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

(30 pages worth of comments, apparently- an amusing irony)

I'm so proud.

I'll bet you are! As you should be- 30 pages on the ineffable is a solid showing!

↪Banno
I'll bet you are! As you should be- 30 pages on the ineffable is a solid showing! — busycuttingcrap

But a solid showing of what ?

I guess that's the crucial question here, right? The ineffable?

Or are you telling me that after 30 pages you guys still don't have it sorted out? :wink:

Or are you telling me that after 30 pages you guys still don't have it sorted out? — busycuttingcrap

Don't look at me. I tried to discourage the reams of babble that emerged early on, to no avail.

But a solid showing of what ? — jgill

Enough rope.

Not transferred, as nothing moves from brain to brain; the ability is developed, perhaps? — Banno

Yup, that works for me too. The ability is developed.

I don't believe that what can only be shown, not said, is effable, because I understand the word to denote that which can be clearly explained. — Janus

Sure, I'm on board. Interesting cases only.

Think of a culinary recipe, for example. If it is exhaustively set out and followed rigorously, results are guaranteed. To my way of thinking that would be an example of effability. No such definite instructions can be given for how to paint a picture, compose a musical piece or write a poem, because the requirement there is analogous to creating your own unique culinary dish.

I think we can't be taught a unique thing, but that character is developed in such a way that a person is set up to be creative.

To teach how to paint a picture we begin with the elements and principles of art, and those are similar enough rules that both masters and students use. And one's aesthetic sensibilities are developed by attending to the history of the art, both in terms of technique and in terms of movements.

So, yes -- it's an interesting case, but I think creativity can be taught. An uncreative person can be shown how to be creative. Or, at least, more creative than they were. So, we probably couldn't come up with a regimen which will be guaranteed to develop a Picasso, but we can teach people to be creative in the art for all that.

Don't look at me. I tried to discourage the reams of babble that emerged early on, to no avail. — jgill

:D -- I just embrace it. It's somewhat beautiful that we can babble on.

Because it gets to the intent of the post, without the "knowing" that confused the issue
— Banno

Okay, so what was the original intent if it wasn't about knowledge? — Luke

Do we talk about them? Or do they drop out of the conversation as irrelevant? — Luke

Exactly. Somehow sensations are supposed to occupy some middle (@Moliere) ground, private, ineffable, yet the foundation of our understanding (@Constance).

You clever folk all agree, but can't explain it. I call bullshit.
— Banno

You said that we do talk about sensations. However, Wittgenstein says of his beetle that "The thing in the box doesn’t belong to the language-game at all". If the beetle in the box represents sensations (as Richard B suggests here), then it seems like you are advocating both positions? — Luke

Do you intend to address these questions, Banno? I understand if you don't since it took you over 20 pages to acknowledge the contradiction I pointed out to you. Even then, you brushed the contradiction off merely as something you "could have...expressed more clearly" and didn't address it.

Something that's weighty about teaching, and it's much the same with any position of authority. You just have power over other people's lives, if you're in a position of authority, whether you like it or not.

While learning to play a piano we develop an ethics of practice (hence my lamenting my lack of character)

While learning to read the Bible, there are many more ethical teachings which are about developing character to be a certain way.

And it's interesting to note, here, I think -- each discipline has a certain boundary of what's appropriate to say. A kind of ineffability, but only by way of collective practice. So it'd be inappropriate to develop much more than an ethics of practice when teaching the piano, it'd be inappropriate to develop an ethics of selfishness in teaching someone how to operate in a union, it'd be inappropriate to not address concerns about living life in a church (well, depending on the faith group -- it varies greatly, but is still developing people's ability to live their life)


But, also, I want to note how it's only because I care about others being free that I think a person should be developed to flourish on in their own way. It's an ethical commitment.

Or are you telling me that after 30 pages you guys still don't have it sorted out? :wink: — busycuttingcrap

Don't look at me. I tried to discourage the reams of babble that emerged early on, to no avail. — jgill

Do you intend to address these questions, Banno? — Luke

Behold! We are not done yet! They want more!

Oh, hell yeah. :D

I find Mary's room to be quite a cozy spot for nonphysicalists. The ineffable can't be as ineffable as some things that have been effed, now even by kindergarten toddlers albeit clumsily.

Then, as Emperor Palpatine says to the increasingly agitated Anikin Skywalker, soon to become Darth Vader, "there are ways ... "

Do you intend to address these questions, Banno?
— Luke

Behold! We are not done yet! There is more! — Banno

Does that mean you are going to address my questions?

We do talk about the aroma of coffee.
— Banno

Yes, we do. We also talk about swimming like fish, flying like birds, going to the ends of the Earth. — Mww

I don't agree that your counter-instance works. — Banno

We talk about this, we talk about that. We talk about all sorts of stuff, some of it eccentrically. Which is just another word for irrationally. What about that doesn’t work?
————

the aroma of coffee not being reducible to chemistry, it is caused by chemistry. — Banno

What’s the difference? That which is caused by only this, is reducible to this for its cause. A tautology. True insofar as its negation is a contradiction.
————

two different ways of talking about the same thing. Not unlike the piece of paper being a dollar bill. — Banno

Talk of these types of judgements are not talking about the same thing, just as talk of, e.g., “right” as direction, is not the same as talk of “right” as correct. And irrelevant with respect to your analogy, insofar as there is nothing whatsoever contained in talk of a piece of paper by which talk of a dollar bill must necessarily follow from it. While it may be true the conception of a dollar bill is contingent on the conception of a piece of paper, it is not the case the conception of a piece of paper is contingent on the conception of a dollar bill.

Language. An affront to the dignity of philosophy itself, and justified by being the single human condition completely unnecessary for having an opinion.

……says the guy who must use language in order to voice an opinion on how evil it is.

(Sigh)

I tried to discourage the reams of babble that emerged early on, to no avail. — jgill

Come on jgill, a thread on the ineffable could be nothing other than babble (a typical Banno thread). Why discourage them? Just let them play their games. Consider the infinite monkey theorem, something meaningful is bound to pop up once in a while.

Truth is bound to language. And if the mystical is not true, because it is outside of language, in what way can we claim that it is reasonable? — Moliere

The mystical cannot be true or false because this is a feature of propositions, not states of mind or existential encounters. It is what is said about these that can be true or false. So what if God actually appeared before me and intimated HER eternal grandeur and power? Language does not prohibit this; it is the content of language that prohibits this, that is, what is familiar and usual. Language is entirely open and even the Wittgensteinian Tractatusian prohibitions are not categorical. They rest on intuitions about logic, and these are, in Heidegger's terms, taking up the world AS: When logic speaks of logic's own delimitations, this is an imposition that occurs within the finitude of logic's application.

But if one is seeking the mystical, to be unbound by language, then I think that's likely when we've hit the boundary of philosophy. (also, something funny here -- when mystics disagree) — Moliere

They do. On the one hand there is Meister Eckhart who prays to God to be rid of God, in his apparent frustration with the way familiar finitudes seem to bar the way to actual realization. then there are the tibetan monks who, as I read in an intro to the Tibetan Book of the Dead, would talk freely of their "subterranean" experiences. And pseudo Dionysius the Areopogite in The Cloud of Unknowing reveals a remedy:

How a man shall have him in this work against all thoughts, and specially against all
those that arise of his own curiosity, of cunning, and of natural wit.
AND if any thought rise and will press continually above thee betwixt thee and that darkness, and
ask thee saying, “What seekest thou, and what wouldest thou have?” say thou, that it is God that
thou wouldest have. “Him I covet, Him I seek, and nought but Him.”
And if he ask thee, “What is that God?” say thou, that it is God that made thee and bought
thee, and that graciously hath called thee to thy degree. “And in Him,” say, “thou hast no skill.”
91
And therefore say, “Go thou down again,” and tread him fast down with a stirring of love, although
he seem to thee right holy, and seem to thee as he would help thee to seek Him. For peradventure
he will bring to thy mind diverse full fair and wonderful points of His kindness, and say that He is
full sweet, and full loving, full gracious, and full mercifu

It is not an event in a reaffirmation of the ordinary forms of knowing, but of something outside of this, and yet, accessible? Of course, this is generally taken as a bunch of religious drivel, but this is the spirit of empirical science talking. It reminds me of something Quine famously said:

“As an empiricist I continue to think of the conceptual scheme of science as a tool, ultimately, for predicting future experience in the light of past experience. Physical objects are conceptually imported into the situation as convenient intermediaries-not by definition in terms of experience, but simply as irreducible posits comparable, epistemologically, to the gods of Homer. For my part I do, qua lay physicist, believe in physical objects and not in Homer's gods; and I consider it a scientific error to believe otherwise. But in point of epistemological footing the physical objects and the gods differ only in degree and not in kind. Both sorts of entities enter our conception only as cultural posits. The myth of physical objects is epistemologically superior to most in that it has proved more efficacious than other myths as a device for working a manageable structure into the flux of experience.”

Extraordinary!

Did he say the "myth" of physical objects? He is right, isn't he, in this pragmatic epistemic view?: All that "comes to us" is, well, mystical. Wittgenstein wrote (inspiring Quine?): "The world is the totality of facts, not of things," and, "It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists."

Of course, not included in this statement is the possibility that the "that it exists" could be presented in deeper more profound ways, the kind of thing Eckhart was looking for. As an empiricist philosopher, Quine was bound to a scientific consensus, but he knew this simply fell apart when examining, let's call it dasein: "semantical and intentional phenomena cannot be incorporated within the science of nature as I would wish," add to this the entire range of human experience. And again, ALL we ever encounter in the world, is phenomena. Materialism, a derivation and kind of embodiment of science's objective claims, is just, to borrow from Quine's own critical words, epistemically inferior in accounting for all we actually witness!!

Rather, given I don't even have institutional ambitions, philosophy is more personal, social, and connective. It is something done for pleasure, rather than a competition. — Moliere

I do disagree here: Philosophy does have its grounding, which is firmly there before inquiry. This is the foundational indeterminacy of all things. It appears to us as trivial because we are all like Quine, at the basic level of analysis: full of certainty and faith regarding our societal collective knowledge claims. All inquiry ABOUT these claims leads to indeterminacy. Philosophy's job, I argue, is to bring this to the fore and understand it.

This opens, not avenues into empty space, logical or otherwise; but value revelations. I.e., wha has been traditionally called God, here, divested of its "myths" as Quine put it.

I think the differences are institutional, and what's more what is institutionalized are aesthetics of reason. Aesthetics are a necessary component to human judgment, and certainly needed to teach human judgment -- but are they true? Are they the sorts of things which lead us to say, this is the one way to do philosophy? I think not. — Moliere

It is an interesting way to think. But the "institutions" are in some relation of connectivity to actualities, even though the very idea of an actuality is itself part of the institutional construct. This is not to think in correspondence terms, not as if our words somehow slink up with "things". It is rather to think as Quine does, that language is a tool. I have thought this right for some time now: the "scientific method" is a forward looking confirmation of a "theory" about the world, and this is at the most basic level, like walking down the street. the foot moves forward, anticipating the resistance of the sidewalk, descends, carries the weight to the next step, and so on. All knowledge claims at the basic level are like this; temporal events of problem solving.
But there is always the impossible "givenness" of the world that is intractable to the understanding. Always keeping in mind that this pragmatic view itself is conceived in this abiding indeterminacy. My position is that philosophy is right to the extent that it serves to disclose foundation. The spirit of empirical science simply DOES NOT possess this capacity for disclosure. It is not even ABOUT the world we experience. At the level of ontology, it is just bad metaphysics.

So what if God actually appeared before me and intimated HER eternal grandeur and power? Language does not prohibit this — Constance

Language does not prohibit hallucinations either.

They rest on intuitions about logic — Constance

So if p then q, p, therefore q is based on intuition. I don’t think we are using “intuition” correctly.

As an empiricist philosopher, Quine was bound to a scientific consensus — Constance

No, I would say he was bound by the success of make predictions of future stimuli.

And again, ALL we ever encounter in the world, is phenomena. — Constance

This is incorrect, we encounter trees, apples, humans. Also,it does not make sense to say ALL we ever encounter in the phenomena, is phenomena.

All inquiry ABOUT these claims leads to indeterminacy. — Constance

In science, there is a certain inaccuracy with measurements. Is this a concern? Should it impede progress? No, they march forward. They apply the measurement, where there is practical gain, and live with the uncertainty, or strive to improve. Some philosophers could learn from this example.

In that light, I'd say that neither materialism nor phenomenology are terms worth fighting over, because only people educated in this stuff would really get something out of the distinction, — Moliere

Hmmm, true. But just because it is not a popular issue doesn't help here. All that we know and accept as true was once not popular.

Husserl is one I've read selections from -- I have a reader I've read but I haven't done the deep work. So, yes I've read parts, but no I haven't read it all. He's someone I need to, but he's still far enough away from present interests that I've sorta just kept him there — Moliere

You know, it really does take the reading. Consider that empirical science was there at the beginning of our acculturation and we were, in those early years, exposed to nothing but, through high school and beyond. Phenomenology is a radical departure from this, beginning with Kant and onward. A monumental task it was for me to finally understand why it is so important: it is about the totality of our being here, and it is able to look closely at the metaphysics, if you will, of our existence. It is not confined in any way. It does not deny science at all, but simply understands that this is not the revelation of our existence at the basic level that philosophy seeks.

The mystical cannot be true or false because this is a feature of propositions, not states of mind or existential encounters. It is what is said about these that can be true or false. So what if God actually appeared before me and intimated HER eternal grandeur and power? — Constance

Then that'd be between you and God, yeah? And whomever else saw her.

Maybe what you say of her is true. And, if I believe you, in the same vein, I'd have to believe others who say otherwise if I'm going to remain consistent (i.e., reasonable, like the practice of philosophy would have me do). And then it's pretty easy to see how people experience these things differently, upon listening to them. In some way I'd have to accommodate the apparent inconsistency. God is feminine, God is masculine, God has no gender -- since the purpose is guidance and consolation, it depends on the speaker's conviction of God rather than some fact of the matter. In fact, for someone who wants a person like themselves to be in charge of existence, it's better to think of God in that way.

But it's not consistent. And so it seems we've left the standards of reason behind in seeking to speak truth about the mystical, when the mystical is neither true nor false.

Language does not prohibit this; it is the content of language that prohibits this, that is, what is familiar and usual. Language is entirely open and even the Wittgensteinian Tractatusian prohibitions are not categorical. They rest on intuitions about logic, and these are, in Heidegger's terms, taking up the world AS: When logic speaks of logic's own delimitations, this is an imposition that occurs within the finitude of logic's application. — Constance

I think it's the familiar and usual which enables one to speak at all -- though we are free to re-tool language as we see fit (insofar that we are, in fact, free at least). There's not a strict prohibition on creative uses of language. That's the only way that it could be worthwhile -- because as the world changes, so does language, and vice-versa.

Really, the familiar or the exotic are a matter of perspective. If you're born in a Morman household, now, evolution isn't exotic. When I was growing up, however, it was. It was a strange thing that should be shunned because it conflicted with faith. Exoticism or everydayness is just a pattern of difference and habit.

And, for the most part, people are creatures of habit.

I'd hazard that in learning how to live habits are what are passed on. Rituals. That sort of thing.

Things which people hold dear.

But if a philosopher wants to call them true, then there's some work cut out for them in trying to resolve the various inconsistencies -- the Euthyphro, the naturalistic question, the mind-body problem, God's existence (and, thereby, all existential claims). . . it's kind of a huge project. And you wouldn't be the first philosopher to try. And, as it turns out, the philosophers -- even with the best of intentions -- sincerely disagree with one another in their attempts to apply reason to the problem.

And, for the most part, no one actually cares about "Religion within the bounds of reason alone" -- they want something beyond reason. Reason is seen as somehow not supplying a person with what they need. They need something beyond reason, something beyond language, something greater than themself.

So one wonders what the point is if you'll just be left there with your cathedral in the sky that makes sense to you, but that's about it.

For me, I still like to think about the anthropology of religion, and why it is so compelling. The idea that it will just fall away is simply naive, though. I'm pretty sure the traditions and practices will be preferentially selected among the religious over a philosophical product.

I do disagree here: Philosophy does have its grounding, which is firmly there before inquiry. — Constance

Heh, that might be a agree-to-disagree. We can mark our departure, at least. If philosophy has a grounding, I do not see it. Maybe it's firm. But I think it just goes back to an individual's convictions and desires (themself a social product of the process of life).

Hmmm, true. But just because it is not a popular issue doesn't help here. All that we know and accept as true was once not popular. — Constance

Yeh, but here I'm saying -- bury the hatchet. This distinction will be forgotten because it's just a blip in the history of philosophy.

You know, it really does take the reading. Consider that empirical science was there at the beginning of our acculturation and we were, in those early years, exposed to nothing but, through high school and beyond. — Constance

This probably goes some way to our disagreement, too, and goes some way to elucidate what I mean by everyday/exotic experience.

I was raised in a very religious household. I figured out science later. The arguments from experience and all that were my bread and butter, and I've seen how people in communities react to and use such arguments "in the wild", outside of the philosophers concerns. My skepticism in such things is based in experience -- hence my doubts about phenomenology leading one to God, but rather, from my story, it leads one to nature.

Language does not prohibit hallucinations either. — Richard B

But hallucinations aren't God. It's a supposition, so one has to play along.

So if p then q, p, therefore q is based on intuition. I don’t think we are using “intuition” correctly. — Richard B

How do you know the conditional works at all? Or the disjunction? It comes and is not analyzable, not reducible, this intuition qua intuition, for any analysis that would be brought to bear on this would beg the question given that it would itself presuppose just that which is being analyzed. Heidegger would give an historical account of this, but this dismisses the ineffable intuition as ineffable. Witt affirmed this as mystical (in the Tractatus).

No, I would say he was bound by the success of make predictions of future stimuli. — Richard B

Which is the litmus for establishing the consensus.

This is incorrect, we encounter trees, apples, humans. Also, it does not make sense to say ALL we ever encounter in the phenomena, is phenomena. — Richard B

Phenomenology is a second order of analysis. It first takes the encounter of trees, apples, etc., then gives analysis of the presuppositional claims that go to the totality of the claim, and not just an aspect of it. But it no more conflicts with encountering trees and apples than does Newtonian physics. It simply says something ABOUT encountering trees and apples. That they are, at the level of basic questions, phenomena.

In science, there is a certain inaccuracy with measurements. Is this a concern? Should it impede progress? No, they march forward. They apply the measurement, where there is practical gain, and live with the uncertainty, or strive to improve. Some philosophers could learn from this example. — Richard B

Don't make objections where there is no claim to make them about. These phenomenologists do not take issue with scientific progress, I mean, not even by the wildest sane interpretation. It is simply another order of thinking. Either one is interested in this kind of inquiry or not. Regarding phenomenology, it is almost always the case that one has no interest because one has not done the reading. Understandable, as it is difficult and alien to what is familiar, but it makes criticism vacuous.

We talk about this, we talk about that. We talk about all sorts of stuff, some of it eccentrically. Which is just another word for irrationally. What about that doesn’t work? — Mww

Well, it seems to me that if we talk about something, then that something is not ineffable....

Hence if we talk about sensations - the aroma of coffee being the case in point - then the sensation is not ineffable. This, going back a half-dozen posts, stands as the argument I used against your

I agree sensations are entirely ineffable. — Mww

You say "but we can't put the smell of coffee into words!". Of course not, it's a smell, not a sentence; but this is a point of grammar, pretending to be profound philosophy.

That's 's point,

we cannot say objects — Moliere

and my reply to , repeating a point made on page one:

"Suppose someone had a list of the instructions for riding a bike, to whatever detail we desire. Would they then be a bike rider? Well, no. So what is missing? Just, and only, the riding of the bike." — Banno

We can't put the tree or the smell or the bike ride or 's olympic diver into words. they are things in the world, not sentences. If you like, call them ineffable, but don't make the mistake of thinking that we can't therefor talk about them. We can, and we do.

So, yes -- it's an interesting case, but I think creativity can be taught. An uncreative person can be shown how to be creative. Or, at least, more creative than they were. So, we probably couldn't come up with a regimen which will be guaranteed to develop a Picasso, but we can teach people to be creative in the art for all that. — Moliere

Having been an art student myself and having been involved in the arts for many years, I find myself disagreeing with this. My point was that there is no reliable set of rules that can be laid out like a recipe to achieve the certain result of developing creativity and aesthetic sense. "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make her drink".

Sure, exposing people to artworks and familiarizing them with art history are necessary, but by no means guarantee results, because it all depends on what people see when they look at artworks and study art history, and that is down to personal experience, which is unpredictable and ineffable.

Personally, I find it incredible that some (not you, Moliere) want to deny that there is any aspect of private experience which cannot be made public, and seem to have some weird, politically correct fetish for making everything public,and insisting on their dogmatic, and even worse insuufferably boring, version of correctness in all matters philosophical, which to me is objectionable and raises the horrible spectre of Groupthink and universal ennui. Beyond my opposition to the dogmatic thinking of such ideologues, I have no interest in the trivialized question of effability vs ineffability if it turns on mere definitions.

My skepticism in such things is based in experience -- hence my doubts about phenomenology leading one to God, but rather, from my story, it leads one to nature. — Moliere

You seem to have forgotten your Spinoza: "Deus siva natura" : God is nature.

Maybe all we need is a few more pages of discussion in order to finally land on an acceptable (written/linguistic) account of the ineffable (!!) :roll:

Having been an art student myself and having been involved in the arts for many years, I find myself disagreeing with this. — Janus

Cool.

I see the tough cases as ones of motivation. You can lead a horse to water, but if they don't want to drink they won't.

That's true of teaching any subject, though. Students will be students, in the end.

And yes, I'm not interested in trivial cases, either, where it comes down to a definition. Interesting cases only.

Personally, I find it incredible that some (not you, Moliere) want to deny that there is any aspect of private experience which cannot be made public, and seem to have some weird, politically correct fetish for making everything public,and insisting on their dogmatic, and even worse insuufferably boring, version of correctness in all matters philosophical, which to me is objectionable and raises the horrible spectre of Groupthink and universal ennui. — Janus

I think it's more a matter of trying to figure it out philosophically than anything. The demands of reason, and such. Maybe there's something private, but it might be outside the bounds of philosophy at that point. Also, given that philosophy seeks agreement -- at least I think it does, else why talk at all when you could just live? -- those are the sorts of appeals one makes in looking for agreement, or at least understanding.

Also, while it may be weird, I think it worth noting if something is private by way of a groups decision vs. something being private in some sort of universal sense. At least, from the philosopher's vantage. I can understand that sacred things may be kept out of the hands of philosophers (by choice, because it's inappropriate, or because all the philosophers disagree with one another anyways ;) ) -- it's not that everything is public, but philosophy is public just because of the rubric of reason. (though, of course, philosophers play with that, but generally speaking... naw)

I have no interest in the trivial question of effability vs ineffability. — Janus

Don't give up the ship, mate !

At 1,000 posts all will be revealed. The difference between effable and ineffable is ineffable, or is it effable? I can't wait !

I think it's more a matter of trying to figure it out philosophically than anything. — Moliere

Well, that's what it says on the label: The Philosophy Forum.

...we need is a few more pages.. — busycuttingcrap

...just... a few more... pages... and Banno... will agree... with me...

You can lead a horse to water, but if they don't want to drink they won't.

That's true of teaching any subject, though. Students will be students, in the end. — Moliere

True, if they don't want to drink they won't, and nor will they if they don't know how to drink, and there is no guarantee they can learn to drink either.

I don't think it's the same for all subjects; if learning a subject is a matter of learning a bunch of facts or formulas, then there is a definite process of teaching which will definitely yield results if the student is willing and has the necessary intellectual capacity. Of course, being creative in any subject is another matter and is more akin to the arts and cannot be reliably taught.

I think it's more a matter of trying to figure it out philosophically than anything. The demands of reason, and such. Maybe there's something private, but it might be outside the bounds of philosophy at that point. Also, given that philosophy seeks agreement -- at least I think it does, else why talk at all when you could just live? -- those are the sorts of appeals one makes in looking for agreement, or at least understanding. — Moliere

Right, but I don't think there is any one philosophically correct answer to any question, so I am not arguing for some standpoint, but rather arguing against any purportedly universally correct position.

Reason just consists in validity; in being consistent with your basic presuppositions, which are themselves groundless. I also don't see philosophy as seeking agreement, but as creatively explicating diversity of perspective for the sake of interest, insight and development of the imagination.

:lol: