The posing is inherently an opposing, a contrast and comparison with the substrate it grows out of — Joshs

If you want to start with Becoming, then substrate and emergent meaning are polar aspects of what is. They don't sit there waiting to do their jobs. So the posing has nothing to oppose until we equip it with that. There is no "one" to talk to itself other than the figments of reflection on what passes in unity.

...thought is embedded within an affectively organizing bodily system in an even more immediate way that it is in the discursive world of other people. A cognitive system only continues to exist by making changes in itself. — Joshs

So both language and other people are part of the world in which we are embedded.

Seems we agree on what to say here but not on how to say it.

Dunno; don’t care. Too many courts, half of which are held on what he said anyway, so….

Too many courts... — Mww

Someday we might play ball.

Might be fun. Although, the analytically inclined on one side, the critically inclined on the other doesn’t bode well for meeting in the middle.

Historically Kant did not do so well.

Well enough to make the list of only three choices. I’d say he still doing quite well.

Also, depends on which main question is asked about. For instance, for “a priori knowledge”, for which Kant is the more or less established authority, 72% find it acceptable.

:rofl: Since when has the popularity of beliefs become an accurate indicator of their truth-value?

For all prom queen wannabees out there: the striving for popularity is a Socially Transmitted Disease. Something to do with selling out and lack of authenticity or other. But then all the prom queen wannabees are bound to disagree. :roll:

Yes. the questions are not particularly clear.

Since when has the popularity of beliefs become an accurate indicator of their truth-value? — javra

No one said it was.

No one said it was. — Banno

:cool:

[/qu

Please list the presuppositions that I have to consciously dismiss that give me the familiarity of the world in a perceptual event. — Richard B

Speaking generally, consider what Michel Henry has to say about the the four principles of phenomenology. It is a movement toward pure givenness:

The first—“so much appearance, so much being”—is borrowed from the Marburg School. Over against this ambiguous proposition, owing to the double signification of the term “appearance,” we prefer this strict wording: “so much appearing, so much being.”1 The second is the principle of principles. Formulated by Husserl himself in §24 of Ideen I, it sets forth intuition or, more precisely, “that every originary presentive intuition is a legitimizing source of cognition”2 and thus for any particularly rational statement. In the third principle, the claim is so vehement that it clothes itself in the allure of an exhortation, even a cry: “zu den Sachen selbst!” The fourth principle was defined considerably later by Jean-Luc Marion in his work Reduction and Givenness, but its importance hits upon the entirety of phenomenological development as a hidden presupposition that is always already at work. It is formulated thus: “so much reduction, so much givenness.”

Henry comes after Heidegger and was well aware of the criticism regarding having a "pure experience" of phenomena. But this is a methodological and descriptive thesis, not a deductive argument. What is "pure" lies in the unfolding, not in what the concept says. the question is, can one make this dramatic move of severance from ordinary experience?

The list you mention would be everything, as I see it, that would encourage the assumption of knowledge in which the seeing passes over the presence of the phenomenon and into our "consummate ordinariness". Husserl wanted to get "zu den Sachen selbst!' Back to the things themselves!

Reminds me of Monet who said he wished he could be made blind from birth, and then to have his sight given to him so he could see with a truly innocent eye.

Anyway, it is hard to argue about. Not really far off from what Kierkegaard called this the beginning of original/inherited sin: when self consciousness makes one aware of the world, as if for the first time. He thought this was a rudimentary step toward redemption.

On the other hand, Putnam, one of Quine’s heirs, wrote:
“Thus we have a paradox: at the very moment when analytic philosophy is recognized as the "dominant movement" in world philosophy, it has come to the end of its own project-the dead end, not the completion.” — Joshs

Furthermore, in one of my references on philosophy, they indicated that Husserl, toward the end of his career, wrote that the dream of putting the sciences on firm foundations was over. Rather tragic end to one who began phenomenology to put all the sciences on secure footing. Talking about a dead end

he first—“so much appearance, so much being”—is borrowed from the Marburg School. Over against this ambiguous proposition, owing to the double signification of the term “appearance,” we prefer this strict wording: “so much appearing, so much being.”1 The second is the principle of principles. Formulated by Husserl himself in §24 of Ideen I, it sets forth intuition or, more precisely, “that every originary presentive intuition is a legitimizing source of cognition”2 and thus for any particularly rational statement. In the third principle, the claim is so vehement that it clothes itself in the allure of an exhortation, even a cry: “zu den Sachen selbst!” The fourth principle was defined considerably later by Jean-Luc Marion in his work Reduction and Givenness, but its importance hits upon the entirety of phenomenological development as a hidden presupposition that is always already at work. It is formulated thus: “so much reduction, so much givenness.” — Constance

What can I say but that:

This passage has an ineffable quality of sophistry

Thank you for the list!

I learned a new word: giveness. :cool:

Luke has a firm grip on the wrong end of the stick. — Banno

The self-appointed oracle has delivered his verdict from on high. As Wittgenstein once said:

A philosopher who is not taking part in discussions is like a boxer who never goes into the ring.

The irony here is that the self-appointed oracle, while pretending to be a faithful follower of Dennett and/or illusionism, contradicts himself by advocating a "what-it's-like" to have subjective experiences such as riding a bike or seeing red. Moreover, that this "what-it's-like" (e.g. to ride a bike) adds to one's knowledge, over and above what can be said or what can be included in any instructions.

At least, that's what I gather from his scant remarks. Since he doesn't actually offer any substantial response, it's difficult to say.

Perhaps I should have made it more clear in my earlier posts that he was contradicting himself.

...he was contradicting himself. — Luke

So set out the contradiction. I'll address it.

We can no more expect to convey an exprience in this way than we can expect to convey an object: we can talk about an experience, but there is always something beyond the talk, namely the experience itself; similarly, we can talk about an apple, but there is always something beyond the talk, namely the apple itself. But we don't say that apples are ineffable. — Jamal

I think the main difference is that I can show you an apple, but I can't show you my experience. I can show you my expression of pain, but not the pain itself. You might describe your pain to a doctor as "sharp" or "dull" or "throbbing" or some such, and maybe that's enough for the doctor to make an accurate diagnosis or to prescribe some meds, but these are somewhat vague descriptions. Likewise, I might describe the taste of sea urchin as comparable to chicken (I really don't know; I've never tried it), and this might give you some idea of what it's like, but it's not the same as having the experience for yourself. Then there are people who perceive the world differently to ourselves, such as those with exotic medical conditions or abnormal bodies, or just those of the opposite sex. I know how pain feels in my body, but I don't know the pain of childbirth. Pain is pain, sure, but can a man understand the experience of childbirth via words alone?

Even if some technological machinery allowed one to have the experience of another, someone would need to program it to identify the full range of one person's experience in order to allow another to have the same experience, which I only imagine would be dependent on an existing public language and its available (limited) descriptions of an individual's experience. A public language possibly can describe common shared experiences, but what about putative experiences which may be unique to only one individual?

I think the main difference is that I can show you an apple, but I can't show you my experience. I can show you my expression of pain, but not the pain itself. — Luke

First, I think you can show me the experience. If you prick your finger with a pin, you can show me the experience by pricking me with a pin. Are the experiences the same? Well, there’s no numerical identity, but there’s some level of qualitative identity. There can’t be total qualitative identity because that would be equivalent to numerical identity, and that would require that I experience the pinprick as you, which is just to be you. I don’t think it’s right to describe this as ineffability.

I see this kind of how I see perception. Some around here will say that perception is deficient or distorted because we perceive in a particular way which is determined or conditioned by our anatomy and physiology and our behaviour in our environment. This view presumes that perfect, undistorted perception would be a view from nowhere or, in Kant’s terms, an intellectual intuition. This is a bad account of perception.

I don’t really disagree with the bulk of your post; we just draw different conclusions. In fact, I’m not yet even sure that I’m absolutely against your use of “ineffable”. I do think that the position I’ve set out goes some way to clarify things.

Second, all analogies will break down at some point. The apple, unlike the experience, is not subjective, so I agree that there’s a significant difference.

Are you making a claim here? — Richard B

Yes, I was making a claim that our private subjective concepts of a particular word cannot be the same, in that it is impossible for them to be the same, although they may be similar.

I can never know my claim is true, as I cannot put myself into someone else's mind. I believe my claim is true from observations of other people's behaviour, but I can never know. It is an inference.

On the other hand, how would it be possible for anyone to know that their private subjective concept of a particular word was the same and not just similar to someone else's?

What are you tryin to justify? — Constance

I believe that there are limits to what language can explain about the word because of the intellectual limits of the human brain, in that language cannot transcend the mind. Language doesn't have a power that is not given to it by the mind.

You will have to turn to phenomenology, which is about the Totality of our existence, and not just an aggregate of localized arguments that is found in analytic thinking. — Constance

Perhaps neither the anti-reductionist Phenomenology nor the reductionist Cartesian method can be used by themselves. Both lead to problems. The Cartesian method suffers from treating the world as a set of objects interacting with each other. Phenomenology suffers from rejecting rationalism, relying on an intuitive grasp of knowledge, and free of intellectualising.

Taking the analogy of art, a complete understanding of a Derain requires both an intellectualism of the objects represented within the painting and an intuitive grasp of the aesthetic artistic whole. IE, a synthesis of both the Cartesian and the Phenomenologist.

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'?

Since when has the popularity of beliefs become an accurate indicator of their truth-value? — javra

No one said it was. — Banno

Banno seems to have a very big problem with this, continually insisting that it is unreasonable to reject or be skeptical of the foundational conventions of mathematics, physics, and other sciences. But the only reason Banno can give for accepting these principles is that they are the accepted principles, and they work, even though some are demonstrably inconsistent, therefore necessarily false. Then Banno will turn around and say something like this, above, demonstrating complete hypocrisy. The hypocrisy displayed is the reason why I am repeatedly inclined toward the charge of dishonesty against Banno.

First, I think you can show me the experience. If you prick your finger with a pin, you can show me the experience by pricking me with a pin. Are the experiences the same? Well, there’s no numerical identity, but there’s some level of qualitative identity. There can’t be total qualitative identity because that would be equivalent to numerical identity, and that would require that I experience the pinprick as you, which is just to be you. I don’t think it’s right to describe this as ineffability. — Jamal

But what is this difference, the difference between your pinprick and my pinprick? Isn't it the difference between these two, the difference which makes them not numerically identical, yet still qualitatively identical, what is supposed to be ineffable? We know what it means to be one and the same (numerically identical), and that is to exist in the same context, no difference. And we know what it means to be of the same type (qualitatively identical), similar in some way, yet still separate, or different.

Now, in the case of the two pinpricks, the separation, or difference is a matter of context. The two things are called the same, "pinprick", yet the difference is that they each have a distinct context. This, "context" is where the ineffable is supposed to lie, it is what makes the two different. And it is what gives each particular instance of word usage its own unique meaning. If we attempt to bring the context into the statement, by describing it, we simply reformulate the context as part of the content, thereby making it not context any more, but content. However, there is always a part of the context which is missing from any such description or transformation, no matter how hard we try to include the entire context into our description of the difference between the two particular pinpricks. This inability to account for the entirety of the context is what validates the claim of an "ineffable".

This inability to account for the entirety of the context is what validates the claim of an "ineffable". — Metaphysician Undercover

Does it not follow, if all that’s needed is sufficient context, rather than entire context, that the claim “ineffable” is invalid?

If it is the case that all thoughts are conceptions, and all conceptions are represented by the word(s) that refer to them…..how can any conception be too great to be described? The representation just is the description. How can any conception, then, be ineffable?

So that which is ineffable has no word by which it is referred. For that of which there is no word, there is no conception that is the necessary presupposition for it, for otherwise, there must be conceptions without representation, which is self-contradictory, hence, unintelligible.

Imagination is that which presents objects without there actually being one. Imagination can present any thinkable object, which makes explicit imagination can present any thing that can be conceived, can be represented by words, can never be too great to be talked about.

Ineffable: a useless euphemism intended to obfuscate the fact it is impossible to conceive anything too great to be talked about. It merely indicates a way to escape the explanatory pigeonhole.

Ineffable: a useless euphemism intended to obfuscate the fact it is impossible to conceive anything too great to be talked about. — Mww

I don't think it's usually about greatness. "The ineffable aroma of the autumn wind...". It's just that words are sometimes like fingers and some of experience falls through the open hands of language.

Haven't you ever had dreams that couldn't be adequately put into words? I have. Interestingly, years later, all I remember are the metaphors I came up with to explain it: it was like a bee hive and I could feel each bee. I know that's not what the dream really was.

Maybe memory is a factor here. It's hard to remember what you couldn't put into words

RussellA adopts a referential theory of meaning. — Banno

In the referential theory of meaning, words mean what they refer to in the world. Words are like labels attached to things existing in the world, in that the word "mountain" refers to the object mountain.

However, as I see it, not only is a mountain an object in the world, but also the word "mountain" is an object in the world (setting aside exactly what objects are).

During (metaphorical) public performative acts establishing meaning, any set of objects in the world may be linked. For example, "mountain" may be linked to mountain, "mountain" may be linked to "awesome" and mountain may be linked to river.

As the referential theory of meaning only allows words such as "mountain" to be linked with objects such as mountain, because my theory of meaning allows not only words such as "mountain" to be linked to other words such as "awesome" but also objects such as mountain to be linked to other objects such as river, I don't adopt the referential theory of meaning.

One advantage of my theory of meaning is that it allows the word "horse" to be linked with the phrase "horn projecting from its forehead", overcoming one of Russell's and Frege's objections against the referential theory.

What can I say but that:

This passage has an ineffable quality of sophistry

Thank you for the list! — Richard B

Sorry about that. Henry is pretty out there. The basic philosophical idea is this: When you face the world with understanding, it is not that the world is sitting there telling you what it is. What makes the world the world is your history of experiences, and this is what separates your world from a "blooming and buzzing" infant's world. But if it is education that informs the understanding, then how is it that the this education can ever access the "out there" of the world as it really is, given that the understanding is all about this stream of recollection? Sure, there is something before me, a tree or a couch, but isn't this recognition of what these are just the occasion for memories to be brought to bear in the specific occasion, and the palpable things of the world in their "really what they are" ness just an impossible concept; impossible because to have it as an an object at all is to be beheld AS a kind of regionalized set of memories, you know, memories about couches kick the moment you see a couch and there is no "in between" time to catch the couch in all its "pure presence". To perceive at all is to, with humans, with language taking up the world AS this language phenomenon.

Husserl thinks it is possible for a person to stand apart from the naturalistic attitude in which everything just moves along in the usual fashion, and couches are there as couches with no question, and insert a kind of conscious divide that allows the "intuitive actuality" of the occasion of encountering the couch to be recognized, as if one could SEE the world as it really is with the natural tendency to just go along suspended.

It is a very strong claim. Most think it impossible. But it goes directly to the issue of ineffability, for what is really on the table here is whether it makes sense to talk like this at all. For me, in t he meditating mind in which one allows memory, not to put too fine a point on it, to fall away, there occurs a crtain uncanny freedom, and in this freedom the world becomes a very different place, as if what was there all along had been forgotten in the naturalistic attitude.

This state of mind is proximal to what the issue of ineffability is all about. It sounds like sophistry, or as others have put it, the "seduction of language," when reading Henry because he is deeply embedded in the scholarly works of the neoHusserlian thinking. These guys just assume.

I believe that there are limits to what language can explain about the word because of the intellectual limits of the human brain, in that language cannot transcend the mind. Language doesn't have a power that is not given to it by the mind. — RussellA

I understand what you're saying about language, but brain talk used to explain language's limitations has a serious problem. I won't labor the point, but brains are language, too. So they get their meaning from the contexts in which we talk about brains, and outside of contextual identities, it loses meaning. So there must be something else, some other explanatory means that can account for brains AMONG the trees and tables and coffee cups of the world. In other words, brain talk is not foundational.

And if you are defending a physicalist view about the world, then the thesis is just untenable, unless you can explain epistemic connectivity between brains and objects in a physicalist setting with out abandoning physicalism itself.

Perhaps neither the anti-reductionist Phenomenology nor the reductionist Cartesian method can be used by themselves. Both lead to problems. The Cartesian method suffers from treating the world as a set of objects interacting with each other. Phenomenology suffers from rejecting rationalism, relying on an intuitive grasp of knowledge, and free of intellectualising.

Taking the analogy of art, a complete understanding of a Derain requires both an intellectualism of the objects represented within the painting and an intuitive grasp of the aesthetic artistic whole. IE, a synthesis of both the Cartesian and the Phenomenologist. — RussellA

You sound close to things Heidegger says, that the world and its concepts are "of a piece". I think this right, with emphasis! But on the issue of ineffability, I also think there is nothing precluded in this regarding novel and extraordinary experiences in which there is an intimation of deeper, more profound insights about our Being here. Descartes and his substance talk leads to trouble, but the direction for greater more "epistemically proximal" apprehensions of what we call reality toward our interiority makes sense to me.

Materialism takes an objective model and applies it across the board, but this leads to an existential alienation, as if what we really are is forever distant in t he "out thereness" of things, and one could argue that this kind of thinking in the modern age, so bound to its objectifying methods, is what has led to the crisis of identity.

Banno seems to have a very big problem with this, [...] — Metaphysician Undercover

I've noticed. :grin:

I see the Lord of the Flies has made an appearance, despite my restraint, which was all for nought. Or should I say "Nothing"? But perhaps it's to be expected that where the ineffable is a topic, the execrable must be summoned.

the execrable must be summoned. — Ciceronianus

And here you are!