Your argument applies to any kinesthetic skill: who would claim to know how to play the guitar after reading "How To Play the Guitar", even if the last instruction were: "Now, go play the guitar!"
The problem is that even when you have the skill, you don't know how you do it, you just do it. Or rather, you don't know how to verbalize it. — hypericin

Yeah, I'd agree with that. Except that it's not my argument, it's @Banno's. He's the one who asserted that an exhaustive list of instructions won't give one the knowledge of how to ride a bike. The trouble is, he also says that no knowledge is gained from riding a bike. One can't know how to ride only from the written instructions and yet riding a bike adds no knowledge. It therefore makes you wonder how anyone knows how to ride a bike at all. However, the fact that people do know how to ride a bike shows that we don't need a completed list of instructions. Despite the insufficiency of the instructions, and the zero knowledge gained from riding, people somehow magically know how to ride.

The difficulty is that, despite making knowledge claims, Banno then refuses to talk about knowledge. He will only talk about performance/demonstration:

Here's a complete list of what you need to do in order to ride a bike:

Ride the bike. — Banno

And then he pretends that I'm somehow at fault for talking about knowledge instead of demonstration. He forgets that his original claim was about knowing how to ride a bike, not about "what you need to do in order to ride a bike".

He has a talent! — hypericin

Yep. Moreover, he seems to think that dodging the argument, or telling us to "eff off", is his argument.

Ooo look.

who would claim to know how to play the guitar after reading "How To Play the Guitar", — hypericin

The problem is that even when you have the skill, you don't know how you do it, you just do it. — hypericin

Hypericin gets it.

Except that it's not my argument, it's Banno's. — Luke

Indeed. :wink:

Indeed. :wink: — Banno

Yes indeed! You are arguing FOR ineffable knowledge. On the other hand, you claim nothing is ineffable. That's the contradiction.

Or, suppose we had a list of the instructions for riding a bike, to whatever detail we desire. Would we then know how to ride a bike? Well, no. — Banno

constructed from words and the concepts they define. — Isaac


Sure sounds like:

3. (if necessary) - abstraction of 'red', 'ball' and 'threw' from that experience (2) according to the social rules around identifying those components — Isaac — hypericin

Yep.

I have immediately understood the image from perception will not correspond to any image whatsoever I already have, insofar as otherwise, it wouldn’t have been unfamiliar in the first place. — Mww

But it's not really about correspondence with an image you already have because it's the same spelling no matter what font it's written in. It's simply that when building the parts of the image (book, page writing) you don't know how the writing should look because you don't know how to spell it. You can't make an accurate prediction.

No, I wouldn’t admit doing any of that. Those are not the things with which I am unfamiliar. I know them so I need not think about them. Peripherals make no impression on me when I’m presented with something I don’t know. — Mww

This is interesting. Topic for another thread though perhaps...

The recollected image will remain unspelt, yes. Or, which is the same thing, the initially perceived image in sensation and the recalled image in mind will not correspond to each other. But again, not because I’m constructing it as I go, but because I cannot construct it at all. — Mww

But you must have been able to construct it to some extent, otherwise you wouldn't have two images to compare?

I wouldn’t cease recalling the word at that point, although I might if I have no further interest, but rather, assuming there is an interest, I would continue by then focusing on its components. If the object of the operation is attaining the word, I have no choice but to recall the letters which comprise it, and furthermore, to recall the proper arrangement of them. The fewer components comprising the word, then, by their consequently becoming the focus, wouldn’t be blurry, but still does not address their relative arrangement with each other. — Mww

That's it. That's basically how perception works neurologically too. You focus increasingly on salient parts of the external sate which you guess are going to give you the best information to predict the rest. The interesting part of this (for me anyway) is that those guesses, far from being random, follow almost exactly the guesses that would be made by someone carrying out Bayesian model selection.

Thanks for the interesting experiment. — Mww

Thanks for an interesting answer.

I find it correct to conceptualize the issue in the following manner: certain neural networks form connections to other neural networks - while, concurrently, certain aspects of awareness which supervene on the first grouping of neural networks will form connections to other aspects of awareness that supervene on the second grouping of neural networks.

All this in the context of first-person awareness associating words to concepts. — javra

I think this seems similar to...

If I seem to be having an experience then I am having an experience: I can only see absurdity in trying to deny that; in saying "I don't really have an experience". — Janus

But I don't see how either are more than...

The epoché is not a falsifiable notion, so it could not be in conflict with any empirical evidence. The epoché is more like a prayer. — Banno

---

If I claim "I seem to have a memory of my childhood house" it doesn't then follow that I do, in fact, have a memory of my childhood house. Someone might take me there and show me how the details are wrong. I have a memory of something, but it's not my childhood house. I cannot claim both the memory and my current perception to be of the same thing, there's a contradiction there. That which it seems to me is happening in my mental processes, turns out to be wrong, not on empirical grounds, but on grounds of contradiction. I cannot be right both about my description of my memory and my description of my perception.

So this notion that if it 'seems to you' your mental processing follows some method, then it does (and simply must therefore merely supervene on any neural activity underscoring it), seems flawed from the outset. A modicum of lived experience tells us that we're frequently wrong in our assessments of what's going on in our mental processes and it doesn't require neuroscience, nor empirical investigation of any sort.

The mere recognition that many of our assessments are contradictory should be sufficient to tell us in no uncertain terms that our ability to determine our mental processes by introspection is rubbish. Far from resisting evidence from neuroscience as to what those processes might be, we should be fully expecting them to contradict what we thought was the case, knowing that our ability to divine our mental systems by introspection is crap.

Insofar as the contribution from empirical sciences to mental events like 'experiences' it's simply that the brain doesn't seem to have the component systems in the right order to reflect what we might say is going on. Having established that our introspected assessment of what's going on is frequently flawed anyway, I can't think of a single reason why anyone would be so resistant to updating their model... until something better comes along, of course.

But I don't see how either are more than...

The epoché is not a falsifiable notion, so it could not be in conflict with any empirical evidence. The epoché is more like a prayer. — Banno — Isaac

The epoché is simply the bracketing of the question about the reality of the external world, so as to focus on the phenomena as they seem to present themselves to us, so Banno's comment seems oddly inapt.

. Having established that our introspected assessment of what's going on is frequently flawed anyway, — Isaac

Our assessment of what seems to be going on is not flawed, and what, outside the context of neural activity, which we simply don't experience, could "what is really going on" even mean?

Banno's comment seems oddly inapt. — Janus

It may be regarded as a radicalization of the methodological constraint, already to be found in Logical Investigations, that any phenomenological description proper is to be performed from a first person point of view, so as to ensure that the respective item is described exactly as is experienced, or intended, by the subject. — SEP

How will you show that my private first person experience is false?

How will you show that your private first person experience is false?

Think that makes my point. It's not falsifiable, and hence not empirical.

Hence

The epoche isnt in conflict with the results of neuroscience — Joshs

is right. Phenomenology is not science. It's more like prayer.

Are we conflating ineffability with something else?

Did you have something in mind?

The OP lists a few possible uses for the word, but we now seem to be dealing with the supposed ineffability of private first person experiences - what ever they are.

Yep — Isaac

And yet.. 3 comes after 2.

The epoché is simply the bracketing of the question about the reality of the external world, so as to focus on the phenomena as they seem to present themselves to us, so Banno's comment seems oddly inapt. — Janus

Is it even possible to achieve epoche? It sounds tricky and mystical.

Here's Dan Zahavi on epoche:

From: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11007-019-09463-y

By performing the epoché, by first bracketing or suspending our tacit belief in the absolute existence of the world, by no longer simply taking reality as the unquestioned point of departure, we start to pay attention to how and as what worldly objects are given to us. But, in doing so, in analysing how and as what any object presents itself to us, we also come to discover the intentional acts and experiential structures in relation to which any appearing object must necessarily be understood. We come to realize that reality is always revealed and examined from some perspective or another, and we thereby also come to appreciate our own subjective accomplishments and contributions and the intentionality that is at play in order for worldly objects to appear in the way they do and with the validity and meaning that they have.

When Husserl talks of the transcendental reduction, what he has in mind is precisely the systematic analysis of this correlation between subjectivity and world. This is an analysis that leads from the natural sphere back to (re-ducere) its transcendental foundation (Husserl 1960, 21). Both the epoché and the reduction can consequently be seen as elements in a philosophical reflection, the purpose of which is to liberate us from our natural dogmatism and make us aware of our own constitutive accomplishment, make us realize to what extent consciousness, reason, truth, and being are essentially interlinked (Husserl 1982, 340). In this way, we will eventually, according to Husserl, be able to accomplish our main, if not sole, concern as phenomenologists, namely to transform “the universal obviousness of the being of the world—for him [the phenomenologist] the greatest of all enigmas—into something intelligible” (Husserl 1970, 180).

Zahavi argues that phenomenology practised in psychology and the arts, and areas outside of philosophy generally ignore this transcendental expression of phenomenology.

Phenomenology is not science. — Banno

So it seems.

Does it make sense to you? For example how can one do a "systematic analysis of this correlation between subjectivity and world" without words. And if words are included, in what way is the experience "bracketed" from other things?

Your argument is quite clear to me. I feel your frustration reading through the discussion, you might call it "The @Banno Experience".

Perhaps the missing keyword is "practice"? In order to learn to ride a bike, which I think we agree is a kind of knowledge (one "knows" or "doesn't know" how to ride a bike), one has to practice. The knowledge gained from practice is always ineffable knowledge, otherwise you wouldn't have to practice, you could just read.

Which part of this do you disagree with Banno? Or perhaps you could respond with misdirection, mischaracterization, insults, or some more of that clever "irony" of yours?

Yep. Moreover, he seems to think that dodging the argument, or telling us to "eff off", is his argument. — Luke

Here I thought that was his (ungracious, but what can you expect) way of conceding the point.

Those are amongst my questions too. It is enigmatic but not ineffable.

Your argument is quite clear to me. — hypericin

Then why don't you have a go at explaining it to us.
We agree that

who would claim to know how to play the guitar after reading "How To Play the Guitar" — hypericin

and

The problem is that even when you have the skill, you don't know how you do it, you just do it. — hypericin

which as Luke says is my argument, so where to from there?

Did you have something in mind?

The OP lists a few possible uses for the word, but we now seem to be dealing with the supposed ineffability of private first person experiences - what ever they are. — Banno

Does all this have anything to do with Wittgenstein's private language "argument"?

Ineffable means that which can't be put into words and I suspect this is meant to expose a language barrier impossible to break.

Ineffable means that which can't be put into words and I suspect this is meant to expose a language barrier impossible to break. — Agent Smith

Ironically ineffable seems to have fecund interpretations. One obvious and fun one is the notion that there are facts or truths residing in some Platonic realm, say, which are beyond human comprehension and therefore language. Hence the ineffable nature of spiritual truth or enlightenment. So, it's not so much a 'language barrier' as it is ultra-linguistic - apophatic mysticism. The fact that we can't demonstrate this suggest it may be better not to try to talk about it. The mystics might crib Wittgenstein and say, 'Don't talk, do' ( shut up and meditate!).

Is there a phrase "pure experience"? What does it mean?

Anyway, you, I suppose, put it in a way closer to the truth with "ultra-linguistic" - the flaw is not with us but with ....

Mysticism, ex mea sententia, is the low hanging fruit - go for it by all means.

Then why don't you have a go at explaining it to us. — Banno

Suppose Betty, an aspiring guitarist, reads "How to Play the Guitar". She diligently reads and re-reads every word. We agree that Betty does not know how to play the guitar yet. Call her guitar knowledge at this point KG1.

She then practices her instrument 8 hours a day, for 15 years, until she is a master guitarist. Call her knowledge at this point KG2.

At KG1 she does not know how to play the guitar at all:
KG1 ~= 0

The difference between KG1 and KG2 is huge: it is the difference between tyro and master.
KG2 >> KG1

Call it KGI:
KG2 - KG1 = KGI

KGI is the Ineffable part of KG2. Betty could only gain it by practice. Even if she had read every book on playing the guitar, she would still be more or less at KG1. Now, at KG2, she can write her own books. Unfortunately her readers will only thereby attain roughly KG1. All books can really teach is how to practice, not how to play. The bulk of Betty's knowledge, KGI, can only be learned by practice, not by reading, as it cannot be put into words: it is ineffable.

The epoché is simply the bracketing of the question about the reality of the external world, so as to focus on the phenomena as they seem to present themselves to us, so Banno's comment seems oddly inapt. — Janus

But what could possibly constitute such a 'focus'? Things appear to us as they appear to us. If you look harder you don't get to some 'more real' version because you've got no external reference against which to measure this quality.

How things seem to you might be a starting point of an investigation, but one can gain nothing more than other ways things seem to you without bringing in external referents.

Plus...

how can one do a "systematic analysis of this correlation between subjectivity and world" without words. And if words are included, in what way is the experience "bracketed" from other things? — Banno

... seems to cover the same complaint I was raising with 'experience of red'. You don't somehow 'find it in yourself' to have had an 'experience of red' you wouldn't even know what 'experiences' or 'red' were unless you were embedded in an external world of language users and that external world of language use imports all the real-world matter of wavelengths, brains, objects, neurons... You can't bracket them out, but the keep the words they are connected to. The words then become unmoored from anything.

Our assessment of what seems to be going on is not flawed, and what, outside the context of neural activity, which we simply don't experience, could "what is really going on" even mean? — Janus

I've just got through demonstrating how it is, indeed flawed. You've not addressed that argument, just gainsaid it. As to "what is really going on", I refer back to @Mww's (forgive the paraphrasing) "whatever you like so long as you don't contradict yourself".

You don't need to afford empirical science an special place, but simply by accepting it (the evidence of the lab) you have a contradiction to resolve between models. your folk model and the empirical model don't knit together. You could have one or the other, but not both.

And yet.. 3 comes after 2. — hypericin

Yes. I'm not sure where you're going with this. Both 2 and 3 are constructed. The fact the 3 comes after 2 doesn't seem to prevent either from being constructed.

But you must have been able to construct it to some extent, otherwise you wouldn't have two images to compare? — Isaac

Construct to some extent, yes. Two images to compare, no.

The construct to some extend you’re referring to, in the case of perceiving an unfamiliar, is for me a metaphysical phenomenon, which you have posited as scientific “blurry letters”. The senses tell me there is something but is not the place for the telling of what the something is. Phenomena just inform the mind there is about to be something for it to work on. The blurry letters say there is a word for the brain to work on.

In the strictest sense of the word, therein is a construct in the physical system, in that one form of energy in the sensory apparatus is transformed into another kind of energy for transfer along the nerves. So too is there a kind of construct in metaphysical apparatus, in that the matter of the perceived object is arranged in accordance with its given external space. The tail of a dog is placed on the butt end and not the nose end, legs point down….and all that. In the case at hand, that it is a word being perceived is familiar because a succession of letters which are the necessary composition of any word, is part and parcel of the perception as a whole, but the unfamiliarity of the word is not given from this arrangement of these letters, for the simple reason there is as yet no conscious awareness of it as such.

Ever onward. Just as there is no conscious awareness of the information in sensory stimuli traversing the nerves on its way to the brain, there no conscious awareness of phenomena in intuition on its way to understanding. So for the sake of logical consistency it can be said there is a pre-cog construct, but is useless as such to conscious awareness, being necessary, only for the brain, in determining which neural pathway leading to which area of the brain, or similarly, only for metaphysical comprehension, in how the perceived object is to be understood.

So…because I am not consciously aware of the phenomena in my metaphysical system, I do not consider it a construct insofar as I have no knowledge or thought of it at all. In fact, I can say “I” haven’t yet constructed anything. That there is an unconscious part of my metaphysical system that does stuff for which the conscious part is entirely oblivious, is exactly the same as the physical system doing things for the brain with which neural networking has no part.

As the physical system uses electrical energy for its means, the metaphysical system uses phenomena for its means; just as the physical system uses chemical energy for its ends, the metaphysical system uses understanding for its ends. Both in their respective domains are necessary for the other, but neither in their domains can substitute for the other. It follows that the information in nerves is necessary but not sufficient for mental events in the brain, and phenomena are necessary but not sufficient for understanding in conscious awareness.

Now, after progressing from the unconscious nerves/phenomena to the conscious mental event/understanding, the question arises…do I have two images to compare. I had, up to this point, only a indeterminate something, a representation of whatever has affected my senses. As far as the brain is concerned, all there is, is some data, some electrical information that has not been subjected to the area of the brain that is capable of doing something productive with it.

And the separation in domains now becomes apparent. In the scientific system, we don’t know specifically where conscious awareness is born, but in a metaphysical system, conscious awareness is born in understanding, which we call thinking. The phrase we both used, “recalled to mind”, means just to think, to be consciously aware of something I’m supposed to do, in the case at hand, do something with an unfamiliar phenomenon. And what I’m supposed to do, is understand the unfamiliar word. I do that by comparing to what I already understand. In the physical system, the brain must direct the information along certain pathways determinable by the conditions of the information itself. In a metaphysical system, the understanding must conjoin the phenomenon with a conception, determinable by the conditions of the phenomenon itself. In each case a relation is formed: in the brain a mental event occurs; in a metaphysical system, a cognition occurs.

Now comes the time of unfamiliarity, manifesting as the understanding that the letter arrangement does not permit a conception to be conjoined to it. In the brain, the information does not enable a suitable pathway. No sense can be made of the letters, hence the word is uncognizable; no pathway is enabled, no chemical reaction occurs. I have constructed no image relating to the phenomenon just presented, that matches any image already constructed as an image of familiar letter arrangements I can “recall to mind”, which is experience of words I know. No area of the brain is activated, or some area of the brain is activated but it is not suitable to the information. There are extant images to compare by (there do exist energized pathways) but no immediate image to compare with (the information does not meet the criteria of the pathway it’s on), from which follows an empty experience of a word I don’t know (the brain returns its unused energy to whatever its depository for such energy is).

If it is true that two separate and distinct methodologies having such manifest similarities must have a common ground, is sufficient reason to ask what it would be. Here, I must say I don’t know.

Before I get into the substance of what you've replied here, I need to clarify something at the outset. Are you here posting what you conclude must take place (logically, rationally, whatever), or are you describing what you sense takes place (interoception, self-awareness, etc)? In other words, is this the result of the investigation or the data for it? I can't quite make out which and it obviously makes quite a difference in how to understand what you're putting forward.

In so far as the phenomenological epoché is in the first person, it is private, dropping like a beetle. It could not therefore be part of the public narrative. In so far as it is part of the public narrative, it cannot perform the intended task of setting out the experience exactly as experienced. We are embedded in a world that is social and real, and hence not only can one not bracket all one's experiences at once, one cannot bracket one's experiences at all. See Isaac's comments above regarding the conceptualisation of colour involving those parts of the brain that use language... — Banno

Here's the rub; Wittgenstein is an analytic philosopher. Hence there is a contradiction in your account. — Banno

No, not really. Analytic philosophy began WITH Wittgenstein, following Russell. Russell thought Witt was a mystic and they parted ways on this matter of that which should be passed over in silence.

And btw, your response has nothing of the content that was presented to you. Curious. What do you think of the issue at hand regarding Witt and ineffability and Witt's statement about value and ethics, specifically in the Trac5atus, the Lecture on Ethics and in Value and Culture?

Why indeterminate? Unstated, experienced, enacted, perhaps, but not indeterminate. — Banno

Indeterminacy is simply where inquiry takes all matters that may come up. But the approach to understanding this has three, as I understanding it, courses of proceeding. Consider Derrida's deconstruction and Quine's Indeterminacy of translation. The former goes directly to the failure to produce a contextless center for meaningful talk. In order for anything meaningful to be said at all requires context, the "gathering" of regionalized ideas in which a given idea is set, and from which the given idea gets its individualization. There are NO stand alone meanings. A cat is not a cat because there are cats out there that bear their own meaning as cats. A cat is a cat, at the basic level of analysis, only as a "play" of relevancies: and then, what about this very explanatory position itself? Yes; it too is a play of relevancies. Nothing escapes this. Heidegger's existential analysis of time, say, is itself hermeneutically indeterminate: He doesn't think he has found the final answer, only that this is best that can be done in the contextual possibilities of our world. Quine, the second I referred to, was defending the same in his naturalism, but note, he always came back to a naturalistic foundation, and in doing so had to reject the thesis of meanings of terms. He writes,

Within the parochial limits of our own language, we can continue as always to find extensional
talk clearer than intensional. For the indeterminacy between “rabbit,” “rabbit stage,” and the rest
depended only on a correlative indeterminacy of translation of the English apparatus of individuation—the apparatus of pronouns, pluralization, identity, numerals, and so on. No such indeterminacy obtrudes as long as we think of this apparatus as given and fixed. Given this apparatus,
there is no mystery about extension; terms have the same extension when true of the same things.
At the level of radical translation, on the other hand, extension itself goes inscrutable.5
the third is but my thinking the most extraordinary: the indeterminacy of intuitive encounter. (Ontological Relativity, p 32)

You see, Quine, too is destined to admit that at the end of a persistent inquiry, indeterminacy of meaning looms large.

The third, most powerful, for me, is simple and intuitive: Experience the bare exposure to indeterminacy of time, space and Being. This goes directly to the isseu to ineffability. Alas, it is hard to discuss. One has to go there, simply put.

In so far as the phenomenological epoché is in the first person, it is private, dropping like a beetle. It could not therefore be part of the public narrative. In so far as it is part of the public narrative, it cannot perform the intended task of setting out the experience exactly as experienced. We are embedded in a world that is social and real, and hence not only can one not bracket all one's experiences at once, one cannot bracket one's experiences at all. See Isaac's comments above regarding the conceptualisation of colour involving those parts of the brain that use language...

Phenomenology sets itself an impossible task. — Banno

Public narrative? The question here is the public narrative embodied in the subject, the historically constructed individual, the center of institutions embedded in language and culture that we call a self--what happens when this kind of entity examines the foundations of being a human being. We encounter phenomena first. Period. The social and the real are first order terms that begs the further foundational questions.

These gaps in mutual understanding sound like they are almost insurmountable. Are there ways you recommend we manage gaps such as these, or perhaps some essay about this you can direct me to? — Tom Storm

Funny you should mention it. In this essay I summarize the recent history of approaches to blame , anger and ethics in philosophy( free will blame, modernist blame skepticism, postmodern blame, Heideggerian blame) , and offer my alternative to blameful justice:

https://www.academia.edu/87763398/Beyond_Blame_and_Anger_New_Directions_for_Philosophy

https://youtu.be/1ycD55Zp634

My approach is consistent with my reading of psychologist George Kelly:

https://www.academia.edu/44497152/Personal_Construct_Theory_as_Radically_Temporal_Phenomenology_George_Kelly_s_Challenge_to_Embodied_Intersubjectivity

Thanks Joshs, I'll have a read. Appreciated.

….you conclude what must take place…. — Isaac

No, not must. That’s a empirical knowledge claim to which I’m not entitled.

….or what you sense takes place — Isaac

If to sense is to form an opinion, then I admit to that.

investigation or the data — Isaac

Investigation. Of the data in topically restricted books, texts, papers. Conversations.

I’m just philosophizing, from a well-versed platform perhaps, but philosophizing nonetheless.

The fact the 3 comes after 2 doesn't seem to prevent either from being constructed. — Isaac

If 3 comes after 2, how is 2 constructed from 3?

Well, thanks for that - nice try.

So you have KG1, where betty has read all there is to read on guitar playing.

And KG2, where Betty has practiced and can actually play.

And the claim is that the difference between KG1 and KG2 is ineffable.

Yet you have clearly explained that the difference between KG1 and KG2 is that in KG1 Betty cannot play the guitar, while in KG2 she can.

But the difference is that Betty can play the guitar.

You explained exactly what that difference is, you put it in words, and hence it is not ineffable. The difference is that betty can play guitar.

Yes, Betty gained the ability to play guitar by practice, and yes, that ability is not found in guitar manuals, but is demonstrated in the playing.

____________
Going back to the beginning, I was responding to @Frank:

But can one put into words how one rides a bike or play guitar? Tacit knowledge is a candidate for the ineffable. — Banno

Following through with

...suppose we had a list of the instructions for riding a bike, to whatever detail we desire. Would we then know how to ride a bike? Well, no. So what is missing? Just, and only, the riding of the bike. But that's not something it makes sense to add to the list!

And so back to PI §201, the way of working with a set of instructions that is not adding to the list but implementing it.

And if this is right, then there is nothing here that is ineffable. Or if you prefer, what appeared to be the ineffable bit is just the doing, the getting on the bike and riding it. — Banno

The "list of instructions" corresponds to your KG1, the "what is missing" corresponds to your KGI. You have repeated my argument.

The missing part is exactly the riding of the bike or the playing of the guitar. There is a way of showing one can ride a bike or play guitar that is not found in answering questions about bikes or guitars but in the riding and in the playing.

And we have just set that out in words. Again, what appeared to be ineffable is exactly the doing.

As Moli put it:

When I read this it feels like it'd go the same with objects... we cannot say objects, and so they are ineffable. But the reason we can't say objects is that they aren't words, not because we can't talk about them.

Now, that's just how I'm reading this. It seems like you'd agree that we cannot say objects since objects are not words, but we can talk about objects (and hence objects are not ineffable). So what is it about activity that makes it different from objects? Why can't we just note that activity, experience, and words aren't the same, but we can talk about them? — Moliere

________________
I don't expect what I've said here to make a difference to your opinion. So I will grant the following: Being able to play guitar is not sayable in much the same way that chalk is not democracy. There is a difference in kind between chalk and democracy, and a difference in kind between guitar instruction books and playing guitar. Thank you for pointing out this difference. But it was something of which we were already aware.

But the difference is that Betty can play the guitar. — Banno

The difference between KG1 and KG2 is also a difference in knowledge (hence the ‘K’ in KG).

Why is KG2 not included in the instructions in the first place, especially since you say that we can list the instructions “to whatever detail we desire”?

It’s not just that Betty can play guitar; it’s that Betty knows how to play guitar. And you say she does not know how to play guitar from the instructions (KG1) alone.

Something which is known but which cannot be stated is ineffable. — Luke