experiences are post hoc constructions, they're narratives we use to make what just happened in our brain more predictable (understandable in more colloquial terms). We weave together disparate, and often completely contradictory processes into one coherent narrative after the mental events themselves have already taken place and then 'prune' our connections to those process via the hippocampus to create a false memory of how things went down - one which eliminates all the contradictory and inexplicable stuff. — Isaac

I would argue that what we weave together is not disparate and completely contradictory bits but inferentially compatible ( but never identical) experience united on the basis of commonalities as well as differences. That’s what makes the narratives cohere. It is only when we shift our interest and focus in order to spin out an empirical third person narrative consisting of neuro-chemical bits and physical wavelengths that what we wove together now appears as disparate and completely contradictory. The contradiction is between two forms of language, two kinds of narratives, the phenomenological and the naturalistic, not between our perception of the ways things are and the way things REALLY are, as if our folk psychology ‘fools’ us into ‘false’ knowledge.

It’s interesting that you can apply this relativism to perception but not to the underlying empirical realist assumptions you ground it in , implied by terms like such as “false memory” , “what actually happens in the brain” and “wavelengths of light”. Why not be consistent and jettison the assumption that neurons and brains and wavelengths refer to something any more context and person-independent that the experience of color?

experiences are post hoc constructions, they're narratives we use…. — Isaac

Interesting synopsis.

our word 'red' acts as an off-the-shelf ready-made narrative — Isaac

So the child learning. Is it his teacher/parent/sandbox buddy that puts “red” on his shelf? If the sociological theme for the ground of our experiences is true, is it the case the child doesn’t need that “disparate/contradictory process” for his constructed narrative? And, of course, if he does need it, simply from the fact he has a brain and thinks for himself, the sociological theme would surely be false.

I agree “red” acts as an off-the-shelf narrative for use post hoc, along with every other possible “__” experience. But ‘tis a veritable beggar’s banquet, I say, not to consider how they were one and all put there in the first place.

We are affected by our sociopath-cultural situation as filtered and interpreted through our situated bodily organization of perception. The word red has as many senses as there are shared purposes and uses, but those purposes are always only partially shared, due to the fact that we are all situated differently within the ‘same’ culture. The meanings of words are negotiated , not introjected from culture to individual. — Joshs

Yes, there is no such introjection. But our use of language has no more autonomy than our socially situated organization of perception. As you wrote in your article ‘Where is the social’: “What I bring to a conversation with each word, gesture or bodily action is not a symbol whose referent is available as context-independent meaning but is instead radically indeterminate.” Following your reading Derrida, you conceived our body and language as equally grounded on what is “neither sensible nor intelligible” (‘Derrida and Negative Theology,’ p74). Accordingly, both are entirely determined/undetermined by the ineffable premise. Doesn’t it make the task of redefining the social unrealizable?

Makes sense, in different contexts in regard to saying 'yes' or 'no' to the use of loaded words. — Janus

Was in a rush with my last post; sorry about that. I had something more fundamental in mind.

Loaded words may indeed be more easily changed in a language, but I’m sustaining that no language or part thereof is absolute. Therefore, any word or phrase can in principle change by being either endorsed for use in a language or else by being proscribed, this by any individual or cohort of these. Every time we make use of a word, we endorse its usage in the language community we partake of. Or, as phrases it (and in disagreement with his appraisal), we say yea to a word’s use every time we make use of it.

So I’m here arguing that we all partake in the construction, preservation, and alteration of the language we communally share - this via the choices we make (be they conscious or subconscious) in terms of which words we as individuals use.

Both the endorsement and proscription of particular words will be contingent on the interests of individuals: words which individuals find favorable to themselves in terms of functionality, aesthetic appeal, or (as in my previous examples) their ethics will be endorsed for use in language. “Meme” comes to mind as a word that via these means of endorsement has gained mainstream presence in at least the current English language, and this in a very short span of time. On the other hand, whatever words individuals - such as via their changing culture - no longer find favorable to themselves (functionally, aesthetically, ethically, or for any other reason) will degrade in the language until no longer present.

Hence, I'm maintaining that since no language is absolute or else set in stone, all languages thereby evolve via the endorsement or proscription of word use by individuals.

As to use of the term “red”: Two thousand years ago “red” didn’t exist as word to express the given color (neither did English for that matter). And two thousand years from now, there could well be a different term to address the same color in some neo-English language. But when it comes to our concrete experiences - unlike at least some abstracted notions which words express - words will change over time while their referents will remain the same. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, sort of thing.

our use of language has no more autonomy than our socially situated organization of perception. — Number2018

The ‘autonomy’ I have in mind is not that of the repetition of self-identity. My sense of my own identity is relentlessly, but subtly, formed and reformed through direct and indirect social engagement, in a manner which presupposes and is made possible by the self's ‘continuing to repeat itself “the same differently or otherwise”, as Derrida (1978) says. Derridean differance would be an "imperceptible difference. This exit from the identical into the same remains very slight, weighs nothing itself...(p.373)". The repetition of this very slight difference dividing self -identity from itself produces an ongoing singular self that returns to itself the same differently.

“…there is singularity but it does not collect itself, it "consists" in not collecting itself. Perhaps you will say that there is a way of not collecting oneself that is consistently recognizable, what used to be called a `style' “(Derrida 1995, p.354)

I would argue that what we weave together is not disparate and completely contradictory bits but inferentially compatible ( but never identical) experience united on the basis of commonalities as well as differences. — Joshs

I'm not sure I fully understand what this means, but why would you think there'd be a lack of internal disparity. We have many different inputs, many sources of data noise, why would each input yield, nonetheless, complimentary dataset?

Why not be consistent and jettison the assumption that neurons and brains and wavelengths refer to something any more context and person-independent that the experience of color? — Joshs

Well, that's an interesting suggestion, but I'm not entirely sure how one might speak at all without such terms.

I agree “red” acts as an off-the-shelf narrative for use post hoc, along with every other possible “__” experience. But ‘tis a veritable beggar’s banquet, I say, not to consider how they were one and all put there in the first place. — Mww

Absolutely. I'm ultimately a realist, which means, for me, the social constructs aren't just random, they are constrained by the external states they seek to explain. Not just any old explanation will do. But where I depart from many realists in in there being a single 'true' narrative that somehow captures external states in perfection. I just don't see external states as being so closely tied to our modeling methods.

What is it you say, something about being able to think what you like so long as it's not contradictory? Something like that, I think is true of social constructs.

I don't think anyone 'doesn't have experiences'. I said earlier that experiences are post hoc constructions, they're narratives we use to make what just happened in our brain more predictable (understandable in more colloquial terms). We weave together disparate, and often completely contradictory processes into one coherent narrative after the mental events themselves have already taken place [...] — Isaac

With the understanding that a concept is an abstraction abstracted from particulars:

In terms of languageless creatures and language, dogs, for one example, can on average understand 89 unique words and phrases - with a demonstrated extreme of being able to recognize about 1000 - and with at least some such words understood on average referencing concepts, e.g., “treat”. So, a preliminary question: Do human words for concepts bring into being the dog’s very ability to cognize that concept which the word references? Or do dogs hold cognizance of non-linguistic (hence non-narrative) concepts which they can then associate with human words?

As per the quote above, you seem to lean toward affirming “yes” to the first and “no” to the second. Then:

Without an organism’s innate ability to cognize non-linguistically expressed (hence, non-narrative) concepts - such as the concept of treat - how do words that reference concepts, such as “treat”, become associated with anything any concept whatsoever?

Edited the crossed-out word for better comprehension.

What is it you say, something about being able to think what you like so long as it's not contradictory? Something like that, I think is true of social constructs. — Isaac

….so long as I don’t contradict myself. Cool as hell of you to remember that. As for its relation to social constructs, asking you to explain that would take you away from your engagement here, so I won’t.

I depart from many realists in in there being a single 'true' narrative that somehow captures external states in perfection. — Isaac

Agreed; the realist proper likes to think he can tell the external states what they are. There remains the certain kind of idealist, on the other hand, who asks those states what they might be.

I just don't see external states as being so closely tied to our modeling methods. — Isaac

Nor do I, in general. So closely tied meaning captured perfectly. And that which is closely tied, narrated near-perfectly, has nothing to do with external states, but they nevertheless serve as verifications for our modeling methods.

Right, so the (wordless) experience comes first and the post hoc narrative follows, but the latter, no matter how much in it is distorted, left out, or confabulated, supervenes on the former.

So, if I see, for example, a blue ball, that will differ from seeing a yellow ball, whether I be dog or human, and my report of that experience will vary accordingly, assuming my report is accurate.

Hence, I'm maintaining that since no language is absolute or else set in stone, all languages thereby evolve via the endorsement or proscription of word use by individuals. — javra

I agree with that and the rest of your post, but watch out, @Banno might interpret what you've said in such a way as to make it seem that you are stuck in a bottle that he has freed himself from. :wink:

but watch out, Banno might interpret what you've said in such a way as to make it seem that you are stuck in a bottle that he has freed himself from. :wink: — Janus

It would be pretty fly of him if he could so demonstrate. :wink:

Freedom … it can be such a cockeyed concept. Some seek freedom from reality; others freedom from prohibitions not to be a tyrant; but I do believe that the typical philosopher - including those anti-philosophy philosophers amongst us - seek freedom from falsehoods … very much enjoying the bottle of truth-filled reality in which we would like to perpetually dwell.

There, waxed poetic a bit in turn. :smile:

It would be pretty fly of him if he could so demonstrate. :wink: — javra

:lol: Well, there are demonstrations, and then there are acceptances of the soundness of those demonstrations. Likely it is we all accept our own; hopefully not in perpetuity, though. :pray: .

There, waxed poetic a bit in turn. — javra

:up: :cool:

I depart from many realists in in there being a single 'true' narrative that somehow captures external states in perfection.
— @Isaac

Agreed; — Mww

Two musings here.

The first is that such an "ultimate" narrative can be either consistent or complete, but not both. Hence it seems pretty unlikely that there could be such an "ultimate" narrative, since to avoid contradiction the narrative must remain unfinished.

The second is that if we have two competing narratives such that there is no test to decide which one is true, then either they are consistent, amounting to two different ways of saying the very same thing, or they are inconsistent. If they are inconsistent then either one is true and the other false, but we can't know which, in which case we are wrong or they again amount to two different ways of saying the very same thing: or they are both true, in which case we have a contradiction and anything goes; or we deny realism, in such a way that the narratives have some third truth value.

Not taking a side so much as prying out the implications.

, There are also some who claim to find freedom in the bottle. Not good for one's liver, I hear.

There are also some who claim to find freedom in the bottle. Not good for one's liver, I hear. — Banno

:up: Ha, that is more a case of finding freedom, not in the bottle, but in the contents; and a very temporally limited freedom it is, often followed as payback, in proportion to the sense of intoxicated freedom enjoyed, by having to endure a period of even more strict unfreedom than that imposed by nature herself. Of course, the trick is to avoid the hangover by never sobering up, but I think that course comes with its own horrendous set of constraints and rigours.

It is not so much a matter of putting yourself in the bottle as it is putting the bottle in you (figuratively or metonymically speaking).

The second is that if we have two competing narratives such that there is no test to decide which one is true, then either they are consistent, amounting to two different ways of saying the very same thing, or they are inconsistent. — Banno

The third possibility is that they are narratives derived from different perspectives, which are neither consistent nor inconsistent.

Of course, the trick is to avoid the hangover by never sobering up, but I think that course comes with its own horrendous set of constraints and rigours. — Janus

There are some drinkers (about 20% as I understand it) who do not get hangovers. I was one of those. I could drink an entire bottle of whisky over dinner and be bright as a new pin next morning. That's why I stopped. If you don't get warnings, it can be hard to know how to act. But it makes me ponder the ineffable nature of hangovers - something about a headache and queasiness; but those are just words, right? :razz:

There are also some who claim to find freedom in the bottle. Not good for one's liver, I hear. — Banno

Eh, for my part, yours is a trite retort, especially seeing the lack of coherent rebuttals to the arguments I’ve provided. FYI, there’re other kinds of freedoms associated with to bottles that are nowhere near as common, like the far harder to express and obtain sense of profound freedom pointed to in Jim Croce’s song Time in a Bottle. And yes, unlike booze, it’s not something that can be easily, if at all, effed.

But it’s your thread; express ad nauseum what you will about your lowly flies.

yours is a trite retort — javra

Feeling grumpy today, eh. Fine.

What was it you wished rebutted?

But it makes me ponder the ineffable nature of hangovers for me - something about a headache and queasiness; but those are just words, right? :razz: — Tom Storm

Right, words will never convey what it is to enjoy a hangover if you've never had one; if you've experienced a hangover then you might relate to the words.

I have heard that some don't experience hangovers; I didn't myself until I was about mid-twenties. Maybe it's on account of having a very efficient liver, since the excess alcohol which overburdens the liver's capacity to metabolize the alcohol is converted to formaldehyde apparently, which toxifies the body. There is also the dehydration caused by alcohol's diuretic effect, but this can be counteracted by consuming adequate water during or after your drinking sessions.

an "ultimate" narrative can be either consistent or complete, but not both. — Banno

If an ultimate narrative, wouldn’t it be complete? If so, an ultimate narrative cannot be consistent. But there’s nothing in a complete narrative that makes necessary it is therefore inconsistent. Paraphrasing ’s words, capturing external states in perfection makes explicit a consistent narrative, insofar as the negation of it would be a contradiction, re: an inconsistent narrative cannot be a perfect capture.

it seems pretty unlikely that there could be such an "ultimate" narrative, sicne to avoid contradiction the narrative must remain incomplete. — Banno

The contradiction here, though, regards true or false in competing narratives. For a single true narrative, to avoid contradictions, the narrative only needs to be internally consistent.

we deny realism, in such a way that the narratives have some third truth value. — Banno

Dunno so much about third truth value, but I’d deny strict and stand-alone realism in favor of an underlying predication.

If an ultimate narrative, wouldn’t it be complete? — Mww

Well, Gödel seems to think it makes the narrative behave oddly. You get to choose consistency or completeness, but not both. There will either be a contradiction in the narrative, or there will be stuff left our.

So "This sentence is not part of the ultimate narrative", if true, will not be part fo the ultimate narrative, and hence the narrative is incomplete...

Yet if it's false, then the ultimate narrative contains falsehoods.

Let's just grant this "gap", as you call it, between what we can say and what is known. It strikes me as being somewhat prosaic -- we all know that there's more to the world than speech, and there's more to knowledge than speech too. So what does this calling attention to a gap do for us? — Moliere

In a discussion on ineffability, with some folks asserting that nothing is ineffable, calling attention to this gap shows that some things are ineffable.

Further, having called attention to the gap, now we can talk about it. So we might introduce a distinction between, say, theoretical and practical knowledge. Now here we have two categories, one of which refers to speech, and one of which refers to action. And we can predicate things of action in general. So, we can talk about it. That doesn't convert activity into speech, only goes some way to making the case for effability -- let's call this kind of effabilty the ineffably effable. — Moliere

Saying that some things are ineffable doesn't make those ineffable things effable. I think that's like saying that the concept of 'nothing' is substantive, where 'nothing' is a something.

So I could even grant your ineffability, but then I want to note -- there's more. Such as beliefs in the soul, or that we live in the best of all possible worlds, or that everything has a cause. Those are the sorts of things I have in mind when I think of the ineffable: that which cannot be spoken of, no matter how much experience I acquire, no matter what evidence I bring to bear, no matter how clever I am -- God himself wouldn't be able to speak on these things, because to speak on them would be to destroy them. — Moliere

As a non-religious type, it's not really what I had in mind (and I don't understand why God's speaking of such things would destroy them). But if you accept that some things are ineffable, then we at least agree on that.

Without an organism’s innate ability to cognize non-linguistically expressed (hence, non-narrative) concepts - such as the concept of treat - how do words that reference concepts, such as “treat”, become associated with anything any concept whatsoever? — javra

I don't know anything about canine psychology, but if it works anything like human psychology, the association of a word (or any noise at all) with an expectation is mediated primarily by the hippocampus and just works by associating previous responses with a kind of 'mock up' of that response repeated (but not carried out). So if a human says "pass me the book", my motor circuits will be fired for all the muscle movements required to pass the book, by that expression, before I actually decide to pass the book. The last action on my part is sort of 'releasing the flood gates' of the potential to act that has already built up. Or in object recognition, it might be firing all the clusters related to some action on that object (naming it, using it, emotional response to it), connected, via the hippocampus, to the output of the various auditory cortices (depending on if it were a word or another sound type).

'Experience', as in the thing we later report as our conscious experience of the event, is constructed later out of those firings (plus a whole load of random firing which are happening all the time, and a load of extraneous firings to do with unrelated environmental variables). The task of the experience narrative is (partly) to sift out all that extraneous junk so that the memory of the event is clearer - next time's firing set is nice and neat, useful and clean of noise. It doesn't really play a role in the actual word-object linking in real time.

so long as I don’t contradict myself. Cool as hell of you to remember that. As for its relation to social constructs, asking you to explain that would take you away from your engagement here, so I won’t. — Mww

Another thread perhaps. The phrase stuck with me, this is the first time I've linked it to model-dependant realism. Perennially interesting thing about philosophy is where these crossovers are that one had never thought of.

so the (wordless) experience comes first and the post hoc narrative follows — Janus

No, that's not how it seems to me. Experiences are all post hoc constructions. What 'comes first' is not an experience. It's not something we can report, nor anything that we're even conscious of. It's just a load of neural activity which, as we should all know by now, does not have any kind of one-to-one relation with the sorts of things we talk about like balls, colours, or words. all of that is constructed afterwards as a way of explaining what just happened.

So it's not a case of "I threw a red ball" being an experience constructed out of the constituent experiences "throwing" redness" and "ball".

It goes...

1. {some collection of neural firing events} ->
2. "I threw a red ball" experience ->
3. (if necessary) - abstraction of 'red', 'ball' and 'threw' from that experience (2) according to the social rules around identifying those components

This is interesting. I'm not sure quite how best to answer using the terms you're using. But I'll have a go.

The way I see the relation between external and internal states is like a small mathematical data set say {2,4,6,8,10,12}. We could define that set as something like "double the value of the ordinal in the sequence". We could also define that set as "add 2 to the previous number in the sequence". Both are right, and with the sequence were given, neither are more right than the other.

We could extend it to something like {2,4,8,16} which could be "double the previous number" or ad to the previous number the sequence {2,4,8}. with what we've got, both are right, even though, if we had more numbers, the latter might be shown to be wrong.

But unlike the pragmatists, I'm not suggesting that we're merely having a 'best guess' given limited knowledge, I'm saying that the external states have functionally limited data sets. It will never be possible to determine between the two definitions. Both are right and always will be.

Would that be that the models are incomplete, then?

The original topic has for its subject external objects perfectly narrated (described/explained/viewed/comprehended). Responses to you, now, must address the topic having the narrative as its subject, which is a different topic.

This sentence is not part of the ultimate narrative — Banno

……is true but irrelevant because the object represented as a sentence is not part of whatever object is being narrated perfectly as an external object, and second it is redundant because it’s already established that no ultimate narrative is possible whether there is an object such as that sentence or not. On the other hand, the sentence is false insofar as it is possible to narrate it perfectly, as an object in itself, merely by repeating it, as it the case anything constructed exclusively by reason can be perfectly reconstructed by reason.

There’s your contradiction. A manufactured causality, and thus sufficient reason, for the validity of the notion humans are very good at intentionally confusing themselves.

If I make the attempt to tell you all there is to know about a ‘57 DeSoto…..what the hell difference does “this sentence is not part of the ultimate narrative (of ‘57 DeSoto’s)” make? What is the sentence even doing there in the first place? I sure as hell didn’t include it in my narrative. This is what I mean by instigating an informal fallacy….you know, goalposts and moving them from the end zone clean out to the parking lot.
————

The phrase stuck with me, this is the first time I've linked it to model-dependant realism. Perennially interesting thing about philosophy is where these crossovers are that one had never thought of. — Isaac

Yeah, true. I mean…even realism is a model, which reduces all models ever, to a purely subjective origin. It’s always amazed me how little the pure subject has escaped proper consideration. I know why, but I’m amazed nonetheless for it.
————-

….the association of a word (or any noise at all) with an expectation is mediated primarily by the hippocampus and just works by associating previous responses with a kind of 'mock up' of that response repeated (but not carried out). — Isaac

In cognitive metaphysics, hippocampus is experience, associating previous responses is reproductive imagination, and kind of ‘mock up’ is intuition. In effect, science has merely physically located that which speculative philosophy already understood as necessary. Metaphysics subjectively modeled; science objectively verified the model.

All’s well.

so the (wordless) experience comes first and the post hoc narrative follows — Janus

No, that's not how it seems to me. — Isaac

You’re both right, but approaching “narrative” from differing perspectives. In the first, the narrative is from the perspective of recounting, which necessarily presupposes a system has done its job, in the second the narrative is from the perspective of accounting, which necessarily presupposes a system by which that same job is possible to do.

, in narrating for the object, presupposes but cannot immediately narrate for the system; , in narrating for the system, immediately accounts for the object but cannot narrate a recount of it.

For the irreducible proof, you ask? Simple: humans think necessarily, but not sufficiently, in terms of brain states, hence realism is false.

Ahhhh….but if that which is considered as mere thought is necessarily given from brain states alone, then idealism is false.

Oh dear. Whattodowhattodowhattodo…..

As a non-religious type, it's not really what I had in mind (and I don't understand why God's speaking of such things would destroy them). But if you accept that some things are ineffable, then we at least agree on that — Luke

I mean, I can grant it -- but I'm going to say I'm not sure your ineffable is exactly what I had in mind. While experience and language aren't the same, and I believe we learn things from experience, I don't think I'd call that ineffable as much as this latter notion of what God couldn't even violate. For me, the fact that all I have to do is experience something in order to talk about it means that it's only ineffable at a certain time (in the sense that I couldn't speak the experience into myself, I'd have to get off my butt and go do something), rather than in principle. I guess I'm thinking, no matter what conditions you might put out there it will always be something that cannot be spoken of, whereas experience doesn't meet that criteria -- all you need do is experience something, then you can talk about it. Notions about the exact-sameness of experience are, I believe, inventions more than metaphysical barriers to speech, even though it is something of a philosophical puzzle, because we regularly share experiences with others. (Think of phrases like, "I know exactly what you mean!" -- when the stories aren't even the same stories, we still do!)

But others have said what I'd say in that regard, so I'll just note I'm not sure experience is what I was looking for, but set it to one side for now.


I'm pretty sure religion is what a lot of people have in mind when speaking on "the ineffable" -- more or less, if you can't talk about it, you can't criticize it. God works in mysterious ways (which is convenient when asked to explain why we do such and such...) -- so my invocation of God is to put a point to what I mean by ineffability: I'm not impressed with mysterious ways style ineffability. That's just ignorance, not some sort of in principle ineffability which I'd answer by asking about God's abilities -- what could God, the all-powerful and all-knowing (though certainly not all loving ;) ), not say?

For that I still think that God couldn't speak for you (and by extension, I couldn't speak for you, given that not even God could speak for you). Though I'm inclined to speak like this because I'm interested in a metaphysics that takes alterity, and the Other, as significant.

Another test case: The Ten Commandments. If a Moses came from God and told us, here's the rules -- would the rules mean "the good"? Or would you, as a person with freedom and judgment, have to evaluate those rules? And so, could any one person actually say "Here's the rules!" and be done with it? (If there is special knowledge, and he works in mysterious ways, then Moses might be the guy -- he did speak to God, after all, unlike us, though for purposes of this question I think skipping the middle-man wouldn't improve things because you can just ask God, "But is this right?", being a being with freedom and judgment) -- in some way, because we must judge things ourselves, "the good" is ineffable in a similar sense to the above, in that it requires input from many sources and always demands, of free persons at least, some sort of judgment (broadly speaking... a choice as a judgment, not necessarily all cognitive-style-in-your-head judgments). In order to speak on the Good, one must be open to another's speech. It is a dialogue, rather than a monologue -- which means there's a part of the speech which cannot be spoken by some of the participants.

God, being all powerful, could silence and destroy us -- but that wouldn't be asking us our opinion, that'd be destroying us. Even with all that power, God cannot speak for us just by the nature of a dialogue.

I don't know anything about canine psychology, but if it works anything like human psychology, the association of a word (or any noise at all) with an expectation is mediated primarily by the hippocampus and just works by associating previous responses with a kind of 'mock up' of that response repeated (but not carried out). So if a human says "pass me the book", my motor circuits will be fired for all the muscle movements required to pass the book, by that expression, before I actually decide to pass the book. The last action on my part is sort of 'releasing the flood gates' of the potential to act that has already built up. Or in object recognition, it might be firing all the clusters related to some action on that object (naming it, using it, emotional response to it), connected, via the hippocampus, to the output of the various auditory cortices (depending on if it were a word or another sound type).

'Experience', as in the thing we later report as our conscious experience of the event, is constructed later out of those firings (plus a whole load of random firing which are happening all the time, and a load of extraneous firings to do with unrelated environmental variables). The task of the experience narrative is (partly) to sift out all that extraneous junk so that the memory of the event is clearer - next time's firing set is nice and neat, useful and clean of noise. It doesn't really play a role in the actual word-object linking in real time. — Isaac

Cats also have a hippocampus, but tmk show no evidence of being able to associate words to concepts. So the presence of a hippocampus in a brain does not of itself provide a satisfactory explanation for why the average dog comes to associate certain terms with certain concepts. I say this with no quibble over the hippocampus’s importance to cognition - such as in word recognition, when a word's usage has become habitual, in at least humans.

At pith, though, was whether or not language - and hence narration - is requisite for concept formation. Expressed differently: Do concepts occur first followed by word association? Or are words, and thereby narration, required for concept formation?

Here's my underlying reason for the question:

If concepts can occur prior to word recognition - since concepts are abstractions abstracted from a plurality of particulars - the implications are that experiences can then take place prior to, or else in the complete absence of, narration. This conclusion would be entailed by the process of forming concepts from particular, narration-devoid experiences.

But if words are required for concept formation, I so far fail to see an adequate explanation of how dogs - which are by nature languageless - form concepts to begin with. To this could be added the question of why dogs can and cats can’t - since both, for example, have a hippocampus and are constantly exposed to words while around humans.

To emphasize: At base in the aforementioned question regarding concept formation is whether experience can occur in the absence of narration - this in lesser animals which are by nature languageless and, as would then seem to follow, in humans as well.

In the first, the narrative is from the perspective of recounting, which necessarily presupposes a system has done its job, — Mww

I could see that, granting that it’s as metaphorically narrational as a bee’s dance is linguistic - both having nothing to do with word usage.

….both having nothing to do with word usage. — javra

Crap. Guess I wasn’t clear enough. I intended in ’s comment that the speaker is the narrator recounting some experience, but for ’s rebuttal, I intended that the system is the narrator accounting for any experience. Thus, the first mandates the use of words, the second not only does not, but cannot, use words at all.

Sorry about that….

“…there is singularity but it does not collect itself, it "consists" in not collecting itself. Perhaps you will say that there is a way of not collecting oneself that is consistently recognizable, what used to be called a `style' “(Derrida 1995, p.354) — Joshs

How can the singularity become ungraspable, but recognizable?
“We are before this text that, saying nothing definite and presenting no identifiable content beyond the story itself, except for an endless diffèrance, till death, nonetheless remains strictly intangible. Intangible: by this I understand inaccessible to contact, impregnable, and ultimately ungraspable, incomprehensible—but also that which we have not the right to touch. This is an "original" text, as we say; it is forbidden or illicit to change or disfigure it, or to touch its form. Despite the non-identity in itself of its sense or destination, despite its essential unreadability, its "form" presents and performs itself as a kind of personal identity entitled to absolute respect “(Derrida, ‘Acts of literature’, p 211) Yes, we are startled and bonded by the ‘ultimately inaccessible, ungraspable, and incomprehensible’ event. But are we staying still before 'the text', endlessly, ‘till death’ anticipating the ineffable termination and admittance? Can this endless differance, unlimited suspense and postponement become an impetus to renewing our experience?

My sense of my own identity is relentlessly, but subtly, formed and reformed through direct and indirect social engagement, — Joshs

Here, you consider a social engagement as an immanent cause of ‘my sense of my own identity’. How is that compatible with Derrida’s placing ‘what absolutely is not’ at the center of our temporality and the constitution of our being? “It is because of differance that the movement of signification is related to something other than itself, what absolutely is not… must separate the present from what it is not in order for the present to be itself, but this interval that constitutes it as present must, by the same token, divide the present in and of itself; thereby also along with the present, everything that is thought, every being, and singular substance or the subject”. (Derrida, ‘Margins of philosophy’, p 13). Shouldn’t we substitute Derrida’s interval of an absolute absence, for example, with Simondon’s notion of the transindividual? “The transindividual is the unity of two relations, a relation interior to the individual (defining its psyche) and a relation exterior to the individual (defining the collective), a relation of relations” (Combes, ‘Simondon and the Philosophy of the Transindividual’, p 26). The interval, an abyss of what absolutely is not could be transformed into the relation between the two heterogenetic orders. It could become possible to avoid the epistemological aporia while saving Derrida’s exposure to the unendurable loss of meaning.

since concepts are abstractions abstracted from a plurality of particulars - the implications are that experiences can then take place prior to, or else in the complete absence of, narration. This conclusion would be entailed by the process of forming concepts from particular, narration-devoid experiences. — javra

I don't follow how you're making the jump from the particulars constituting concepts to 'experiences'. Why must the particulars be experiences?

Say there's concept a dog has which makes it more likely to, say, fetch its lead when it hears the word "walk", and say this concept is constituted of several linked concepts, I don't see why any of those linked concepts need be an experience.

What I'm suggesting is that all experience is post hoc. Everything we'd call an experience is made up after the mental events which that experience is attempting to explain.

So your dog's constituent neural activity is not an experience. If your dog has any experiences at all they'll be like ours, constructed after the event - possibly, with dogs, even using socially available narratives... Who knows I don't think it's out of the question.

So the fundamental issue here is not really the use of words. It is for humans, but maybe less so for dogs. It's about what kind of cognitive activity constitutes an 'experience' as opposed to simply some neurons firing.

I think the evidence is pretty strong now that there's no one-to-one relationship between neural events and our 'experience', so we must explain that epistemic cut somehow.

the above might clarify your otherwise felicitous distinction. It is indeed the system doing the narration, but not of experiences so much as of mental events. Does that make sense?