulled. Aesthetically, then, my thought is the exact opposite of reducing value to the raw experience. The raw experience, for the case of aesthetics at least (and not just individual enjoyment), is just an un-tutored mind. It's fun to think back on, but really, the more we come to know things about the art, and especially the more we listen to how others encounter the work of art, the more we get out of it.

So language, in my estimation, must go some way to constructing experience. Even at the level of acquiring it in my individual skull. But, from the phenomenological side of things, it seems impossible to be able to state to what extent it does or doesn't, hence my feelings of skepticism of such things. (not a hard skepticism, just an uncertainty). — Moliere

I think the "untutored mind" is always a matter to deal with. Think again of Kant: His analysis assumes that one has empirical experiences in which the structures of reason can be revealed. No language and social transaction, no demonstration of pure reason. Also consider that while you music education can enhance appreciation, it you were born to an enviironment of classical music, you would take to it intuitively. Your infantile exposure would BE you education, ands this applies across the board.

I wonder if learning music theory, say, can really enhance the aesthetic experience. Some music is very intellectual, like atonal pieces. Sure, you CAN appreciate them aesthetically, and certainly tonal dissonances can be just gorgeous, but IN tonal contexts! I have an open mind, but the aesthetics of Anton Weber (see here, e.g. https://www.google.com/search?q=youtube+anton+weber+atonality&rlz=1C1GIVA_enUS965US965&sxsrf=ALiCzsZhkrviWDoQp5TK4QsU0-uxHgQuwA%3A1669479356704&ei=vDuCY5XRKsytqtsPptWd-AQ&ved=0ahUKEwiVn5Cgn8z7AhXMlmoFHaZqB08Q4dUDCBA&uact=5&oq=youtube+anton+weber+atonality&gs_lcp=Cgxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAQAzIFCAAQogQ6BAgAEEc6BwgAEB4QogRKBAhBGABKBAhGGABQrAZY2iNg2CZoAHACeACAAZsBiAHtDJIBBDEuMTOYAQCgAQHIAQjAAQE&sclient=gws-wiz-serp#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:6339fa33,vid:ctLLqVy_kB0

is challenging.

But music can be powerfully beautiful. A weird way to put it, those two words together, but there is that extraordinary rapture that that comes over one that can and should be the object of great philosophical interest. Alas, philosophers tend not to be aesthetes. But when one listens to, say, the first several minutes of Mahler's ninth, or Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin, or whatever, there is something extraordinary that steps forward. (But how about Brittany Spears' Oops!? This raises a very interesting question pretty much untouched by philosophy, which is the possibility of qualitative gradation of evaluation of the "pure" affectivity of music and art, looking into whether some music is simply, qualitatively better than another. How could this be determined? Solely on the listening event; but this goes to your point about education, enculturation, and how this makes appreciation possible. Play Beethoven to bushman, and I am sure there will be mostly confusion.

Anyway, I would say all music is received in an environmentally structured way, but this structure is not the aesthetic, just as, to borrow Kant's way, pure reason is not about which language or culture it appears in.

If we take the assertion that language-world is fused, Heidegger's phenomenology of Ancient Greek to modern German should have worked -- and he wouldn't have posited something entirely different from what Plato said (or, maybe, he knew what Plato really said if we're true devotees :D ). His procedure would have seen the original meaning right there, rather than creating a very interesting treatise that is interesting specifically because it is a creative work and a fusion of ideas.

(It doesn't help Heidegger's case that he got lost in his own hermeneutic circle and couldn't even finish the 6 books that were planned, and then was seduced by fascism)

Where I think you and I, from the rest of what you write, will get along well is with Levinas -- I agree with you and him that ethics is the starting point for philosophy.

And if ethics is the starting point of philosophy, then there's no point in discussing proposition from non-propositional knowledge, or whether an ontology of naturalism is better from an ontology of phenomenology without, at first, understanding the ethical dimensions of these things. — Moliere

Heidegger thought, I have read, that ancient Greek and German were privileged languages, and that Greek terms were a cure for centuries of bad metaphysics. And I have read about the culture of the 1930's that influenced a lot of thinking, a quasi mystical belief in early races that were pure, once, and needed to be made pure again. There was something of this in Heidegger, who thought historically of about ontology, and I think this is the basis of his brief but terrible tryst with Nazism. I think he said he was "disappointed" and never condemned what they did. But he thought he could lead Germany to a new era of "self invention" recalling that a major part of his thought was to take the inquirer to that understanding of one's freedom to make one self, and this content of oneself was, of course, always already there in one's historical throwness (geworfenheit). Germans were Germans, so all there is to do is make the perfect German! In a creative act of authenticity grounded in the grand historical conception.

This creepy thinking is dangerous, and all too familiar in recent politics; nationalism is born out of thinking like this. But his analysis of our "there being" is just breath taking. Can't read Levinas without him, or, you can, even without Husserl, but he really needs context. Heidegger said Husserl was just walking on water with his "pure phenomenon". What you call "language fused", I hold, should be understood in terms of Husserl's transcendentalism: he thinks that this recognition of our "captivity of unquestioned acceptance" of the world's events is more than stepping beyond Heidegger's throwness; it is an ontology in the old, pre Heideggerian sense, you might say, of real Reals, and it is here I think he is right, though to speak of it makes the whole thing instantly assailable. But ot me this misses something very important, which brings the matter of pure phenomena to the table. Pure? In what sense? Certainly, the everydayness is suspended, but then what happens, for we are still IN everydayness when we do this in a critical way, which is the foundational interpretative engagement of language.

Put Heidegger's historicity aside, I say, and now see where the epoche takes one. I hold the only thing that really survives is value. And this is a major part of my thinking: a value-ontology, which means the only phenomenological purity comes to us entangled, of course; but the less entangled we can see it, the more it reveals itself. This is where metaethics takes us.

Levinas' Totality and Infinity opens this door, but he does not, as I can see, affirm the primacy of ethics as in the givenness of value as such. the face of the Other conveys this, but what IS this that is so important, a nd how can it be determined in the reduction that moves to purity? This is witnessed in the pain and pleasure, agony and bliss AS SUCH. It is manifest in its manifestness. or, it is its own presupposition.

Reading Levinas? Quite a different world you are in. Makes us something of a cult of two. He, and others, take religion seriously, something Heidegger would complain about (he called Kierkegaard a religious writer, with an unkind intention, even though he owed him a great debt of thanks for some of his thinking). But Heidegger didn't see the primacy of ethics. He is always me, mine, my death, my (our, in the case of his nationalism/naziism) freedom.

Hrmm, for me it's the foundationalism that's an issue (same issue I have with Descartes, for that matter). Also, I have a feeling we have very different notions of what science is :D -- but that's going to take us very far astray. Maybe put a bookmark on this line of thought for another thread? — Moliere

But it has to there: here is where ineffability lies, in the ethical and aesthetics of our world. A huge topic. My sources are too broad to mention (not at all that I am a master of these), but for the phenomenological reduction's theological "turn" see Being without God by Marion; too many others.
I like the intro to Michel Henry's works:

Henry’s phenomenology of life is radical precisely because it situates life’s original dimension beyond the realm of what is accessible to the natural sciences and even to objectivity as such, namely, by locating it in an affective immanence that escapes every attempt to objectify it.

This originarity of the "affective immanence" is striking. I want to stress that this dimension of affectivity is discoverable as a potency embedded in the revelation of absolute ontology. Of course, the rub lies with saying such a thing and not being misunderstood, for the problems that leap up at you are created by familiar language, even or especially philosophical language, that have no footing here, yet it is not as if the "something ineffable" about this can't be said. It can be said just as well as anything else, but that would take a system of language use in which this kind of affective immanence is common.

I hope my prodding isn't seen as disapproval. Because your posts have been a treat to think through some thoughts. So, at least from me, I have nothing but approval, though I am naturally inclined towards skeptical thinking, and skeptically inclined towards naturalism. Usually I doubt people who claim to have special knowledge. But, then, there's the curious fact of our individuality, our interiority, and so on that doesn't seem to be physical.

I just wonder if we really lose out on naturalism, for all that, when we think of naturalism as a philosophy rather than as "What physics books say is the whole truth and nothing but the truth"-style naturalism. Or, even further, I doubt metaphysics ever produces knowledge, ala old Kant's line of thinking. So, if phenomenology be an object of knowledge, then it's not metaphysical and thereby amenable to the methods of science. And if it's an object of knowledge, it would be effable, shareable, study-able.

But if it's an ethical basis, then it wouldn't. In which case, what is Husserl doing when he asks us to reject naturalism? What is the ethical dimension to Husserl's thought? Isn't that the important part? — Moliere

In the all too busy comments I made above, all that you say here is relevant and poignant. Kant's old line of thinking is the jumping off place, because he did understand that there is something unnatural or noumenal that was intimated in phenomena. What he didn't see is that in order for this to be the case, then phenomena itself must be noumenal. The metaphysics he conceived drew a line. But this was wrong. There is no line; only being, and metaphysics has always been about the physics that stands before us. Nor did he realize, as the very fewest "philosophers" have, the the whole point of our existence is to be found in affectivity: the Good, says Wittgenstein, this is what I call divinity.

I'm still not following how you've jumped to 'awareness'. Why does the dog need to be 'aware' of bones and biscuits in order for the category {stuff that's nice to eat} to form a semantic memory. — Isaac

Aren't all variations of memory (e.g. short term memory and long term memory) the storage (however imperfect it may be) of what occurs in the present awareness of the organism? If not entertaining philosophical zombie scenarios, this is the only possibility I can currently think of. I for example don't find that we as humans can recall memories of events which we were never consciously aware of in some former present time. (EDIT: false memories excluded - but this exception only seems to evidence the point made in terms of true memories.)

As to category formation, at the very least all species of will animals will make active use of categories if they are to survive - e.g., those of predator and/or of prey - in manners devoid of word use. This will include solitary animals, such as is typically the case for felines. Which to me evidences that categories can and do form in the absence of word use. (In truth, I also uphold that some category awareness will be inborn in certain animals, becoming only fine-tuned via experience ... a duckling's indifference to a goose's silhouette overhead and fearing that of a hawk's comes to mind as one researched example (though not devoid of controversy) of such ingrained recognition of categories ... but this would greatly complicate the current issue.)

It seems to me all that's required would be some connections between the word-sound 'treat' and the neural networks associated with nice food. — Isaac

My view is that no animal, humans included, forms connections between word-sounds and certain neural networks. Here I find a confounding of two different levels that concurrently occur in the same system. The animal would instead hold conscious awareness of the word-sound "treat" and would consciously associate it to, in my view, a category it is also in some way consciously aware of - most likely intuitively. And all of these activities that take place within the conscious awareness of the organism are then concurrently also manifesting in the workings of organism's neural networks.

I'm saying that without language we do not have experiences of 'red', not that we don't have experience tout court. — Isaac

I can agree that without language we would likely hold no awareness of the culturally-relative, abstract, connotations which redness can imply. That of passion - be it anger or love - for example.

But it seems to me that all lesser-animal predators will be aware of red, for it is the color of blood, which prey evidences when injured or eaten. For a lesser-animal predator to not have an experience of red would be greatly detrimental to its survival - such that experience of this color is favored by evolution in at the very least predators (irrespective of how qualitatively different their experiences of redness might be in comparison to typical human awareness of the color). I mention this because, of course, lesser animals do not make use of language (when understood as word use) to have experiences of red.

Never mind; too overly-analytical of me.

Never mind; too overly-analytical of me. — Mww

I'm curious, especially if you find fault with what I've stated, but if you insist on my never minding, alright.

it is important to remember that the ‘social’ here refers to the exposure to absolute alterity that temporal repetition implies. Such alterity can be the voice of another or one’s own outer or inner voice, the written words of another or my exposure to the perceptual features of my room — Joshs

So, ‘the social” here is significantly reduced to what can be expressed by either discursive or the
apparent perceptual features of ’my room.’ Such reduction omits various social situations that directly affect my sense of identity without my conscious engagement.

What would allow two orders to be heterogeneous to each other, other than some structural unity or center within each , opposing one to the other? Doesn’t this invoke the problem of the condition of possibility of formal structures? We would have to recognize the heterogeneity that already inhabits an ‘order’ and keeps
it from being closed within itself and simply opposed to another order. — Joshs

The problem of the impasse of a formal structure should not be limited by a classical apparent
structuralist approach. Despite an innumerate variety of significant interpretations, Derrida's differance and 'what absolutely is not' can be referred to discovered by Foucault our comprehensive contemporary situation of 'the cogito and the unthought.' "Man cannot posit himself in the immediate and sovereign transparency of a cogito… man extends from pure apprehension to the empirical clutter, the chaotic accumulation of contents, the weight of experiences constantly eluding themselves, the whole silent horizon of what is posited in the sandy stretches of non-thought." (Foucault, ‘The order of things’, p 351) Hasn't Derrida, instead of openness to the immanence of 'the unthought', erected an enclosed formal transcendental structure of the ultimate negative theology? Foucault, as well as Simondon and Deleuse, chose a different way. That is 'what would allow two orders to be heterogeneous to each other: we are impacted not by 'what absolutely is not" but by 'the whole silent horizon of what is posited in the sandy stretches of non-thought.' Foucault distinguished between the order of powers to affect and to be affected and the order of knowledge as heterogeneous but immanent to each other. "Between technics of knowledge and strategies of power, there is no exteriority, even if they have their specific roles and are linked together on the basis of their difference" (Foucault, 'The History of Sexuality p 98). Similarly, answering to the situation of 'the cogito and the unthought,' Deleuze and Guattari asserted: "There is only desire and the social, and nothing else. "(D & G, ‘Anti-Oedipus, p29).

What is it that you suppose is named here? — Banno

The sensation of red, of course.

If it, or anything, is ineffable, then you would expect circularity: "Which sensation? The red one. What is a red sensation? Redness. What is X? X-ness." Once the ineffable is reached, description stops, and its name can only be recited.

I concede I may be interacting with an automation or a p-zombie, with no notion of sensations, and so all this will be incomprehensible. If so, you can rest assured (whatever that may mean for you) that this incomprehension is a result of sensation's ineffability.

For a start, my insults are funnier. — Banno

The problem with your insults is that you use them in lieu of arguments. They are not particularly clever either, but to each his own.

Thanks for the interest, and please note my mere opinion on the matter.

I can agree that without language we would likely hold no awareness (…) which redness can imply. — javra

it seems to me that all lesser-animal predators will be aware of red…. — javra

lesser animals do not make use of language (…) to have experiences of red. — javra

I dunno….just seemed to smack of anthropomorphism. First to say lesser animals do not make use of language, then say they have red experiences, seems to attribute to them that which is reserved for us.

Lesser predators are not aware of red or blood, for those are conceptions that belong to language using intellects. Lesser predators are aware of that which triggers their instincts, I think is as far as we should use our language in describing beings that don’t.

I deleted because I understand what you mean; overly analytical because I think it misrepresented to say it that way. But alas…..we’re freakin’ married to our own words, and don’t employ a sufficient work-around when trying to show them impossible to use.

Not to worry….

I dunno….just seemed to smack of anthropomorphism. — Mww

You've cut the first quoted sentence short. I find the sentence important in it's entirety, including the part about "the culturally-relative, abstract, connotations which redness can imply". To me words facilitate the ability to form abstractions from abstractions from abstractions ... ultimately abstracted from experienced particulars. We may make use of the former while lesser animals don't, but I take it both experience the particulars. To be more blatant about things, while some mammals can visually associate the redness of inflamed genitalia with a readiness for reproduction, they will not be able to associate redness to, for one example, what the red circle in the Japanese flag symbolizes (the sun; power, peace, strength) - which is a culture-relative, abstract connotation that red can invoke.

Lesser predators are not aware of red or blood, for those are conceptions that belong to language using intellects. Lesser predators are aware of that which triggers their instincts, — Mww

This, though, denies the well documented reality that lesser animals can and do learn - including by forming associations. But I grant, my bias is not to deny lesser mammals the presence of any and all intellect, despite their lack of language and far less able cognitive faculties.

But alas…..we’re freakin’ married to our own words, and don’t employ a sufficient work-around when trying to show them impossible to use. — Mww

I get that, it's a little like a vicious circle. It's why I'm now leaning into ethology (animal behavior) in this discussion.

Thanks for the comments.