But some folk have the Red Shoes. — Banno

Nice. Classic film buff?

The first time one makes use of the word as it’s expressed to oneself by others, one agrees, or willfully consents, to its use.

One can also disagree to use the word “red” at any time; instead making use of “crimson”, “scarlet”, “vermilion”, “amaranth”, and so forth.

... or even coin a new term for a unique shade or red, and this irrespective of whether others would then agree to make use of it so as to make the term an aspect of the shared language. — javra

I don't remember agreeing (but I did follow orders) - I remember being told what the names of colors were and getting them wrong. I still do, as I am color blind. I have to say parsing the notion of color as a pathway to understand the merits of the term ineffable is bloody dull.

Thirteen pages in and I am no closer to understanding what ineffable means other than the literal definition and associated, shall we say, poetic uses. Is it not the case that some people believe there are quasi mystical matters that are beyond words while others think that everything can be understood or, at least, turned into words? It's hardly a surprising bifurcation.

Not any value. Value as such. It is not an argument from dogmatic authority, but from what I would call phenomenological ontology, and by this I simply mean, take an occasion of ethical ambiguity and give analysis. there are facts before you, like your friend who owes to money but will not pay, but you owe him from a prior business, and does the one cancel the other? — Constance

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

Philosophy is an inquiry into everything and anything at the most basic level. Kant looked at the formal dimensions of thought, not just occasions where thought was in play. So what is this foundational analysis of value about? The good and the bad, to give it categorial recognition (keeping in mind always that such analyses are abstractions. There is no such thing as pure reason or value as such. These are ways we talk about reality). Good and bad can be contingently understood, as with a good couch or a bad knife that doesn't cut cleanly. This is not the ethical good and bad. Follow analytically any contingent use of these terms and eventually you will run into the non contingent good and bad: the discomfort of a bad couch, the frustration of a knife that won't cut. Now the analysis has gotten to the final question, what is this discomfort all about? That goes to the feeling, and here, this cannot be derided or deflated: we have come to the analytic basis of the, if you can stand it, meaning of life.

But this absurd term, 'the bad' sounds ridiculous, like some kind of platonic ultimate reality. It is best to leave historical platitudes out of it and just attend to the matter at hand. No one is talking about the "form of the bad". This is just bad metaphysics. We are talking about a dimension in our existence that defies presuppositional analysis. Value as value is its own presupposition. And I have to leave it at that unless you want a further go at — Constance

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

Frankly, I don't see why there is resistance to this thinking. — Constance

Ah.. but not everyone sees the world the same or makes the same inferences. That's part of the problem when someone maintains their own worldview is reasonable (or base line common sense) and the other person is... strange or mistaken.

There are people who come into existence just to suffer. — Constance

This sounds theatrical and reminds me of Voltaire - the joke about how god designed the nose just so we could wear glasses. For the rest I am not clear what your points about suffering mean.

But let's just drill down into one thing since this is discussion has expanded and is messy.

When you say this:

If ethics is transcendental, and I have no doubt it is (though always keeping in mind that everything is like this once one's inquiry leaves familiar categories) then value (entirely off the grid: "If there is any value that does have value, it must lie outside the whole sphere of what happens and is the case") is an absolute. And this means all of our ethical affairs are grounded in an absolute. — Constance

So this is a style of argument we get from many; from Islamic religious thinkers to David Bentley Hart (an interesting Eastern Orthodox theologian). Can you demonstrate that there is any value which transcends human perspectives and perceptions?

I refer you to Wittgenstein:

Consider, from Culture and Value:

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

Wittgenstein means little to me and for what reasons should I accept his authority on the subject? What I liked most about LW is that he went out and actually did things. Brave things. The point for me is getting on with it.

Religion is mostly bad metaphysics and story telling. — Constance

A lot of philosophy seems to be the same.

I put the matter simply: why are we born to suffer and die? — Constance

Not you alone. It's one of questions most people seem to ask themselves. It's at the heart of Buddhism. I hear this question often when working with people who are experiencing suicidal ideation.

I think it is a fair question, given how impossibly important such a thing is. — Constance

How did you determine this was an impossibility? We really have no way of determining if this is the case. It may seem it from our vantage point (our particular kind of inferential thinking) but given the erroneous and tentative nature of much human thought... who knows, right?

But perhaps we are off the OP. Nice topic for a separate OP.

But then, philosophy is not telling you how to live. It doesn't care, I would argue. It is analysis at the most basic level and nothing more. — Constance

Of course not. But why do it then? And the analysis is itself replete with confusions, omissions, contradictions, contortions and, perhaps, the odd glimmer of understanding. And Christ knows who can tell what's what? :wink:

It's a social construct, and not private. — Banno

You might even say it's an intersubjective agreement (I know you dislike that word :joke: ).

Do antinatalsits celebrate?

Depends on the meaning. Do you mean dictionary meanings? — Constance

No, I was talking about your question of meaning. Asking 'why' of life seems moot to me.

Take a "spin" (it can be dizzying) in a deconstructive analysis, and you will find the concepts never find their grounding in something a-conceptual and Rea — Constance

I have read some Derrida and Richard Rorty and understand this well enough. But it doesn't matter. Everything when looked at too closely distorts and may even vanish. But we don't live in the examination, we live in the experience.

It seems that red as a color qua color losses all meaning when contexts are withdrawn — Constance

But this matters little. We conduct our lives in the contexts. :wink:

And neither does there exist a socially constructed notion of red that is completely shared within a language
community. It would at best be only partially shared, continually contested and redetermined , slightly differently for each participant, in each instantiation, relative to purposes, context and capacities. — Joshs

I am sympathetic to this. What are your thoughts regarding the variations within a shared understanding? While it seems accurate to say that people have different understandings of red, do you consider those differences are sufficient to warrant being seen as incompatible.

I simply must understand why oh why we are born to suffer and die. And this goes metaphysical in an instant. — Constance

I am not sure 'why' questions are of much use when applied to life but, as you suggest, there are plenty of baroque 'answers' available to such questions. My favorites are mundane: nihilism and naturalism. We're back to the ineffable it seems. For my money there is nothing 'true' we can say about life when questions of meaning arise. There's a few thousand years of speculation and superstition no one can agree upon and it's all of no use in finding a plumber on a Saturday night when the sewerage is backed up.

Hence: Nietzsche’s principle of will to power, Freud’s principle of will to pleasure (in fairness, together with his reality principle), Frankl’s principle of will to meaning, and the one which I find most important, Enigma’s principles of lust.

It might take a whole lot of reasoning to make me change my mind on this stance: — javra

Given neither of us arrived here by reasoning, it ain't gonna be reasoning that gets us out. :joke:

don't understand that. What are "principles"? — Banno

Principles are ineffable.

I have decided to follow Husserl;
I have decided to follow Husserl;
I have decided to follow Husserl; — Richard B

I think you may need to decide to follow the more contemprary Zahavi, who seems to think most interpretations of Husserl are superficial.

You get a sense of how exciting his thinking is from his writing:

“If we wish to do justice to the phenomenal character of our experiential life, it is not sufficient to consider the intentional object and the intentional attitude, since what-it-is-likeness is properly speaking what-it-is-like-for-me-ness. Phenomenally conscious states are not states that just happen to take place in me, whether or not I am aware of their taking place; they are also for me, precisely in the sense that there is something it is like for me to have those states. This is why strong phenomenal externalism necessarily fails in its attempt to provide an exhaustive account of the phenomenal character of experience.”

― Dan Zahavi, Self and Other: Exploring Subjectivity, Empathy, and Shame

Thanks for taking the time. I don't think this approach is useful to me in my daily life, but I am fascinated by what others think. The older I get, the less postulation I enjoy and the more I just get on with the doing of things. It makes for a fairly happy life (in my case). For the most part I am not looking for metaphysical truth or foundational justification, just things that work.

There's no fact about the rock in my hand that cannot be put into words. But one cannot put the rock into words, because it's a rock.

Any propositional answer to that will be wrong. Nor is the ineffable just the words that have no reference; plenty of words have a use but do not refer to anything. And if the ineffable is a second-order predicate, then what does it predicate? If understood only apophatically, then it is sayable, in understood only by metaphor, then it is sayable, and if an honorific, then no more than the consequence of our honour.

So what is it that is ineffable? Well...


See? — Banno

Yes, for the most part. Cheers.

And of course one can't put the birth of a child into words. But it would be wrong to think of that as a failing of language. — Banno

Not suggesting it is a failing as such, perhaps a type of limitation. What's your take?

Or are you saying that, that we call that thing a "mountain" is in a sense arbitrary? But I already agree with that.

Amusing as this is, it all seems utterly pointless. — Banno

By way of summary, I'd be interested to hear what do you think is at the crux of this debate about the ineffable?

It seems some people believe that language is a blunt tool and simply can't cover off on 'reality' except perhaps as metaphor.

I'm a firm believer that words are sometimes inadequate to describe an experience - say being present at the brith of a child. Sure, you can use words to accurately describe what is taking place, but how one actually feels about it may be less accessible. Technical questions about language use aside, for me anything 'ineffable' remains for the most part an emotional claim.

Thanks for clarifying. It's not always that the ideas are hard, it's just that everyone's prose style is different and it's not always easy to decipher the nuances along with the philosophy. :wink:

My take on religion and philosophy is at a glance, pretty simple. the world is moving into an era of radical disillusionment, and the old narratives are simply not sustainable. What we see in the lying and cheating in politics is in part the death throes of popular religion, as believers become desperate in an increasingly unbelieving world. — Constance

Yes, a well established Weberian and Nietzschean critique. We seem to be well past this stage and hitting a counter revolution in many notable instances - with the blossoming of fundamentalist religions and concomitant conspiracy theories world wide.

Science cannot touch these issues, and there is a strong tendency to redefine them to fit what physical science can say. — Constance

Hmm. I suspect there's a very healthy dose of value and meaning making within secular humanism and environmentalism, surely as robust and arrogant as any overtly transcendent spiritual system?

the next religious phase of our philosophical evolution will be to prioritize ethics and value. As I see it, Husserl's epoche lays a foundation for what will happen, for it is a Cartesian move inward, and here, I argue (as best I can) this leads to a radical unfolding of subjectivity. — Constance

Surely this would need philosophy (and a particular type of philosophy at that) to be more broadly valued. How does complex philosophy of this kind move from a narrow subculture of specialised interest (where disagreement is the norm) and become anything approaching a cultural preoccupation and new way of 'seeing'?

Given your views on phenomenology and the ineffable how do you determine what is effable and what is not and why does it matter?

But this goes to the point, which is that ineffability is defined in such a way that the foundational issues of our existence are rendered nonsense, empty, because there is found here an apparent impossibility. which is an explanatory nullity that underlies everything. It is not as if science has met its new paradigmatic anomaly, and quantum physics is there to rescue empirical theory; rather, it is that Kant was absolutely right about one thing, that underlying all we acknowledge as real in the world is an index to metaphysics. He was wrong about another thing in failing to see that metaphysics is an existential "phenomenon", and this term is highly disputatious in its use here. But I disagree with philosophy's familiar categories that place powerful but nebulous experiences out of the boundaries of, call it palpability or realizability. Put bluntly, metaphysics is not some Kantian extrapolation to an epistemic impossibility (the noumenal transcendental unity of apperception) that cannot be spoken, for if it could not be spoken, we would live in world that had none of its intimation in the first place. This is the way I read the early Wittgenstein's cancelation on bad metaphysics, but he was wrong to take what he thought to be most important and declare it nonsense (most egregiously in ethics). And language games keep metaphysics at bay as well: an attempt to fill a breach in human understanding, a breach that is a structural part of our existence.

Ineffability has been argued into indefensibility, and this has created a false sense of thinking that to be in intellectual good conscience in philosophy, one must never speak of the most stunning issues that press upon us. this is where Husserl and Fink left off. They need to be rediscovered, for the they were right: beneath the familiar world, there is an altogether unfamiliar world of intuitive apprehension. This is revelatory in its depth as it intrudes into and discovers "intuitive ineffabilities" in what belonged to religion, and this is where philosophy belongs.

As I see it, philosophy is going to be the new religion, and phenomenology will be its method. — Constance

As a non-philosopher I find this is dense and hard to follow, but very interesting.

It sounds like you are advocating for a metaphysical, shall we even say, 'faith based' belief? But obviously not in the traditional sense.

In essence, you seem to be saying that analytic philosophy's approach is too narrow and limiting and serves to keep metaphysics safely at bay and 'the unfamiliar world and its stunning issues' contained. And you are suggesting that the future of philosophy and some notion of transcendence may be found in using the phenomenological method and the metaphysics it 'opens up' to our awareness (sorry if the language is clumsy). Is this a fair summary?

What is it that you think lies beyond the censorious methodologies of analytic philosophy? Where do suppose the phenomenological approach takes human beings for it to be called a 'new religion'?

I suppose that innate Empathy serves for morality in animal behavior. Instinctive positive feelings toward kith & kin helps to explain why most (but not all) predators don't kill & eat their own kind. But that would not suffice for the complex behaviors & cultures of human animals. So, most societies have been forced by transgressions of Empathy (e.g. murder) to construct formal codes of morality. But the basic motivator of moral behavior, even in humans, may be the visceral feeling of Empathy, not the intellectual knowledge of moral laws. — Gnomon

Nicely put.

:up:

I agree with the rest, with the note that all their views and claims regarding good/bad are false. — Leftist

For me true and false don't need to come into this. Communities set intersubjective agreements about how they should conduct social interaction based on agreed values. It's interesting that most communities around the world seem to come to similar intuitions about values and conduct. It is probably common sense that murder, theft, rape and torture are mostly proscribed in communities around the globe, regardless of religious beliefs.

Value judgements have connection to truth in that value judgements can be correct or incorrect. You can't just randomly decide something actually should be done, or shouldn't be done, and be correct. — Leftist

It's more complex and far from random. We accept social customs, codes, prohibitions and interdictions based on tradition and superstition and experience, and common sense - none of which need to be true. Which is why humans believe in a lot of strange things as well as a lot of sensible things.

Do people mean it as a preference, say? Or do they mean it as a truth claim? — Bylaw

They may think of it as a truth claim but from what I can see, the best anyone can do is express a preference based on some set of values.

If you believe there are no moral truths, you must also believe there is no valid reason to want anything. — Leftist

Not sure how you get to this. Can you step it out again?

I generally think that humans create morality to facilitate social cooperation in order to achieve our preferred form of order. Roughly speaking, cultures generally share preferences on right and wrong (usually down to not wishing to harm the wellbeing of others) and most cultures, regardless of religion or dominant philosophy, view murder, rape, theft, torture as wrong. I don't know what morality is except that it seems to be created by the choices we make and how we conduct yourself in relation to others. It makes good intuitive sense to treat others well (what goes around comes around) but this is not a scientifically derived 'fact'.

To say that torture is bad is to say that moral claims can be true. — Leftist

Saying it is 'bad' is a values statement (which may have no connection to truth). Societies can really only determine these sorts of values by coming to shared agreements about how people would like to behave with each other. Why bring truth into it? Communities can just as readily determine (as they have done historically in the West) that torture has utility in the context of crime and punishment. Such debates seem to spring up from time to time and remind us that values are not unanimous or perpetual. One has to make a choice about how one acts and what values one privileges.

I'm saying our universe, as evidenced by QM and string theory, includes expanded spatial dimensions additional to the four mentioned above. Newly discoverable types of time and motion are available for our enrichment. In saying this, I'm answering your earlier response to something I said (both quoted below). — ucarr

Thanks for clarifying.

I haven't read the lectures in Naming and Necessity but I suspect you are correct.

But undaunted philosophers continue to eff away with metaphors & analogies. Why else do you think the topic of effability keeps coming up on this forum? :smile: — Gnomon

I would think mainly because humans are emotional creatures who often struggle to express or resile from articulating these feelings.

ma·trix | ˈmātriks |
noun (plural matrices | ˈmātrəˌsēz | or matrixes)
1 an environment or material in which something develops; a surrounding medium or structure: free choices become the matrix of human life.

In my Apple Dictionary I have an animated graphic most instructive. It starts with a black dot (point) that expands to a line that expands to an area that expands to a cube that expands to a hypercube.

This exemplifies "an upwardly dimensional axis of progressively complex dimensionally unfolding matrices."

This is my view of the ultimate medium, reality. — ucarr

Not sure I follow. Are you saying that the possibilities for a human life are immeasurably fecund and the most authentic life is one of continual learning and reinvention?

Making things interesting is the fact the world is full of Hemingway knockoffs who keep telling me most ideas beyond beer, dames, sports and money are twaddle spewed by idlers who need to get real jobs. You can however get exemption from assignment to the woo woo chorus by scoring a career that pays living wages for commercially viable twaddle (academics/entertainment). — ucarr

This I do partly understand. Sounds like something a resentful man might say about their need to feel superior to others. I'm sure that can't be you. Personally I think dames and money sound a lot more fun than metaphysics and science (beer and sports I have no use for).

What do you think of @joshs interesting point:

Put differently, what all kinds of theories of objects have in common is that they are all theories, even though only one of them represents modern physics. In another few hundred years we may be using a theory of the real world that no long calls itself physics and no longer deals with what we today think of as material objects. So ‘physics’ and ‘material object’ may be historically transient concepts , but theory and metaphysics, like self-world interaction, are common to all eras of scientific inquiry. Metaphysics is not prior to the self-world interaction, but it is prior to ( the condition of possibility for) modern physics. — Joshs

This leads me to the following difficult conceptualization: all of existence is physical, and yet the metaphysical is integral to this physicality. I proceed forth from this puzzle by claiming metaphysics_physics are coordinate and contemporary with each other. Furthermore, metaphysics_physics are both independently and mutually non-reductive. Lastly, all of the preceding suggests to me our universe is an upwardly dimensional axis of progressively complex dimensionally unfolding matrices. — ucarr

If this is the case, what does this contribute to your understanding of the world and models of reality?

I'm hoping the cause of this is seen clearly as the unelectability of Trump candidates so that the Trump era can once and for all come to an end. — Hanover

Is there a risk that the end of Trump might bring with it more astute and cunning demagoguery by people like Ron DeSantis who might actually know what they are doing?

I wonder if we could also add ‘spiritual’? I’m more generous to it than some atheists, as I translate it to mean emotional well-being. Is spiritual a word we can reclaim in a secular context?

A second possibility is simply to say that ascribing ineffability to something is to say that it has no referent. Another is to treat "ineffable" as a second-order predicate, somewhat like existence, such that ascribing ineffability is not ascribing a property but saying something (what, exactly?) about those properties. A fourth possibility is that to say that something is ineffable is to say that it can only be understood by listing the attributes that do not apply to it. Or it might be that the ineffable cannot be said, only experienced. Or perhaps it can only understood by metaphors. Or it might be an honorific, just a way of marking certain language as sacrosanct, or certain subjects as not available for further comment. — Banno

Nice set of possibilities. I mainly hear the word in spiritual/religious circles, where, as most of us are aware, ineffable is used to describe a 'spiritual' experience which cannot be put into words. On this Wittgenstein's 'silence' may be entirely apropos. I generally think ineffable refers to an emotional experience people find hard or impossible to choose words for. I think a spiritual experience is an intense emotional experience - of loss, recognition, solidarity, joy...

The nearest I get to such an experience would be listening to orchestral music. Sometimes the music leaves me with feelings I can't access linguistically - is the experience powerful; sad; euphoric; joyful? Is it catharsis - a journey through tension and resolution? Perhaps it's a melange of all of the above. Some people might dub such an experience 'numinous' - another delightfully ambiguous term which lacks linguistic and perhaps conceptual precision.

I often regard words as inadequate, crude building blocks. We do our best to assemble them in meaningful ways to clarify our thoughts for others. The results may be inadequate or even wrong. In some cases it might just be easier to describe something as ineffable - as a way to avoiding the need to assemble a set of coherent ideas.

Glad to hear you appreciate the funny side of life.

This is anything but ‘pseudo-religious’. On the contrary, it reveals the remnants of religious thinking still influencing modernist forms of science. — Joshs

Doesn't Nietzsche says something like, “I am afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar”? To what extent (if any) do you think modernism influences post-modernism?

And the rules that are chosen by you come already constrained in their sense by the contingent intersubjective community you are immersed in as well as your own history of habitual construals. Welcome to postmodernism. — Joshs

That made me laugh a lot. Thanks Joshs.

:up:

That's a helpful clarification, appreciated. I'll mull over some of the finer points later.

So we count the conservation laws not as physics but as metaphysics? Think on that for a bit. These are the core, fundamental rules of physics, and yet not part of physics? — Banno

What is your conclusion, spell it out, I'm old and dim.

I look for character and resonance in singing voices, not purity of tone and pitch (although I'm not against that either, if character and resonance are there as well), so I don't have a problem with the likes of Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits and Bob Dylan. — Janus

Indeed - to me these are the great voices. Character, uniqueness, expression. Try to sing a Tom Waits song with a conventional 'good' voice and it almost disappears.

Have you seen this?

This also demonstrates the absurdity of ↪javra 's attempting to force physics and metaphysics into a hierarchy. One does not "sit" on the other. — Banno

Interesting. I thought there was merit in this in as much as physics seems to rest upon metaphysical assumptions ('sits on'). Is this horribly wrong?

The first law is not provable. We cannot, have not, checked out every apparent change in total energy and found that the total energy is constant.

The first law is not falsifiable. To be falsifiable, we would have to find an instance where the total energy did not remain constant. But suppose we do find an apparent case in which the total amount of energy increases. We would have to show that the energy responsible for that increase did not come from anywhere else. But again we cannot check everywhere. — Banno

This makes total sense. Is your point here not the fact that physics rests on metaphysics?