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" — Number2018

I think Deleuze was closer to Derrida’s approach to the relation between strategies of power than he was to Foucault’s. Deleuze was not happy with Foucault’s understanding of systems of power as motivating and constituting. Desiring assemblages can be differentiated from each other, but not in the way that Foucault presumes power systems to do.

“Which brings me to my primary difference from Michel at the moment. If I speak with Felix Guattari of desiring-assemblages, it's that I am not sure that micro-systems can be described in terms of power. For me, the desiring-assemblage marks the fact that desire is never a "natural" nor a "spontaneous" determination. Feudalism for example is an assemblage that puts into play new relations with animals (the horse), with the earth, with deterritorialisation (the battle of knights, the Crusade), with women (knightly love), etc. Completely mad assemblages, but always historically assignable. I would say for my part that desire circulates in this assemblage of heterogeneities, in this sort of "symbiosis": desire is but one with a given assemblage, a co-functioning. Of course a desiring-assemblage will include power systems (feudal powers for example), but they would have to be situated in relation to the different components of the assemblage. Following one axis, one can distinguish in the desiring-assemblage states of things and enunciations (which would be in agreement with the distinction between the two types of formation according to Michel). Following another axis, one can distinguish the territoritalities or re-territorialisations, and the movements of deterritorialisation which carry away an assemblage (for example all the movements which carry away the Church, knighthood, peasants). Systems of power would emerge everywhere that re-territorialisations are operating, even abstract ones. Systems of power would thus be a component of assemblages. But assemblages would also comprise points of deterritorialisation. In short, systems of power would neither motivate, nor constitute, but rather desiring-assemblages would swarm among the formations of power according to their dimensions.”( Desire & Pleasure,Gilles Deleuze.
trans. Melissa McMahon 1997)

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

What I'm suggesting is that the duck-rabbit is resolved in that we can talk of it being either a duck or a rabbit; we are not limited to one description. We have three: duck, rabbit and duck-rabbit.

But someone might come along and show us that it is also a sailing ship, that there is yet another description that we had so far missed. It's not that seeing the sailing ship is ineffable, since we now can talk about it. There was more that can be said. Because it can be said, it is not ineffable. ( )

Hence, the tail grows in the telling.

(edit: Ducking the dick.)

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. — hypericin

You are almost there. You almost grasped the circularity of defining red as the sensation of red.

The science of perception is built on confidence in our knowledge of the external world.

We can only speculate about why that confidence is so easy to come by, but we can't explain it by empirical or logical means.

No, that's not how it seems to me. Experiences are all post hoc constructions. What 'comes first' is not an experience. It's not something we can report, nor anything that we're even conscious of. It's just a load of neural activity which, as we should all know by now, does not have any kind of one-to-one relation with the sorts of things we talk about like balls, colours, or words. all of that is constructed afterwards as a way of explaining what just happened.

So it's not a case of "I threw a red ball" being an experience constructed out of the constituent experiences "throwing" redness" and "ball".

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

OK, I can agree that it seems reasonable to think that the neural machinery operates prior to the experience, but that is irrelevant to what I am saying. The experience consists in the sensations, feelings and images of the body-mind. They don't all have to be conscious, or reflexively conscious, let alone reported.

So, I'm saying that what the dog sees; either the yellow ball or the blue ball, is different in each case. The dog is aware of the yellow ball or the blue ball, and can tell the difference, as evidenced by her responses.

Of course dogs and other animals may not be capable of the self-reflexive awareness of experiencing as humans are, since that ability may require symbolic language. Experiencing requires a perspective, and the neural machinery is not experienceable (in the sense that we have no awareness whatsoever of neural "goings on; it has no perspective).

I think Deleuze was closer to Derrida’s approach to the relation between strategies of power than he was to Foucault’s. — Joshs

Could you expand this? In what way Deleuze was close to Derrida's approach? Could you relate Derrida's perspective on power to your quote from 'Desire and Pleasure'? By the way, Deleuze entirely changed his position and reformulated the disagreement with Foucault in 'Foucault'.

We have three: duck, rabbit and dick-rabbit. — Banno

I'll choose the dick-rabbit myself, therefore the option that there's always more options.

There was more that can be said. Because it can be said, it is not ineffable. — Banno

But, what I explained, the difference between "there is something left unsaid", and "there is always more that can be said" presents us with an inconsistency, which also necessitates the ineffable.

Your reply here indicates that because there is always more that can be said, what is referred to necessarily can be said, therefore nothing ineffable. However, since the phrase "there is always more that can be said" also implies that everything cannot be said, the ineffable is also implied.

That is the manifestation of the inconsistency I explained. If you look at it from the point of view of the particular, we have your conclusion, each and every instance has more to be said, but it can be said, therefore your conclusion. But from the point of view of a general principle, your statement says there will always be more to be said, therefore not everything can be said.
.

Cheers, Meta. The more that can be said, by that very fact, can be said, and hence is not ineffable.

However, since the phrase "there is always more that can be said" also implies that everything cannot be said, the ineffable is also implied. — Metaphysician Undercover

Maybe this is a little silly but just because a lot may be said 'about' a subject doesn't mean it is actually being spoken of. Sound and fury...? Talking to a priest friend of mine yesterday about God he made the following comment - 'We can fill many books and many thousands of hours in talk of god without ever making contact with the subject. We are just talking to ourselves - the nature of god remains ineffable.'

You still haven't made the case that value is transcendent. Values talk is simply a conversation people share about the world. Like the idea of truth, value is an abstraction and is not a property that looks the same where ever it is found. Values can only be understood through specific examples - it is a process applied to beliefs, objects, people, behaviours, etc. The process of setting or accepting values is mundane and subjective and messy - it is deliberative and people disagree. — Tom Storm

And reason is an abstraction, that is, something about our existence that is taken up in analysis. and all of our categories are like this. There is no knitting, no arboreal things, no lunch and dinner; everything you can think of is construct, and thinking cannot occur without these. But in its categorizing of the world, thought comes upon the world itself, and questions step forward: What is reality, reason, truth and so on, and so we have philosophy, but its categories are weird and intractable.

All disciplines tries to take what you call the messiness of the world and conceptualize them. So how can we conceptualize value. I first give Wittgenstein's answer: Don't even try. But it is not the messiness he has in mind. Just the opposite: value is a term exceeds the function of facts/concepts for it is, its is, as Sartre put it, this impossible superfluity, though he doesn't talk like this, a pure phenomenon, that cannot be fit onto the logical grid for logic in the world is contextually grounded, and "the world" is a-contextual. Again, I talk like this, not Witt, as I put the puzzle together, but I am sure this is a defensible interpretation. His insistence that we should pass over in silence that which cannot be spoken, is an insistence that goes to the vacuous claims about qualia (think the world qua world), and these are supposed to be pure phenomena.

This is where I begin my thoughts: I don't think at all that one can make any sense out of qualia, this "being appeared to" foundation of knowledge, when it comes to factual categories or "states of affairs" and neither did Witt. It would be like talking about the logical analysis of logic itself, using logic as a presupposition to analyze logic: logic as logic is not a "thing of parts" because the only parts you can imagine, the modus ponens, the disjunctions and conditionals, etc., are deployed in the analysis. "The world" is not a thing of parts, and in order for a thing to be analyzed, it has to have parts; analysis is, after all, taking apart of something. What is knitting? Its parts are all you can say, which is quite a bit. The world as the world has no of this.

So, if a thing has no analytical possibilities, we have simply to remain silent about it, and as I said, regarding qualia, the pure phenomenon, the presence qua presence of a thing is simply unanalyzable. But my agreement ends on value. It possesses an unanalyzable dimension the categorization of which makes for a truly unique and impossible category: that of the ethical right and wrong, good and bad. The "pure phenomenon" of "being appeared to redly" is a very different kind of phenomenon from being in pain. This is the premise that I claim to be an existential universality and apriority, impossible because it does not issue from logic, but from existence.

All this is wordy and says little to me, I'm afraid. Not sure what your point is. Good and bad have multiple meanings, many subjective, most people know this. As animals who depend on and risk so much to survive, it's hardly surprising that humans have created a multiplicity of notions for good and bad. Valuing things (making judgements and making choices) is how we stay alive, it's hard wired. — Tom Storm

But you are not allowing analysis its due. Take any given ethical issue ask what it is. It can be analyzed. My sister wants to borrow the car, but she has had her license suspended, but then, it is an emergency because someone has appendicitis and needs to go now, but again she could be lying just to get the car and have fun; but on the other hand; and so on .All ethical issues have their examinable affairs. Metaethics asks, but what is it that makes it ethical at all? Ask what makes a spoon a spoon, and you get the familiar features of spoons, and this has nothing to do with any particular case of using spoons. Only spoons as spoons. Same here. What makes ethics ethics at all. At the existential core of this is value. An ethical case must have something of value at risk. So what is value? Value is the strange stuff of the world, a given dimension of existence. Then, see the above.

Cheers, Meta. The more that can be said, by that very fact, can be said, and hence is not ineffable. — Banno

You are looking at the general principle you stated, as if it only applies to one particular case. In that one instance, more can be said, and that which can be said is not ineffable. But if the general principle you stated is true, that there is always more which can be said, then it is impossible that all can be said. Therefore there is something ineffable.

That's the example Banno needs to look at. The fact that we can always say more, implies that not all can be said, therefore the ineffable.

But if the general principle you stated is true, that there is always more which can be said, then it is impossible that all can be said. Therefore there is something ineffable. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is much the same failure on your part that underpins your inability to grasp instantaneous velocity, limits, and such. I and others have tried to help you with this conceptual failing, but to no avail.

That there are things unsaid does not imply that there are things that cannot be said.

That there are things unsaid does not imply that there are things that cannot be said. — Banno

You are changing the subject Banno. Your statement was:

that there is always more that can be said.. — Banno

Can you see how "there is always more that can be said" implies necessarily that not all can be said?

Can you see how "there is always more that can be said" implies necessarily that not all can be said? — Metaphysician Undercover

But to demonstrate that some things are ineffable, you would have to conclude not "there is always more that can be said" but "there are some things that cannot be said".

You seem to think that one can step from "possible but not actual" to "not possible" without further presumption.

So what is value? Value is the strange stuff of the world, a given dimension of existence. Then, see the above. — Constance

So? What do you do with all this 'analysis' apart from going around and around in circles?

I remain unconvinced that value is anything more than an understandable and mundane attempt by humans to rate objects, people or matters in terms of usefulness. Some of it is arbitrary, some of it transitory, some of it survivability. :wink: If you wish to call needing to make choices and act a process of transcendence that's fine, but I'm on a different bus.

My intuition tells me it's best to presuppose that the world is real and there are other people/creatures who share this reality with me and we must work out together ways of living/acting that are least harmful to overall wellbeing. Unfortunately this means taking for granted any manner of things you might well call a construction or artifice.

There's no question that philosophy can commit itself to analysis (analysis paralysis?) and to intense and deep speculative acts such as you have listed. But why? What are the results? You and I are not Kant and we're going to make any breakthroughs.

That's why I use "the ineffable" rather than "some things are ineffable". It's the difference between the general and the particular. We can talk about "the ineffable" as a general principle without mentioning which things are ineffable, therefore without negating the property of "ineffable" from those things which have that property. But to talk about the things which are ineffable is self-defeating, nonsense, because you identify particulars and say that they are ineffable. Likewise, it would be self-defeating to demonstrate ineffable things.

So you've just loaded the requirement so that it would be impossible to do what you ask for. 'Show me the things which are ineffable, so we can talk about them'.

I suspect that you will find you have much in common with Anscombe, a devout theist. — Banno

Anscombe was professedly not a phenomenonlogist, and was an analytic philosopher. You think she is aligned with the outrageous things I said? Just for your recollection, I am looking at this from Witt:

What is Good is Divine too. That, strangely enough, sums up my ethics.
Only something supernatural can express the Supernatural. MS 107 192 c: 10.11.1929

Of course, in his Lecture on Ethics, he was clear, talk of the nature of ethics was nonsense. Yet, the Good is at the very center of ethics. The implicit question was this, How is it that Wittgenstein was capable of, at once, a flat out denial of the possibility of talk about ethics; yet confessing this about the Good? Keep in mind that in the Tractatus ethics was transcendental. "The Good lies outside the space of facts."

You should see where this is going. Witt was struggling with the contradiction inherent in the confrontation with the world that one the one hand possessed logical delimitations, and on the other, intimated with such insistence that ethics and value were embedded in the intuitive presence of things (putting aside his own language limitation here, just to discuss) that he broke off with Russell on account of the latter failing to see that the essential point of the Tractatus was not what was revealed to be affirmed within the "state of affairs" of discourse, but rather just what it was that could not be said at all. This was the major thrust of the work.

The discussion in this thread is about ineffability. Wittgenstein has clearly given us an index to just this: ethics and aesthetics. I want to give this the full breadth of its analysis, a nd this brings Husserl's phenomenological reduction, which is a method of suspending "states of affairs" to use Witt's language, in order to release perceptual engagement from the intrusive knowledge claims that attend implicitly always, already.

The question put to you, who are interested in the matter of ineffability (this is your OP), is, what do you think of Witt's apparent dilemma? And what of the reduction toward a purifying of the familiar and spontaneous, toward a clearer understanding of what it is that should be passed over in silence, the key purpose of the Tractatus?

Here, I am looking exclusively of what I bring to bear on the issue. Other works have no bearing, that is, unless you have something in mind.

Keep in mind that in the Tractatus ethics was transcendental. — Constance

Well, not so sure about that. Ethics is the doing, not the saying, sure; but what is added by the oddly intractable predication of "transcendental"? Not much.

Wittgenstein's point looks to me not that ethics is transcendent, but that it is extremely practical: it is the doing.

This seems also to be what is getting at.

Witt was struggling with the contradiction inherent in the confrontation with the world that one the one hand possessed logical delimitations, and on the other, intimated with such insistence that ethics and value were embedded in the intuitive presence of things... that he broke off with Russell on account of the latter failing to see that the essential point of the Tractatus was not what was revealed to be affirmed within the "state of affairs" of discourse, but rather just what it was that could not be said at all. — Constance

A difficult sentence. For Wittgenstein, ethics is not transcendent, but done. Looking at transcendence rather than action has mislead you, I think. So I disagree with

Wittgenstein has clearly given us an index to just this: ethics and aesthetics. — Constance

Such an index would be a saying, not a doing. He does nto tell us what to do.

what do you think of Witt's apparent dilemma? — Constance

I think the dilemma is yours, not Wittgenstein's.

It's not that ethics is ineffable, so much as that talking is the wrong sort of thing to do with ethics. There's a piece of apocryphal, that he was visiting a friend, who's wife came into the room to ask if they would like tea. The friend said "Don't ask, just do", to which Wittgenstein agreed, wholeheartedly. The good thing to do was to bring the tea in and make it available rather than talk about it.

As for phenomenology, it sets itself an impossible enterprise in attempting to suspending "states of affairs" as if they were distinct from "perceptual engagement". Hence

And what of the reduction toward a purifying of the familiar and spontaneous, toward a clearer understanding of what it is that should be passed over in silence, the key purpose of the Tractatus? — Constance

is ill-framed. The Tractatus is not about "purifying of the familiar and spontaneous". Phenomenology tries to escape language, like a clown cutting off the branch on which he sits. The enterprise undermines itself. And that seems to be what is saying with

When was the last time you had an experience of red and how did you know that that's what you were having at the time? — Isaac

You are almost there. You almost grasped the circularity of defining red as the sensation of red. — Banno

You are almost there. You almost made a substantive reply.

Kidding, not close.

It is possible to communicate with more than words. It is impossible to paint a picture of ‘and’ and have anyone recognise it as ‘and’ without literally spelling the term out with ‘a-n-d’.

Yet I can state clearly that ‘and’ cannot be painted yet it is still ‘there’ in every painting when a conscious eye gazes on it. ‘And’ is necessary for consciousness even if there is no ‘worded’ term ‘and’ expressed in a common communicated language like in speech, signs or symbols used on a universal scale.

I gaze on a painting and my mind is touched by the principles of ‘and’ ‘or’ ‘why’ and even ‘of’ yet my minds tongue need never utter such delineations of conscious existence.

‘Ineffable’ I take to mean that there is a tenuous line between an experience and the ability to share said experience in any useful way worded terms that other people can easily grasp or that we can conjure up.

I agree that a high level of ability to take such experiences and shift human communication towards a slightly better way to approach such intangible experiences is precisely what great philosophers can do and many artists too.

It is tricky to fish for the exact fish you wish to catch if you have never seen it before.

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.) — hypericin

No.

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? — hypericin

No. The sensory experience at (2) is constructed from words and the concepts they define.

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. — javra

That's just episodic memory, not semantic memory, and it's still how we'd talk (or internally recreate) the event. It's not what triggers such an account.

Let's say, hypothetically, I see a post box. My experience is of seeing a red post box, but in my brain there might be clusters firing which are commonly associated with red, and pillar-shapes, and posing, and letters, and nostalgia...When I recall the experience, I re-fire those clusters. Now I see a red car. Clusters fire relating to red, speed, driving, fear, Tom Cruise,... Recalling the experience re-fires those clusters. In both cases, clusters associated with red fire, so recalling them re-fires those clusters. In neither case have I experienced 'red'. I experienced a red post box or a red car. It's never the case that the only neural activity my experience is trying to explain is the firing of one cluster of neurons in V4. So the idea of 'red' must be abstracted from the full experiences, not the component parts. We never have conscious awareness of an isolated component part.

But, more importantly, even if that ever happened, we'd still interpret it (using the definition of 'red') because all it is is a few neurons firing, nothing more. And it's not even the same neurons. There's a lot of involvement in the superior parietal lobule and precuneus in colour recognition which is simply not a one-to-one correlate to wavelengths hitting the retina. There's no direct link there for us to be dealing with internally. We cluster together a set of different neural activity under the term 'red'. How do we learn which to bring into that cluster? The social experience of the the use of the word 'red'.

My view is that no animal, humans included, forms connections between word-sounds and certain neural networks. — javra

This seems to be directly contradicted by the evidence. Am I misunderstanding your claim, or are you just saying that evidence from cognitive science is all wrong?

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. — javra

There's no evidence that I know of which links either hippocampal activity or long-term potentiation with consciousness. Studies of both sleep and anaesthesia seem to both confirm that conscious awareness isn't necessary.

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. — javra

They might be aware of blood. Why need they be aware of 'red'? There's a scene in a comedy film whose name I can't recall, where a prince is murdered. His blood is blue (the royalty joke). We don't all think "hey, what's that?", we think "blue blood".

I mention this because, of course, lesser animals do not make use of language (when understood as word use) to have experiences of red. — javra

Again, they only need have experiences (if they have experiences at all) of red things. There's no need for an experience of 'red' other than to make proper use of the word 'red'.

The experience consists in the sensations, feelings and images of the body-mind. They don't all have to be conscious, or reflexively conscious, let alone reported. — Janus

If that's the definition of experience you prefer, then we definitely don't have experiences of 'red'. We just have some neurons fire. Else, which of them are the sub-conscious experience of 'red'? The V4 cluster? BA7? Parietal lobe? Which bits would be 'red'?

What I'm suggesting is that the duck-rabbit is resolved in that we can talk of it being either a duck or a rabbit; we are not limited to one description. We have three: duck, rabbit and duck-rabbit.

But someone might come along and show us that it is also a sailing ship, that there is yet another description that we had so far missed. It's not that seeing the sailing ship is ineffable, since we now can talk about it. There was more that can be said. — Banno

I like this. If I understand correctly, you're expressing a multiple-model interpretation as being a synthesis of all possible models (an exclusion of all impossible ones) such that there is a unitary truth of what is the case - that being it is the case that all these models are right, but these models are not. A kind of meta-model?

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

You mean like 'pictures in the mind'?

It's complicated (isn't it always?). I certainly seems as though the parts of the brain involved in creating mental images are the same ones as involved in interpreting visual stimuli from external states, so no less 'real' in that sense. Where I'd diverge from some folk interpretations though is that there's a tendency to think the brain 'produces' an image (say of the cup in front of me). I don't think the evidence justifies such a model. We might later recount having seen, or imagined, a cup, but interrogation of such an image often reveals gaps which we wouldn't have reported being there. Plus, recall, or recounting mental images seems to involve parts of the brain uninvolved in visual representation. we have routes through areas associated with semantic memory and language (obviously), but less involvement of episodic memory.

So seemingly we're more making it up on the spot "Had I imagined a cup, this is what it would have been like", than recalling something which happened "I imagined a cup, this is what it was like".

, Pretty much. Talking here about narratives, or propositional models, not neural nets. But that doesn't mean it doesn't apply to neural nets...

Ok, thanks.

It is absolutely fascinating, that it seems as though I myself….the entire sum of entitlement…. think in images, when in fact, there couldn’t really be any. I’m prepared to swear to a figurative High Heaven my brain presents both from and to itself a relative diorama of this or that, but in seeking for the substance or the means for all those images, it shall be found the substance of the brain contains not a single image much less a compendium of them, and the means by which the material brain functions, contradicts their very possibility.

Yet….there they are. I swear.

(Sigh)

Of course, in his Lecture on Ethics, he was clear, talk of the nature of ethics was nonsense. Yet, the Good is at the very center of ethics. The implicit question was this, How is it that Wittgenstein was capable of, at once, a flat out denial of the possibility of talk about ethics; yet confessing this about the Good? Keep in mind that in the Tractatus ethics was transcendental. "The Good lies outside the space of facts." — Constance

This is consistent with how Plato originally explained "the good" in "The Republic". It is in a strange way, always outside of knowledge, therefore not truly knowable, making virtue something other than knowledge. But the good has a profound effect on knowledge, as what makes the intelligible objects intelligible, in a way analogous to the way that the sun makes visible objects visible.

You should see where this is going. Witt was struggling with the contradiction inherent in the confrontation with the world that one the one hand possessed logical delimitations, and on the other, intimated with such insistence that ethics and value were embedded in the intuitive presence of things (putting aside his own language limitation here, just to discuss) that he broke off with Russell on account of the latter failing to see that the essential point of the Tractatus was not what was revealed to be affirmed within the "state of affairs" of discourse, but rather just what it was that could not be said at all. This was the major thrust of the work. — Constance

This is the difference between the general principles which we apply, and the particular things or particular circumstances which we find ourselves engaged with, and requiring the application of general principles. This difference often creates a conundrum for decision making because the general principles often do not readily fit the particular circumstances.

The problem with "states of affairs" is that this terminology creates the appearance that a particular situation can be represented by general principles, and expressed as a state of affairs. The issue, with what cannot be said, is that there is a fundamental inconsistency between how we represent general principles, and how we represent particular situations. There are features of the particular circumstances, which by our definition of "particular" and the uniqueness assigned to "particular", which makes it so that the particular cannot be represented by descriptive terms, which we employ as general principles.

Pretty much. Talking here about narratives, or propositional models, not neural nets. But that doesn't mean it doesn't apply to neural nets... — Banno

Yeah, could do. We talk about neural nets as having likelihoods of leading to certain reported mental events (or behaviours) because they're so prone to noise and stochastic fluctuations. That might make it difficult to pin down, but one might still be able to say that the statistically averaged sum of x collection of neural network functions across a time period represented some external state accurately.

Interesting line of thought.

It is absolutely fascinating, that it seems as though I myself….the entire sum of entitlement…. think in images, when in fact, there couldn’t really be any. I’m prepared to swear to a figurative High Heaven my brain presents both from and to itself a relative diorama of this or that, but in seeking for the substance or the means for all those images, it shall be found the substance of the brain contains not a single image much less a compendium of them, and the means by which the material brain functions, contradicts their very possibility.

Yet….there they are. I swear. — Mww

Yeah. Try testing them yourself. This might be difficult with one as well-educated as your good self, but a little trick one can try to demonstrate the phenomena is to look at a complicated word, one you don't know how to spell, then shut the book and try to bring to mind the image of the word as it was written (typeface, page colour, book edges - the lot). You'll find (or at least you should - let me know if you don't) that your 'mental image' contains something of a blur around the specific letters that you don't know the correct order of. It won't 'fix' them in the image. Theoretically, this is because how to spell a word is semantic memory, not episodic. You don't actually 'recall to mind' the image you just saw of it written down, but you'll think that's exactly what you're doing (if the experiment works), you'll 'see' the page, the book colour, perhaps the desk it was on...but the word will remain stubbornly un-spelt, because you're actually constructing the 'image' as you go, not recalling it as a complete image, and you just don't know where those letters go.

*Of course, explaining the experiment does give us confounding factors. Don't try too hard to recall the spelling deliberately, that'll engage word-recognition parts of your brain which might hold it in short term memory long enough to be called on in reconstructing the image.

Poetry seeks to overcome the weakness of words - easily given, but sometimes as easily broken - by invocation. One calls into being something that was not, by a creative verbal act. The weakness of this thread is that it does not even try to escape the dance of words - there's a red house over yonder, where even the blind can be seen to. Let there be Red!

And it was so, because the invocation was puissant. Thus poetry builds language as fast as doublespeak destroys it, and so builds the world anew, as Banno would have it. What does it mean that in a century we have gone from a nature red in tooth and claw, to a nature that is the greenest of greens? (This is an observation intended to evoke a transformation, not a question to answer.)

[What is ineffable? {response} But look we are talking about it, so that isn't it.] That is a gigantic turd of analysis, or a pathetic joke of logic.

What is creativity? Only original answers will be considered. — unenlightened

I think I continue to trip across this thought -- that talking about something makes it effable. I'm going to attempt to draw connections which addresses your concern that naming is the only reason experience is effable:

It seems to me that language is always growing, changing, and acquiring (at least, as we decide to use language to grow, change, and acquire). Whereas I can see laying a space for the sacred, the capitalist-scientist will poke the sacred until it, too, is under our control -- so my thought is, what gives people such faith that their minds and experiences won't be an object of knowledge? They are, at this time, at least objects of economy -- the economy already sells experiences, and commodifies identities (to be a good environmentalist, you should buy from these corporations, and not those...), and commodifies attention (the very "stuff" of consciosness!) -- these supposedly ineffable things are already blasphemed by our mode of production, are already constantly being operated upon through propaganda (advertisement, in a capitalist world), and many people come out of the process of socialization roughly similar enough that we don't even need explicit knowledge of the mind to manipulate people to do the thing which keeps the economy going. Their very interiority is a social product, known by those in charge (because how else do you build large hierarchies of dominance successfully than by controlling, and *knowing*, others' emotions?)

... I guess, to me, there seems to me to be a lot more going on than just naming. There's a whole history of thought and economy which "experience" is tied to that makes me doubt that experience is ineffable. It's just another product to be sold, in this world. To make it sacred wouldn't be to make it ineffable, it'd be to let it be. But we don't live in a world where people can just be. We live in a world where they can own things, and through that they find their freedom -- and experience is no different than any other commodity.

constructed from words and the concepts they define. — Isaac

Sure sounds like:

3. (if necessary) - abstraction of 'red', 'ball' and 'threw' from that experience (2) according to the social rules around identifying those components — Isaac

A difficult sentence. For Wittgenstein, ethics is not transcendent, but done. Looking at transcendence rather than action has mislead you, I think. So I disagree with — Banno

??

It is clear that ethics cannot be put
nto words.
Ethics is transcendental.
(Ethics and aesthetics are one and the
same.) (Tractatus 6.421)

Such an index would be a saying, not a doing. He does nto tell us what to do. — Banno

An index points, and leaves the exposition up to that to which the pointing intends. Very important to note this distinction: analytic philosophy wants to say that that which must be passed over in silence is about nothing. But this is directly contradicted by Witt. He says just the opposite in the above, and in Culture and Value where he states the Good being what he calls divinity. He does not emphasize this kind of thing at all, for he believed that the spoken word vitiates meaning, and on this he is on the threshold of apophatic thinking (what is called in the East neti neti), that is, silence is the negative approach to discovery of things that

There are indeed things that cannot be put into words; They make themselves manifest.

In art it is hard to say anything as good as saying nothing.

Keeping in mind that he puts ethics and aesthetics in the same basket, for it is here that the the world "speaks" the ineffable: the Good and the Bad. No doubt for Wittgenstein, Beethoven "spoke" the Good. But what does the Good mean here? If you mention it, do you truly vitiate it, as he thought? Only if the words pull meanings down to mundane comprehension, but words can also elevate matters, as was done by religious metaphysics for centuries. Clearly, words language can distort and distract, which is why philosophers like Husserl wanted to make the whole affair of transcendental analysis into a science: what if words were reduced to their strictly descriptive function, as say a geologist does examining rocks and minerals, assigning values that try to adhere to observation? Husserl's famous, or infamous, reduction does just this, and thereby takes the question of ineffability to its finality: the terminal point where thought is suspended altogether. Even if this does not make sense on the surface of it, it has to be taken in the Wittgensteinian sense that even if you DO have a language in place that qualifies, conditions, this doesn't mean the apprehension of value is impinged. One simply has to shut up and listen, watch, feel, receive. Language interpretatively, implicitly attending to every intimation, but the bliss of it, the horror of it, is itself the original potency, and one knows this.

The importance of this is seeing that while ethics/aesthetics remains deeply indeterminate, one realizes that that which imposes these entanglements issues from eternity, so to speak. On this I stand with Wittgenstein, the Good is that which I call divinity.

It's not that ethics is ineffable, so much as that talking is the wrong sort of thing to do with ethics. There's a piece of apocryphal, that he was visiting a friend, who's wife came into the room to ask if they would like tea. The friend said "Don't ask, just do", to which Wittgenstein agreed, wholeheartedly. The good thing to do was to bring the tea in and make it available rather than talk about it. — Banno

Yes, he did want to quash talk about ethics. I think this exchange here would be addressed like this: It is better allow the original thrust of a kind act to play out than to mix this with a deflating discourse. But there is no question of the the event itself.

I think he was responding especially to Moore, who had written his Principia Ethica, stating that moral goodness and badness were non natural properties, and Witt just would have none of it. Goodness was self revealing. I am saying this kind of thing is exactly what the ineffable is about.

As for phenomenology, it sets itself an impossible enterprise in attempting to suspending "states of affairs" as if they were distinct from "perceptual engagement". — Banno

No, no. It is a compatibility in that states of affairs may usher forth true propositions, but therein, does not lie an impediment of intuitive realization. This is Witt's position.

is ill-framed. The Tractatus is not about "purifying of the familiar and spontaneous". Phenomenology tries to escape language, like a clown cutting off the branch on which he sits. The enterprise undermines itself. — Banno

Keep in mind that I am not defending all Husserl says, and so it is to no avail here to produce standard objections. I am saying value in ethics and aesthetics are qualitatively revealing, and Husserl's epoche gives these their existential clarity. Wittgenstein was no mystic, but he was threshold in his thinking about ethics and aesthetics in the Tractatus and elsewhere. But the argument here does not rest with what he said. I just bring him in because he was right on this.