But isn't it just those things that we cannot express well in words, such as justice, ethics, morality, honour, wisdom, etc, that are exactly those things which we should strive to express well in words?
3 hours ago — RussellA
You are I think right about the flies. — Banno
...but no, I won't say the name. — Ciceronianus
This highlights one of the difficulties faced by the flies: mistaking experience for "stuff". See orI have always viewed the term "qualia" as meaning "the stuff of experience", rather than a description of a subjective experience. Do you think we're both talking about the same thing? — Bret Bernhoft
...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
You and Banno appear to advocate that some knowledge/information is missing unless one undergoes the experience for themselves. As I see it, that is not a rejection of the ineffable, but an endorsement. — Luke
The visitor may not have the same skill as the gymnast in performing a gymnastic routine, but they can share in the experience. — RussellA
Who said anything about "earth wind, fire and water"? I'm not discussing physical Chemistry. Just meta-physical philosophy (ideas ; relationships ; categories). Do you believe that Philosophy should be about the physical world (matter) instead of the intellectual models (mind) of the world? We all look at the world through a framework, a paradigm, of some kind. The Chemistry frame is looking for the mechanics of matter, so that's what it sees. But the Philosophy frame is focused on the ineffable essential structure of those ideal constructs. That's why it's so difficult to express in conventional matter-based words. Some modern philosophers have gone so far into abstract abstruse linguistic analysis that they bury common sense under a pile of BS. Effing about the ineffable.↪Gnomon
Would you be content with a chemist who refused to make use of the atomic theory of matter, insisting instead on dealing only in earth wind, fire and water?
That's how your insistence on applying only Aristotelian essentialism appears. — Banno
Me.Who said anything about "earth wind, fire and water"? — Gnomon
...using Aristotelian logic. Oddly anachronistic¹. Frankly, your posts do not make much sense.What I'm presenting is a 21st century development from Quantum Science & Information Theory. — Gnomon
*2. What is the Aether? :
The aether is a critical,missing component of physics that must be considered to explain the wave nature of matter.
https://energywavetheory.com/explanations/aether/ — Gnomon
How long is a thread about what cannot be said? — Banno
I have always viewed the term "qualia" as meaning "the stuff of experience", rather than a description of a subjective experience. Do you think we're both talking about the same thing? — Bret Bernhoft
If I'm reading you correctly Luke, I think you and I and @Jamal and @Banno are thinking in terms of two different ways we can talk about "ineffable" -- Ineffable, as in unable to be spoken of in principle, and ineffable, as in different from linguistic competence. I think I'm thinking in the former, and you're thinking in the latter. — Moliere
There's an element to knowledge that includes experience. I'm just not sure I'd say that makes it ineffable in the former sense, though I'd agree with you that Mary learns something and we learn something by experiencing that isn't the same as words, nor could it be conveyed by words alone. They'd also have to experience the sound of a clarinet, the taste of salt, the love of God, or the color red to say they had experienced these things, and no amount of textual familiarity would give them the experience, and they even learn something from experiencing. — Moliere
I was following Banno's reasoning and his conflation of knowing how to do something with doing it.
— Luke
Of course I'm doing no such thing. — Banno
...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
The point made is, that one is able to ride a bike is proven not by being able to say what is involved, but in the act of riding. — Banno
Or, suppose we had a list of the instructions for riding a bike, to whatever [effable] detail we desire. Would we then know how to ride a bike? Well, no. — Banno
I would say no, if you mean arriving at all-inclusive definitions of that they are; treating them as objects which can be definitively described, objects of knowledge if you will. — Ciceronianus
I am also thinking of "ineffable" in the former sense. At least, I think that if the ineffable were ever to be eliminated, then it would require some sort of "perfect" language which is capable of communicating every possible nuance of any individual's experience. I don't think that our language is presently of this sort, but I also doubt that it ever will or can be. — Luke
If knowledge is something that can be communicated via language, and if there is nothing which is not able to be communicated via language (because nothing is ineffable), then there should be no "gap" between what can be known/taught and what can be said. However, you and Banno say that there is such a gap. You both keep writing this off as a mere gap between knowledge and experience - where all that's missing is having the experience - instead of acknowledging the gap that you have both asserted between knowledge and effability. — Luke
If the most detailed possible list of instructions for riding a bike does not give one the knowledge of how to ride, then there is a gap between saying how to ride a bike (via a detailed list of instructions) and knowing how to ride a bike, which means that there is something about riding a bike which is known but which cannot be stated and included in the instructions. Which is just to say that there is something ineffable. — Luke
Word use doesn’t literally mean “changing the state of the world — Joshs
Whoever our interlocutor is, just by virtue of being a fellow conversationalist -- well, if we spoke for them, they'd no longer be in the conversation. — Moliere
To speak is never to know, though if you know something then you might have something interesting to say.
Let's just grant this "gap", as you call it, between what we can say and what is known. — Moliere
What is it we are doing when we merely ‘think’ rather than ‘speak’ something? Can we distinguish , for instance , pure thought or meaning from speaking to oneself? — Joshs
According to traditional understandings of the role of language, the communicative nature of language implies the risk of losing or distorting some aspect of what is to be communicated. Something is lost when we speak what we are thinking , and even more so when we write down what we are speaking. The problem with language is supposedly the risk associated with attaching of a signifier to carry and express the meaning of a signified. — Joshs
But doesn’t this assume there is such a thing as a pure, or purely present to itself signified, an immediately present meaning in thought and then direct experience of doing that only secondarily , through symbolic language, is then expressed and communicated? — Joshs
When we know something , doesnt the knowing have to be repeated to itself, to refer back to itself, in or order to continue to be a knowing?
What is immediate thought and direct doing are already mediated , already a form of speaking to oneself that is in fact never purely present to itself but already a form of language? — Joshs
Isn’t this necessary repetition a speaking to onself, and in speaking to onself, isnt there a gap from one iteration of the repetition to the next , between what one intends to mean to say to oneself and what one actually says and means? — Joshs
All we can do is strive to use words to better understand the nature of morality, surely not a futile philosophical undertaking. — RussellA
If the most detailed possible list of instructions for riding a bike does not give one the knowledge of how to ride, then there is a gap between saying how to ride a bike (via a detailed list of instructions) and knowing how to ride a bike, which means that there is something about riding a bike which is known but which cannot be stated and included in the instructions. Which is just to say that there is something ineffable. — Luke
One can never speak for someone else. If God himself spoke for me, he'd just be speaking for himself. Whoever our interlocutor is, just by virtue of being a fellow conversationalist -- well, if we spoke for them, they'd no longer be in the conversation. — Moliere
If the most detailed possible list of instructions for riding a bike does not give one the knowledge of how to ride, then there is a gap between saying how to ride a bike (via a detailed list of instructions) and knowing how to ride a bike, which means that there is something about riding a bike which is known but which cannot be stated and included in the instructions. Which is just to say that there is something ineffable.
— Luke
Yep. And it is exactly riding the bike. Which is not something that can be said, but has to be done. Hence it is not a something that remains unsaid.
It's unclear if you have grasped this point, and are trying to articulate it, or if you remain benighted. Either way, I don't think adding more will be of help to you. — Banno
That's OK. We all have our blind spots. Yet, there are plenty of other posters who are not mystified by metaphysics, or flummoxed by feelings. But you're the one that raised a question about that which cannot be expressed in prosaic words. Ironically, this thread fills four pages of effing about the ineffable. Apparently your own negative feelings about "the ineffable" can be expressed in scornful language.You links seem to be in the main, irrelevant.
...using Aristotelian logic. Oddly anachronistic¹. Frankly, your posts do not make much sense. — Banno
That question doesn't follow from what I've said. It should have been "Since a detailed list of instructions won't give us knowledge of how to ride a bike, then perhaps you could tell us what else is required to riding the bike?". And the answer is getting on the bike and riding it. — Banno
It's a bit like the difference between compiling a computer program and executing it. Or having a CD in the player and pressing "play" so you can hear it. The difference is in what is done, not what is said. — Banno
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