[FRIAM] Friam Digest, Vol 198, Issue 15

[Frank Wimberly]

That's a good description.

-----------------------------------
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 Fri, Dec 20, 2019, 5:32 PM <thompnickson2 at gmail.com> wrote:

> “Scintillating fortresses”!
>
>
>
> n
>
>
>
> Nicholas 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 *Frank Wimberly
> *Sent:* Friday, December 20, 2019 10:01 AM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam at redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Friam Digest, Vol 198, Issue 15
>
>
>
> When I drink caffeine it stimulates my visual cortex in a way that causes
> hallucinations.  Perhaps you've had similar experiences.
>
> -----------------------------------
> 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 Fri, Dec 20, 2019, 8:36 AM Prof David West <profwest at fastmail.fm>
> wrote:
>
> "Seeing" is the consequence of patterned neural activity in the cerebral
> cortex?
>
>
>
> what is the relevance of "constraints," "enhancements," "inputs
> (electrical impulses or hormones or chemicals that excite/inhibit synaptic
> firing)," that are in any sense "required" for the patterns to form?
>
>
>
> please note these are questions, not assertions.
>
>
>
> davew
>
>
>
> On Fri, Dec 20, 2019, at 2:57 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
>
> For me it has to involve the visual cortex.  I see things in my dreams and
> I see hallucinations when I drink caffeinated coffee. So I'm not saying
> it's what my eyes do.
>
>
>
> -----------------------------------
>
> 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, 11:18 PM Nicholas Thompson <thompnickson2 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> 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:
>
>
>
>
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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_2281281390277259706_m_2376827421255797964_m_311584144966093>
>
>
>
>
>
> ????
>
>
>
> 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."
>
>  <span style="font-fa
>
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