Obviously it cannot be empirically demonstrated, but I know from my own experience that it is so. If you don't see that I can't help you; I can only report from my experience and hope your experience accords; welcome to phenomenology.

Was that post meant for the "irony" thread?

Was that post meant for the "irony" thread? — Banno

No. That all you've got? I don't know, Banno; I'm a bit worried about you; you seem to be going the way of the troll.

Well, you are the one claiming there is a thingie that can't be talked about, shown, or demonstrated...

Excuse my scepticism.

I'm not claiming anything, just reporting my experience; I know there are countless aspects of experience I can't render into words, including many things both practical and creative I know how to do .

Such things are not learned via words and cannot be taught, although it is possible to encourage others to take certain directions in practice that make the acquisition of such know-how more likely.

If skepticism proceeds from ignorance, or lack of experience, it is excusable, so if that is the case then no need to apologize..

What's missing is the riding of the bike.

That was my point way back on page one. — Banno

Why not simply retract the claim that you made about incomplete knowledge back on page one (which I've quoted ad nauseum) since I've demonstrated it to be inconsistent with your claims about effability?

1. If no knowledge is ineffable, then all the knowledge required to know how to play/ride can be made explicit and included in a list of instructions. That is, a list of instructions can be completed.
2. However, you claim that a list of instructions cannot give one knowledge of how to play/ride, no matter the level of detail. That is, a list of instructions cannot be completed.

Contradiction.

Kant's "concepts without intuitions are empty; intuitions without concepts are blind." — Constance

Whose translation is this?

It occurs to me that if reference is inscrutable, and one takes all of meaning to be referential, then Quine pretty much renders language inscrutable.

I'd been taking Quine as a criticism of the referential theory of meaning. But if one supposes that meaning just is reference, then he shows that language can't work.

Is that what you are suggesting? — Banno

I think he means that it's just a folk theory that language refers. It's a theory that ignores the limits of knowledge vis-a-vis beetles in boxes.

I don't know what you're thinking about. All I know is the way you behave. So Quine is arguing against meaning internalism, and for some sort of behaviorism.

In a behaviorist context, ineffability doesn't mean much. There is no aboutness to language in the first place. To cling to ineffability is to cling to some kind of internalism.

Here attempting to lay out more against the case that know-how is ineffable (at least in some absolute sense, though I've granted the relative sense when someone hasn't learned something yet, but could)

Is a recipe know-how? Or is it just an aid to knowing-how?

Still going along my materialist thought line . . . knowledge is in the body. It's a conjunction of . . . well, whatever experience/language/activity/being is such that we are enabled.

If that be the case, then statements, all unto themselves, are never knowledge. Rather, they are enablers, aids, or parts of knowledge. In the toy model of knowledge they roughly correspond to "beliefs", but given that we don't need to believe the statements to know-how that's not quite right (because knowledge is in the body, rather than a set of true statements/propositions believed and justified -- but also because we need to be able to consider statements before believing them, but we are still able in spite of the state of consideration.)

After all, when learning your first recipe you pretty much follow it to the letter. But, with the more recipes you learn, the less you rely upon the words in the book (unless baking, which is more like chemistry-lite ;) ). You look at the ingredients, and their rough proportions, and usually you have enough techniques down that you don't have to follow the instructions to the letter. You can even "improve" upon the recipe, to your own taste at least, knowing that this and that will have such and such an effect on the food.

So why doesn't this count as ineffable, if we aren't even tied to the words really, but just use them to enable? I think it's because these things can be taught to others. I can refer to my knowledge, and show it to someone, and they can learn. So, at least, there's a connection of some kind between us in the transfer of knowledge. And while transferring knowledge to others, at least, I cannot do it without words.

Even in teaching someone to ride a bike, which is primarily a know-how with scant words, I'd still use words to transfer that knowledge to someone else. I could, as an exercise, attempt to teach without any words whatsoever, but it'd be much harder than if I'd just communicate while showing.

Now, if riding a bike were ineffable, I couldn't teach it to someone -- or, perhaps, words themselves wouldn't aid me in teaching someone. So the mystics say they cannot tell you what they see, but they can attempt to use the imperfect medium of language to translate their experience. And, given that knowledge is in the body it's also relative to the body, so for some it is ineffable. They cannot ride the bike. The ant will never understand what it's like to be a bi-pedal creature keepings its balance on a bike with eventual ease. But for most creatures like myself it's only ineffable prior to the doing. After the doing, they can speak about it because now they have the knowledge in their body.

Is riding a bike really the same as mystical or metaphysical claims? I guess that's really the thing that seems more pertinent, unless we're trying to claim that consciousness is metaphysically distinct from the natural world. Maybe it is just as mysterious, and I'm just not seeing it, though it seems to me that these are not the same.

None.

What's missing is the riding of the bike.

That was my point way back on page one. — Banno

Maybe this foolish claim needed to be nipped in the bud back on page one.

What's missing is not "the riding of the bike". What's missing is learning, learning to ride the bike.


More unnipped gems from p1:

And the same goes for "You have to learn on your own". Of course you do, since anyone else learning would not count as you learning.

But that makes "You have to learn on your own" just another grammatical point. — Banno

Someone else learning history does not count as you learning history. Yet, you don't have to learn history on your own. It is not "just another grammatical point".

"knowing how to ride a bike" and "riding a bike"; we don't have two things here, one being bike riding and the other being knowing how to ride a bike. — Banno

Yet here I am sitting on my ass, knowing how to ride a bike yet not riding a bike.

...

Again, well said. That is in agreement with my extended argument to @hypericin and @Luke.

To cling to ineffability is to cling to some kind of internalism. — frank

That, indeed, seems to be what is claiming... or reporting. He is trying to tell us of something of which he cannot tell us. And like the beetle it must drop out of the conversation. So one could not claim, for example, that one is following in the footsteps of other phenomenologists, because to do so would be to say that there was something shared, or at least something similar, in the face of the claim that despite this it is ineffable. So that internalise is esoteric, mystical.

Now that's not so far from Wittgenstein, except that the phenomenologists seem to insist on continuing the impossible conversation were Wittgenstein would be silent, choosing instead to enact, and perhaps show by enacting.

There is a contradiction in Janus claiming both that what "cannot be taught" yet one can "make the acquisition of such know-how more likely", but perhaps it's much the same point as I just attributed to Wittgenstein. Janus would then be saying much the same thing, just less clearly.

It seems to me that there is a point about tacit knowledge being explicable and hence not ineffable, that is agreed by @Moliere, @frank and others, but missed by @hypericin and @Luke. Not sure where @Janus stands on this. The point seems ineluctable, yet moot.

@Janus, @Constance and @Joshs apparently see a place for discussion of phenomena, via a somewhat esoteric method, that somehow permits the effing of the ineffable. Perhaps @Moliere is tempted to sympathy with that idea, but the problem here is that such a method becomes a beetle in a box.

@frank and @Moliere also remind us of the broader picture, that all such discussions take place in, for want of a better expression, a "form of life", in which the learning (@hypericin) takes place in an interplay of conversation and enacting; as when one sits with a guitar tutor, listening to their words, watching their fingers and hearing the result; or like changing a recipe based on the reaction, spoken and otherwise, of those sampling your cooking. Language use is embedded in our daily lives, enacted in what we do minute by minute. Meaning is not something seperate from this, but created by the process.

And that interplay is open ended, with new interactions and word uses coming in to the form of life as it proceeds.

My present conclusion is that the notion of the ineffable, if taken seriously, fails to acknowledge this interplay. So we are left, from the list in the OP, with the ineffable as an alternative term for metaphors and honourifics, or to mark a topic as out of bounds for discussion. These are the roles that "ineffable" can take in our language games. Beyond that, it fails.

How long is a thread about what cannot be said? — Banno

How're you traveling, @jgill?

That, indeed, seems to be what ↪Janus is claiming... or reporting. He is trying to tell us of something of which he cannot tell us. And like the beetle it must drop out of the conversation. So one could not claim, for example, that one is following in the footsteps of other phenomenologists, because to do so would be to say that there was something shared, or at least something similar, in the face of the claim that despite this it is ineffable. So that internalise is esoteric, mystical.

Now that's not so far from Wittgenstein, except that the phenomenologists seem to insist on continuing the impossible conversation were Wittgenstein would be silent, choosing instead to enact, and perhaps show by enacting. — Banno

Well put. I eagerly await the response. As I wait, I shall meditate.

As I wait, I shall meditate. — Richard B

:razz:

I've meditated enough to have experienced that state of "no-thought".

Funny thing is, I'd heard of it before I achieved it, and recognised it.

Hence, it, too, is not ineffable.

That, indeed, seems to be what ↪Janus
is claiming... or reporting. He is trying to tell us of something of which he cannot tell us. And like the beetle it must drop out of the conversation. So one could not claim, for example, that one is following in the footsteps of other phenomenologists, because to do so would be to say that there was something shared, or at least something similar, in the face of the claim that despite this it is ineffable. — Banno

No, you're still misunderstanding. I am telling you that there are things I cannot tell you, not trying, per impossibile, to tell you what I cannot tell you. And of course the things I cannot tell you cannot be part of the conversation, but the fact that there are things I cannot tell you can be, and should be an important part of the human conversation.

Also you misunderstand phenomenology, since it doesn't deal with the ineffable, but with what can be told about personal experience..The observations, analyses and syntheses of phenomenologists do not purport to be empirically testable (obviously) but offer you something only if they speak to your own experience. If you don't have the kind of experience being explicated or don't notice that you have, or reject the whole notion for ideological reasons, then it will mean little to you.

There is a contradiction in Janus claiming both that what "cannot be taught" yet one can "make the acquisition of such know-how more likely", but perhaps it's much the same point as I just attributed to Wittgenstein. Janus would then be saying much the same thing, just less clearly. — Banno

Again there is no contradiction. Think of Zen as an analogy; enlightenment cannot be taught as factual disciplines can, by rote, but the techniques that might get you there can be taught. Exactly the same applies to the arts.

I've meditated enough to have experienced that state of "no-thought".

Funny thing is, I'd heard of it before I achieved it, and recognised it.

Hence, it, too, is not ineffable — Banno

Really? Not ineffable, eh? then you should be able to tell us what it's like to be in the state of "no-thought".

I am telling you that there are things I cannot tell you — Janus

Of course you are. And the reply is that such things cannot count as things.

Around and around.

What think you, ?

That, indeed, seems to be what ↪Janus is claiming... or reporting. He is trying to tell us of something of which he cannot tell us. And like the beetle it must drop out of the conversation. — Banno

I was talking about Quine. I'm afraid there's a field of incomprehensibility surrounding him. You've been deflected by it and stumbled into Janus. :sad:

Now that's not so far from Wittgenstein, except that the phenomenologists seem to insist on continuing the impossible conversation were Wittgenstein would be silent, choosing instead to enact, and perhaps show by enacting. — Banno

Witt did say that Heidegger was trying to do the impossible, but that had nothing to do with enacting anything. That's your bugaboo resulting from your immense laziness. Probably.

Of course you are. And the reply is that such things cannot count as things. — Banno

Sure, they are not determinate things, else they could be talked about, but they are not nothing. You seem to be developing the nasty habit of picking up the fruit which has already fallen; not a habit conducive to fruitful conversation.

I was talking about Quine. — frank

Of course. I was making an attempt to bringing the disparate parts of this chat together. Quine's stuff on reference is not dissimilar to Wittgenstein's stuff on silence. Too much animosity for such a discourse, is seems.

Has anyone else noted how much the conversation of phenomenologists looks like grooming?

Quine's stuff on reference is not dissimilar to Wittgenstein's stuff on silence. — Banno

I think it's fairly dissimilar unless you take all of Witt's ideas and dump them into a blender with some Tequila.

Here we might go back to

I think Quine's point was that there's nothing in your knob twiddling that stands as evidence that what you mean by 'gain' coincides with what the engineer who designed the amp meant by it.

It's not a matter of imprecision. It's that everything is actually ineffable. Speech with a lack of clear reference is never about anything in particular. — frank

...despite all this we do make use of words, one way or another. The knob gets to the right spot. How can that be so, unless reference is not as important as it might seem?

You seem to be developing the nasty habit of picking up the fruit which has already fallen — Janus

It has more sugar, and so makes better jam.

makes better jam. — Banno

Log jam in the conversation.

Has anyone else noted how much the conversation of phenomenologists looks like grooming? — Banno

How low can you go? Now you're picking up what's left of the fruit after it has already been eaten.

Now you're picking up what's left of the fruit after it has already been eaten. — Janus

It was you who left the not-nothing-and-yet-not-something lying around. It's still there. Tell us some more about the ineffable.

Tell us some more about the ineffable. — Banno

It would be a waste of time,
like trying to describe colour to the blind,
or casting pearls before swine.

Or making a silk purse from a sow's ear.

More like trying to find a sow's ear in a silk purse...