Re: Friam Digest, Vol 198, Issue 15

[Bruce Simon]

Birds and bees see ultraviolet light but I don't.  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.  Suppose God gave me the ability to see like a bird.  Could I describe to you what the flower looks like (re. UV?).  

On Wednesday, December 11, 2019, 12:23:29 PM MST, [hidden email] <[hidden email]> 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?
      ([hidden email])

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 [phone]

On Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 11:34 AM uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> 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

============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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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

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2019 2:58 AM
To: [hidden email]
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] 

 

 

????

 

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 ☣ <[hidden email]> 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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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

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============================================================

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

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---

[1] Conversely, explanations are descriptions that the speaker and audience hold to be unverified under the present circumstances.

_______________________________________________
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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[thompnickson2]

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

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Bruce Simon
Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2019 1:44 PM
To: [hidden email]
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, [hidden email] <[hidden email]> 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?
      ([hidden email])

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 [phone]

 

On Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 11:34 AM uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> 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

============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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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

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2019 2:58 AM
To: [hidden email]
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] 

 

 

????

 

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 ☣ <[hidden email]> 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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============================================================

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

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---

[1] Conversely, explanations are descriptions that the speaker and audience hold to be unverified under the present circumstances.

_______________________________________________
Friam mailing list
[hidden email]
http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

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FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[Frank Wimberly-2]

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

On Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 9:14 PM Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> 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

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Bruce Simon
Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2019 1:44 PM
To: [hidden email]
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, [hidden email] <[hidden email]> 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?
      ([hidden email])

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 [phone]

 

On Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 11:34 AM uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> 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

============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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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

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2019 2:58 AM
To: [hidden email]
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] 

 

 

????

 

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 ☣ <[hidden email]> 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] Conversely, explanations are descriptions that the speaker and audience hold to be unverified under the present circumstances.

_______________________________________________
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[thompnickson2]

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 <[hidden email]> 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 [phone]

On Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 9:14 PM Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> 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

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Bruce Simon
Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2019 1:44 PM
To: [hidden email]
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, [hidden email] <[hidden email]> 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?
      ([hidden email])

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 [phone]

 

On Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 11:34 AM uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> 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

============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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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

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2019 2:58 AM
To: [hidden email]
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] 

 

 

????

 

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 ☣ <[hidden email]> 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] Conversely, explanations are descriptions that the speaker and audience hold to be unverified under the present circumstances.

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[Frank Wimberly-2]

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.

On Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 11:18 PM Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> 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 <[hidden email]> 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 [phone]

On Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 9:14 PM Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> 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

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Bruce Simon
Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2019 1:44 PM
To: [hidden email]
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, [hidden email] <[hidden email]> 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?
      ([hidden email])

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 [phone]

 

On Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 11:34 AM uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> 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

============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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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

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2019 2:58 AM
To: [hidden email]
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] 

 

 

????

 

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 ☣ <[hidden email]> 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] Conversely, explanations are descriptions that the speaker and audience hold to be unverified under the present circumstances.

_______________________________________________
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[Prof David West]

"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 [phone]

On Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 11:18 PM Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> 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 <[hidden email]> 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 [phone]

On Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 9:14 PM Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> 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

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Bruce Simon
Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2019 1:44 PM
To: [hidden email]
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, [hidden email] <[hidden email]> 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?
      ([hidden email])

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 [phone]

 

On Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 11:34 AM uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> 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

============================================================
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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

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2019 2:58 AM
To: [hidden email]
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] 

 

 

????

 

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 ☣ <[hidden email]> 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] Conversely, explanations are descriptions that the speaker and audience hold to be unverified under the present circumstances.

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[doug carmichael]

And important part about I seeing  is that you can’t see something if you didn’t look in that direction so the muscular system is involved in the circular process of looking seeing looking.

doug

On Dec 19, 2019, at 10:18 PM, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> 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 <[hidden email]> 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 [phone]

On Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 9:14 PM Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> 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

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Bruce Simon
Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2019 1:44 PM
To: [hidden email]
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, [hidden email] <[hidden email]> 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?
      ([hidden email])

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 [phone]

 

On Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 11:34 AM uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> 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

============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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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

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2019 2:58 AM
To: [hidden email]
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] 

 

 

????

 

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 ☣ <[hidden email]> 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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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

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---

[1] Conversely, explanations are descriptions that the speaker and audience hold to be unverified under the present circumstances.

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============================================================
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

[Frank Wimberly-2]

When I drink caffeine it stimulates my visual cortex in a way that causes hallucinations.  Perhaps you've had similar experiences.

On Fri, Dec 20, 2019, 8:36 AM Prof David West <[hidden email]> 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 [phone]

On Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 11:18 PM Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> 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 <[hidden email]> 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 [phone]

On Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 9:14 PM Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> 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

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Bruce Simon
Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2019 1:44 PM
To: [hidden email]
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, [hidden email] <[hidden email]> 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?
      ([hidden email])

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 [phone]

 

On Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 11:34 AM uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> 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

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2019 2:58 AM
To: [hidden email]
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] 

 

 

????

 

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 ☣ <[hidden email]> 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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[gepr]

I didn't see this contribution, either. Thanks, Nick. Since Nick, Frank, Dave, and Doug (NFDD) took the question in a different direction, I'll branch the thread differently.

Could you *describe* what the flower looks like? Obviously, yes. Could you give a constructive explanation of it? Maybe. In the other branch, NFDD have gone down the road of circumscription and *definition* [†], relying on, factoring out, that most of us share similar construction (human to human, visual cortex, eyeballs, skin, etc.).

So to show how the NFDD attempt to factor construction out of the question might fail, we can change the question to:

  Could you give a constructive explanation for a flower's appearance to a bird?

I've raised this point before cf cross-species mind-reading. Imagine 2 behaviors: "smiling" and "feeling pain". When your dog "smiles" at you, can we inversely map from the dog's and your smiling phenomena to a *common* underlying mechanism that generates the smiling? I'd answer "No." But when we inversely map "feeling pain" to underlying mechanisms, I'd answer "Yes."

I can argue those answers, or not. But if we go back to the modified question of whether or not you can give a constructive explanation of a flower's appearance to a bird, I think it's safe to say "pretty much, though not completely constructive." That's because a bird has eyeballs and a neural structure fairly similar to ours. For a bee, on the other hand, any such description you gave to the bee would be MUCH less constructive.

[†] It would take some persuasion to convince you that "definition" is non-constructive. I tried to do that back when Lee posted his definition of "computation". But I suspect I failed.

On 12/11/19 12:44 PM, Bruce Simon wrote:
> Birds and bees see ultraviolet light but I don't.  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.  Suppose God gave me the ability to see like a bird.  Could I describe to you what the flower looks like (re. UV?).  


--
☣ uǝlƃ

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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[Prof David West]

yes I have. A long list of agents causing same in various degrees. Strangely, caffeine has never been one of them. my reaction to anti-histamines might be somewhat comparable to your caffeine.

On Fri, Dec 20, 2019, at 6:01 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:

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 [phone]

On Fri, Dec 20, 2019, 8:36 AM Prof David West <[hidden email]> 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 [phone]

On Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 11:18 PM Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> 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 <[hidden email]> 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 [phone]

On Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 9:14 PM Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> 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

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Bruce Simon
Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2019 1:44 PM
To: [hidden email]
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, [hidden email] <[hidden email]> 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?
      ([hidden email])

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 [phone]

 

On Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 11:34 AM uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> 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

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2019 2:58 AM
To: [hidden email]
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] 

 

 

????

 

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 ☣ <[hidden email]> 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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============================================================
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
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[thompnickson2]

“Scintillating fortresses”!

 

n

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Friday, December 20, 2019 10:01 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
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 [phone]

 

On Fri, Dec 20, 2019, 8:36 AM Prof David West <[hidden email]> 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 [phone]

 

On Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 11:18 PM Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> 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 <[hidden email]> 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 [phone]

 

On Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 9:14 PM Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> 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

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Bruce Simon
Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2019 1:44 PM
To: [hidden email]
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, [hidden email] <[hidden email]> 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?
      ([hidden email])

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 [phone]

 

On Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 11:34 AM uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> 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

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2019 2:58 AM
To: [hidden email]
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] 

 

 

????

 

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 ☣ <[hidden email]> 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

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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[Frank Wimberly-2]

That's a good description.

On Fri, Dec 20, 2019, 5:32 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:

“Scintillating fortresses”!

 

n

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Friday, December 20, 2019 10:01 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
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 [phone]

 

On Fri, Dec 20, 2019, 8:36 AM Prof David West <[hidden email]> 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 [phone]

 

On Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 11:18 PM Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> 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 <[hidden email]> 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 [phone]

 

On Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 9:14 PM Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> 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

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Bruce Simon
Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2019 1:44 PM
To: [hidden email]
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, [hidden email] <[hidden email]> 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?
      ([hidden email])

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 [phone]

 

On Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 11:34 AM uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> 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

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2019 2:58 AM
To: [hidden email]
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] 

 

 

????

 

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 ☣ <[hidden email]> 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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============================================================
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
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[thompnickson2]

Hi, Frank,

 

I think I am logical entitled, if not social so, to assert that, on your account so far, ANYTHING the visual cortex does is “seeing”.    In other words, to be satisfied with your own definition, you will have to specify that only those activities of the visual cortex that are involved in “seeing” should be considered, in which case, we are right back to defining “seeing” again. 

 

Nick

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Friday, December 20, 2019 8:36 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Friam Digest, Vol 198, Issue 15

 

"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 [phone]

 

On Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 11:18 PM Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> 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 <[hidden email]> 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 [phone]

 

On Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 9:14 PM Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> 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

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Bruce Simon
Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2019 1:44 PM
To: [hidden email]
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, [hidden email] <[hidden email]> 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?
      ([hidden email])

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 [phone]

 

On Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 11:34 AM uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> 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

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2019 2:58 AM
To: [hidden email]
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] 

 

 

????

 

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 ☣ <[hidden email]> 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] Conversely, explanations are descriptions that the speaker and audience hold to be unverified under the present circumstances.

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[Frank Wimberly-2]

This is a good example of necessary vs sufficient.  In my opinion, involvement of the visual cortex is necessary but not sufficient for seeing.  But I'm open minded on this point.

Frank

On Fri, Dec 20, 2019, 11:17 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi, Frank,

 

I think I am logical entitled, if not social so, to assert that, on your account so far, ANYTHING the visual cortex does is “seeing”.    In other words, to be satisfied with your own definition, you will have to specify that only those activities of the visual cortex that are involved in “seeing” should be considered, in which case, we are right back to defining “seeing” again. 

 

Nick

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Friday, December 20, 2019 8:36 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Friam Digest, Vol 198, Issue 15

 

"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 [phone]

 

On Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 11:18 PM Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> 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 <[hidden email]> 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 [phone]

 

On Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 9:14 PM Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> 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

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Bruce Simon
Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2019 1:44 PM
To: [hidden email]
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, [hidden email] <[hidden email]> 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?
      ([hidden email])

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 [phone]

 

On Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 11:34 AM uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> 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

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2019 2:58 AM
To: [hidden email]
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] 

 

 

????

 

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 ☣ <[hidden email]> 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] Conversely, explanations are descriptions that the speaker and audience hold to be unverified under the present circumstances.

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[Frank Wimberly-2]

An example:  a person who has been totally blind since birth probably has an active visual cortex and therefore sees some kind of "hallucination".  Anybody have data on this?  Mike?

On Sat, Dec 21, 2019, 7:30 AM Frank Wimberly <[hidden email]> wrote:

This is a good example of necessary vs sufficient.  In my opinion, involvement of the visual cortex is necessary but not sufficient for seeing.  But I'm open minded on this point.

Frank

On Fri, Dec 20, 2019, 11:17 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi, Frank,

 

I think I am logical entitled, if not social so, to assert that, on your account so far, ANYTHING the visual cortex does is “seeing”.    In other words, to be satisfied with your own definition, you will have to specify that only those activities of the visual cortex that are involved in “seeing” should be considered, in which case, we are right back to defining “seeing” again. 

 

Nick

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Friday, December 20, 2019 8:36 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Friam Digest, Vol 198, Issue 15

 

"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 [phone]

 

On Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 11:18 PM Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> 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 <[hidden email]> 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 [phone]

 

On Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 9:14 PM Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> 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

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Bruce Simon
Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2019 1:44 PM
To: [hidden email]
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, [hidden email] <[hidden email]> 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?
      ([hidden email])

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 [phone]

 

On Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 11:34 AM uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> 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

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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

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2019 2:58 AM
To: [hidden email]
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] 

 

 

????

 

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 ☣ <[hidden email]> 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] Conversely, explanations are descriptions that the speaker and audience hold to be unverified under the present circumstances.

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[thompnickson2]

Hi, Frank,

 

Here, I think, we are in danger of confusing definition with cause, or, more subtly, mediation.  I agree that among humans the visual cortex (among many structures) mediates vision  But that begs the question of what vision is. When a robot sees, it is doing the same thing as we do when we see, but the seeing is mediated in a different way.  Seeing, I assert, in my lovable, stubborn, old codgery way, is “building a three dimensional model of the world from a point of view.”  

 

Arising in the pitch dark, on a moonless, night, I still try to see the room (make a model of it), although my eyes are useless in the task, and sometimes even misleading.  In talking of a “model of the world” am I slipping into representation-talk?  BLAT BLAT BLAT!  Dualism alarm.  Eric, help me out, here!  I think a monist would say, “What I mean by a model is not a leetle internal pictchah but a rather large set of expectations of the form, “If I turn right, I will bump into a door; if I veer to the left, I will trip over the cardboard box full of Christmas presents.  Etc.

 

But, Uh-oh.  That get’s me in trouble with abduction as inference to a class.  Can I have abduction without representation?  I will have to check the Monist Constitution.   Gosh, I may have to spend some time in the Monistary. 

 

Frank, and all of you, again, in this season, particularly, I want to thank you for helping me sharpen ideas against the whetstone of FRIAM.   I think my psychiatrist would say (if I had one – does anyone have one they like?) would say, my life has depended on it.

 

 

To all Y, where Y = FRIAM members, merry, happy, jolly X for all values of X

 

Nick

 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Saturday, December 21, 2019 7:31 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Friam Digest, Vol 198, Issue 15

 

This is a good example of necessary vs sufficient.  In my opinion, involvement of the visual cortex is necessary but not sufficient for seeing.  But I'm open minded on this point.

 

Frank

 

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

My memoir:
https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly

My scientific publications:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

Phone [phone]

 

On Fri, Dec 20, 2019, 11:17 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi, Frank,

 

I think I am logical entitled, if not social so, to assert that, on your account so far, ANYTHING the visual cortex does is “seeing”.    In other words, to be satisfied with your own definition, you will have to specify that only those activities of the visual cortex that are involved in “seeing” should be considered, in which case, we are right back to defining “seeing” again. 

 

Nick

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Friday, December 20, 2019 8:36 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Friam Digest, Vol 198, Issue 15

 

"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 [phone]

 

On Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 11:18 PM Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> 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 <[hidden email]> 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 [phone]

 

On Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 9:14 PM Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> 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

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Bruce Simon
Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2019 1:44 PM
To: [hidden email]
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  

 

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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?
      ([hidden email])

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 [phone]

 

On Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 11:34 AM uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> 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...

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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

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2019 2:58 AM
To: [hidden email]
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] 

 

 

????

 

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 ☣ <[hidden email]> 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."

 

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---

 

[1] Conversely, explanations are descriptions that the speaker and audience hold to be unverified under the present circumstances.

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[gepr]

On conflating definition with cause, I tried to build a spectrum between the two using the concept of constructive explanation. But my line of reasoning doesn't seem to provide you (or anyone else on the list) with any traction. So, maybe I should abandon that.

To take a different tack, I can also hearken back to our conversations about metaphor when you talk about models. I still reject the idea that metaphor underlies so much of thought. Instead I believe thought relies on analogy, the distinction being laden with sophistry, I'm sure. But when you talk about "building a 3D model of the world from a POV", you're implicitly talking about an analogy between the physiology triggered when *actually* looking at some thing analogized with the physiology triggered when imagining/remembering that thing. The analogy is between the two generating mechanisms, the two *different* neurological structures that generate the same phenomenon.

In analogical reasoning, there are 2 main types: behavioral versus structural analogy. 1 phenomenon can be generated by 2 completely different mechanisms to create a (nearly pure) behavioral analogy -- a simulation. And 1 phenomenon can be generated by 2 mechanisms that are somewhat similar in structure. In reality, of course, any 2 (somewhat dissimilar) mechanisms will always generate 2 distinct phenomena. So, we have to talk about 2 types of similarity, behavioral and structural. But atop the similarity measures, we can define equivalence classes such that any 2 mechanisms within a class are "the same" and if that class is coherent, we can find a behavioral class containing both of the phenomena generated. (Which is where we get concepts like "supervenience", "neutral networks", and Dave's nod to Korzibski.)

Lest your dualism alarm go off again, however, note that the similarity measures need not be different. I've made the argument in some publication somewhere that a phenomenon at one layer is a mechanism at the next layer out. And a generator is a phenomenon for the next layer in. So similarity measures may be recursively applied. And lest you think we're simply swapping level dualism (higher vs. lower) for container dualism (inside vs. outside), any boundary can be a transducer. So, any mediator of a signal can be swapped out for another mediator, carrying the *same* signal. And we even have things like catalysts (amplifiers) and such, which, in one context mediate and, in another context, compose signals.

What you end up with is a Holy Fabric ... an irregular froth of transducing boundaries. And that froth can take pretty much any shape, some of which look dualist (inside vs outside), but most of which look like complex ontic structures of many types of thing.

On 12/21/19 8:45 AM, [hidden email] wrote:
> Here, I think, we are in danger of confusing definition with cause, or, more subtly, mediation.  I agree that among humans the visual cortex (among many structures) /mediates /vision  But that begs the question of what vision /is/. When a robot sees, it is doing the same thing as we do when we see, but the seeing is mediated in a different way.  Seeing, I assert, in my lovable, stubborn, old codgery way, is “building a three dimensional model of the world from a point of view.”  
>
> Arising in the pitch dark, on a moonless, night, I still try to see the room (make a model of it), although my eyes are useless in the task, and sometimes even misleading.  In talking of a “model of the world” am I slipping into representation-talk?  BLAT BLAT BLAT!  Dualism alarm.  Eric, help me out, here!  I think a monist would say, “What I mean by a model is not a leetle internal pictchah but a rather large set of expectations of the form, “If I turn right, I will bump into a door; if I veer to the left, I will trip over the cardboard box full of Christmas presents.  Etc.

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[Eric Charles-2]

Frank,

There is very cool data about brain plasticity, which i only know the surface of.  "Visual cortex" tends to get taken over by other functions.  If i recall,  much of it will become auditory cortex if you ate blind from birth.  But it will definitely vary by person.  Epigenetics and what not.  Among other very cool research in these regards, I highly recommend Leah Krubitzer's experimental work that involves experimentally removing parts of developing brains in several species and observing the resulting plasticity. https://krubitzer.faculty.ucdavis.edu/leah-krubitzer/

Nick, 

Why aren't you reflexively pointing out that Frank is begging the question? The visual cortex is named "visual cortex" because we discovered that it is active during "seeing". For that to have happened, we must have had a pretty damned solid idea of what seeing was, independent of any knowledge of what parts of the brain were involved. Thus, saying something like "seeing is whatever the visual cortex does" has both the logic and the historic chain of events exactly backwards. Rather, the visual cortex is a part of the brain that we found to be particularly involved in seeing, fairly early in our brain-mapping efforts. 

All,

Speaking for the brand of psychological theory that I buy into, which focuses a lot on perception: "Seeing" is what happens when people are better at acting with the lights on then they are with the lights off. Thus, the blind man isn't seeing with a cane and the bat isn't seeing with its ears. Such metaphors might be useful in some situations -- it is as if the blind man sees with the cane -- but we will screw up if we lose track of the metaphor-work. Similarly, hallucinating isn't seeing, though it is similar in some ways. Hallucinating is a term exactly intended to allow us to contrast with situations in which things are seen. Note the clear difference if I said, "Yesterday I saw a car coming towards me when I was crossing the street, and just now I hallucinated a car coming towards me while I was sitting in my living room." 

The description-explanation slippage is happening, both here and throughout the field of psychology, because we haven't yet become clear on what what we are trying to explain. The explanation for why humans are better at particular tasks with the lights on WILL involve the visual cortext, if we are going for mechanistic explanations, which are one valid type of explanations in most systems. However, visual cortex will not fit into a much broader explanation of "seeing", because there are plenty of species that see perfectly well without any such thing. At that point, you would need to move towards a Gibsonian/Ecological-Psychology explanation. That would involve talking about organism-level systems syncing/resonating with ambient energy structures in the environment via systems level interactions. In such a story, a visual cortex is a component of one of the of many system-types that solve the resonance challenge. 

Also, there is a very interesting weird side conversation to be had about whether "mechanical explanations" are actually "explanatory" in any proper sense, or if they are simply an enhanced form of "description. If anyone would be interested in THAT conversation, specifically in the context of behavior/mind, I would enthusiastically join into an appropriate thread with a different title (so the discussions can stay separate). 

Best,

Eric

On Sat, Dec 21, 2019, 10:23 AM Frank Wimberly <[hidden email]> wrote:

An example:  a person who has been totally blind since birth probably has an active visual cortex and therefore sees some kind of "hallucination".  Anybody have data on this?  Mike?

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

My memoir:
https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly

My scientific publications:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

Phone [phone]

On Sat, Dec 21, 2019, 7:30 AM Frank Wimberly <[hidden email]> wrote:

This is a good example of necessary vs sufficient.  In my opinion, involvement of the visual cortex is necessary but not sufficient for seeing.  But I'm open minded on this point.

Frank

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

My memoir:
https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly

My scientific publications:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

Phone [phone]

On Fri, Dec 20, 2019, 11:17 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi, Frank,

 

I think I am logical entitled, if not social so, to assert that, on your account so far, ANYTHING the visual cortex does is “seeing”.    In other words, to be satisfied with your own definition, you will have to specify that only those activities of the visual cortex that are involved in “seeing” should be considered, in which case, we are right back to defining “seeing” again. 

 

Nick

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Friday, December 20, 2019 8:36 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Friam Digest, Vol 198, Issue 15

 

"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 [phone]

 

On Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 11:18 PM Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> 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 <[hidden email]> 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 [phone]

 

On Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 9:14 PM Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> 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

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Bruce Simon
Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2019 1:44 PM
To: [hidden email]
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, [hidden email] <[hidden email]> 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?
      ([hidden email])

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 [phone]

 

On Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 11:34 AM uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> 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
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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

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2019 2:58 AM
To: [hidden email]
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] 

 

 

????

 

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 ☣ <[hidden email]> 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] Conversely, explanations are descriptions that the speaker and audience hold to be unverified under the present circumstances.

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[Eric Charles-2]

"Suppose God gave me the ability to see like a bird.  Could I describe to you what the flower looks like (re. UV?)."

YES! To the same extent as you can explain anything else. Which is to say, with the same limitations, no more, no less, that we find in any other situations in which we broadly agree that something has "been explained." 

I can write a 400 page book about what it is like to tie my shoes, and we could find someone, somewhere, who would still claim that I haven't really explained it. And yet, I could write my 10 year old a few sentences on the topic, ask her that seems like a good explanation of how to tie your shoes, and she will say that it is. The only assertion Nick and I (and similar authors in this line of thinking) need to make here is that there is no extra challenge simply because we are suddenly talking about "seeing." Once we have worked out the challenges of "explaining" in any context, and there are many, we will find that there is no greater challenge in this domain. 

Best,

Eric

On Wed, Dec 11, 2019 at 3:46 PM Bruce Simon <[hidden email]> wrote:

Birds and bees see ultraviolet light but I don't.  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.  Suppose God gave me the ability to see like a bird.  Could I describe to you what the flower looks like (re. UV?).  

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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?
      ([hidden email])

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 [phone]

On Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 11:34 AM uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> 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

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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

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2019 2:58 AM
To: [hidden email]
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] 

 

 

????

 

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 ☣ <[hidden email]> 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] Conversely, explanations are descriptions that the speaker and audience hold to be unverified under the present circumstances.

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[Frank Wimberly-2]

Eric,

I asked Mike if he was aware of relevant data even though his field is audiology.  I suspected there may be some overlap between the visual and auditory cortexes or cortices (my daughter is a Latin teacher) or similarity of functioning.

Frank

On Mon, Dec 23, 2019, 3:37 PM Eric Charles <[hidden email]> wrote:

Frank,

There is very cool data about brain plasticity, which i only know the surface of.  "Visual cortex" tends to get taken over by other functions.  If i recall,  much of it will become auditory cortex if you ate blind from birth.  But it will definitely vary by person.  Epigenetics and what not.  Among other very cool research in these regards, I highly recommend Leah Krubitzer's experimental work that involves experimentally removing parts of developing brains in several species and observing the resulting plasticity. https://krubitzer.faculty.ucdavis.edu/leah-krubitzer/

Nick, 

Why aren't you reflexively pointing out that Frank is begging the question? The visual cortex is named "visual cortex" because we discovered that it is active during "seeing". For that to have happened, we must have had a pretty damned solid idea of what seeing was, independent of any knowledge of what parts of the brain were involved. Thus, saying something like "seeing is whatever the visual cortex does" has both the logic and the historic chain of events exactly backwards. Rather, the visual cortex is a part of the brain that we found to be particularly involved in seeing, fairly early in our brain-mapping efforts. 

All,

Speaking for the brand of psychological theory that I buy into, which focuses a lot on perception: "Seeing" is what happens when people are better at acting with the lights on then they are with the lights off. Thus, the blind man isn't seeing with a cane and the bat isn't seeing with its ears. Such metaphors might be useful in some situations -- it is as if the blind man sees with the cane -- but we will screw up if we lose track of the metaphor-work. Similarly, hallucinating isn't seeing, though it is similar in some ways. Hallucinating is a term exactly intended to allow us to contrast with situations in which things are seen. Note the clear difference if I said, "Yesterday I saw a car coming towards me when I was crossing the street, and just now I hallucinated a car coming towards me while I was sitting in my living room." 

The description-explanation slippage is happening, both here and throughout the field of psychology, because we haven't yet become clear on what what we are trying to explain. The explanation for why humans are better at particular tasks with the lights on WILL involve the visual cortext, if we are going for mechanistic explanations, which are one valid type of explanations in most systems. However, visual cortex will not fit into a much broader explanation of "seeing", because there are plenty of species that see perfectly well without any such thing. At that point, you would need to move towards a Gibsonian/Ecological-Psychology explanation. That would involve talking about organism-level systems syncing/resonating with ambient energy structures in the environment via systems level interactions. In such a story, a visual cortex is a component of one of the of many system-types that solve the resonance challenge. 

Also, there is a very interesting weird side conversation to be had about whether "mechanical explanations" are actually "explanatory" in any proper sense, or if they are simply an enhanced form of "description. If anyone would be interested in THAT conversation, specifically in the context of behavior/mind, I would enthusiastically join into an appropriate thread with a different title (so the discussions can stay separate). 

Best,

Eric

On Sat, Dec 21, 2019, 10:23 AM Frank Wimberly <[hidden email]> wrote:

An example:  a person who has been totally blind since birth probably has an active visual cortex and therefore sees some kind of "hallucination".  Anybody have data on this?  Mike?

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

My memoir:
https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly

My scientific publications:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

Phone [phone]

On Sat, Dec 21, 2019, 7:30 AM Frank Wimberly <[hidden email]> wrote:

This is a good example of necessary vs sufficient.  In my opinion, involvement of the visual cortex is necessary but not sufficient for seeing.  But I'm open minded on this point.

Frank

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

My memoir:
https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly

My scientific publications:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

Phone [phone]

On Fri, Dec 20, 2019, 11:17 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi, Frank,

 

I think I am logical entitled, if not social so, to assert that, on your account so far, ANYTHING the visual cortex does is “seeing”.    In other words, to be satisfied with your own definition, you will have to specify that only those activities of the visual cortex that are involved in “seeing” should be considered, in which case, we are right back to defining “seeing” again. 

 

Nick

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Friday, December 20, 2019 8:36 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Friam Digest, Vol 198, Issue 15

 

"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 [phone]

 

On Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 11:18 PM Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> 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 <[hidden email]> 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 [phone]

 

On Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 9:14 PM Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> 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

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Bruce Simon
Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2019 1:44 PM
To: [hidden email]
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, [hidden email] <[hidden email]> 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?
      ([hidden email])

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 [phone]

 

On Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 11:34 AM uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> 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
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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

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2019 2:58 AM
To: [hidden email]
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] 

 

 

????

 

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 ☣ <[hidden email]> 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] Conversely, explanations are descriptions that the speaker and audience hold to be unverified under the present circumstances.

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