Also you misunderstand phenomenology, since it doesn't deal with the ineffable, but with what can be told about personal experience..The observations, analyses and syntheses of phenomenologists do not purport to be empirically testable (obviously) but offer you something only if they speak to your own experience — Janus

Phenomenology as it was begun by Husserl was about finding our way past preconceptions to the formal conditions of possibility of experience, to what is irreducible, indubitable and universal in experience and thus is communicable and intersubjective . For instance, time consciousness, the fact that every moment of experience is a synthesis of retention, presentation and protention. This means that the now is a blend of expectation and memory. Phenomenology can’t capture any content that is immediately present. To retain a momentary content is to reflect back on it, thereby changing what it was. No particular content repeats its sense identically.

This means that what we experience in its uniqueness is ineffable to us as well as to others, in the sense that it doesnt hold still long enough for us to repeat its essence, duplicate it, record it , reflect on it, tell ourselves about it. This does’t mean that we can’t communicate our experiences to ourselves , only that in doing so what we are communicating is something similar rather than identical to what we experience in it’s never-to-be repeated immediacy. So self-reflection is as imperfect as communication with others. The phenomenological method reveals to us the structural patterns that intentional synthesis consists in, such as the constitution of higher level phenomena like persisting spatial objects out of the changing flow of perceptual data.

In short, the content-in-itself of the contingent , relative, ineffable ‘now’ is not useful or meaningful via its role in the formal , communicable aspects of experience .

what we are communicating is something similar rather than identical to what we experience in it’s never-to-be repeated immediacy. — Joshs

Maybe, but an impression or memory of a phenomenal experience is still similar in kind to that experience. As opposed to when we attempt to translate that experience into words, where its phenomenal character is destroyed. A being who hears those words can only attempt to reconstruct it if that variety of phenomenal experience is already familiar to them. Words can refer, but words themselves are not a medium that can convey phenomenal experience. And so I still maintain that phenomenal experience is ineffable.

Phenomenology as it was begun by Husserl was about finding our way past preconceptions to the formal conditions of possibility of experience, to what is irreducible, indubitable and universal in experience and thus is communicable and intersubjective . — Joshs

I agree with this, but not everyone would. I need to reflect on my experience in a certain way to find "the formal conditions of the possibility of experience" (Kant in this respect was arguably the first major phenomenologist). There are those of a logical postivist bent who will say that such a priori knowledge is not really knowledge ( because untestable) or is not really a priori (Quine).

For instance, time consciousness, the fact that every moment of experience is a synthesis of retention, presentation and protention. This means that the now is a blend of expectation and memory. Phenomenology can’t capture any content that is immediately present. To retain a momentary content is to reflect back on it, thereby changing what it was. No particular content repeats its sense identically. — Joshs

Yes, what we are reflecting on in such investigations are generalities. It seems to me that all our knowledge consists in generalties, and particularity is thus ineffable, because it is really subverted by generalization. Generalizing is the attempt to capture what is common and unchanging in particularity, so that we can bring it to conscious determination and communicate about it. Which seems to be pretty much the same as what you say here:

This means that what we experience in its uniqueness is ineffable to us as well as to others, in the sense that it doesnt hold still long enough for us to repeat its essence, duplicate it, record it , reflect on it, tell ourselves about it. This does’t mean that we can’t communicate our experiences to ourselves , only that in doing so what we are communicating is something similar rather than identical to what we experience in it’s never-to-be repeated immediacy. — Joshs

The phenomenological method reveals to us the structural patterns that intentional synthesis consists in, such as the constitution of higher level phenomena like persisting spatial objects out of the changing flow of perceptual data. — Joshs

Yes, we experience only fleeting images, impressions and sensations, and out of that common experience we construct the collective representation which is the world of stable objects and entities.

an impression or memory of a phenomenal experience is still similar in kind to that experience. As opposed to when we attempt to translate that experience into words, where its phenomenal character is destroyed. — hypericin

Keep in mind that the original, immediate experience of a ‘now’ content , being itself an intentional synthesis of past , present and future, is not the exposure to an external objective datum , but a sense conditioned by my expectations. The moment we refer back to that original experience through reflection, we are intending a new sense, thus changing the phenomenal character of the original phenomenon. In this respect, reflection is like relating to another through language.

“... the immediate "I" performs an accomplishment through which it constitutes a variational mode of itself as existing (in the mode of having passed). Starting from this we can trace how the immediate "I," flowingly-statically present, constitutes itself in self-temporalization as enduring through “Its" pasts. In the same way, the immediate "I," already enduring in the enduring primordial sphere, constitutes in itself another as other...Thus, in me, "another I" achieves ontic validity as co-present [kompräsent] with his own ways of being self-evidently verified, which are obviously quite different from those of a "sense" perception.”(Crisis, p.185)

@Banno I've been meaning to read Wittgenstein for the past 4 bloody years. Can you link me to his books (available for download)?

In this respect, reflection is like relating to another through language. — Joshs

Even if it is true that reflection "changes the phenomenal character of the original phenomenon", both sides of the comparison, immediate experience vs. reflection, are phenomenal. Whereas, when phenomenal experiences are verbalized, an attempt is being made to transform them into something that is not phenomenal whatsoever, leaving aside whatever phenomenal medium is being used to convey the language.

I've been meaning to read Wittgenstein for the past 4 bloody years. Can you link me to his books — Agent Smith

Since the end result seems to be some variety of philosophical addlement I personally wouldn't bother.

Since the end result seems to be some variety of philosophical addlement I personally wouldn't bother. — hypericin

Ok! Still wanna read. Banno, are you reading this?

Google "Philosophical Investigations PDF" :chin:

Or look for Kenny's Wittgenstein instead.

I'd say that narrative is not logical -- or, at least, narrative brings with it its own logic, if we wish to logicize a narrative. Something along the lines of "with each sentence time progresses", or whatever -- but then there's always a storyteller out there who notices that people are logicizing stories, then changes it up to thwart the logic. — Moliere

I mean something much more basic: there is nothing that is free of logic, simply because to have an idea at all, fact or fiction, is to have this within the framework of logic. For example, "Oh, my offense is rank" is, among other things, an affirmation, a logical category.

I can get along well enough with phenomenology-talk that I don't feel the need to clear it with another theory. One starts somewhere, after all. My doubts aren't based in a notion of what philosophy ought to be, as much as based in particular experiences of people claiming to have so-called special knowledge.

And sometimes phenomenology is very grounded and attending to our experience, and sometimes it goes off the deep-end and claims that everything is consciousness correlated to the special ideas the phenomenologist can see.

It's the latter that I think goes off into what Kant called noumenal speculation. Maybe to the speaker, they can see something special. That's what mystical experience is about -- seeing something others cannot, and purportedly attempting to translate what cannot be translated for people who do not have that mystical experience. And, religiously, perhaps that flies -- but I've yet to make sense of such talk in a rational manner, at least -- though I remain interested. — Moliere

As to Kant's noumena, what I think is clear now is that Kant's grudging affirmation of something on the radical objective and subjective side of things that is the invisible ground of all things. I say, there is nothing invisible about it. Noumena is a concept that has its grounding right before one's beholding the world. What we "see" before us is a radical indeterminacy in everything. This is how phenomenology takes, not drawing lines, but making a setting for discussion to embrace this indeterminacy. Husserl has his intuitional affirmations, Heidegger has interpretational foundation, which is really, a foundation if indeterminacy. I lean Husserl, not because we do not live in an interpretative ontological unity of thought and actuality, but because the epoche takes one to a reductive process where the world "appears" in a startling new way. And it is here that propositionally vague but meaningful words that have little use in everydayness truly rise to the occasion: words like profundity, sublimity, holiness, divinity, the absolute.

This takes philosophy beyond its proper category. I say, philosophy's proper category IS the onto-theo-philosophical examination of our "thrownness" into a world, and the center of this inquiry is ethics/value, in an metaethical and metavalue exposition.

Why value? Because all propositional pursuits of philosophy reduce to this, I argue. Truth is indeterminate, and to the extent talk about value is "language" talk, it, too is indeterminate. But value talk possesses the, what I will call, direct (a risky term) "indexical" pursuit of value, so called.

Tough to talk about, but then, religion has never understood itself, so mired in bad metaphysics.

I think that's a warning sign, for myself at least, that I've fallen into a transcendental argument -- it's valid, but it's also easy to construct and usually based on an unstated feeling (what, Kant acting on unstated feelings?! He's a being of pure reason! ;) ) — Moliere

But put Kant's dividing line aside. The transcendental issue is embedded in phenomena. Put bluntly, one does not "divide" eternity. The reason we have to talk this way is because we face it in everything we can conceive. The question really goes to why we have warrant to give any priority to this, and this is a value issue. Analytics (like Davidson) assume truth is not value (he says this), but Dewey is closer to being right: everything that transpires before us IS value; the separation of cognitive functions occurs in analysis only. The philosophical problem has never been about rightly determined propositions, but rightly determined propositions in the disclosure higher affectivity.

Only Buddhists, Hindus and various mystics talk like this.

When I feel I don't know what the negation of some philosophy is, I'm focusing on some universal idea -- a totality, one might say, that encompasses, explains, relates, feels, connects, guides, and soothes. Something like God, but in a phenomenological world -- so God can be replaced by Man, ala the Enlightenment, or something else, but it's all religion at the end of the day. Magical beliefs, big-M Meaning, the mystical -- these things are more important because they make life worth living. — Moliere

I think the is very important nail's head hit very hard by this. But God is not God, nor are daseins, daseins in the context of this thinking. Not is the sun the sun, and so on. Such things fall away. I see concepts not as labels tagged on to objects, but as powerful dynamic world makers, Heidegger's temporal dynamic is an extraordinary exposition. I think of it like this: what is left after past-present-future is divested of its existence making process? the argument is, this cannot be done, hence the complaint against Husserl, who thought "pure" phenomena could "appear" in the epoche. For pure phenomena to make sense at all, one would have to "turn off" the world itself.

I disagree, of course. One can turn off the world and be in the world at once. Not unlike what Kierkegaard has in mind with his Knight of Faith. At heart, K was an irrationalist, which is why he fought so against Hegel. One did not have to read Kant or Hegel or even Kierkegaard to make this extraordinary movement toward affirmation, a yielding to God, in theological terms. Where I disagree is in the irrationality, where terrible mistakes allow for distortion, dogma, and moronic authoritative thinking to undermine the whole enterprise. Philosophy's "job" is to steer through such things.

And so the transcendental argument springs forth -- how does anyone really do/experience/say/be anything at all? Phenomenology is the only possible way we live our actual lives, and clearly we do live actual lives, therefore phenomenology is the way. To bolster the first point we must first list all the possible alternative ways, and defeat them until Phenomenology is the one that stands -- then say, abductively, "See if you can come up with a better explanation"

The problem being -- it all relies upon what sounds good to the speaker. It's just as easy to set up the exact same argument with materialism. It follows the same pattern (and is akin to the moral arguments for God's existence): — Moliere

The answer to this lies in the epoche, I claim. It is a method, first, not a thesis, first. The most radical form of this is found in meditation, when seriously undertaken, which really amounts to expunging the contents of the world.

When you talk about living our actual lives, you suggest phenomenology has practical wisdom. I don't see how philosophy has this dimension apart from the way it can be applied, and what comes to mind is Heidegger, who was briefly a Nazi, and this does seem to follow from his ideas of history, freedom and self realization.

On materialism: it is not as if this concept has no meaning, even though it has no properties, as all vacuous metaphysics goes. It carries, however, an unmistakable connotative meaning, which is due to its being lifted from contexts found in natural science, and thus, when this term is used, it implicitly endorses scientific settings for philosophical thinking. What I mean is, when we think of material substance, we think the underlying substratum of all physical objects, and so we are directed toward objects, their physical analyses, their localities in space and time, their causal relations with other objects, etc. Phenomenology takes a term like material substance and registers its significance in "predicatively defined regions" of the naturalistic attitude. It is a term, like all other terms, and its meaning is context dependent, and so it is NOT a foundational term for ontology. Husserl thought philosophy had its true calling in the foundational intuitions of the world. Heidegger did not share this. I am in between.

How does anyone really do/experience/say/be anything at all? Materialism is the only possible way to explain our lives, and we clearly do live ("some of us, anyway" scolding the eliminative materialists), therefore materialism is the explanation at least until something better comes along, but all these other explanations are bad for these reasons. — Moliere

Well, phenomenology has come along. Materialism is not a philosophical concept, as I see it, because philosophical questions go deeper than science can conceive. One must make subjectivity the center of inquiry. Ask, what is it one is confronting in the world, in actuality? It is the what appears before us. To take materialism as a philosophical idea is pure empty metaphysics based on an extension of what science thinks about regarding what is NOT material at all.

What is the ethical dimension to Husserl's thought? — Moliere

I should say, I am don't defend Husserl, Heidegger or anyone else in full. Husserl and empathetic relations is interesting, but it is not a metaethical account (though I would have to read more on it). My take on the discoveries of ethics via the epoche issues from reading of Michel Henri and others, but I was first struck by G E Moore's non natural property of ethical matters. He was talking about the Good and the Bad. I won't go into this unless you want to, but it is a big issue, basic to my thinking: Suffering stands as its own presupposition, that is, the badness of suffering is not bad because there is a discursive exposition of it being so. AS SUCH, suffering is a stand alone feature of our world. It is an absolute. Nothing more axiomatic than this. Arguable, granted; but in the end, not really to be gainsaid.

Whose translation is this? — Mww

Is there an issue?

:up: Gracias.

Sure, they are not determinate things, else they could be talked about, but they are not nothing. You seem to be developing the nasty habit of picking up the fruit which has already fallen; not a habit conducive to fruitful conversation. — Janus

Wittgenstein PI 304 "And you again and again reach the conclusion that the sensation itself is a nothing.- Not at all. It is not a something, but not a nothing either. The conclusion was only that a nothing would serve just as well as a something about which nothing could be said. We have only rejected the grammar which tries to force itself on us here."

and PI 293 "The thing is the box has no place in the language game at all; not even as a something for the box might even be empty.-No, one can divide through by the thing in the box; it cancels out, whatever it is. That is to say: if we construe the grammar of the expression of sensation on the model of 'object and designation' the object drops out of consideration as irrelevant." (The box in this case is some inner world of sensations.)

No, you're still misunderstanding. I am telling you that there are things I cannot tell you, not trying, per impossibile, to tell you what I cannot tell you. And of course the things I cannot tell you cannot be part of the conversation, but the fact that there are things I cannot tell you can be, and should be an important part of the human conversation. — Janus

Yes, the important part of the conversation is the language game that gives rise to such conversation, the language and actions that take place in the stream of life.

Yes, we experience only fleeting images, impressions and sensations, and out of that common experience we construct the collective representation which is the world of stable objects and entities. — Janus

I believe you have this backwards. First, we come to learn a language from our follow human beings in world of stable objects and entities. Afterwards, we begins to learn more sophisticated concepts like images, impression and sensation against this stable background.

Allow me to try a different tack which may clarify the issue. Let's say I agree with you and @Banno that nothing is ineffable. Firstly, let's define "ineffable":

Dictionary.com defines "ineffable" as: "incapable of being expressed or described in words."

This is the sense with which I have been using the term.

Now, I agree that nothing is ineffable, including knowledge. However, I disagree with you and Banno in your shared claim that a list of instructions cannot give one knowledge-how, no matter how detailed the list. I find this to be inconsistent with the view that nothing is ineffable.

I will attempt to demonstrate this in response to your post.

Here attempting to lay out more against the case that know-how is ineffable (at least in some absolute sense, though I've granted the relative sense when someone hasn't learned something yet, but could) — Moliere

It's unclear to me what you are granting "in the relative sense" here. If someone hasn't learned something yet, then they don't have the knowledge (or know how) yet. Are you granting that their lack of knowledge is ineffable? They can't say what they don't know?? That's a bit trivial...

Still going along my materialist thought line . . . — Moliere

What is effable (or what is effed) is that which is said or written down in a public language - in the world - among a community of language speakers. What could be more materialist than that? I have no qualms with that.

If that be the case, then statements, all unto themselves, are never knowledge. — Moliere

"Statements, all unto themselves" is a strawman that you have attributed to those opposing your view. I don't recall anybody saying that nobody would be using the list of instructions. My criticism has been wholly in response to Banno's claim that an exhaustive list of instructions will not give one knowledge of how to ride a bike. I don't believe that Banno meant or implied that such a list of instructions is supposed to exist independently of any language users. I had assumed that an expert on bike riding would write them, and someone who didn't know how to ride would read them and attempt to learn how to ride using them.

In the toy model of knowledge they roughly correspond to "beliefs" — Moliere

That's why I have tried to restrict the preceding discussion to knowledge. It's mainly because Banno's original claim was about knowledge, viz. that a list of instructions cannot give one know-how. But it's also because knowledge has a close relation to beliefs, statements and therefore to effability; to what can be stated. For some reason, you and Banno tend to shy away from talking about knowledge when it comes to effability.

...but given that we don't need to believe the statements to know-how that's not quite right (because knowledge is in the body, rather than a set of true statements/propositions... — Moliere

You are supposed to be making a case for effability, or against ineffability. A set of statements/propositions - i.e. explicit knowledge - is something that is clearly effable (or effed). Unspoken knowledge which may or may not be "in the body" is not clearly effable.

So why doesn't this count as ineffable, if we aren't even tied to the words really, but just use them to enable? — Moliere

As you appear to recognise, you are making a case for the opposition, for ineffability, instead of making a case that all knowledge is effable.

I think it's because these things can be taught to others. I can refer to my knowledge, and show it to someone, and they can learn. So, at least, there's a connection of some kind between us in the transfer of knowledge. — Moliere

You appear to imply that some knowledge can only be shown and can't be said. The part of the instruction which needs to be shown is unspoken; uneffed. I believe this was Wittgenstein's distinction between showing and saying in the Tractatus. If it is necessary to show it to someone, because it can't be said, then it is ineffable.

And while transferring knowledge to others, at least, I cannot do it without words. — Moliere

Saying that you "cannot do it without words" is vastly different from saying that you can or can't do it entirely with words; which is the point I've been disputing with Banno, and which is relevant to establishing whether any knowledge is ineffable.

Even in teaching someone to ride a bike, which is primarily a know-how with scant words, I'd still use words to transfer that knowledge to someone else. I could, as an exercise, attempt to teach without any words whatsoever, but it'd be much harder than if I'd just communicate while showing. — Moliere

I don't see how this supports the argument that no knowledge is ineffable. You say here that you might be able to provide instruction without language, but I don't see how that helps since effability requires language.

Now, if riding a bike were ineffable, I couldn't teach it to someone... — Moliere

This is why I'd prefer to restrict it to knowledge. I don't understand what "riding a bike is ineffable" means. However, I clearly understand what "knowing how to ride a bike is ineffable" means. It means that the knowledge of how to ride a bike cannot be put entirely into words or into verbal/written instructions, such that another person can learn how to ride a bike from those instructions alone. And that's precisely Banno's claim - he is claiming that knowing how to ride a bike is ineffable.

And, given that knowledge is in the body it's also relative to the body, so for some it is ineffable. — Moliere

Yep. Why do you say it isn't?

...for most creatures like myself it's only ineffable prior to the doing. — Moliere

Are you saying that the knowledge of how to ride a bike is ineffable prior to learning how to ride a bike? Or - assuming that you have already learned how to ride a bike - are you saying that you don't know how to ride a bike while you aren't riding it?

The former makes some sense, I suppose, since you don't have the knowledge in order to verbalise it. The latter, however, makes no sense at all - you have learned how but you don't know how.

Is riding a bike really the same as mystical or metaphysical claims? — Moliere

Meh, the specific argument I'm making in relation to knowledge doesn't require any mystical or metaphysical claims. My argument is against Banno's contradiction, not for either prong of that contradiction (i.e. neither for ineffability nor for a completely effed list of instructions).

Until this point, I realise that I have not addressed the issue of actually riding the bike. The exhaustive list of instructions purportedly contains all the knowledge of how to ride the bike but does not provide one with the knowledge of how to ride. That extra piece of knowledge can only come from the actual riding of the bike. But wait. Does that mean that the list of instructions does not contain all the knowledge of how to ride? Is there some knowledge missing from the instructions that one gains from riding the bike? That can't be right because Banno said that riding the bike neither adds nor is knowledge. I wish one of you could tell me what knowledge is missing from the list of instructions or why one cannot learn how to ride from the list of instructions alone. Perhaps the part that you are unable to tell me is ineffable?

It's unclear to me what you are granting "in the relative sense" here. If someone hasn't learned something yet, then they don't have the knowledge (or know how) yet. Are you granting that their lack of knowledge is ineffable? They can't say what they don't know?? That's a bit trivial... — Luke

I was saying they can't say what they don't know. And, yes, I agree that this is trivial. But I was trying to mark what seemed to me to be a mundane case of ineffability from what might be an interesting case of the ineffable, like what mystics claim.

What is effable (or what is effed) is that which is said or written down in a public language - in the world - among a community of language speakers. What could be more materialist than that? I have no qualms with that. — Luke

I agree. I'm on the same page here.

My criticism has been wholly in response to Banno's claim that an exhaustive list of instructions will not give one knowledge of how to ride a bike. — Luke

Ahhh, OK. This is clicking something in place for me.

I believe an exhaustive list of instructions will not give one knowledge of how to ride a bike, because I'd say that we do have to actually do something in order to learn. I have read my piano books, but practicing them everyday is how I learn (in a more perfect me, at least)

But I also want to say that this doesn't make it ineffable -- where you say an exhaustive list will give someone knowledge, I'm hesitant because I'm thinking about how practice seems to be needed too.

"incapable of being expressed or described in words."

Step 1: put your left foot on the left pedal
Step 2: swing your right foot over the triangular seat. if it feels awkward, adjust the parts to fit yourself.
Step 3: get in "the stance": one foot on a pedal in the furthest downward position, and the other on the ground, both hands firmly grasping the handle bars. you're about to take off!
Step 4: push forward with your foot on the ground and try to get your balance by gliding. you can keep your foot close to the ground while figuring out how to balance yourself. take your time, you'll get it eventually
Step 5: once you are comfortable balancing with your foot off the ground, put your pusher foot onto the other pedal.
Step 6: push the pedals around in a circle to speed up, stand still to glide, and go in reverse to engage the brake to slow down.


Working my way through an example-- anyone who didn't know how to ride a bike, supposing this was a good list of instructions, would upon reading it now know how to ride a bike. Hence, it is effable, by your account. Right?

And, yeah, I wanted to work through an example with the dictionary.com definition -- I don't see anything ineffable by that definition in the above list of instructions. I think, given the dictionary. com definition, I've been the one using a strange notion of "ineffable" -- or at least one which has some philosopher's ideas in mind, rather than just the dictionary definition.

So I agree to your point here:

"Statements, all unto themselves" is a strawman that you have attributed to those opposing your view. — Luke

That's why I have tried to restrict the preceding discussion to knowledge. It's mainly because Banno's original claim was about knowledge, viz. that a list of instructions cannot give one know-how. But it's also because knowledge has a close relation to beliefs, statements and therefore to effability; to what can be stated. For some reason, you and Banno tend to shy away from talking about knowledge when it comes to effability. — Luke

I'll attempt to be direct here.

I don't think I have a handle on knowledge such that I could, from my knowledge of knowledge, make demonstrative cases. If anything, I'd be tempted to say that defining knowledge is ineffable, but I'd rather say that this is an exercise of judgment, and that such definitions don't really define knowledge as much as try to pin down how it is we judge sometimes.

Which, as you note --

As you appear to recognise, you are making a case for the opposition, for ineffability, instead of making a case that all knowledge is effable. — Luke

So what I think I'm doing is attempting to resolve "hard cases" -- and suggest that the hard cases of ineffability, to use an old philosophical distinction, are apparently ineffable, but actually effable.

Heh, it's not easy to do, though.

You appear to imply that some knowledge can only be shown and can't be said. The part of the instruction which needs to be shown is unspoken; uneffed. I believe this was Wittgenstein's distinction between showing and saying in the Tractatus. If it is necessary to show it to someone, because it can't be said, then it is ineffable. — Luke

Right! I think what I want to say, though, is that after being shown, what was ineffable is no longer ineffable. And, if that be the case, it suggests that we could continue this process of turning what is, right now, ineffable to us -- into something which is no longer ineffable. The process of knowledge-production is like this. At one point we don't know, and no one knows, and then we produce knowledge, and some people know. So I think what I want to say is that after we know what had been ineffable is no longer. Before learning how to ride a bike it was apparently ineffable, but after learning it I find it was actually effable.

If that be the case, how can we tell which of the entities are ineffable, even after we come to know them, and which aren't? What standard of judgment could we suggest? Wouldn't we just have to know everything in order to be able to say, definitively, this is what can be said while gesturing to what can't?

I guess I'm seeing "the ineffable" as something of an organic category, in that case, and also why I'm invoking the exercise of judgment. There's no rule we can state which tells us, for any case someone might present, this is ineffable. We have to make a judgment call based upon much more limited capacities, though (or, at least, recognize that judgment can't make that call).

Which suggests a case for the ineffable, right? But then there's the case of coming-to-know, and knowledge-production, and that we can learn.

So I think I want to use "the ineffable" in a specialized way to mean that which cannot even be learned by creatures like us. Immortality is the case I like to use because it's clear-cut -- in order for creatures like us to learn if they are immortal, we have to die. If we die, we're no longer a creature. Therefore, a creature like us will never learn if we are immortal. It's ineffable.

I want to say this specialized case is different from the case of learning how to ride a bike. How to ride a bike, in the dictionary . com definition way, is ineffable. But immortality, in this specialized sense, is ineffable in principle (again, for creatures like us).

Until this point, I realise that I have not addressed the issue of actually riding the bike. The exhaustive list of instructions purportedly contains all the knowledge of how to ride the bike but does not provide one with the knowledge of how to ride. That extra piece of knowledge can only come from the actual riding of the bike. But wait. Does that mean that the list of instructions does not contain all the knowledge of how to ride? Is there some knowledge missing from the instructions that one gains from riding the bike? That can't be right because Banno said that riding the bike neither adds nor is knowledge. I wish one of you could tell me what knowledge is missing from the list of instructions or why one cannot learn how to ride from the list of instructions alone. Perhaps the part that you are unable to tell me is ineffable? — Luke

It might be. I hope I've gone some way to addressing these questions in the above.

I mean something much more basic: there is nothing that is free of logic, simply because to have an idea at all, fact or fiction, is to have this within the framework of logic. For example, "Oh, my offense is rank" is, among other things, an affirmation, a logical category. — Constance

What about the not-ideas?

Facts and fictions are composed of words, I'd say -- language, rather than logic. Rather than focus the copula and the categories I'd say that language is more powerful than these logics, that language is what makes logic comprehensible in the first place rather than the other way around.

But, it'd be a transcendental argument. It'd sound good to me.

This takes philosophy beyond its proper category. I say, philosophy's proper category IS the onto-theo-philosophical examination of our "thrownness" into a world, and the center of this inquiry is ethics/value, in an metaethical and metavalue exposition. — Constance

I look at philosophy anarchically. Each philosopher defines for themself what is important, and ranks things in accord with their philosophy. Philosophy is one of the most unlimited disciplines. Only institutions, I'd say, have notions of what is proper to philosophy. And that is important, because philosophy is actually difficult, and it's difficult to teach, and to learn we need standards put before us. But eventually, we are simply free.

So, from that vantage, I see onto-theo-philosophical examination of our "thrownness" into a world as very interesting. Each philosopher defines their own project, really, and that's the whole point. It's why it's mind-expanding.

But I don't see it as being any more proper than any other way of doing philosophy.

Why value? Because all propositional pursuits of philosophy reduce to this, I argue. Truth is indeterminate, and to the extent talk about value is "language" talk, it, too is indeterminate. But value talk possesses the, what I will call, direct (a risky term) "indexical" pursuit of value, so called.

Tough to talk about, but then, religion has never understood itself, so mired in bad metaphysics. — Constance

I agree that religion has never understood itself, and I find that pursuit to understanding religion very interesting. It's pretty clearly connected to how human beings function in the world, given how it's literally part of every culture ever and secular thoughts are relatively new, in the scheme of all written history.

I'm not sure I'd say value-talk is less determinate than truth-talk, though. I'd say that value-talk ends in convictions, rather than in values. And convictions, given that people have different ones, lead to conflict, but for all that, we still cling to them.

But put Kant's dividing line aside. The transcendental issue is embedded in phenomena. Put bluntly, one does not "divide" eternity. The reason we have to talk this way is because we face it in everything we can conceive. The question really goes to why we have warrant to give any priority to this, and this is a value issue. — Constance

Where you say "we have warrant to give any priority to this", what does "this" mean? Like, what would take the place of the word in the sentence?

Analytics (like Davidson) assume truth is not value (he says this), but Dewey is closer to being right: everything that transpires before us IS value; the separation of cognitive functions occurs in analysis only. The philosophical problem has never been about rightly determined propositions, but rightly determined propositions in the disclosure higher affectivity.

Only Buddhists, Hindus and various mystics talk like this.

I think I addressed this above in speaking about philosophy anarchically.

I think the is very important nail's head hit very hard by this. But God is not God, nor are daseins, daseins in the context of this thinking. Not is the sun the sun, and so on. Such things fall away. I see concepts not as labels tagged on to objects, but as powerful dynamic world makers, Heidegger's temporal dynamic is an extraordinary exposition. I think of it like this: what is left after past-present-future is divested of its existence making process? the argument is, this cannot be done, hence the complaint against Husserl, who thought "pure" phenomena could "appear" in the epoche. For pure phenomena to make sense at all, one would have to "turn off" the world itself.

I disagree, of course. One can turn off the world and be in the world at once. Not unlike what Kierkegaard has in mind with his Knight of Faith. At heart, K was an irrationalist, which is why he fought so against Hegel. One did not have to read Kant or Hegel or even Kierkegaard to make this extraordinary movement toward affirmation, a yielding to God, in theological terms. Where I disagree is in the irrationality, where terrible mistakes allow for distortion, dogma, and moronic authoritative thinking to undermine the whole enterprise. Philosophy's "job" is to steer through such things. — Constance

Cool. I agree that adhering to rationality is a distinctive feature that makes philosophy, philosophy -- but like all creative endeavors, the masters can break and bend the rules. (ala Keirkegaard)

Though by masters I mean those who are good at the craft of philosophy, which I think that it is. Just as one gets good at painting, so one gets good at philosophy and, eventually, can master it as a discipline. And the masters make their mark on a discipline by creatively iterating previous rules, or inventing them wholesale.

I think Being and time is interesting, but I mostly read him as a requirement than because he speaks to me.

The answer to this lies in the epoche, I claim. It is a method, first, not a thesis, first. The most radical form of this is found in meditation, when seriously undertaken, which really amounts to expunging the contents of the world. — Constance

As a method, though, the results differ. Yes? So I'd say the answer may be there, but we'll find different ones -- one of which may be materialism, the other which may be phenomenology. I'd say these are convictions.

When you talk about living our actual lives, you suggest phenomenology has practical wisdom. I don't see how philosophy has this dimension apart from the way it can be applied, and what comes to mind is Heidegger, who was briefly a Nazi, and this does seem to follow from his ideas of history, freedom and self realization. — Constance

I'd say Levinas is a good example of phenomenology with practical wisdom. I'm sure you're really surprised. ;)

And Heidegger is a good example of how phenomenology isn't always good, in the ethical sense, even while it seems to invoke these ideas. At least if you get along with the argument that his phenomenology is linked to his political life. I think that it does, but I don't think ignoring it is right. If anything, if his philosophy has even a clue to what causes a person to turn to fascism, it's all the more valuable to study.

But I think philosophy, generally, can contribute to practical wisdom since it all bottoms out in judgment, for me. And the more we are exposed to the better judges we will be.

On materialism: it is not as if this concept has no meaning, even though it has no properties, as all vacuous metaphysics goes. It carries, however, an unmistakable connotative meaning, which is due to its being lifted from contexts found in natural science, and thus, when this term is used, it implicitly endorses scientific settings for philosophical thinking. What I mean is, when we think of material substance, we think the underlying substratum of all physical objects, and so we are directed toward objects, their physical analyses, their localities in space and time, their causal relations with other objects, etc. Phenomenology takes a term like material substance and registers its significance in "predicatively defined regions" of the naturalistic attitude. It is a term, like all other terms, and its meaning is context dependent, and so it is NOT a foundational term for ontology. Husserl thought philosophy had its true calling in the foundational intuitions of the world. Heidegger did not share this. I am in between. — Constance

I'm going to quote Epicurus' Letter to Herodotus:

Next, one must see, by making reference to our sense-perceptions and feelings (for these will provide the most secure conviction), that the soul is a body made up of fine parts distributed throughout the entire aggregate, and most closely resembling breath with a certain admixture of heat, in one way resembling breath and in another resembling heat. There is also the third part which is much finer than even these components because of this is more closely in harmony with the rest of the aggregate too. All of this is revealed by the abilities of the soul, its feelings, its ease of motion, its thought processes, and the things whose removal leads to our death

One argument I've come across that I find interesting is that the ancient Greeks are a great resource for phenomenology. That's why Aristotle, for instance, was so convincing and held close for so long. He paid attention to his experiences and wrote them in the most direct way that he could. But, at a minimum, they are interesting specifically because they do not think like us. They provide a contrast point to what we might mean by terms like "materialism" or "the soul".

I like Epicurus' account because he doesn't deny mental phenomena, or even the existence of Gods, but rather grounds it in an account of nature. Not nature as in our modern, scientific project, but just nature like the study of nature -- a kind of naturalism, and one which is closer to a phenomenology of "the things themselves" without knowing what we know.

Not that it's in depth, anymore. Just fragments of a different way of looking at the material world -- the categories are constructed of these "fine particles", as is the soul -- and the soul is this union of body and mind which interpenetrates, rather than something immortal.

It's in this sense that I mean a naturalism which is philosophical, rather than scientific.

I think this goes some way to addressing this:

Well, phenomenology has come along. Materialism is not a philosophical concept, as I see it, because philosophical questions go deeper than science can conceive. One must make subjectivity the center of inquiry. Ask, what is it one is confronting in the world, in actuality? It is the what appears before us. To take materialism as a philosophical idea is pure empty metaphysics based on an extension of what science thinks about regarding what is NOT material at all. — Constance

I don't think that there's really a question of deeper than science or shallower than philosophy. What is "depth", other than the desire for meaning in life?

When I ask, what is it I am confronting in the world, in actuality, I see a natural world. And meaning in it is had by living happy lives with others for the time you get. There's not a grand answer to it all -- we simply are born without purpose, and die without reason. Everything we care about is just that -- what we care about. In actuality, I think there are no deep mysteries.

But, then, there are the mystics who claim elsewise. And I don't think they are lying either. So it is curious.

I should say, I am don't defend Husserl, Heidegger or anyone else in full. Husserl and empathetic relations is interesting, but it is not a metaethical account (though I would have to read more on it). My take on the discoveries of ethics via the epoche issues from reading of Michel Henri and others, but I was first struck by G E Moore's non natural property of ethical matters. He was talking about the Good and the Bad. I won't go into this unless you want to, but it is a big issue, basic to my thinking: Suffering stands as its own presupposition, that is, the badness of suffering is not bad because there is a discursive exposition of it being so. AS SUCH, suffering is a stand alone feature of our world. It is an absolute. Nothing more axiomatic than this. Arguable, granted; but in the end, not really to be gainsaid. — Constance

Cool. Then the question is moot, after all.

Moore's concept of ethics is super interesting to me. I'd say he's right, and that there are no non-natural properties, and therefore, there are no true moral statements. Goodness is what we care about, and it is our human responsibilty to act on it, or to not -- we get to choose. If we care about it, we can pursue it. But if we stop caring about it, then we can choose not to. Hence, the natural world, especially as we gain more power over it, is our responsibility exactly as it is. But it's still natural for all that. And it's a collective responsibility, not an individual one.

Is there an issue? — Constance

Yes. Your translator’s reading doesn’t match any of the four of mine. It’s a technicality for sure, but in a system built on them, such ambiguity is either confusing or destructive.

Science eventually solved this speculative impossibility by proving any change in the form of energy means some will be lost — Mww

Try making this statement on the dualism and conservation of energy thread. They will act as if you are a troll, and make fun of you like you are a fool.

What this whole discussion misses is the interplay between the words and the world; — Banno

It's called the mind, and it's not the fault of the other participants in the thread that you refuse to recognize its existence, and therefore ignore everything written about it. You represent "the beetle" as if it is non-existent, and therefore we ought not talk about it, even though it is a named thing, and you talk about it. If the beetle were non-existent, implying that we ought not talk about it, this would be because talking about it would be deception. That's the point with the possibility that there might not be a beetle, deception is possible. So the beetle (what's in the box) only ceases to be relevant in the act of deception. In honest discussion, the thing in the box called "the beetle" maintains relevance because there id no such deception. And here, you talk about "the beetle" as if it is not relevant, implying its non-existence, then you are the one engaged in deception.


That's about it, "knowledge" in that specialized epistemological sense, JTB, which is expressed in words, is just a special type of "knowledge" in the more general sense, which is still a form of know-how. Even Banno is accepting of this principle, but Banno has a very muddled idea of what know-how is, having been misled by a poor reading of Wittgenstein.

So why doesn't this count as ineffable, if we aren't even tied to the words really, but just use them to enable? I think it's because these things can be taught to others. I can refer to my knowledge, and show it to someone, and they can learn. So, at least, there's a connection of some kind between us in the transfer of knowledge. And while transferring knowledge to others, at least, I cannot do it without words. — Moliere

I agree that the key to understanding the nature of knowledge is in understanding the process of learning. There is much misunderstanding here, and the reading group of Wittgenstein's "Philosophical Investigations" which we held a few years back, seems to have permanently stalled out when we approached the critical part of this book, where he analyzed this process of learning.

Your passage here is rife with error. First, it is a misrepresentation to say that there is a "transfer of knowledge" between people. We have two possible representations of "knowledge", one as a communal entity, and the other as the property of individuals. The former, knowledge as a communal entity, rules out the possibility of a 'knowledge transfer', knowledge is a communal property which we share in. Therefore there would be no 'transfer'. However, "knowledge" as 'know-how' is inconsistent with "knowledge" as a shared entity, because know-how is unique and proper to the individual.

This is where Banno goes astray, trying to make "knowledge" as know-how consistent with "knowledge" as a shared, communal entity. I believe that a true reading of Wittgenstein demonstrates that Wittgenstein actually places knowledge into the individual, as a property of the individual, which we call "know-how".

From here, we have to account for the process of teaching, which you call "the transfer of knowledge". There is no transfer here, as the uniqueness of each person's know-how demonstrates. Each person individually goes through a process of learning, and "construction" of one's own capacities called "know-how". Therefore we must represent the learning process as something other than a transfer of knowledge. It is instead, better described as a process of acquiring the capacities through observation along with trial and error. This is what Wittgenstein alluded to when he spoke of the possibility of learning the rules to a game simply through observing the game, without the rules being stated in words. And, we see this type of behaviour in all sorts of animals, how the young learn from the adults through observation, without the use of words.

↪Moliere Again, well said. That is in agreement with my extended argument to hypericin and @Luke — Banno

See above.

There is a contradiction in Janus claiming both that what "cannot be taught" yet one can "make the acquisition of such know-how more likely", but perhaps it's much the same point as I just attributed to Wittgenstein. Janus would then be saying much the same thing, just less clearly. — Banno

There is no such relationship between what can and cannot be taught, and what is ineffable. That is because teaching and learning extends far beyond the use of words, as animals demonstrate to us, and using words is just a form of showing, as knowing-that is a form of knowing-how. So we can teach and learn things by showing instead of speaking, but since such activity is prior to the use of words, and words come later, it in no way implies that we cannot put words to that teaching process. To invert the logical priority here, to propose that learning with words is prior to showing, is to propose principles not consistent with reality (false). And, if there are things which currently can be shown, but not described in words, this does not imply that they will forever be this way, in the future.

dualism and conservation of energy thread — Metaphysician Undercover

I perused the thread, read some of your links. I wasn’t aware of the refutation of conservation laws, as the links stated.

As far as I’m concerned, energy loss in one exchange is a simple concept, but energy conservation in system-wide exchanges is complicated.

it is a misrepresentation to say that there is a "transfer of knowledge" between people. — Metaphysician Undercover

Conventionally speaking, it does seem that way. Technically, however, abstract systems internally complete and independent from each other, cannot exchange their individual means or ends.

I agree that the key to understanding the nature of knowledge is in understanding the process of learning. There is much misunderstanding here, and the reading group of Wittgenstein's "Philosophical Investigations" which we held a few years back, seems to have permanently stalled out when we approached the critical part of this book, where he analyzed this process of learning.

Your passage here is rife with error. First, it is a misrepresentation to say that there is a "transfer of knowledge" between people. We have two possible representations of "knowledge", one as a communal entity, and the other as the property of individuals. The former, knowledge as a communal entity, rules out the possibility of a 'knowledge transfer', knowledge is a communal property which we share in. Therefore there would be no 'transfer'. However, "knowledge" as 'know-how' is inconsistent with "knowledge" as a shared entity, because know-how is unique and proper to the individual. — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't think that's true, because we can know-how, collectively. That's basically the whole process of production -- to analyse a process, divide up the labor and specialize to form a social organism. We know how to do many things together. Individuals must play their part, but they must play their part in an ensemble, and we do so very frequently.

Further, the process of learning, at least in the industrial world, is transferred -- that's what socialization is all about. And, for creatures like us, given how long it takes for our offspring to become productive, and how much education it takes to make us productive in our societies, we intentionally transfer knowledge to the young all the time. It is taught. There is a teacher, and a student, and the students are given rules to follow -- including the social organization of the school itself, teaching children to behave in an industrial society.

The individual, as far as I can tell, is something which people are also taught. They're taught to believe they are unique, that they have something special about them, and then we form identities to confirm that and differentiate ourselves.

--- basically I think knowledge-production is wholly social, and learning is institutional. There's a sense to our individuality, but we are not epistemic Robinson Crusoe's of either a scientific or phenomenological bent. We need one another to learn things.

time consciousness, the fact that every moment of experience is a synthesis of retention, presentation and protention. This means that the now is a blend of expectation and memory. Phenomenology can’t capture any content that is immediately present. To retain a momentary content is to reflect back on it, thereby changing what it was. No particular content repeats its sense identically.

This means that what we experience in its uniqueness is ineffable to us as well as to others, in the sense that it doesnt hold still long enough for us to repeat its essence, duplicate it, record it , reflect on it, tell ourselves about it. This does’t mean that we can’t communicate our experiences to ourselves , only that in doing so what we are communicating is something similar rather than identical to what we experience in it’s never-to-be repeated immediacy. So self-reflection is as imperfect as communication with others. The phenomenological method reveals to us the structural patterns that intentional synthesis consists in, such as the constitution of higher level phenomena like persisting spatial objects out of the changing flow of perceptual data.

In short, the content-in-itself of the contingent , relative, ineffable ‘now’ is not useful or meaningful via its role in the formal , communicable aspects of experience . — Joshs

Your account of the ineffable refers to the formal phenomenological structures and our conscious experience. It is a correct but incomplete presentation of our time consciousness and discursive performances. Thus, it lacks ontological heterogeneity and uniformizes diverse regions of being. In our social and cognitive environment, we instantaneously take part in various intensive apparatuses whose principles of organization and processes evade our control and recognition. Varela defines a machine as "the set of inter-relations of its components independent of the components themselves." 'A higher level of phenomena' is constituted by a relational machinic complex, effectuated before and alongside intentionality, discursive, and subject-object relations.

In our social and cognitive environment, we instantaneously take part in various intensive apparatuses whose principles of organization and processes evade our control and recognition. Varela defines a machine as "the set of inter-relations of its components independent of the components themselves." 'A higher level of phenomena' is constituted by a relational machinic complex, effectuated before and alongside intentionality, discursive, and subject-object relations. — Number2018

John Protevi writes: “Deleuze lets us go “above” and “below” the subject; “above” to politics, and “below” to biology. We live at the crossroads: singular subjects arise from a “crystallization” or “resolution” of a distributed network of natural processes and social practices.”

Of course , it’s not just Deleuze who lets us go
above and below the subject. Embodied, enactive approaches in cognitive psychology have similar aims.
Shaun Gallagher says “…intersubjective (social and cultural) factors already have an effect on our perception and understanding of the world, even in the immediacy of our embodied and instrumental copings with the environment.”

The problem I have with these attempts to naturalize phenomenology is that they lose what I see as the most radical aspect of Deleuze and Merleau-Ponty:

Deleuze provides a reciprocally causal account that has many features in common with those of the embodied community. But within his formal account any difference of degree, any quantitative repetition, any numeration qualitatively changes the sense of what counts at every quantitative repetition.

Deleuze's(1994) concept of intensive magnitude succeeds in deconstructing the quantity-quality binary by establishing a ‘ground' (as metamorphosis) in difference that is neither qualitative nor quantitative, and thus a basis of number that does not measure.

“Let us take seriously the famous question: is there a difference in kind, or of degree, between differences of degree and differences in kind? Neither.” “In its own nature, difference is no more qualitative than extensive”

“The number is no longer a universal concept measuring elements according to their emplacement in a given dimension, but has itself become a multiplicity that varies according to the dimensions considered (the primacy of the domain over a complex of numbers attached to that domain). We do not have units (unites) of measure, only multiplicities or varieties of measurement.”(Deleuze 1987, p.8)

“If there exists a primitive "geometry" (a proto-geometry), it is an operative geometry in which figures are never separable from the affectations befalling them, the lines of their becoming, the segments of their segmentation: there is "roundness," but no circle, "alignments," but no straight line, etc.” (ibid, p.212)

“A multiplicity has neither subject nor object, only determinations, magnitudes, and dimensions that cannot increase in number without the multiplicity changing in nature (the laws of combination therefore increase in number as the multiplicity grows). ... An assemblage is precisely this increase in the dimensions of a multiplicity that necessarily changes in nature as it expands its connections.” (Ibid, p.8)

What about the not-ideas?

Facts and fictions are composed of words, I'd say -- language, rather than logic. Rather than focus the copula and the categories I'd say that language is more powerful than these logics, that language is what makes logic comprehensible in the first place rather than the other way around. — Moliere

Interesting to note that 'logic' is itself a particle of language. Interesting because when drawing distinction between words and logic, one has to be in words, so to speak, to do this. But you do say this, don't you: "language is what makes logic comprehensible in the first place rather than the other way around." It reveals the primacy of hermeneutics in laying out the bottom line for knowledge claims. See how Heidegger affirms this in his Origin of the Work of Art as he discusses how the art work and the artist define each other:

Thus we are compelled to follow the circle. This is neither a makeshift nor a defect.
To enter upon this path is the strength of thought, to continue on it is the feast of
thought, assuming that thinking is a craft. Not only is the main step from work to art a
circle like the step from art to work, but every separate step that we attempt circles in
this circle.

You can see how he relishes the "game" of the combinatory power of language, and how in this is the cutting edge of the freedom to reconceive oneself.

For me there is the inevitable encounter with the world apart from language, which is conceived IN language. Take causality: I can't imagine my cup moving by itself. This is an intuitive impossibility, but it is not as if by assigning a term and then more terms to inscribe in our understanding a principle, makes it entirely understood. There is an openness inherent in the concept, as there is in all concepts. The world in language is taken AS what we interpret it to be. So this language taking up the world AS (Derrida said language does not stand for things, but "stands in" for things. No doubt a gift from Heidegger) does not contain it, and this applies to all we can think, even hermeneutics.

The trouble with all meaning being bound to contextual interpretation is that it makes for a concept of freedom and openness that is closed in its delimitations to the historical possibilities of a language.

That is where my thoughts about indeterminacy run. One has to be made free from language, even though language leads and controls the conversation in acknowledging just this. Fascinating to behold the world unhinged from the categories of ordinary thought. Mystical.

I look at philosophy anarchically. Each philosopher defines for themself what is important, and ranks things in accord with their philosophy. Philosophy is one of the most unlimited disciplines. Only institutions, I'd say, have notions of what is proper to philosophy. And that is important, because philosophy is actually difficult, and it's difficult to teach, and to learn we need standards put before us. But eventually, we are simply free.

So, from that vantage, I see onto-theo-philosophical examination of our "thrownness" into a world as very interesting. Each philosopher defines their own project, really, and that's the whole point. It's why it's mind-expanding.

But I don't see it as being any more proper than any other way of doing philosophy. — Moliere

But this movement, call it (Kierkegaard called it that) from first order ordinariness to acknowledging one's throwness is universal, belongs to the structure of conscious awareness itself. Granted, from this, one can go different ways. I find myself doing serious reading in the so called French theological turn, with Jean luc Marion, Michel Henry, Emanuel Levinas and others examining Husserl's reduction and epoche and its radical disclosure once we realize that that great Kantian division in being is all wrong: the appearance IS being.

Husserl, then Heidegger then all the post Heideggerian thinking (that I certainly do not keep up with; you know, I have another life) leads some extraordinary revelations that are not contained within discussions of ordinary language, but are found outside of these, in the world; and then back to discussion.

But with analytic thinking, extraordinary revelations are simply off the table, which is why it has been in crisis for a long time now. It has run the course of everyday language possibilities. I object to materialism because this term carries considerable baggage in its exit from scientific contexts to metaphysics. Heideggerian/post Heideggerian thought pulls emphatically away from this.

I agree that religion has never understood itself, and I find that pursuit to understanding religion very interesting. It's pretty clearly connected to how human beings function in the world, given how it's literally part of every culture ever and secular thoughts are relatively new, in the scheme of all written history.

I'm not sure I'd say value-talk is less determinate than truth-talk, though. I'd say that value-talk ends in convictions, rather than in values. And convictions, given that people have different ones, lead to conflict, but for all that, we still cling to them. — Moliere

Quite right, I think. Value talk is, after all, talk, and talk has this historical dimension that creates the possibilities for meanings. But value, I argue, tells of an extraordinary feature of the world, that when said carries a weight of a wholly other order of existence, which is the ethical/aesthetic good and bad. Surely we are when speaking thusly, taking the world AS value, ethics, etc. But this is not like being appeared to redly, say, a vacuous sensuous intuition. It is about the depth, the intensity of meaning of feeling and thought (which are one prior to our abstractions of analyses). Or, if causality, say, is a taking up the world AS causality, the principle, the expository account, there is in this the intuitive impossibility of a thing's movement being its own cause and this intuition exceeds the language that would explain it. But, as with the color red qua color, it is a trivial acknowledgement in itself (of course, the quantitative dynamics of causality in physics is very useful, but that is not the point. In itself, it is trivial). Value, on the other hand is a stand alone meaning that is not trivial at all, evidenced by the our thrills and sufferings.

I don't think that there's really a question of deeper than science or shallower than philosophy. What is "depth", other than the desire for meaning in life? — Moliere

I don't know anyone who says science has no value. It would be absurd. But the depth of science is limited to the reach of its paradigms, and science's paradigms are empirical/theoretical. Phenomenology steps away from this in a dramatic philosophical move that derives its themes from a second order perspective.

When I ask, what is it I am confronting in the world, in actuality, I see a natural world. And meaning in it is had by living happy lives with others for the time you get. There's not a grand answer to it all -- we simply are born without purpose, and die without reason. Everything we care about is just that -- what we care about. In actuality, I think there are no deep mysteries. — Moliere

But ask Husserl about this. When you confront the world phenomenologically, you are NOT seeing a natural world at all. You are witnessing phenomena. Have you read his Cartesian Meditations? Levinas' dissertation was on Husserl. His phenomenology is, by anglo americam standards, just off the charts. Almost no one wants to think like this, because it is downright spooky. I say, sorry; the world IS spooky, and ignoring this is just sticking your head in the sand. All that analytic philosophy holds dear is indeterminate, and they don't see this because analytic philosophers tend not to be aesthetically endowed.

Moore's concept of ethics is super interesting to me. I'd say he's right, and that there are no non-natural properties, and therefore, there are no true moral statements. Goodness is what we care about, and it is our human responsibilty to act on it, or to not -- we get to choose. If we care about it, we can pursue it. But if we stop caring about it, then we can choose not to. Hence, the natural world, especially as we gain more power over it, is our responsibility exactly as it is. But it's still natural for all that. And it's a collective responsibility, not an individual one. — Moliere

I would never disagree that goodness is what we care about. I would ask that the question go one step further: what is it t care about something? What is the anatomy of a care, for it has parts: I care about my cat being free of fleas. Now, analyze this phenomenologically you find an agency of caring, me, and that which is the object of my caring, my cat, but what do I care about specifically? I am looking for the essential feature: just as Kant looked for the essential feature of a rational judgment, and pulled away from particulars to generalize, so I am looking for the essential ethical feature, the kind of thing that, were it absent, the ethicality would vanish as well. What I care about is my cat's suffering (as well as mine having to deal with fleas around the house). What makes this a care all is the value, the measure of pain and pleasure and joy and suffering and everything in between, that is in the balance, at risk, whatever.

It is a transcendental argument, just like Kant's, for it serves as an index to transcendence. Where Kant's CPR was an index to pure reason, Here I postulate the idea of pure value, adding quickly that I by no means think there is anything such as a pure anything. This kind of thinking only serves to underscore a feature of an unknowable primordial unity.

Yes. Your translator’s reading doesn’t match any of the four of mine. It’s a technicality for sure, but in a system built on them, such ambiguity is either confusing or destructive. — Mww

Destructive or confusing in what way?

I wish to cross-reference. If I can’t do that, because I can’t get what I need for it, I’ll stick with what I know. Destructive because, as far as I know, that was not what he said.

I wish to cross-reference. If I can’t do that, because I can’t get what I need for it, I’ll stick with what I know. Destructive because, as far as I know, that was not what he said. — Mww

It is what he said.

but the problem here is that such a method becomes a beetle in a box. — Banno

You think like this because you likely think like Quine and his ilk think, that scientific models of what things are and how to talk about them are models for philosophical thinking. One has to think, if you will, out of the box.

I mean something much more basic: there is nothing that is free of logic, simply because to have an idea at all, fact or fiction, is to have this within the framework of logic. For example, "Oh, my offense is rank" is, among other things, an affirmation, a logical category. — Constance

I’m wondering if you are familiar with the ways in which Husserl and Heidegger, respectively, burrowed within the grammar of formal logic to expose it as a derived abstraction of more fundamental constituting performances ? For instance, are you aware of how Husserl, in Formal and Transcendenral Logic, took Frege and Russell’s starting point in the propositional
copula and traced it back to a developmental sequence of constituting intentions?

“ “Since Aristotle, it has been held as certain that the basic schema of judgment is the copulative judgment, which is reducible to the basic form S is P. Every judgment having another composition, e.g., the form of a verbal proposition, can, according to this interpretation, be transformed without alteration of its logical sense into the form of the copulative bond; for example, “The man walks” is logically equivalent to “The man is walking”.

And Heidegger derives S is P from the hermeneutic ‘as’ structure, showing where we went astray in following Aristotle.

“If the phenomenon of the "as" is covered over and above all veiled in its existential origin from the
“ hermeneutical "as," Aristotle's phenomenological point of departure disintegrates to the analysis of logos in an external "theory of judgment," according to which judgment is a binding or separating of representations and concepts. Thus binding and separating can be further formalized to mean a "relating." Logistically, the judgment is dissolved into a system of "coordinations," it becomes the object of "calculation," but not a theme of ontological interpretation.""If the kind of being of the terms of the relation is understood without differentiation as merely objectively present things, then the relation shows itself as the objectively present conformity of two objectively present things.”

I suspect that your search for a primordial ground for caring and value is linked to the way you distinguish logic and value. Examining how Husserl and Heidegger deconstruct formal logic may clarify things.

Ok then.