[FRIAM] Friam Digest, Vol 198, Issue 15

[Frank Wimberly]

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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>>> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
>>>
>>> than "Re: Contents of Friam digest..."
>>>
>>> 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_3115841449660933792_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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>>>
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>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ------------------------------
>>>
>>> [1]
>>> <#m_3115841449660933792_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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>> ============================================================
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> ============================================================
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