It is "something to be done" because it cannot be said. That's what makes it ineffable. Otherwise, we should be able to say it. — Luke
When I read this it feels like it'd go the same with objects... we cannot say objects, and so they are ineffable. But the reason we can't say objects is that they aren't words, not because we can't talk about them. — Moliere
BecauseIf there is something that cannot be captured in the instructions which can only be learned by doing, then why should this "something" not be called ineffable? — Luke
Nothing is not said here... but something is not done: the riding of the bike. The list is complete, nothing is left unstated, and yet the bike is not yet ridden.So what is missing? Just, and only, the riding of the bike. But that's not something it makes sense to add to the list! — Banno
But knowing how to ride a bike does require being able to ride a bike. Claim that you can ride a bike all you want, the proof is in the riding.Knowing how to ride a bike does not require that one is actually riding a bike. — Metaphysician Undercover
And to think this thread took flight from what I wrote as a joke. :roll: — jgill
must underpin any discussion here. Folk suppose that since there are things that are done rather than said, there must be something that is unsayable. One follows a rule by enacting it better than by stating it.I think Wittgenstein wasn't claiming there were subjects we couldn't talk about. Instead, I think he was saying that there are subjects we shouldn't talk about because by doing so we let "language go on holiday" or are bewitched by it, and do not gain by doing so. — Ciceronianus
Daniel Dennett identifies four properties that are commonly ascribed to qualia.[2] According to these, qualia are:
1. ineffable – they cannot be communicated, or apprehended by any means other than direct experience.
2. intrinsic – they are non-relational properties, which do not change depending on the experience's relation to other things.
3. private – all interpersonal comparisons of qualia are systematically impossible.
4. directly or immediately apprehensible by consciousness – to experience a quale is to know one experiences a quale, and to know all there is to know about that quale.
That may be a problem for you, but not for me. Aristotle may be outdated in Science, but in Philosophy his concise categories are still applicable. Scientific facts may have changed, but the Philosophical problem of effability remains in our time. Scientists confronted with ineffable Qualia and Essences may chose to "shut-up and calculate". 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:Perhaps, there's your problem. There have been a few developments since then. — Banno
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
When I read this it feels like it'd go the same with objects... we cannot say objects, and so they are ineffable. — Moliere
So what is it about activity that makes it different from objects? Why can't we just note that activity, experience, and words aren't the same, but we can talk about them? — Moliere
Nothing is not said here... but something is not done: the riding of the bike. — Banno
Or, suppose we had a list of the instructions for riding a bike, to whatever detail we desire. Would we then know how to ride a bike? Well, no. So what is missing? Just, and only, the riding of the bike. But that's not something it makes sense to add to the list! — Banno
What is there that cannot be said? "...it hardly conveys the full experience" - of course not! That has to be experienced! — Banno
Amazing how you can share the experience of a complicated gymnastic routine just by watching. — jgill
I'm with Moliere on this, because I thought of the same objection. To say that in talking about an experience, something is left unsaid--because it doesn't convey what it's like to have that experience--seems to imply an expectation that is too high, namely that my words can give you the experience. — Jamal
I don't believe that "conveying the full experience" implies making another person have that experience; only that another person can fully understand what it is like to have that experience. Can you convey the full experience of seeing red, or being synaesthetic, or being the opposite sex, or being a lion, via language alone, or are there at least some parts of those experiences that language is unable to convey in order that another can fully understand how it feels to have those experiences? — Luke
Words don’t have meanings as context-independent categories — Joshs
For Wittgenstein words don’t refer to objects, they enact forms of life. — Joshs
Identical form does not always have identical content. — javra
all words have intersubjective meanings — javra
But knowing how to ride a bike does require being able to ride a bike. Claim that you can ride a bike all you want, the proof is in the riding.
The point, again, is that there is nothing that is not said, nothing that we can add to the list; only something that has not been done; hence there is nothing that is ineffable. — Banno
but there is no difference between "knowing how to ride a bike" and "riding a bike"; we don't have two things here, one being bike riding and the other being knowing how to ride a bike. — Banno
. Folk suppose that since there are things that are done rather than said, there must be something that is unsayable. — Banno
Folk suppose that since there are things that are done rather than said, there must be something that is unsayable. — Banno
But there are things that we cannot express in words well, or accurately, or adequately and using words to express them (which we do all the time; which philosophers do all the time) is futile and worse "bewitching" as Wittgenstein might say — Ciceronianus
Since I am a late-comer to Philosophy, I am not well-versed in modern abstruse & esoteric modes of philosophizing. I prefer the timeless common-sense of the old dinosaurs. So, please allow me my amateur dabbling in the shallow end of the pool : where a dead frog is a carcass, and H2O is a universal solvent, not something to drink. :smile:↪Tom Storm
Part of the impact of his development of formal modal logic was the implications for consideration of essence, especially and interestingly the necessary yet a posteriori connection between two properties, like water being necessarily H₂O.It's difficult stuff, and brings with it its own controversies. But it does allow that a dead frog is a frog, unlike ↪Gnomon's odd, self-defeating metaphysics. — Banno
If I walked into a Tanzanian builder's yard and said "jiwe moja tafadhali", I know that uttering this particular sound will achieve my goal of being given a stone. The sound only has meaning in enacting a form of life. It has no meaning if not able to change the state of the world in some way. Yet the sound does refer to an object, because if it didn't refer to an object, a "jiwe", the merchant wouldn't know what I wanted. Words both enact a form of life and refer to objects. — RussellA
Of course Dennett does not champion qualia. I think the term is OK as long as it remains as a mere synonym for "quality of experience". — Janus
I was following Banno's reasoning and his conflation of knowing how to do something with doing it. — Luke
It has long struck me that the problem with Jazz, as opposed to Blues, is that Jazz requires too many words of it's appreciators. You are I think right about the flies.But so are those who think it possible, and necessary or somehow beneficial, to categorize everything, like that relentless categorizer Aristotle. — Ciceronianus
I've contemplated something similar to this, especially after reading Davidson's derangement of epitaphs; but something is done, when we talk; some agreement or coordination is reached, and novel uses of language derive from mundane uses.Maybe nothing is ever specified. There are no references, so the OP presents a false dilemma. — frank
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.