[FRIAM] [EXT] Re: A pluralistic model of the mind?

Wed Dec 11 08:38:40 EST 2019

LIKE.  I like Dave's comments but I reply to make sure that Nick sees them.

-----------------------------------
Frank Wimberly

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On Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 2:59 AM Prof David West <profwest at fastmail.fm> 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...
>
>
>
>
>
>
> -----------
> Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
> Department of Justice - Personnel Psychologist
> American University - Adjunct Instructor
>
> <echarles at american.edu>
>
>
> 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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