"(H)ow epistemic connections work between knowledge claims and objects in the world" is an ambiguous question. — Banno

Can you explain why you think that question is ambiguous?

Which knowledge claims? What objects in which world?

If the supposition that there is one way in which we can tell if a proposition is true, then the answer I gave, the T-sentence, is the only candidate.

:wink:

Nice.

I was somewhat disappointed that your wasn't the last post here. It seems we are not yet done talking about the ineffable.

Which knowledge claims? What objects in which world?

If the supposition that there is one way in which we can tell if a proposition is true, then the answer I gave, the T-sentence, is the only candidate. — Banno

To keep it simple start thinking about empirical claims concerning things in this world. '"Snow is white " is true iff snow is white' tells us nothing beyond the fact that the account it exemplifies, the correspondence account, is the only account that makes any sense.

Then take that example: we know "snow is white" is true if we know snow is white: but how do we know snow is white? We know it appears white, and we know we say it is white; is that the same thing? So, do we know anything about snow?

It's been 11 days so I guess no response to my last post is forthcoming. You appear to consider Wittgenstein a supporter of your position, yet you provide no argument or evidence to refute my claim that he denies only the privacy of language, not the privacy of the feeling of sensations.

At §243 Wittgenstein says of the putative private language that it is supposed "to refer to what only the speaker can know — to his immediate private sensations".

He appears to acknowledge here, at least, that one's immediate sensations are private.

My reply, to you and to various others, was summed up in what you quoted above,

(it) pretends that our sensations are prior to our "being in the world". It assumes the perspective of an homunculus. — Banno

What perspective does it assume to pretend that our language is prior to "being in the world"? Or, that there exist true statements independent of anyone's expressing them?

"The cup has one handle" is true IFF the cup has one handle. — Banno

Your argument appears to be that if there are ineffable parts of the world then these parts can be expressed by true statements. This assumes that those parts of the world cannot be ineffable. As @Constance notes, this begs the question.

↪Constance, in your first post on this thread you gave us:
The reduction I have in mind is Husserl's. The idea is to consciously dismiss presuppositions that implicitly give us the familiarity of the familiar world in a perceptual event.
— Constance
My reply, to you and to various others, was summed up in what you quoted above,
(it) pretends that our sensations are prior to our "being in the world". It assumes the perspective of an homunculus.
— Banno
Your response was
You shouldn't raise questions about things you don't really have an interest in.
— Constance
To which I asked
What?
— Banno
eliciting in turn your enigmatic response. If you think that T-sentences do not answer your question, then have a go at explaining what it is you are asking. "(H)ow epistemic connections work between knowledge claims and objects in the world" is an ambiguous question.

It's not enough just to read a bunch of philosophers and pick the bits you like. We are not doing philosophy until we engage with and critique those views. I think you agree with this.

That is what this thread involves. It sets out various ways of understanding the notion of ineffability, and seeks comment on them. It gives folk enough rope, a place to set out a part of their thinking or the thinking of their betrothed, with the aim of identifying problems and inconsistencies therein.

The problem is that you have still to set out what it is you are asking. — Banno

You were dismissive of the references in the Tractatus to the mysticism and transcendence; you ignored Quine's admission that he could not reconcile his naturalism with experiential phenomena; and you don't seem to grasp the essentials of phenomenology that you reject out of hand, given that you consistently misrepresent it in your statements.

And you cannot handle basic questions. Asking you about the epistemic relation between brains and couches is elementary. Causality? Is this a carrier of what is essential for knowledge? I mean, you have to deliver yourself from arguments that encompass the question and have something that comes to mind when you step away from these and into an actual world encounter. Otherwise you are lost as a philosopher.

So there you are, brain facing a couch. Obviously a knowledge relation is in place, some nexus of intimation. Do tell in a couple of sentences. It doesn't matter if there is more to say. Just say IT. No need to be slippery.

I wonder how you feel about Rorty's question, one of my favorites: How is it that anything out there gets in here? Out there, of course, is my cat, and in here is my brain. It is the kind of thing that leads very quickly to the issue of ineffability.

…how do epistemic connections work between knowledge claims and objects in the world? — Constance

Since you mention Rorty in relation to epistemology , would you agree with the following? Rorty rejects epistemology in favor of a hermeneutic approach. In doing so , he is avoiding the problem of skepticism that arises out of epistemological thinking , the presumption of a grounding for knowledge claims and the attendant problem of figuring out how our beliefs ‘hook onto’ the world.

Not again. Page after page has gotten this discussion nowhere.

And yet you have participated all along; if it is so hopeless why not walk away and cease wasting your precious time?

yet you provide no argument or evidence to refute my claim that he denies only the privacy of language, not the privacy of the feeling of sensations. — Luke

Wittgenstein does not deny that we have feelings or sensations.

Elsewhere I have been quite specific about that, back on page one. What Witti points out is that, that you cannot have my sensation is a direct result of it's being my sensation. If you had it, too, it would by that very fact no longer be just my sensation...

248. The sentence “Sensations are private” is comparable to “One plays patience by oneself”.

Here's the issue that plagues any attempt to claim ineffability:

The problem with claiming that something is ineffable is, of course, the liar-paradox-like consequence that one has thereby said something about it. — Banno

Can you escape this paradox?

And yet you have participated all along; if it is so hopeless why not walk away and cease wasting your precious time? — Janus

Good point.

Here's the issue that plagues any attempt to claim ineffability:

The problem with claiming that something is ineffable is, of course, the liar-paradox-like consequence that one has thereby said something about it. — Banno


Can you escape this paradox? — Banno

There is a difference between contradicting yourself by claiming that "something" (some specific thing) is ineffable, and claiming that much of human experience (generally speaking) is ineffable.

The other point is that whatever is ineffable in human experience, propositonally considered, "drops out of the conversation", but may be the subject of poetry and the other arts. The ineffable, as such, may drop out of the philosophical conversation, but the fact that there is the ineffable need not: it may, on the contrary, be considered to be of the greatest philosophical significance (but obviously not on a conception of philosophy as narrow as AP or OLP).

You were dismissive of the references in the Tractatus to the mysticism and transcendence — Constance

If I was dismissive it was of the idea that the discussion ended there for Wittgenstein.Elucidating the difference between saying and showing would appear to be one of the primary motivations fro his continuation of this investigation in the PI.

you ignored Quine's admission that he could not reconcile his naturalism with experiential phenomena; — Constance

I don't recall this discussion, although doubtless it occurred. My response was probably Davidsonian.

you don't seem to grasp the essentials of phenomenology — Constance

On that we agree. It appears incoherent, for reasons given.

And you cannot handle basic questions. — Constance

I've argued elsewhere at considerable length that there is no general account to be given of truth beyond that found in T-sentences. Your demand for such an account asks the wrong question.

Are we done?

whatever is ineffable in human experience, propositonally considered, "drops out of the conversation", but may be the subject of poetry and the other arts. The ineffable, as such, may drop out of the philosophical conversation, but the fact that there is the ineffable need not: it may, on the contrary, be considered to be of the greatest philosophical significance (but obviously not on a conception of philosophy as narrow as AP or OLP). — Janus

What do you think of the idea that the ineffable used to be thought of in terms of a hidden substance , a thing -in-itself, the noumenon that stands on the other side of a divide between our representations and the essences buried within external nature as well as in the interiority of our own subjectivity? And more recently the ineffable , rather than pointing to a hidden substance, is associated with the unconscious of thought , the fact that the origins of our values are not transparent to us, and neither is language transparent to itself. In other words, the ineffable is irreducible difference , displacement and becoming rather than interiority, essence, ipseity, pure self-reflexivity.

Since you mention Rorty in relation to epistemology , would you agree with the following? Rorty rejects epistemology in favor of a hermeneutic approach. In doing so , he is avoiding the problem of skepticism that arises out of epistemological thinking , the presumption of a grounding for knowledge claims and the attendant problem of figuring out how our beliefs ‘hook onto’ the world. — Joshs

Rorty would say, if I read him right, that one can only be skeptical if there is something to be skeptical about. And there isn't. Truth is made, not discovered, for there is nothing to discover outside of the dynamics of meaning making. One can never step into some impossible world that is there which cannot be second guessed, and then point to proposition X and say, see how this deviates.

I think this right, actually. I also think what we call absolutes are really, to use his jargon, concepts among others in a certain vocabulary of contingencies. But then, IN this vocabulary, we discover something wholly other. This is, for lack of a better term, the metaphysics of presence, which is revealed in our aesthetics and ethics.

Truth is made, not discovered, for there is nothing to discover outside of the dynamics of meaning making. One can never step into some impossible world that is there which cannot be second guessed, and then point to proposition X and say, see how this deviates. — Constance

I would add that he didn't think the very concept of truth was particularly useful, even as warranted assertion, and on this point he differed from Dewey and James , as well as Davidson and Putnam.

I also think what we call absolutes are really, to use his jargon, concepts among others in a certain vocabulary of contingencies. But then, IN this vocabulary, we discover something wholly other. This is, for lack of a better term, the metaphysics of presence, which is revealed in our aesthetics and ethics. — Constance

He liked the fact that Derrida critiqued the metaphysics
of presence, substituting playful irony.

What do you think of the idea that the ineffable used to be thought of in terms of a hidden substance , a thing -in-itself, the noumenon that stands on the other side of a divide between our representations and the essences buried within external nature as well as in the interiority of our own subjectivity? And more recently the ineffable , rather than pointing to a hidden substance, is associated with the unconscious of thought , the fact that the origins of our values are not transparent to us, and neither is language transparent to itself. In other words, the ineffable is irreducible difference , displacement and becoming rather than interiority, essence, ipseity, pure self-reflexivity. — Joshs

I have been thinking of the ineffable more in terms of human experience. The Kantian notion of the noumenon places it beyond human experience. which would make it not merely ineffable, but from the perspective of experience, non-existent.

I agree that noumena might be thought to "have" essences, if by that is meant an absolute nature; in that conception they would be thought to 'be some way' even though we could never have any idea of what that way of being could be. This seems perilously close to being incoherent, at least from a logical propositional perspective. When asked about such things Gautama refused to answer or resorted to answering in terms of polyvalent logic.

I think your second sentence there points to this difference if you accept that what is "unconscious in thought" is nonetheless, non-dually, experienced or perceived. The very non-duality of the experience or perception guarantees that it cannot be expressed in our dualistic language, or in terms of bivalent logic.

Non-dual experience cannot be thought of in terms of "interiority", essence, ipseity or pure reflexivity" since those are all concepts, and non-dual perception is understood to be non-conceptual.

What Witti points out is that, that you cannot have my sensation is a direct result of it's being my sensation. If you had it, too, it would by that very fact no longer be just my sensation...

248. The sentence “Sensations are private” is comparable to “One plays patience by oneself”. — Banno

One does play patience by oneself, so what do you consider to be the point of this remark? Presumably, that sensations are private.

Here's the issue that plagues any attempt to claim ineffability:

The problem with claiming that something is ineffable is, of course, the liar-paradox-like consequence that one has thereby said something about it.
— Banno

Can you escape this paradox? — Banno

Claiming that something is ineffable thereby makes it effable? But this implies that we could never use the word "ineffable" (to mean that nothing can be said about something). That's absurd.

Okay then, nothing else can be said about something except that it's ineffable.

There. Crisis averted.

Unless logical pedantry was intended to be the substance of this discussion? In that case, I must have missed the joke.

But this implies that we could never use the word "ineffable" (to mean that nothing can be said about something). That's absurd. — Luke

Yep.

...nothing else can be said about something except that it's ineffable... Crisis averted. — Luke

So folk ought restrict themselves to not saying anything more about the ineffable than that it is ineffable.

Certainly not 37 pages more.

...nothing else can be said about something except that it's ineffable... Crisis averted.
— Luke

So folk ought restrict themselves to not saying anything more about the ineffable than that it is ineffable. — Banno

But that's saying something about it, according to you.

But that's saying something about it, according to you. — Luke

Now you're getting it.

So folk ought restrict themselves to not saying anything more about the ineffable than that it is ineffable.
— Banno

But that's saying something about it, according to you.
— Luke

Now you're getting it. — Banno

Which one is it? That "folk ought restrict themselves to not saying anything more about the ineffable than that it is ineffable" or that folk cannot claim that something is ineffable due to the liar-like paradox that one has then said something about it?

If it's the former, then we can discuss what things - if any - are ineffable, which is what I thought this discussion was about.

I've argued elsewhere at considerable length that there is no general account to be given of truth beyond that found in T-sentences. Your demand for such an account asks the wrong question.

Are we done? — Banno

Well, as Kierkegaard would put it, you seem to have forgotten that we exist, and Kierkegaard was a great inspiration to Wittgenstein. If curiosity ever enables you to do so, read his Concept of Anxiety. Here he explores the threshold of human depth and understanding as it is beheld in the withdrawal of categorical systems. Yes, such a thing is possible.

No one is asking that language take up meanings that are not there. In the infinite malleability of a language, there are constraints that limit contextual plausibility, and among these restraints there are these "threshold" issues that emerge, in t he margins of meanings, but also, somehow (hence the term 'ineffible'), embedded in meanings, since this is the matrix in which all meaning is made. So my ability to speak about what objects are may have propositional limitations, and these limitations may be imposed by an existing body of default contextual possibilities (exclusively socially defined according to Rorty) of a language, but it is a foolish supposition that there is nothing else, or that anything else that may be doxastically coercive or imposing in some way is unqualifiedly possessed by standard meanings. In other words, while to talk about THE threshold of the meaning making resources is awkward and assailable, it is not the case that there is nothing at all "there". It is rather that what is there is inchoate and nascent, awaiting a new language category, a new philosophical conversation.

Ineffability is what is there on the horizon of the openness of language possibilities as inquiry stands in the midst of a world. As I see it, it literally takes practice to understand this, and as long as analytic philosophy persists in philosophy, this will remain hidden to philosophers. Ineffability is there as a real imposition. Language games, it should be argued, are not closed games, nor are they restrained by logic to be settled within some arbitrary finitude, and reason, it should be added, does not constrain content.

You actually believe "'snow is white' iff snow is white" is a fitting response to the most problematic philosophical questions. It is a partial response, a useful, localized response. But it is reductive to the point of a vacuous absurdity in the matter discussed here.

As this thread lurches vehemently towards aporia, it might be interesting to see what agreement might be salvaged.

If I have it right, you have a barrier beyond which language cannot go, but beyond which a phenomenological method of introspection supposedly can see. Hence you find the term "ineffable" appropriate.

In the place of that barrier I see a continuity from what we say to what we do and what is not said but shown. It's the place where stating the rule is replaced by enacting it, and where saying what the picture is of is replaced by showing it. That continuity means that we can always say more, but enough is said when the task is done. Hence the term "ineffable" is inappropriate.

@Moliere, you've been very quite - I don't blame you. But you claim one foot in each camp. Does the above summary have any validity? Are you still following?

This has been an interesting but labrythine thread.

Do you have a definition of ineffable - or do you think you can steel man one?

Are you comfortable with - 'too great or extreme to be expressed or described in words.'

It sounds like an emotional state.

I think there is contextual ineffability. For instance, I can say nothing about string theory. Others can. I don't accept that the ineffable is a kind of transcendent category, just a context dependent one. Am I being silly?

If I have it right, you have a barrier beyond which language cannot go, but beyond which a phenomenological method of introspection supposedly can see. Hence you find the term "ineffable" appropriate. — Banno

You have it all wrong, mate. You're like a man who refuses to open his eyes and then complains that he can't see what everyone around him is talking about. It's all around you; it's just a non-dual way of seeing that cannot be captured by language. Perhaps the best thing for you would be to drop some acid, and then see if you can communicate what you've experienced. That should open your mind at least a little. As Dylan says "Don't criticize what you can't understand".

I'm still following. I've just been reading along now in an attempt to untangle thoughts. And scratch the itch.

I'm thinking that you're close, but also that @Constance here :

Ineffability is what is there on the horizon of the openness of language possibilities as inquiry stands in the midst of a world. — Constance

Lays out how she'd like to talk about ineffability, which isn't really the same thing as I was indicating with "the ineffable" either, and I think is different from what you've intimated at least, given that we cannot say such things without falling into the liar's paradox. Especially thinking this contrasts with your focus on activity as the mechanism of elucidation.

Going along with -- I'm thinking something along the lines of where your focus is on tasks that elucidate meaning (even if unsayable), but if I'm understanding @Constance at least, then the unsayable is something which is always beyond language but perceptible to all of us -- something I've been calling not quite ineffable, but the phenomenologist, I think, could claim that "the ineffable" is a feature of our construction of experience -- the unfolding of experience is the ineffable becoming, but at the vagaries of thought or language it will always remain. (or, something like that -- just to put some sense to the notion, not arguing for it)

Something more along the lines of we don't know what tomorrow will bring. And, tomorrow is always tomorrow, and never today.

Maybe. But maybe I've got it all wrong and I'm going to draw ire from both sides, as I usually do. :D

I see a continuity from what we say to what we do and what is not said but shown. It's the place where stating the rule is replaced by enacting it, and where saying what the picture is of is replaced by showing it. That continuity means that we can always say more, but enough is said when the task is done. Hence the term "ineffable" is inappropriate. — Banno

A bit different emphasis from Gendlin’s phenomenological dictum that:

“We think more than we can say, we feel more than we can think, we live more than we can feel, and there is much else besides.”

But I don’t see these as incompatible.

Good that you are still here.

Do you have a definition of ineffable - or do you think you can steel man one? — Tom Storm

You might recall hat I am not keen on definitions, preferring to list uses than stipulate meanings. But we might profitably go back to the list in the OP.

One suggestion was "...ascribing ineffability to something is to say that it has no referent". This looks to be a non-starter, since it posits a thing to which we cannot refer, which looks to be at least a performative contradiction, and probably a logical one, too.

The case is similar with "to treat "ineffable" as a second-order predicate", since if it is a predicate at all, we ought be able to predicate... that is to say something about it.

And so for "it can only be understood by listing the attributes that do not apply to it", since in listing those attributes we are saying something about it.

There's certainly a use for "ineffable" as an honorific, a way to mark the sacred. More could be said here. It would involve a language game in which certain subjects as not available for further comment.

Much of the thread concerned to view that the ineffable cannot be said, only experienced. @Moliere's early reply seemed to cover that. It seems to be a point of grammar rather than an ontology. But I don't suppose that discussion will ever be resolved to the satisfaction of all parties.

"The one apparently advocated by Wittgenstein was to simply remain silent about the ineffable". This is perhaps the approach of the Tractatus, but it now seems to me that in the Investigations Wittgenstein sort to say more about this by discussing what it is to follow a rule, what it is to recognise or be shown, and these together, what it is to participate in language, in language games and in a form of life.

Or it might mark where nonsense and irrationality begins.

Are you comfortable with - 'too great or extreme to be expressed or described in words.' — Tom Storm

Sure. That's roughly what was called the "honorific" use. It's not so much that more cannot be said, as that saying more becomes inappropriate.

I can say nothing about string theory. — Tom Storm

Sire, but that does not mean nothing can be said about string theory. String theory is therefore not ineffable.

But much of the thread was unhelpful stuff such as . It's been a long time since I did drugs, and to be sure, it's a fine way to be shown the arbitrariness of the world. However there's plenty of folk who have tried to walk through a tree after eating those mushrooms from around Dorrigo. The result is not supernatural abilities, but a bloody nose. Reality doesn't care what drugs you take.

, good to know you are still here; you to, . Might get another ten pages.

But I don’t see these as incompatible. — Joshs

The narcissism of small differences comes into play.

@Constance, what can we agree on?