I feel like I've found a kindred spirit, but I'll admit I think I'm now on the materialist side of things. And not as an inference, but as a choice. I think the materialist way of looking at the world makes us better, for the kinds of creatures we are. (we can sorta glimpse that there may be more, but usually, the "more" makes us do bad things) — Moliere

Not sure I follow. As I see it, materialism takes what is a metaphysics of the Real of "out there" things, and applies it to mind, affectivity and moods, inquiry, language; but how does it explain any of this given that these are not revealed at all AS material. In fact, I cannot see how material is delivered to us at all as a working concept, except as a stand in for other thinks one doesn't really want to go into at the time. You know, grab your materials and run! If anything is a philosophical nonsense term, it's material substance: never been witnessed.

My way of thinking is that if something is an accounting in metaphysics, then it's already something which we can only decide upon based on our feelings on the matter. Want to live forever? Sure, we're immortal. Want to note how we don't? Well, sure, we're mortal.

Like, literally, you could say anything, and as long as people like what you say then it'll be counted as true.

So the brain IS -- immortality. Or whatever religious belief you want.

EDIT: Just to note, I don't think "wanting" implicates "true". Because religious beliefs are never amenable to methods of knowledge-generation, like ever, while they could be true -- they'll never be known. — Moliere

Metaphysics, I argue, is the foundational indeterminacy of our existence. Many roads to Rome here, but take any concept that has meaning in our world, put it to the test and inquire about it, following inquiry down the rabbit hole in the search for something that is not questionable, that is absolute and as an underpinning to your concept, guarantees its veracity, or reality. You will not find this, BUT, you will find intimations of such things. As with value, discoverable in our ethics and aesthetics. One example I have won out, but makes the point with poignancy: put a lighted match to your finger for a few seconds. Now ask, why is it morally wrong to do this to another person (or you cat)? Words may be there at the ready for you to say this, but it is not the words that address the question. I is the pain. What is pain? A given, a preanalytic alinguistic given. As if the world were "speaking" the principle, don't do this!

But givens in the world cannot be spoken. They just are. Meet metaphysics. It is not some distant speculative notion, conceived in the imagination. It is the hard, arguably the hardest, because understanding is above the common course of thinking, reality. to me, it has its power revealed in the most powerful encounters with the world: like being sentenced to the stake's flames, for midnight trysts in a forest's alluring mysteries, and screaming to God for deliverance.
Not to put you off, but such things are the Real we seek, when we ask philosophy's most imposing questions.

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?

I'm trying to get you to see that there is no determinate fact of the matter. — Janus

There is no determinate fact of the mater that the mountain is a mountain? You are throwing out the principle of identity?

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.

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.

There is no determinate fact of the mater that the mountain is a mountain? You are throwing out the principle of identity? — Banno

The principle of identity; the mountain is a mountain is a mountain is vacuous and tells us nothing whatsoever.

I'm not talking about the arbitrariness of the name, that we might have used a different word.

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

Precisely!

Hilarious...you expect me to say what it is that can't be said.
— Janus
Indeed, there might be a sort of catharsis in the realisation that this is not doable, and perhaps the absence of a something to which "ineffable" refers. — Banno

Where there is no thing, there's nothing to address philosophically. There's no object to be known, and philosophy subsists on objects which can be known and described (in words). So, it pretends there is one.

But the evolving he has in mind follows science's lead. — Constance

Not exactly, from “On What There Is” he says “Here we have two competing conceptual schemes, a phenomenalistic one and a physicalistic one. Which should prevail? Each has its advantages; each has its special simplicity in its own way. Each, I suggest, deserves to be developed. Each may be said, indeed, to be the more fundamental, though in different senses: the one is epistemologically, the other physically, fundamental.”

Though, you are right, I would say Quine favors the later.

Each may be said, indeed, to be the more fundamental, though in different senses: the one is epistemologically, the other physically, fundamental.” — Richard B

Is saying that a physicalist conceptual scheme is, from its own perspective, more physically fundamental saying anything at all?

A large part of the OP is the little boy shaking the flytrap. Works every time. Nine pages and counting.

If I weren't so distracted by the buzzing of the flies, I'd look to the implications of the half-dozen or so variations on "ineffable" mentioned in the SEP article, to see how they relate to each other and to other things.

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.

So, it pretends there is one. — Ciceronianus

Or better, it is silent. And sometimes the philosopher acts.

Not sure I follow. As I see it, materialism takes what is a metaphysics of the Real of "out there" things, and applies it to mind, affectivity and moods, inquiry, language; but how does it explain any of this given that these are not revealed at all AS material. In fact, I cannot see how material is delivered to us at all as a working concept, except as a stand in for other thinks one doesn't really want to go into at the time. You know, grab your materials and run! If anything is a philosophical nonsense term, it's material substance: never been witnessed. — Constance

I stopped caring if I was a materialist, physicalist, non-reductive physicalist, realist. . .

At least, with respect to knowledge.

However, while I understand others feel differently, it just makes a lot more ethical sense to think of others as creatures like me in a material world, connected by the fact that we are a species who -- in spite of our desires to not be this way -- needs one another to survive.

If there's a heaven in the here-after, it's pretty easy to justify exploitation -- the meek will inherit the earth, and that can accommodate both forgiving and vengeful souls. Further, while it's counter-intuitive to the claimed spirit of the religious texts, it really was easy to justify an incredible amount of human bloodshed.

And then I think that these spiritual thoughts also turn people against their natural natures -- and so they are resistant to their own desires. They want to be unhappy, because that makes them good (in a world that we have no access to, unless we just play along) -- and to be happy, to feel good, is to be unworthy, or something. Pleasure as sin. But then, being human, they continue to pursue pleasures while punishing themselves -- a true route to obtaining "spiritual" experiences, the constant to-and-fro of pleasure/pain which seems to be pretty popular among spiritualists.

Just to note, I don't think "wanting" implicates "true". Because religious beliefs are never amenable to methods of knowledge-generation, like ever, while they could be true -- they'll never be known. — Moliere

I think religion is just as amenable to knowledge generation as anything else; it is just that religion needs to be rendered clear in terms of what it addresses that is in the world, that is actual. I hold it that popular religion is nothing less than the narrative response to the metaethical question, what is the good and bad of ethical problems? I think religion removed from its incidental encumbrances such as Who Saves Who and Why, and all the rest, has a existential core to it. Notice how ethics and religion would vanish if the question of good and bad were settled foundationally. Religion, properly understood, is the metaphysics of the ethical good and bad, the source of what we are calling ineffability. Questions about the Real, what consciousness is, the relation between thought and the world, and on and on, are dramatically overshadowed by questions of our suffering and delight.

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?

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

No, I don't think so, because the part of the context which is not reachable, is still real. So it's like you are saying that we never need the ideal, we don't need perfection, and so we should settle on whatever is sufficient. That's fine, but settling on sufficiency instead of the absolute does not make the difference between these two disappear. And we can live very well without ever even thinking about the ineffable, but that doesn't mean that it's not there. Nor does it make the claim of ineffable 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? — Mww

It's not the conception that's ineffable, nor any part of the conception. It is the difference between the conception of what the word refers to, and what the word really refers to in a particular instance of use, which is ineffable. There is a number of ways to look at this. If the conception is a universal, and what the word refers to is a particular, there is a difference between these. If the conception is a representation, and there is something represented, then there is a difference between these. Those are examples. If we use categories, there is a difference between one category and another. To produce more categories in an attempt to describe the difference between categories, still leaves us with an unexplained difference between the new categories. We might try to say this difference consists of boundaries, but it isn't really boundaries between things, because things overlap.

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. — Mww

Yes, I would agree. And because of this, even to put the name "ineffable" to it, is to refer to something, and it's either a particular or a conception. So this is really a self-contradicting thing to do. It's better just to recognize the reality of this problem, and understand that no matter how far we proceed toward perfection in our understanding, toward the ideal, there will always be a deficiency.

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. — Mww

But the matter is not an issue of what can be conceived but not talked about, it is an issue of what cannot be conceived, and because of this it cannot be talked about. We avoid the problem to a great extent by talking about possibilities, and probabilities, as this allows for the reality of whatever it is which we are uncertain about. But the usefulness of possibility and probability is just evidence of the reality of whatever it is that we cannot conceive of, and therefore cannot talk about. It really skirts the issue because we pretend to have conceptions of the unknown, by showing off prediction skills, but these are just mathematical skills, and there are no hidden concepts here, just applied math.

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

I think you may have this backward. The problem is that we try to talk about things which we cannot conceptualize. That is the ineffable, we try to talk about something which we cannot talk about, due to a lack of conceptualization. The lack of conceptualization is what makes it so we cannot talk about it.

This is evident with the application of mathematics in the sciences. Through math we, in a way, talk about things, but it's only really an attempt to talk about them. The things supposedly talked about are not conceptualized, it is just a matter of applying general mathematical principles. So the talk is really about the mathematical principles. Thus mathematics creates the illusion that we are talking about things. But these are really things which we cannot conceptualize, those things which the mathematics is supposedly talking about, so we're not really talking about anything, just applying mathematics to the unknown.

Through this procedure though, applying mathematics to the unknown, I believe we can bring the unknown around to being known, therefore conceptualized, talked about, and properly described. That's why I said earlier in the thread, that we apply mathematics to the ineffable (what we cannot talk about because we have no conception of). Then through the application of math we produce an understanding, conceptualize, and start being able to talk about what was prior to this, ineffable.

What's your take? — Tom Storm

Something more?

Well, the world is all that is the case. If it's the case, then it can be said. Hence the world is all that can be said. The world is all the true propositions.

But there is also what can be shown. And there is also what can be done.

So the squiggle on a page at first looks like a duck, not someone shows you that it can also be seen as a rabbit, and then you realise that wether it's seen as a duck or a rabbit depends on you, not on the squiggle.

Notice that we can say that it's a duck or its a rabbit, or that it is both, depending on how you look at it, so there is nothing ineffable here.

And there is your partner giving birth, with all the anticipation, dread and hope, that cannot possibly be put into words, and yet I just did. What's missing from any words is the doing, the being there, the participation.

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?

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? — Tom Storm

But value as such is not very mysterious and no one likes to talk about it. What is it, in the final analysis, that makes bad things bad and good things good? Factually speaking, there is nothing there, so where and what is it, this, what G E Moore called "non natural property"? Wittgenstein famously said there is no such thing and value; and if there were, it would have no value. But he also identified divinity with the Good. He insisted this was strictly off limits to discussion, and when the Vienna Circle met, he would turn his chair to the wall if they started talking about ethics.
Sure, we talk about value all the time, but philosophically, can sense be made of it, this mysterious, non natural property of the good and the bad in our affairs?

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? — Tom Storm

As you know, that is a really tall order, and it requires a really tall philosophical thesis to rise to the occasion. Best place to start here is Husserl Cartesian Meditations. You may be a bit shocked by what he has to say. A snippet:

As we go on meditating in this manner and along this line, we
beginning philosophers recognize that the Cartesian idea of a
science (ultimately an all-embracing science) grounded on an
absolute foundation, and absolutely justified, is none other than
the idea that constantly furnishes guidance in all sciences and
in their striving toward universality whatever may be the
situation with respect to a de facto actualization of that idea

What he has in mind can, I think, perhaps rests with this single intuition: One can attack any thesis, any proposition, essentially the way Descartes did. But can you doubt the merely descriptive just being there? This is not leading to Descartes affirmation of the cogito. It is much broader, this affirmation that one is in an indubitable intuitive world of presence. Not I think, therefore I am; but, everything IS there before me; therefore everything IS apodictically grounded in an intuition of pure phenomenological presence. This, he argues, underlies as the universal presuppositional basis for all empirical science, and he wants make this intuitive horizon of our existence the foundational science for philosophical inquiry.
In a qualified way, he is on to something very important. This goes to metaethics. E.g., one cannot doubt one is in pain. One can doubt the propositional content, the veracity of the facts, and granted that there are ambiguous examples of pain, but in cases of unambiguous pain, as occasioned by being stabbed in the kidney, say, one is witnessing an absolute. And it is not some tautological apriority; it is existential, and this is supposed to be impossible, the kind of things miracles are made of.

Perhaps the upshot can best be seen as that talk about that of which we cannot speak is utterly useless, even in ethics.

Better to turn your chair to the wall.

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.

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. — Tom Storm

Part thereof should be the getting on with it, that philosophical rumination is secondary to the doing.

Please sing with me:

I have decided to follow Husserl;
I have decided to follow Husserl;
I have decided to follow Husserl;
No turning back, no turning back.

Maybe, one day, philosophy will weave in music into this form of life.

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

It's not the conception that's ineffable, nor any part of the conception. It is the difference between the conception of what the word refers to, and what the word really refers to in a particular instance of use, which is ineffable. — Metaphysician Undercover

Ok…..need the rest of the paragraph to unpack this.

There is a number of ways to look at this. If the conception is a universal, and what the word refers to is a particular, there is a difference between these. — Metaphysician Undercover

Sure there’s a difference, but there’s nothing ineffable about it. The word representing a universal conception won’t refer to a particular example of it. The universal conception represented by the word “change” says nothing about particular instances of that which changes. The manifold of conceptions involved in the proposition, “the branches swaying in the wind make a joyful noise” has no need for, and forwards no cognition of, “change”.

If the conception is a representation, and there is something represented, then there is a difference between these. — Metaphysician Undercover

True enough. Herein is the limit of metaphysical reductionism. Conceptions represent thoughts….but there is no justifiable hypothesis for the origin of thoughts. If one wishes to call the origin of thought ineffable, insofar as there are no words to describe it, that’s fine, but we’ve already understood we just have no idea from whence come thoughts, so why bother with overburdening the impossibility with ineffability?
———-

The problem is that we try to talk about things which we cannot conceptualize The lack of conceptualization is what makes it so we cannot talk about it. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yeah, well….proof positive folks generally put more stock in their talk than their thought. Pity them, I say.

That is the ineffable, we try to talk about something which we cannot talk about, due to a lack of conceptualization. — Metaphysician Undercover

Truth be told, I don’t agree that’s what we’re doing. You say the problem is we try to do this thing we can’t do, I say we can’t even do, in any way, shape or form, what you say we’re trying to do, so the problem itself you say we have, should just disappear and along with it, the very notion of ineffability.

This is just as much fun as trying to fathom why some of us are right-handed and some are left. Why some of us like spinach and some of us gag on it. Only product there can be is fun; we ain’t gonna solve anything here, are we.

Metaphysics, I argue, is the foundational indeterminacy of our existence. Many roads to Rome here, but take any concept that has meaning in our world, put it to the test and inquire about it, following inquiry down the rabbit hole in the search for something that is not questionable, that is absolute and as an underpinning to your concept, guarantees its veracity, or reality. You will not find this, BUT, you will find intimations of such things. As with value, discoverable in our ethics and aesthetics. One example I have won out, but makes the point with poignancy: put a lighted match to your finger for a few seconds. Now ask, why is it morally wrong to do this to another person (or you cat)? Words may be there at the ready for you to say this, but it is not the words that address the question. I is the pain. What is pain? A given, a preanalytic alinguistic given. As if the world were "speaking" the principle, don't do this! — Constance

There is no proving goodness or badness, just as there's no proving something is real. As you say, it's as if it were given, and feels like the world itself were speaking a principle. I think that's a great phenomenological description of attachment to principle.

I'm just not sure that there is, in fact, an alinguistic given. Not everything is language, but we are the sorts of creatures who are deeply integrated with linguistic practices... it seems a stretch to think that we can bracket away language in looking at objects. They're all named and have differentiations and everything. We can pretend that the object we see doesn't have all of the "naturalistic" predicates pertaining to it and see where our mind takes us -- but I think that's about it. That's just a suspension of judgment, though, and not a mental ability to see things as they are absent a worldview. Or, at least, that's how I'd put it.

There is a sense in which, by changing beliefs we change the world. So there's something to it. But I'm unconvinced that bracketing is able to lead us to the things themselves in all but our imagination. In that process of imagining it seems people can trip across what may be patterns of consciousness that are common -- but, given that it's introspection, it may just be idiosyncratic too. From a scientific perspective, I think, the real advantage of phenemonology is it gives a language for talking about consciousness.

**

Also, I'll note, I don't think there are foundations to science, so losing its foundations isn't something I mind. Science isn't as grandiose as Husserl puts it, in my view. Which might go some way to making sense of our views here:

But givens in the world cannot be spoken. They just are. Meet metaphysics. It is not some distant speculative notion, conceived in the imagination. It is the hard, arguably the hardest, because understanding is above the common course of thinking, reality.

I agree that givens in the world just are. And if they cannot be spoken, then what does metaphysics have left to say?

The desire to be above the common course of thinking isn't something I share. I don't believe philosophy leads to a higher knowledge. Philosophy is just one of the activities human beings do. It, too, is not grandiose. It's little wonder that the small, hairless, weak, slow, but creative species which is deeply interdependent, and thereby vulnerable to the actions not just of the environment but what others of its creatures will do -- that something so pathetic might want to be more powerful, and imagines itself so in its own mind from time to time is the most natural of desires.

Like a cat puffing up, we build castles in the mind to soothe our self-image and make it a little stronger.

to me, it has its power revealed in the most powerful encounters with the world: like being sentenced to the stake's flames, for midnight trysts in a forest's alluring mysteries, and screaming to God for deliverance.
Not to put you off, but such things are the Real we seek, when we ask philosophy's most imposing questions. — Constance

Heh, this may be the basis of our disagreement, in truth. I don't want exotic or or mystical experiences. I just want to be happy. And, ethically speaking, that seems a reasonable, at least, general goal -- but I understand lots of people don't want to be happy. They don't put it like that, but their actions speak louder than what they say they believe.

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. — Constance

Form and content, brains and minds

Is the mind and brain a Cartesian duality or a phenomenological unity. What is the relationship between the brain as form and the mind as content. If a Cartesian duality, how can the form access the content. If a phenomenological unity, how can the form be the content.

Protopanpsychism as the link between the form of the brain and the content of the mind
Consciousness is the hard problem of science. Whether consciousness exists outside the brain as some ethereal soul or spirit or can be explained within physicalism as an emergence from the complexity of neurons and their connections within the brain, protopanpsychism is not the belief that elemental particles are conscious, rather that they have the potential for consciousness that only emerges when elemental particles are combined in some particular way.

As an analogy with gravity, the property of movement cannot be discovered in a single object isolated from all other objects, but may only be observed when two objects or more are in proximity. In a sense, the single isolated object has the potential for movement, but doesn't have the property of movement. The property of movement emerges when two or more objects are in proximity with each other.

Similarly, the property of consciousness could never be discovered by science or any other means by observing a single neuron, yet the property of consciousness emerges when more than one neurons are combined in a particular way.

Protopanpsychism breaks Cartesian dualism by enabling both the brain and the mind to come under the single umbrella of physicalism. The content of the brain and the conscious mind emerges from the form of the physical brain.

If the mind and brain are two aspects of the same thing, and are part of a physicalist world, then this explains the epistemic connectivity between mind and brain.

Aristotle and the link between form and content
Aristotle's "four causes" were i) material cause , ie the bronze, ii) the formal cause, ie the statue of Hercules, iii) the efficient cause, ie, the sculptor and iv) the final cause , ie, the purpose of honouring Hercules. The formal cause is the form, the final cause is the content.

For man-made objects, the final cause is not problematic, in that the maker of the statue has made the decision, but for natural objects, purpose may be debated. What purpose do mountains serve, what purpose do humans serve, what is the purpose of anything.

Aristotle denied that purpose came from a divine maker, but rather that purpose was immanent in nature itself . IE, the purpose whether of mountains or humans existed within their very form, ie, content is form.

Purpose necessitates a holistic approach. As Aristotle wrote "we must think that a discussion of nature is about the composition and being as a whole, not about parts that can never occur in separation from the being they belong to". As Frege wrote in 1884, "Only in the context of sentence does a word have a meaning’. Frege's principle establishes contextualism. Individual words have no meaning or value unless they are understood within the context of a sentence, a reaction against the atomization of meaning.

Teleology is the explanation of phenomena in terms of the purpose they serve rather than of the cause by which they arise, in that the purpose of humankind has been determined by neither something in the past nor something in the future, but by the existent present. A change in form inevitably results in a change of purpose. As Jonathan Lear wrote " "real purposefulness requires that the end somehow govern the process along the way to its own realization - it is not, strictly speaking, the end specified as such that is operating from the start: it is form that directs the process of its own development from potentiality to actuality".

The purpose of something in the world, its content, may be said to be determined by the nature of its essence, in other words, its form.

Heidegger and the link between form and content
The value of a Derain is in its aesthetic of representations. The form holds both the aesthetic and the representational content.

Heidegger wrote The Origins of the Work of Art between 1935 and 1960, whereby the "origin" of an artwork is that from which and by which something is what it is and as it is, its essence. The artwork has a mode of being that it is the artwork itself. The origin of an artwork is the artwork itself. An artist may have caused the artwork, but it is the artwork that has caused the artist. The artwork determines what the artwork will be, not the artist. The artist is just a facilitator. Art as the mode of being makes both the artist and artwork ontologically possible. Art unfolds the artwork. The artwork has a life of its own, independent of any maker. Heidegger's phenomenology emphasises the artwork as "Being", as he said "back to the things themselves".

On the one hand, to appreciate art one must start with an understanding of what art is, yet on the other hand we can only appreciate art from the work itself. A paradox described by Plato as "A man cannot try to discover either what he knows or what he does not know. He would seek what he knows, for since he knows it there is no need of the inquiry, nor what he does not know, for in that case he does not even know what he is to look for". This is a circle only broken by an innate and a priori knowledge of Kantian pure and empirical sensible intuitions, of space, time and the categories of quantity, quality, relation, modality.

An artwork has Being and is its own Origin, yet we can understand art from our innate and a priori knowledge of aesthetics and representation that precedes ant experience of art. We can understand the aesthetic form and representational content as a single unity of apperception as a holistic synthesis of form and content.

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. — Constance

Language is metaphor
In language is the syntax of form and the semantics of content. Language is a set of words. A word is a physical object that exists in the world, as much as a mountain exists in the world.

Words refer to, represent, are linked to, corresponds with either another object in the world or a private subjective experience, such that "mountain" is linked to mountain or "pain" is linked to pain.

A metaphor directly refers to one thing by mentioning another and asserts that what are being compared are identical and clarifies similarities between two different ideas.

As mountain is being referred to by mentioning "mountain", as pain is being referred to by mentioning "pain", as it is asserted that the reference of "mountain" is identical with mountain, as it is asserted that the reference of "pain" is identical with pain, as the similarities between "mountain" and mountain, "pain" and pain are being clarified, then the linkage between a word and what it refers to fulfil all the requirements of a metaphor.

The word as an object is different to what it refers, meaning that any linkage between the word and to what it refers is metaphorical. As language is metaphorical, all our understanding through language is metaphorical: evolution by natural selection, F = ma, the wave theory of light, DNA is the code of life, the genome is the book of life, gravity, dendritic branches, Maxwell's Demon, Schrödinger’s cat, Einstein’s twins, greenhouse gas, the battle against cancer, faith in a hypothesis, the miracle of consciousness, the gift of understanding, the laws of physics, the language of mathematics, deserving an effective mathematics, etc

Words are symbols that refer metaphorically. As a metaphorical link can be created between any known object in the world and a word or any known private subjective experience and a word, any known object in the world or known private subjective experience can be expressed in language, meaning that in language, nothing that is known is ineffable.

Conclusion
As language is metaphorical, and as every known object in the world or known private subjective experience can be expressed in metaphorical terms, everything that is known can be said, whether concrete concepts such as mountain, abstract concepts such as pain, non-existents such as “The present King of France is bald.”, negative existentials such as “Unicorns don’t exist.”, identities such as “Superman is Clark Kent.” or substitutions such as “Taylor believes that Superman is 6 feet tall.”

Only that which is unknown cannot be put into words. Only that which is unknown is ineffable. If it is known, it can be put into words and is expressible.

Only that which is unknown cannot be put into words. Only that which is unknown is ineffable. If it is known, it can be put into words and is expressible. — RussellA

All well-said.

Do we….or do we not….still need to stipulate the criteria for determining how the unknowable isn’t a mere subterfuge? Seems like that would be the logical query to follow, “only the unknown cannot be put into words”.

Do we….or do we not….still need to stipulate the criteria for determining how the unknowable isn’t a mere subterfuge? Seems like that would be the logical query to follow, “only the unknown cannot be put into words”. — Mww

It need not be unknowable in principle, just unknown in practice - and we would need to know that it is so. Some givens, via reasoning or experience, can be demarcated as known unknowns (if one pardons my Rumsfieldesque expression). All known unknowns will then be known ineffables.

To readdress examples in my first post here, hence, among some theistic folk, if G-d is a known unknown to them, G-d is then ineffable to them, and known to be so. As an alternative more down to earth example, if I know how to describe a painting but also know that I don’t know how to describe the particulars of how the painting makes me feel, then the painting’s properties will be effable to me but not the precise aesthetic experience which the painting provokes in me. All the same, it’s it, and known to be so by those who might express, "it is ineffable".

Can known unknowns be intersubjectively shared? Language use indicates that they can. As is exemplified in our being able to understand skits such as “Dude, you know.” “Know what?” “Dude …” “Oh, right, of course.”

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And as could also be argued for some Fly of the Lords or other: were it to be a known unknown.

That's why I said earlier in the thread, that we apply mathematics to the ineffable (what we cannot talk about because we have no conception of). Then through the application of math we produce an understanding, conceptualize, and start being able to talk about what was prior to this, ineffable. — Metaphysician Undercover

This from a gentleman who questions 1+1=2 is a surprise. Assuming MU is not being sarcastic, there is value in his observation. Through math we gradually approach a moment of conceptualization, where the mantle of mathematics slips away, revealing a new level of reality that slowly becomes understandable and even effable.

This seemingly has happened when a rare mathematician claims to visualize objects in four dimensions. William Thurston I seem to recall made that claim. He suffered from a vision disorder as a child and that might have had an unexpected effect. Who knows?

And yet folk who are blind do use colour words, correctly. — Banno

The blind can use color words as labels (red ball vs. blue ball).
They can discuss the optical properties of different colored light.
They can use color words as metaphorical proxies for emotions.
The one thing they can't do is know the subjective experience of colors (assuming they didn't lose sight after birth). Because, not only do they lack this experience themselves, but this experience is completely incommunicable through language. It is ineffable.

The one thing they can't do is know the subjective experience of colors (assuming they didn't lose sight after birth). Because, not only do they lack this experience themselves, but this experience is completely incommunicable through language. It is ineffable. — hypericin

Blind folk use colour words correctly, but do not see colours. Yep.

What is it that blind folk cannot say, yet sighted folk can?

There is something blind folk cannot do, not something they cannot say.

Hence the word "ineffable" is ill-used here.

if I know how to describe a painting but also know that I don’t know how to describe the particulars of how the painting makes me feel, then the painting’s properties will be effable to me but not the precise aesthetic experience which the painting provokes in me. — javra

Understood, and that’s the common argument, yes. The counterargument is that feelings per se are not cognitions, hence that part of understanding from which conceptions and the words representing them arise, and from which cognitions follow, is inactive with respect to feelings. So, while it is the case feelings cannot be put into words, the aesthetic judgements which follow from them, can, and those are to which we put words.

Simply put, we don’t speak apodeitically of feelings because understanding doesn’t treat them as objects of reason. Another way to look at it, feelings regard the condition of the conscious subject, whereas understanding regards the condition of the conscious subject’s intellect. This has support when we consider that sometimes it just doesn’t make sense to feel a certain way about a certain thing, e.g., doesn’t make sense to cry over beautiful music.
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….need to stipulate the criteria for determining how the unknowable isn’t a mere subterfuge?
— Mww

It need not be unknowable in principle, just unknown in practice - and we would need to know that it is so. — javra

Doesn’t the unknown in practice still require an explanatory principle? I should think that if it is the case that knowledge is only possible in conjunction with principles, the criteria for the unknowable must be either the negation of those, the validity of its own, or the absence of any. But principles at any rate.

See? — Banno

If we were playing ball, I’d have to concede a score.