The representation always presupposes that which is represented; words always presuppose that to which they relate. — Mww

I was nodding my head in agreement till you got to this. That's not how I see it. There is a sense in which things do not exist until they are named. Yes, I know. That is not the standard way of looking at existence, but is sometimes a useful way to think about it.

This is quite apparent from the fact we know a priori we cannot look directly at the thing called “sun”, which makes explicit there is something about that object not contained in the mere word that represents it. — Mww

I can't remember anything from when I was a baby, but I'm pretty sure I learned not to look at the sun from experience.

In Yogic logic, one of the practices is to turn thought off completely. Such a mental state is surprisingly innately pleasant, for me at least. Walking along a beach, or through a forest, just absorbing it thoughtlessly and nonjudgmentally has this affect of connecting me with the surroundings that is lost once thought returns. — Pop

I don't know anything about "yogic logic," so I'm making some assumptions. I'm ok with what you've written, as long as we stipulate that "turning thought off completely" does not mean walking around in a haze. Many western philosophers have interpreted eastern meditative practice that way. In that kind of state, you are paying attention, fully awake and aware, and actively participating in the world.

In short, naming something is a very brief and concise way of expressing something which is much richer in experience than a single word could convey. It's the difference between all the ways you could think about trees and how you interact with them as opposed to merely naming them. — Manuel

I'm mostly ok with this. Naming can be brief and concise because something is lost. Something is also changed. The thing-in-itself is different from the thing.

I think one place where the thing-in-itself really differs from the Tao is that the Tao is everything all at once undifferentiated. Kant seems to think that apples are separate from the rest of everything before they become things. Before they are named. That doesn't make sense to me. Keeping in mind that my experience with Kant is limited, so I may be misrepresenting him.

I say that a ‘feeling’ is a particular change being made in the way we relate to a situation, just as a word is. — Joshs

I disagree. That's not how I experience either feelings or words.

What give a feeling the richness a word doesn’t have? Is it some intrinsic , immediate mystery? — Joshs

Probably the word "feeling" is not the right one. I generally use the word "experience." The experience includes everything; sights, smells, sounds, touch, heat, cold, along with interoception, i.e. our internal sense of our bodies. It's all of those things at once. It is possible to experience the world directly in this way without words or concepts. I can do it...sometimes. Mostly not, but enough to know that it's possible.

Is it some intrinsic , immediate mystery? — Joshs

It's not a mystery. The experience comes first. The words are something added by processing and interpreting the experience. Maybe the words are the mystery. Cue eerie music.

The distinction resides in the point-of-use of a speculative human cognitive system on the one hand, and the talking about the conditions under which that point-of-use system operates, on the other. — Mww

I don't understand. Can you give me an example.

Intentional communication. — Mww

Again, an example would be helpful.

I can also think ‘pre-verbally’, using the felt as a of a situation. But to me words are merely more richly articulated versions of a felt sense. — Joshs

I think it's the other way around. Words are chopped up and stacked representations of something much richer.

The felt sense is a vague , impressionistic sketch of what the word crystalizes. — Joshs

The crystallization you refer to is achieved by throwing away much of the information included in the original experience.

Is it anything like this? — Joshs

I read it a couple of times and still don't really understand what he's getting at. There is this:

Thus intellectual meanings are in their very nature aspects of subjective feelings. Any moment's subjective feeling implicitly contains many possible meanings which could be differentiated and symbolized. — Joshs

Which I disagree with. It's like he's trying to define the problem away. What does it mean to say that a "feeling implicitly contains many possible meanings." I think he has it backwards.

The answer to the second question then becomes....to know a thing it is necessary to conceive it, and to conceive a thing it is necessary to represent it, but the mere representation of a thing makes the naming of it only possible and not necessary. — Mww

I don't understand the distinction you are making between the representation and the naming. How is it represented if not in words?

By the same token, taking into consideration the second question really meant to ask.....how can I know you know something that can’t be put into words (or some kind of expression)....then it is the case I cannot. — Mww

No. That's not what I "really meant to ask." I think my question is clear. Also, what did you have in mind when you wrote "some kind of expression."

But feeling is already an expressing , and as such it IS a kind of talking. — Joshs

You're changing the meaning of the word "talking." Talking uses words. — T Clark

I left something important out. I know that what I call experience, wordless awareness, is different from knowing or understanding using language. It feels different in a profound way. It uses different parts of me. If you don't feel that same difference, then there's probably not much further we can go with this discussion.

That doesn't mean you're wrong. It just means you experience the world differently than I do.

Yes, but saying one knows them is also wrong. They just are the case; explanation stops here. — Banno

The word I use is "experience." I have many experiences that do not involve words. It's probably true that most of my experiences don't involve words. I think that's true of most people. Let me think about that.

But feeling is already an expressing , and as such it IS a kind of talking. — Joshs

You're changing the meaning of the word "talking." Talking uses words. This from the web:

Talk - speak in order to give information or express ideas or feelings; converse or communicate by spoken words.

It is the arts and poetry in particular that can deal with this kind of knowing I would say — Janus

I agree with this.

Yes, but saying one knows them is also wrong. — Banno

I agree with this. It doesn't make sense to say I know or understand something if I can't put it into words.

I think we know many things which cannot be put into words or at least definitively explained in words. Much of what we know is pre-cognitive, but I don't think that is the same as the different things the Daoists and Kant, in their different ways, were trying to get at. — Janus

Are there "pre-cognitive" things that can't be put into words that are different from what Lao Tzu and Kant are talking about? I don't think so, but I'm not sure of that at all. I'll think about it. And it's not that they can't be put into words, it's that when you do, they become something different. That difference between the Tao and the 10,000 things is at the heart of our experience of the world.

From the relatively little I know (compared to the specialist) of Daoist ideas I have formed the impression that they are positing, by hinting at, a universal movement of life and energy that flows as an undercurrent to our common life as it is conceived, in all of us. This universal dance of life will be intuited directly by those who are able to work effectively on their dispositions such as to quiet the dualistic mind that blinds us to its mistaken views. — Janus

There are more than a hundred translations of the "Tao Te Ching" along with dozens of commentaries written 2,500 years ago and last week. Each one of these has a different understanding of that Lao Tzu was trying to say. I've been in several reading groups and no one could ever agree. [irony]It is only through long study and meditation that I have finally reached an understanding which is clearly and unequivocally what Lao Tzu always intended.[/irony] So, no. That's not how I see it.

Kant, to my knowledge, denies the Spinozistic idea of rational intuition, which for Spinoza (and the Daoists) is the source of ideas of the eternal and the universal. — Janus

I don't know what "rational intuition" means, but it doesn't sound like anything I'd ever use to characterize the Tao as described in the Tao Te Ching. I don't know if Kant would have recognized Lao Tzu's ideas as similar to his. Probably not. I believe he was working about a century before eastern philosophical texts started to be available in Europe.

I wouldn't go as far as to say that our naming of things brings our world of things into existence, and I don't think Kant would either. — Janus

I'm certain you're right about Kant. Lao Tzu writes (Mitchell Verse 40):

All things are born of being.
Being is born of non-being.

Non-being generally refers to the Tao and being to the 10,000 things. I think this way of talking about reality makes sense, although I acknowledge it calls for a change in how we think about "being" and "existence."

As a kid I often use to think that words were like falsifications of thoughts - inchoate blocks used to construct a shared notion of experience - a notion that necessarily reduced or entrapped that personal experience in a kind of verbal prefabrication. It often seemed to me that when my thoughts become words they were heavily truncated or even diverted by the process. It led me to think that in the process of becoming verbal there's a concomitant loss of experiential wisdom. Maybe that doesn't make sense to others - words again... — Tom Storm

I think you're talking about just the insight that Lao Tzu, and I think Kant, were describing. And they're not the only ones. Many philosophies have a place for the unmediated direct experience of unspeakable reality. Words are used to shape those experiences into bite-sized, easily digestible pieces that will stack evenly on the shelves.

I draw an analogy between Kants noumena and the Dao too. I think Philosophers have many different ways of articulating the unknown, and it's implicitly the central problem in many. — Aidan buk

Then I'm a bit confused. You wrote:

For example, knowing that it sounds silly, someone asks, so you know the thing in itself then? And I'd say, what are you referring to, in your mind, when you mention the thing in itself?
Surely if you can think it, I can know it? — Aidan buk

Which is a restatement, in a sense, of the first verse of the Tao Te Ching. You seem to have a grasp of what it means to refer to the unreferable. The important thing is that it can't be put into words. There are ways of experiencing the world directly without words and ideas as intermediaries. It's something I experience all the time and I assume you have too.

Kants thing in itself, direct notions of eternity, nothingness, etc, at first thought, seem to represent thing which are unknowable. They purport to represent things outside of human cognition. — Aidan buk

Yesterday, @Janus had a little back and forth in the "I've got an idea..." ("citizen philosophy")" discussion. I claimed that Kant's noumena are similar to Lao Tzu's Tao. I didn't make a very good case and we didn't take the discussion far, but I still believe my comparison makes sense. The primary document describing Lao Tzu's vision of the Tao is the "Tao Te Ching." It starts with the following:

The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.

The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.

That's from Verse 1 of Stephen Mitchell's translation. Here are some definitions of the Tao from various sources, keeping in mind that the Tao that can be defined is not the eternal Tao.

[1] The ground of being
[2] The Tao that cannot be spoken
[3] Oneness is the Tao which is invisible and formless.
[4] Nature is Tao. Tao is everlasting.
[5] The absolute principle underlying the universe
[6] That in virtue of which all things happen or exist
[7] The intuitive knowing of life that cannot be grasped full-heartedly as just a concept

But, surely, all there is is human cognition? In such an instance, there is no unknowable, in the way it is commonly assumed, instead, the unknowable is always knowable.
For example, knowing that it sounds silly, someone asks, so you know the thing in itself then? And I'd say, what are you referring to, in your mind, when you mention the thing in itself?
Surely if you can think it, I can know it? — Aidan buk

This is the heart of the question that Lao Tzu, and I think Kant, are getting at. How can you know something that can't be put into words? As the verse says, the unnamable, the Tao, is reality. The world we deal with conceptually consists of particular things - cars, apples, electrons, galaxies - which manifest from the Tao by being named. Some translators call these particular things "the ten thousand things," which I love. Putting things into language is what brings our world into existence. This is my particular interpretation, with which many disagree.

I'm certain that there are many people here on the forum who can find fault with my comparison of the Tao with noumena. I'm not claiming there is an exact correspondence, but it is clear to me that at heart the two men were talking about the same experience - knowing what can't be put into words. The unspeakable.

I guess you've never heard of the Zen Mastercard. — praxis

Don't chant "Om" without it.

Thanks, I just read it, and I'm sure I will read it many times more. It's a wonderful poem, dense and rich with allusion. I don't remember having read it before, which means I probably haven't; it is not a forgettable poem. — Janus

I'm glad you liked it.

How's that for unequivocality that may even speak to Frost's very point? — Janus

Have you read "Black Cottage?" It's my favorite Frost poem. My favorite poem. One of my favorite written works. It gives me shivers every time I read it. As I said, there's a lot more going on than just what I quoted.

I just don't think it is true that there have been no new ideas since soon after the dawn of writing; I haven't seen any evidence to support that claim and much to refute it. — Janus

I'm not the one to give you a better argument than the admittedly weak one I already have.

So, treating this not as poetry, but as philosophy for a moment, is the claim that all beliefs are always true, and are only counted false at times, or that beliefs can at some times be true and at others untrue? If the latter would this depend on changing conditions or is the poet suggesting that truth and falsity depend on prevailing? — Janus

If you are at all familiar with my oeuvre, you've heard me say that metaphysical ideas are not true or false, they are more or less useful in particular situations. That's part of the sense I get from what Frost has written, although there's a lot more going on too. But, dear God, he says it better than I ever could. He's one of our most philosophical poets.

Do you think Heidegger's understanding of being had a precursor? Hegel's dialectic? Spinoza's God? Kant's noumenon and transcendental ego? Descartes' "evil demon"? Leibniz' monads? Kierkegaard's leap of faith? Nietzsche's genealogy of morals? Wittgenstein's forms of life? There were recursors to all? — Janus

I can't speak to most of those. I have been struck by how Kant's noumenon is similar to Lao Tzu's Tao, even though I know he wasn't directly influenced. Schopenhauer considered himself a Buddhist. An evil demon who misleads humans has been part of folklore and religion for millennia. The idea that reality might be an illusion ditto. As I said, I am not familiar enough with the others to comment.

You cite Ecclesiastes. Surely someone has commented somewhere in the past few thousand years on why they think that passage is wrong? And, for that matter, surely someone has offered an explanation of why they think it's right? Ecclesiastes just states that it is, without argument. — Pfhorrest

Actually, the first verse of Ecclesiastes says there is nothing new under the sun. The rest of the chapter explains why. The issue is another old idea under the sun - cyclic time vs. progressive time. Are we just going around in circles or are we headed somewhere?

Surely then you could cite a previous example of that idea being put forth in professional philosophy somewhere, and some responses it received to explain why not everyone is on board with it already? — Pfhorrest

From the Bible - Ecclesiastes 1:9

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.

Just because it's not a new idea doesn't mean people will agree with it.

From "The Black Cottage" by Robert Frost:

For, dear me, why abandon a belief
Merely because it ceases to be true.
Cling to it long enough, and not a doubt
It will turn true again, for so it goes.
Most of the change we think we see in life
Is due to truths being in and out of favour.

Those beliefs you mentioned all come under your worldview, based in your experiences, interactions, and observations.
IOW I would maintain that your main belief/worldview shapes the whole of how you perceive and interact with the world around you. — Jan Ardena

I agree with this. The mechanisms by which we build our worldview are not usually addressed in epistemology, even though, as you note, that is the source of most of what we know and believe. It makes philosophy look pretty silly.

Why not subject this to Pfhorrest's program of explication? — tim wood

So, is my idea that there are no new ideas a new idea? Definitely not.

The idea is that there could be some kind of loosely structured discourse where people who think they might have new philosophical ideas (either new possible positions, or new arguments for existing positions) can say what those ideas are, and then the responses should only be either affirming that that actually is a new idea — Pfhorrest

This is intended as a serious response. There really are no new philosophical ideas. There probably haven't been any since soon after people developed written language.

This is a really good idea. Upvote. I didn't vote because too many of them were "neither of the above" for me. Now I'm thinking about questions I could put in a poll like this one. Let's see:

True or false:

• Bullwinkle is a dope.
• @180 Proof is a national treasure.
• Psychology is a science.
• The USA is the greatest nation in history.
• pi = 3.14159265358971323846...
• Emus and Ostriches are really the same thing.
• This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.
• 1 + 1 = 10

This approach typically involves eschewing philosophical "theories" in favor of close attention to the details of the use of everyday "ordinary" language." — Chaz

Responses to your OP seem to be talking about a bunch of different things. Some of these don't seem to have much to do with what I think of as ordinary language philosophy. You're the original poster, but you haven't posted since the OP. You have a responsibility to continue to contribute to the discussions you start. This thread needs some guidance.

However, if one assumes in physics, as do many physicists, that the world is not mathematical, then doesn't it mean that conservation of energy laws would become violated for every branching of wavefunction collapses? — Shawn

Seems to me that if we buy the many worlds interpretation, violation of the conservation of energy and matter is the least of our problems.

It's a mode of critique more than a set of solutions. It's basic tenet might be "cut the bullshit". — Banno

Do you have any specific examples in mind?

This approach typically involves eschewing philosophical "theories" in favor of close attention to the details of the use of everyday "ordinary" language." — Chaz

I'm not really sure if I understand what is meant by "misunderstandings philosophers develop by distorting or forgetting what words actually mean in everyday use." Is this an example - Philosophers talk about free will, but on an everyday basis I am more likely to talk about whether a person should be held responsible for their actions?

Apparently it is indeed pretty dubious, Deepak Chopra uses the term, and while that does not immediately discredit it, it goes a long ways towards raising suspicion that it is bullshit. — ToothyMaw

I value mystical ways of seeing things. I started a thread called "My favorite verses of the Tao Te Ching." I'm also an engineer - good at math and science. Booth ways of knowing are important to me and are central to my understanding of reality. Many people are tempted to mix the two. That almost always results in crap.

Never would have thought of postulating a consciousness field (but of course I'm not a physicist — ToothyMaw

Perhaps the reason you wouldn't have thought of a "consciousness field" is that it's baloney. It's certainly not physics. Or psychology. It doesn't mean anything.

Can anyone convince me that this is not anything more than a Billion member cult?! — Trey

Here's the definition of "cult" I think is the most applicable to this discussion - "A relatively small group of people having religious beliefs or practices regarded by others as strange or sinister."

Clearly, the Catholic Church does not meet that definition.

Not everyone would have to have the same brain state to believe the same thing, but those beliefs exist as brain states nonetheless. — ToothyMaw

So, insofar as beliefs can be represented with words, then they can be easily put into sets. — boethius

I don't think saying that beliefs can be represented as groups of words gets us out of the hole. Similar ideas can be expressed with different words, but small differences in wording can change the meaning significantly. Example - there is currently a discussion on incest here on the forum. According to Thesaurus.com, "unacceptable" and "undesirable" are synonyms. Take these two statements of belief:

• I believe incest is unacceptable.
• I believe incest is undesirable.

Are they the same belief?

Also - what about groups of words that don't mean anything or that don't make sense.

For me, this isn't nitpicking. It goes to the heart of how I experience my mental life. It's a flowing current, not a set of blocks to be stacked.

I actually thought we were getting somewhere. — ToothyMaw

Ok. I was worried that I was distracting. I like to show respect for the intentions of the person who starts the thread.

Not everyone would have to have the same brain state to believe the same thing, but those beliefs exist as brain states nonetheless. — ToothyMaw

I think this tangent I set us on is distracting from your main purpose. I'll leave it at that.

What exactly do we mean by separate? Separate from other phenomenon in the brain? Or never repeating and identifiable? I used the word because you did. — ToothyMaw

Say I have a box of apples. The apples are separate from each other. I can pick them up, eat them, count them. I don't think ideas or beliefs are separable in that way. It seems much more artificial to me. More open to disagreement.

Furthermore, if there is a finite number of brain states brain states could potentially repeat I think. — ToothyMaw

Perhaps, but not in any practical sense. Given the number of neurons in a brain and all the possible interconnections, I think it is unlikely there would be a repeat in the lifetime of the universe, much less a person's lifetime. And that's assuming the persons brain was not constantly changing.