[FRIAM] Friam Digest, Vol 198, Issue 15

[Nicholas Thompson]

Which raises the question, what is your definition  of "see".  To me,
seeing is building a three dimensional model of the world around you from
your point of view.  So, a blind man sees with his cane.  You see with a
television.  You saw trump tonight on the television.

Before you laugh at me, try to build a different definition of "see".  It's
harder than you might suppose.  Whatever my eyes do, won't do.

Nick

On Thu, Dec 19, 2019 at 9:52 PM Frank Wimberly <wimberly3 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I don't mean to answer for Bruce.  That UV light may cause some response
> from my skin but that does not fall within my definition of "see".   Not
> even close.
>
> Frsnk
>
> -----------------------------------
> Frank Wimberly
>
> My memoir:
> https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly
>
> My scientific publications:
> https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2
>
> Phone (505) 670-9918
>
> On Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 9:14 PM Nicholas Thompson <thompnickson2 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi, Bruce,
>>
>>
>>
>> I finally found this.  Email grief.  Sorry to be so slow in answering.
>>
>>
>>
>> Nick Thompson
>>
>> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>>
>> Clark University
>>
>> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
>>
>> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *Bruce Simon
>> *Sent:* Wednesday, December 11, 2019 1:44 PM
>> *To:* friam at redfish.com
>> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Friam Digest, Vol 198, Issue 15
>>
>>
>>
>> Birds and bees see ultraviolet light but I don't.
>>
>> *[NST===>] Well, your skin sees it, right? If you transduce it down to
>> wavelengths that your eye can respond to, you will see it with your eyes,
>> right?  So all of this hangs on your definition of “see”.  *
>>
>>  Flowers give off UV but I can't have the experience of it.  A
>> spectrophotometer can detect UV and I can see the dial move but that is not
>> the same as experiencing it. *[NST===>] Again, that hangs on a
>> definition of “see”.  *“ Suppose God gave me the ability to see like a
>> bird.  Could I describe to you what the flower looks like (re. UV?).
>>
>> *[NST===>] You mean, I can never experience the world as a bird
>> experiences the world, right?  But, on your account, as I understand it, we
>> don’t have to appeal to the birds and the bees to reach this conclusion:  I
>> can never experience the world as YOU experience it, because each persons
>> experience is ineffably his own.  But isn’t there a strange regress going
>> on here.*
>>
>>
>>
>> *Bruce: I experience that flower.*
>>
>>
>>
>> *Nick: I, too, experience that flower.*
>>
>>
>>
>> *Bruce: But you don’t experience my experience of that flower.*
>>
>>
>>
>> *Nick:  Non-sense.  I am experiencing your experience of that flower as
>> we speak!  Otherwise we could not be speaking of it. *
>>
>> *  you  y  *
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wednesday, December 11, 2019, 12:23:29 PM MST,
>> friam-request at redfish.com <friam-request at redfish.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Send Friam mailing list submissions to
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>>
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>>
>> Today's Topics:
>>
>>   1. Re: [EXT] Re: A pluralistic model of the mind? (u?l? ?)
>>   2. Re: [EXT] Re: A pluralistic model of the mind? (Frank Wimberly)
>>   3. Re: [EXT] Re: A pluralistic model of the mind? (u?l? ?)
>>   4. Re: [EXT] Re: A pluralistic model of the mind?
>>       (thompnickson2 at gmail.com)
>>
>> It seems like you're asking a question with the ???? at the end. But it's
>> unclear to me what the question is.  If the question is:
>>
>> Can a thing-occurance exist/be-real even if any attempt to describe it in
>> any language will be a false description?
>>
>> Phrased that way, it's unclear how anyone could say "No". I enjoy quoting
>> Gödel's interpretation of what von Neumann said [†] to demonstrate one way
>> that could happen:
>>
>> von Neumann: But in the complicated parts of formal logic it is always
>> one order of magnitude harder to tell what an object can do than to produce
>> the object.
>>
>> Gödel: However, what von Neumann perhaps had in mind appears more clearly
>> from the universal Turing machine. There it might be said that the complete
>> description of its behavior is infinite because, in view of the
>> non-existence of a decision procedure predicting its behavior, the complete
>> description could be given only by an enumeration of all instances. Of
>> course this presupposes that only decidable descriptions are considered to
>> be complete descriptions, but this is in line with the finitistic way of
>> thinking. The universal Turing machine, where the ratio of the two
>> complexities is infinity, might then be considered to be a limiting case of
>> other finite mechanisms. This immediately leads to von Neumann's conjecture.
>>
>> By this reasoning, it's relatively easy to see why *any* description will
>> fall short of the thing described, at least in this levels-of-types
>> conception.
>>
>>
>>
>> [†] Or what Burks says Gödel said anyway -- Theory of Self-Reproducing
>> Automata
>>
>> On 12/11/19 1:58 AM, Prof David West wrote:
>> >
>> > Last summer I spoke with God. The effects were profound and obvious to
>> all. Many of the effects, measured with MRI and encephalographic devices,
>> were quantifiable. I spoke of my experience, as best as I could,
>> recognizing that whatever words I used told but part of the story. Other's
>> experience of me changed as well - they uniformly and consistently
>> experience me, not as the fun loving drunken whoring party guy, but only as
>> the pious jackass that was the inevitable and most profound effect of my
>> experience.
>> >
>> > God is therefore real and extant?
>> >
>> > But wait ...
>> >
>> > I did not really speak with God. That word and all the other words, and
>> the framing of the effects, piety replacing ribaldry, came after the fact,
>> a post hoc rationalization/interpretation/articulation of "something." And,
>> of course, the form of all those words and effects is but an artifact of
>> the culture (and maybe the Jungian collective unconscious) within which I
>> was raised.
>> >
>> > There was "An Experience;" but even that label, those two words, is
>> false-to-fact. What "Was" had no bounds, in time or space and, in fact
>> continues (and predated) the implied bounded context inherent in the
>> meaning of 'an experience'. There is an implied relation between the
>> "Experience" and an ego, an "I:" 1) the "Experience" was apart from "I," 2)
>> "I" was part of the "Experience," 3) "I" perceived/sensed the
>> "Experience."  None of these implied relations are accurate or complete, or
>> even differentiable from each other.
>> >
>> > There was a Real, Existing, Thing. "It" was effectual; in that patterns
>> of brain waves and detectable activity in different parts of the brain
>> before and after "It" are measurable and comparable. Behavior and
>> experience — from the "inside" — was altered dramatically, in the sense of
>> the "color," the filtering lens, the 'fit" of interpretations of individual
>> experiences is dramatically altered. Experience — of others on the
>> "outside" —  is altered as well, although often not expressible beyond,
>> "there's something different about you, can't put my finger on it, but ... "
>> >
>> > Not only was the "Thing" effectual, it is, within statistical limits,
>> possible to predict the nature and degree of the effects that ensue from
>> "Thing-Occurrence." Moreover, it is possible to establish an "experimental
>> context" whereby others can "experience" the "Thing" and thereby confirm
>> the prediction of effects.
>> >
>> > "Thing-Occurrence" ---> partially predictable, measurable (sometimes
>> quantifiable) effects ---> "Thing is Real/Existing?
>> >
>> > Despite being, in every way ineffable —  in that no words capture its
>> totality and any words used, in any naturally occurring human language, are
>> false-to-fact.
>> >
>> > ????
>> >
>> > dave west
>> >
>> >
>> > On Wed, Dec 11, 2019, at 6:10 AM, Eric Charles wrote:
>> >> Ok.... I'm going to try to do a better take on the "ineffable" issue.
>> I want to start by admitting that there is some sense in which ANYTHING I
>> want to describe is never fully described by the words I use, in some
>> reasonable use of the word "fully." If I see a turtle, and I tell you that
>> I saw a turtle, I haven't provided you with a full description of exactly
>> what the experience was like. So, I'm willing to admit that... but I'm not
>> convinced there is anything deeper than that about Nick's inability to
>> express his "feelings" to his granddaughter... and with that out of the way
>> I will return to what I think is the broader issue.
>> >>
>> >> Real / existing things have effects. That is what it is to be real /
>> to exist. If someone wants to talk about something that exists but have no
>> effects, they are wandering down an rabbit hole with no bottom, and might
>> as well be talking about noiseless sounds or blue-less blue.
>> >>
>> >> The pragmatic maxim tells us: " Consider what effects... we conceive
>> the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects
>> is the whole of our conception of the object." So anything we conceive of
>> is, in some sense, a cluster of effects, and so everything "real" is _in
>> principle_ conceivable. And to the extent anything can be expressed
>> adequately - whether by words or any other means of expression - concepts
>> can be expressed, and so anything real can be expressed.
>> >>
>> >> However, i'm not sure the effability is really the important part. The
>> bigger question was about epistemology and ontology. But the pragmatic
>> maxim covers that as well. Things that have effects are _in principle_ we
>> may presume there are many, many effects that we don't yet have the means
>> to detect, but anything that has effects could, under some circumstances,
>> be detectable. So the limits of what _is_ are the same as the limits of
>> what can in principle be known. Postulation of things that are existing but
>> which can't, under any circumstances, be known is internally contradictory.
>> >>
>> >> Was that a better reply? It felt more thorough at least...
>>
>> --
>> ☣ uǝlƃ
>>
>>
>> I'm surprised no one has quoted Wittgenstein:
>>
>>
>>
>> Wovon Mann nicht sprechen kann daruber muss Mann schweigen.
>>
>> -----------------------------------
>> Frank Wimberly
>>
>> My memoir:
>> https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly
>>
>> My scientific publications:
>> https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2
>>
>> Phone (505) 670-9918
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 11:34 AM uǝlƃ ☣ <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> It seems like you're asking a question with the ???? at the end. But it's
>> unclear to me what the question is.  If the question is:
>>
>> Can a thing-occurance exist/be-real even if any attempt to describe it in
>> any language will be a false description?
>>
>> Phrased that way, it's unclear how anyone could say "No". I enjoy quoting
>> Gödel's interpretation of what von Neumann said [†] to demonstrate one way
>> that could happen:
>>
>> von Neumann: But in the complicated parts of formal logic it is always
>> one order of magnitude harder to tell what an object can do than to produce
>> the object.
>>
>> Gödel: However, what von Neumann perhaps had in mind appears more clearly
>> from the universal Turing machine. There it might be said that the complete
>> description of its behavior is infinite because, in view of the
>> non-existence of a decision procedure predicting its behavior, the complete
>> description could be given only by an enumeration of all instances. Of
>> course this presupposes that only decidable descriptions are considered to
>> be complete descriptions, but this is in line with the finitistic way of
>> thinking. The universal Turing machine, where the ratio of the two
>> complexities is infinity, might then be considered to be a limiting case of
>> other finite mechanisms. This immediately leads to von Neumann's conjecture.
>>
>> By this reasoning, it's relatively easy to see why *any* description will
>> fall short of the thing described, at least in this levels-of-types
>> conception.
>>
>>
>>
>> [†] Or what Burks says Gödel said anyway -- Theory of Self-Reproducing
>> Automata
>>
>> On 12/11/19 1:58 AM, Prof David West wrote:
>> >
>> > Last summer I spoke with God. The effects were profound and obvious to
>> all. Many of the effects, measured with MRI and encephalographic devices,
>> were quantifiable. I spoke of my experience, as best as I could,
>> recognizing that whatever words I used told but part of the story. Other's
>> experience of me changed as well - they uniformly and consistently
>> experience me, not as the fun loving drunken whoring party guy, but only as
>> the pious jackass that was the inevitable and most profound effect of my
>> experience.
>> >
>> > God is therefore real and extant?
>> >
>> > But wait ...
>> >
>> > I did not really speak with God. That word and all the other words, and
>> the framing of the effects, piety replacing ribaldry, came after the fact,
>> a post hoc rationalization/interpretation/articulation of "something." And,
>> of course, the form of all those words and effects is but an artifact of
>> the culture (and maybe the Jungian collective unconscious) within which I
>> was raised.
>> >
>> > There was "An Experience;" but even that label, those two words, is
>> false-to-fact. What "Was" had no bounds, in time or space and, in fact
>> continues (and predated) the implied bounded context inherent in the
>> meaning of 'an experience'. There is an implied relation between the
>> "Experience" and an ego, an "I:" 1) the "Experience" was apart from "I," 2)
>> "I" was part of the "Experience," 3) "I" perceived/sensed the
>> "Experience."  None of these implied relations are accurate or complete, or
>> even differentiable from each other.
>> >
>> > There was a Real, Existing, Thing. "It" was effectual; in that patterns
>> of brain waves and detectable activity in different parts of the brain
>> before and after "It" are measurable and comparable. Behavior and
>> experience — from the "inside" — was altered dramatically, in the sense of
>> the "color," the filtering lens, the 'fit" of interpretations of individual
>> experiences is dramatically altered. Experience — of others on the
>> "outside" —  is altered as well, although often not expressible beyond,
>> "there's something different about you, can't put my finger on it, but ... "
>> >
>> > Not only was the "Thing" effectual, it is, within statistical limits,
>> possible to predict the nature and degree of the effects that ensue from
>> "Thing-Occurrence." Moreover, it is possible to establish an "experimental
>> context" whereby others can "experience" the "Thing" and thereby confirm
>> the prediction of effects.
>> >
>> > "Thing-Occurrence" ---> partially predictable, measurable (sometimes
>> quantifiable) effects ---> "Thing is Real/Existing?
>> >
>> > Despite being, in every way ineffable —  in that no words capture its
>> totality and any words used, in any naturally occurring human language, are
>> false-to-fact.
>> >
>> > ????
>> >
>> > dave west
>> >
>> >
>> > On Wed, Dec 11, 2019, at 6:10 AM, Eric Charles wrote:
>> >> Ok.... I'm going to try to do a better take on the "ineffable" issue.
>> I want to start by admitting that there is some sense in which ANYTHING I
>> want to describe is never fully described by the words I use, in some
>> reasonable use of the word "fully." If I see a turtle, and I tell you that
>> I saw a turtle, I haven't provided you with a full description of exactly
>> what the experience was like. So, I'm willing to admit that... but I'm not
>> convinced there is anything deeper than that about Nick's inability to
>> express his "feelings" to his granddaughter... and with that out of the way
>> I will return to what I think is the broader issue.
>> >>
>> >> Real / existing things have effects. That is what it is to be real /
>> to exist. If someone wants to talk about something that exists but have no
>> effects, they are wandering down an rabbit hole with no bottom, and might
>> as well be talking about noiseless sounds or blue-less blue.
>> >>
>> >> The pragmatic maxim tells us: " Consider what effects... we conceive
>> the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects
>> is the whole of our conception of the object." So anything we conceive of
>> is, in some sense, a cluster of effects, and so everything "real" is _in
>> principle_ conceivable. And to the extent anything can be expressed
>> adequately - whether by words or any other means of expression - concepts
>> can be expressed, and so anything real can be expressed.
>> >>
>> >> However, i'm not sure the effability is really the important part. The
>> bigger question was about epistemology and ontology. But the pragmatic
>> maxim covers that as well. Things that have effects are _in principle_ we
>> may presume there are many, many effects that we don't yet have the means
>> to detect, but anything that has effects could, under some circumstances,
>> be detectable. So the limits of what _is_ are the same as the limits of
>> what can in principle be known. Postulation of things that are existing but
>> which can't, under any circumstances, be known is internally contradictory.
>> >>
>> >> Was that a better reply? It felt more thorough at least...
>>
>> --
>> ☣ uǝlƃ
>>
>> ============================================================
>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
>> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>> archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
>> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
>>
>> I'm not. Wittgenstein was very cool. But he wasn't a *builder*. (... as
>> far as I know. I'd be happy to be wrong.) The thing that (in my ignorant
>> opinion) distinguishes people like Wittgenstein from people like Gödel, von
>> Neumann, Feynman, etc. ... even Penrose with the tilings and such, is that
>> they *build* things. Until the hoity-toity results from the unification
>> theorem come percolating down to morons like me, I'll continue treating
>> constructive proofs as better and more real/existing than classical proofs.
>>
>> On 12/11/19 10:44 AM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
>> > I'm surprised no one has quoted Wittgenstein:
>> >
>> > Wovon Mann nicht sprechen kann daruber muss Mann schweigen.
>>
>> --
>> ☣ uǝlƃ
>>
>>
>> Hi, Dave, and thanks, Frank.  See Larding Below:
>>
>>
>>
>> Nick Thompson
>>
>> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>>
>> Clark University
>>
>> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
>>
>> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *Prof David West
>> *Sent:* Wednesday, December 11, 2019 2:58 AM
>> *To:* friam at redfish.com
>> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] [EXT] Re: A pluralistic model of the mind?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Last summer I spoke with God. The effects were profound and obvious to
>> all. Many of the effects, measured with MRI and encephalographic devices,
>> were quantifiable. I spoke of my experience, as best as I could,
>> recognizing that whatever words I used told but part of the story. Other's
>> experience of me changed as well - they uniformly and consistently
>> experience me, not as the fun loving drunken whoring party guy, but only as
>> the pious jackass that was the inevitable and most profound effect of my
>> experience.
>>
>> *[NST===>] My Larder is only half working on this computer.  *
>>
>>
>>
>> God is therefore real and extant?
>>
>> *[NST===>] Does God “prove out”? In order to answer that question, we
>> would have to have a conception of God that could possibly “prove out”.  I
>> say that God is the Wizard in Wizard of Oz.  An old guy who hides in a
>> closet and manipulates our experience with giant levers.  That conception
>> is probably “prove-out-able” but probably doesn’t prove out.  Or, ringed
>> around with sufficient special meanings, it could become circular, and
>> therefore not “prove-out-able”.  So, *
>>
>>
>>
>> But wait ...
>>
>>
>>
>> I did not really speak with God. That word and all the other words, and
>> the framing of the effects, piety replacing ribaldry, came after the fact,
>> a post hoc rationalization/interpretation/articulation of "something." And,
>> of course, the form of all those words and effects is but
>>
>> *[NST===>]  Why “but”, Dave?  It’s an artifact of culture.  It’s an
>> experience that proves out only with in the framework of a culture.  As
>> long as you stay within the culture, it proves out pretty good.  When you
>> moved away from home, it didn’t prove out.  *
>>
>>  an artifact of the culture (and maybe the Jungian collective
>> unconscious) within which I was raised.
>>
>>
>>
>> There was "An Experience;" but even that label, those two words, is
>> false-to-fact.
>>
>> *[NST===>]  Stipulated*
>>
>> What "Was" had no bounds, in time or space and, in fact continues (and
>> predated) the implied bounded context inherent in the meaning of 'an
>> experience'. There is an implied relation between the "Experience" and an
>> ego, an "I:" 1) the "Experience" was apart from "I," 2) "I" was part of the
>> "Experience," 3) "I" perceived/sensed the "Experience."  None of these
>> implied relations are accurate or complete, or even differentiable from
>> each other.
>>
>>
>>
>> There was a Real, Existing, Thing. "It" was effectual; in that patterns
>> of brain waves and detectable activity in different parts of the brain
>> before and after "It" are measurable and comparable.
>>
>> *[NST===>] Not sure what all this brain talk is doing.  What experiences
>> does brain talk represent.  Were you looking at an MRI while all of this
>> was happening? *
>>
>> Behavior and experience — from the "inside" — was altered dramatically,
>> in the sense of the "color," the filtering lens, the 'fit" of
>> interpretations of individual experiences is dramatically altered.
>> Experience — of others on the "outside" —  is altered as well, although
>> often not expressible beyond, "there's something different about you, can't
>> put my finger on it, but ... "
>>
>> *[NST===>] The outsidedness and the insidedness of experiences are
>> themselves experiences which prove out in markedly different ways.  *
>>
>>
>>
>> Not only was the "Thing" effectual, it is, within statistical limits,
>> possible to predict the nature and degree of the effects that ensue from
>> "Thing-Occurrence." Moreover, it is possible to establish an "experimental
>> context" whereby others can "experience" the "Thing" and thereby confirm
>> the prediction of effects.
>>
>>
>>
>> "Thing-Occurrence" ---> partially predictable, measurable (sometimes
>> quantifiable) effects ---> "Thing is Real/Existing?
>>
>>
>>
>> Despite being, in every way ineffable —  in that no words capture its
>> totality and any words used, in any naturally occurring human language, are
>> false-to-fact.
>>
>> *[NST===>] Hang on, Dave. We are starting to talk as if ANYTHING is
>> effable.  Let’s agree on an example of proper, unambiguous effing that we
>> can use as a model, a case where you, and I, and all members of FRIAM can
>> agree, “Nick and Dave really effed that sucker!”  In the meantime, please
>> have a look at the attached text, pp 4-8.  *
>>
>>
>>
>> *Here, for the lazy amongst you, is a “gist”*
>>
>>
>>
>> Working through thought-experiments like the one above leads us to
>> conclude that all descriptions, particularly satisfying ones, are
>> inevitably explanatory and that all explanations are descriptive. And yet,
>> you cannot explain something until you have something to explain – so all
>> explanations must be based on prior descriptions. The only reasonable
>> conclusion, if you take both of these claims at face value, is that all
>> explanations are based on prior explanations! The distinction between
>> description and explanation concerns their position in an argument, not
>> their objectivity or subjectivity in some enduring sense.  Whether a
>> statement is explanatory or descriptive depends upon the understandings
>> that exist between the speaker and his or her audience at the time the
>> statement is made. *Descriptions are explanations that the speaker and
>> the audience take to be true for the purpose of seeking further
>> explanations*.[1]
>> <#m_-7189693114313297488_m_-881266309841501019_m_-6995609592522041570__ftn1>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ????
>>
>>
>>
>> dave west
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Dec 11, 2019, at 6:10 AM, Eric Charles wrote:
>>
>> Ok.... I'm going to try to do a better take on the "ineffable" issue. I
>> want to start by admitting that there is some sense in which ANYTHING I
>> want to describe is never fully described by the words I use, in some
>> reasonable use of the word "fully." If I see a turtle, and I tell you that
>> I saw a turtle, I haven't provided you with a full description of exactly
>> what the experience was like. So, I'm willing to admit that... but I'm not
>> convinced there is anything deeper than that about Nick's inability to
>> express his "feelings" to his granddaughter... and with that out of the way
>> I will return to what I think is the broader issue.
>>
>>
>>
>> Real / existing things have effects. That is what it is to be real / to
>> exist. If someone wants to talk about something that exists but have no
>> effects, they are wandering down an rabbit hole with no bottom, and might
>> as well be talking about noiseless sounds or blue-less blue.
>>
>>
>>
>> The pragmatic maxim tells us: " Consider what effects... we conceive the
>> object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is
>> the whole of our conception of the object." So anything we conceive of
>> is, in some sense, a cluster of effects, and so everything "real" is *in
>> principle* conceivable. And to the extent anything can be expressed
>> adequately - whether by words or any other means of expression - concepts
>> can be expressed, and so anything real can be expressed.
>>
>>
>>
>> However, i'm not sure the effability is really the important part. The
>> bigger question was about epistemology and ontology. But the pragmatic
>> maxim covers that as well. Things that have effects are *in principle* we
>> may presume there are many, many effects that we don't yet have the means
>> to detect, but anything that has effects could, under some circumstances,
>> be detectable. So the limits of what *is* are the same as the limits of
>> what can in principle be known. Postulation of things that are existing but
>> which can't, under any circumstances, be known is internally contradictory.
>>
>>
>>
>> Was that a better reply? It felt more thorough at least...
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> -----------
>>
>> Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
>>
>> Department of Justice - Personnel Psychologist
>>
>> American University - Adjunct Instructor
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Dec 10, 2019 at 7:36 PM uǝlƃ ☣ <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I intend to respond to both Nick's and EricC's comments about "faith in
>> convergence" at some point. But I've been caught up in other things. So, in
>> the meantime, ...
>>
>>
>>
>> "Irony and Outrage," part 2: Why Colbert got serious — and why Donald
>> Trump isn't funny
>>
>>
>> https://www.salon.com/2019/12/08/irony-and-outrage-part-2-why-colbert-got-serious-and-why-donald-trump-isnt-funny/
>>
>>
>>
>> There are 2 interesting tangents touching this thread:
>>
>>
>>
>> 1) Re: ineffability -- "But also that the mere logic of the humorous
>> juxtaposition eludes him — the notion that you do not issue the argument,
>> you create a juxtaposition that invites the audience to issue an argument."
>>
>>
>>
>> I'll argue that the content of a (good) joke is *ineffable*. The whole
>> purpose of the joke teller is to communicate something without actually
>> *saying* it. If you explain a joke, it breaks the joke.
>>
>>
>>
>> And 2) Re: limits to epistemology limiting ontology -- "That, to me, is
>> illustrative of that broader point I try to make about how when a threat is
>> salient to you, it becomes hard to enter the state of play, ..."
>>
>>
>>
>> I *would* argue that pluralists will be more able to enter the "state of
>> play" Goldthwaite describes (and I've described on this list a number of
>> times as variations of "suspension of disbelief", "empathetic listening",
>> and being willing to play games others set up) than monists. I think
>> monists should TEND to be more committed to their way of thinking than
>> pluralists ... more willing to believe their own or others' brain farts. At
>> least in my case, being a pluralist means, in part, that I refuse to
>> *commit* to ontological assertions of any kind. I'll play with various
>> types of monism just as readily as I'll play with 3-tupleisms ... or
>> 17-tupleisms. I think that's what makes me a simulant of passing
>> competence. You just need to tell me *what* -ism you want to simulate.
>>
>>
>>
>> As such, it seems that maybe Dave's got the cart before the horse. It's
>> the failure of ontology that's mandating voids in epistemology. We should
>> work toward robust *ways of knowing* and loosen up a bit on whatever it is
>> we think we know. I say "would argue" of course because, being totally
>> ignorant of philosophy, I'm probably just confused about everything.
>>
>>
>>
>> On 12/10/19 12:43 PM, Prof David West wrote:
>>
>> > Both your anecdotes support, my assertion that lots of things and lots
>> of experiences are ineffable. This does not mean they are not "expressible"
>> nor "communicable, merely that they cannot be expressed with words nor
>> communicated using words.
>>
>> >
>>
>> > Words fail! Indeed!
>>
>> >
>>
>> > Entire languages fail. Entire epistemological philosophies fail.
>>
>> >
>>
>> > You "rendered" the ineffable to your grand-daughter, but you did NOT
>> render them to me with words. You you words to circumscribe and speak about
>> an experience of a kind that you believe I might have first hand, equally
>> ineffable, experience of and that your indirect words would move me to make
>> a connection. At best, your words, your language, worked like a game of
>> Charades or Pictionary as a means of limning the space wherein I might find
>> my own experience of like kind.
>>
>> >
>>
>> > A "mystic" engages an experience that is ineffable, and then utters
>> thousands, book volumes worth, of words attempting to limn a space wherein
>> you too might engage the same experience — or, if an optimist, might awaken
>> in you a recognition of what you have already experienced. More Charades
>> and Pictionary — spewing forth words ABOUT the experience; never
>> expressing, in words or language, the experience itself.
>>
>> >
>>
>> > At least some ineffable experiences can be expressed directly using a
>> language of voltages and wave forms, (Neurotheology), but not words or
>> mathematical symbols or such-based languages.
>>
>> >
>>
>> > The question remains: why does a failure of epistemology mandate voids
>> in ontology?
>>
>> >
>>
>> > I love your etymological daffiness, I share it.
>>
>> >
>>
>> > The definitions cited reflect an arrogance of the "enlightened" in the
>> notion "too great for words." A lot of mystics make this, what I believe to
>> be, error, attempting to grant an ontological status of REAL that does not
>> follow from the simple fact that it cannot be expressed in words.
>>
>> >
>>
>> > And another sidenote — something might be "ineffable" simply because
>> you are not allowed to use a word, ala Carlin's seven dirty words, or the
>> "N-Word" or the "C-Word."
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>> ☣ uǝlƃ
>>
>>
>>
>> ============================================================
>>
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>>
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------
>>
>> [1]
>> <#m_-7189693114313297488_m_-881266309841501019_m_-6995609592522041570__ftnref1> Conversely,
>> explanations are descriptions that the speaker and audience hold to be
>> unverified under the present circumstances.
>>
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