• gurugeorge
    514
    It's a question of degree. I think while peoples' experiences are ontologically distinct (different experiences) they share enough similarity so that triangulation is possible; but some people can experience things that are dissimilar enough to others' experiences to make them less communicable.

    On the positive side, for example, not many have experienced, say, Earthrise, on the negative side, not many have experienced being nearly eaten by a shark - but even these experiences have some similarities to more common experiences to make them somewhat communicable (one can make a "patchwork" description that takes bits from things others have experienced more commonly).

    So I think yes you can be "alone" in that sense, but it's quite rare; for most things, one's experience is fairly common and easily communicable. For example pop music attests to the commonality of most of the experiences surrounding love won, sustained and lost.
  • Blue Lux
    581
    Love is the root of truth and communicability. Love is the superlative exchange.
  • Banno
    23.1k
    Just a note to all, that when someone asks a question such as this, we ought all ignore it. No replies would be so much more interesting than any.
  • gurugeorge
    514
    Love is the superlative exchange.Blue Lux

    Yes, to some extent love is (or has a lot to do with) the feeling of being understood - but as people occasionally find, even that can be mistaken! :)
  • Cabbage Farmer
    301
    Regardless of whether or not there is a soul or whatever one wants to call the ego or the I, it seems that within our own sphere, our 'hyletic nucleus,' we are absolutely incapable of expressing to anyone else, specifically and superlatively, meaning.Blue Lux
    What is "our own sphere"? What is an "hyletic nucleus"?

    What does it mean for one person to "express meaning" to another person?

    What's the difference between "expressing meaning" and "expressing meaning specifically and superlatively"?

    What do you mean here by the term "meaning"?

    What's the difference between "expressing a meaning" and, for instance, expressing a thought, an opinion, a fact, a state of affairs, a perception, a feeling, an intention...

    How shall we compare the act of "expressing" with the act of "describing"? Are they the same act, or how different? What about "characterizing", "reporting", "relating"...

    It seems to me that each of us is perfectly capable of expressing, reporting, describing... any feature of his own experience to others, for instance in the medium of a common language on the basis of common experience.

    If you can grasp it yourself, then you can relate what you've grasped to others. The fact that you've grasped it doesn't mean that you've understood it completely and correctly. The fact that you've described it to another doesn't mean you've communicated clearly and effectively. The fact that you've described it adequately according to your own lights doesn't mean everyone will understand your intention in so speaking. But ordinarily our communicative acts satisfy their purpose, and when we come up short there's always in principle room for revision.


    Is this the case?Blue Lux
    I don't think so. To me it seems like a dubious claim motivated by inflated and ambiguous conceptions of "meaning" and of the individual's understanding of his own experience.

    Am I thus alone to my own experiences after all?Blue Lux
    I see no reason to speak that way.

    Is language a game of mere abstraction? Is knowledge too this?Blue Lux
    I see no reason to speak this way either. And I'm not sure how these questions are related to your initial comments.
  • Number2018
    550
    Am I thus alone to my own experiences after all?Blue Lux
    According to Bakhtin, even our intimate feelings and experiences are determined by outer-social
    organization: "The experiential, expressible element and its outward objectification are created, as we know, out of one and the same material. After all, there is no such thing as experience outside of embodiment in signs. Consequently, the very notion of a fundamental, qualitative difference between the inner and the outer element is invalid ... Furthermore, the location of the organizing and formative center is not within (i.e., not in the material of inner signs) but outside, It is not experience that organizes expression, but the other way around - expression organizing experience. The expression is what first gives experience its form and specificity of direction."
  • blazed2today
    3
    Neither ineffability or indemonstrability makes a fact any less so, just because of that fact; meaning, lack or absence of evidence isn’t equivalent with falsehood, the question of other minds/solipsism isn’t different.
  • Number2018
    550
    it seems that within our own sphere, our 'hyletic nucleus,' we are absolutely incapable of expressing to anyone else, specifically and superlatively, meaning.
    Is this the case?
    Am I thus alone to my own experiences after all?
    Blue Lux
    If we consider the full continuum of the space opened by loneliness, it is possible to find in the one of its borders death – related existential experiences. Blanchot argued that relation to death creates one of the foundations of our human conditions: “Death, in the human perspective, is not a given, it must be achieved. It is a task, one, which we take up actively, one which becomes the source of our activity and mastery. Man dies, that is nothing. But man is, starting from his death. He ties himself tight to his death with a tie of which he is the judge. He makes his death; he makes himself mortal and in this way gives himself the power of a maker and gives to what he makes its meaning and its truth. The decision to be without being is possibility itself: the possibility of death.” (”The Space of Literature”) So, after all, we are not alone, even it looks like we are isolated in our closed sphere. Loneliness is a way of approaching the impersonal and atemporal.
  • Blue Lux
    581
    Can you rephrase this for me? I have no idea what this means.
  • JamesG1951
    3
    It depends on your definition of "being alone" For example some say in a marriage, The two become one. are they alone then because they are one? Or do they still have one another with them? Einstein said Mankind is under the optical DELUSION that they are separate from the universe and from each other. Are we alone is we are all ONE WITH OUR UNIVERSE ?
    If we are a SINGULARITY, does that mean we are alone?
    if I am alone with my thoughts, what am I with? I am not alone if I am with my thoughts and you are in my thoughts then am I not with you in some way?
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