An attempt at philosophical writing ...

[Burning ghost]

This is my attempt at a philosophical essay, or collection of essays. I am looking for critique of style and presentation because it is hard to get critique from a more "normal" writing forum given the particular medium of philosophical writings.

Due to the forum rules I must also add in that I am open to critique of contents, but also I have to say there is not a lot here to really get your teeth into (maybe I am wrong?) So, I am also curious to hear where you expect this to lead. This little piece is meant to be a vague introduction into my general views on a number of topics that I hope will come together under one general "view".

HERE IT IS ....


SUBJECTS : The Experience of Experiencing
(note: The title “SUBJECTS” is a purposeful play on the various ways in which this term may be construed.)

In this essay I will be exploring what is meant by ‘knowledge’, ‘experience’, ‘existence’ and ‘truth’, and, of course, what is meant by ‘meaning’ as well as offering my generlal views on ontology and epistemology as best I can.

There are numerous pitfalls on this journey some of which I will wittingly follow for the purpose of showing the intricacies of language and how we appreciate the world we live in and express this appreciation through language.

I will start at the start. Right here we find ourselves asking directly “What start?”, and/or, “Where is the beginning?” This is how we express ourselves. We take some experience and translate it into a sequence in order to be understood by others. When I see a large, black book on a yellow table I order these articles of information in a particular sequence. I do not say “table book black yellow on large”, my experience has no regard for sequence, it is not piece-meal. Yet my verbal thought and communicative capacities require me to create a sense of sequence and order, to create a ‘start’ that fits into the rules of a particular grammatical structure, to be understood by others - but experience remains ‘whole’ (eidectic). We, of course, may very well possess a term that means “A large black book on a yellow table”, let us say this term is “babyot”, so when I say “babyot” to someone they know what is meant. Just like if I say “table” you don’t say “What does that mean?”, nor would you say “What does babyot mean?” if you understood it as stated above.

For ease of communication it is impractical to have a term for every singular experience, yet we still experience how we experience regardless of precisely how we communicate said experience (we can, maybe, question the effect of the communicative process, and its grammar, on further experience.) We cannot really imagine describing a book without referring to its contents, its cover, its size, or its colour. We require adjectives understood in a singular fashion not having countless terms in our lexicon such as “babyot” to replace these more specific descriptions of colour, size and various other magnitutes and such. But pause to understand that if we say “book” we understand the “book” and all “book” could be, where when we say “black”, we are more likely to ask further questions as to the item being spoken of as being “black” (the nouns prominence over the adjective).

Consider a painting in this sense of grammatical order and sequence. We do not look at a painting and search for the ‘start’ of the painting, although we may be driven to explore its possible intention and from there declare a meaning. We may even be drawn to focus on certain areas of the painting, but we would never state that any particular location of the painting is the “beginning” of the painting. Such a proclaimation would be quite absurd to us, but do we not in day-to-day life often find ourselves captured by such absurdities from time to time? The base description of each person viewing the painting though will on occasion concur (eg. “It is a picture of a ship sailing across a sea.”) Descriptive words are just the communication of an experience exactly like the large, black book on the yellow table. The diffeence being that I mean “babyot” in the same sense as I would use any other adjective and could say “large babyot”, “dark babyot”, etc.
As an individual (to be precise, an individual, known as indivdual in relation to the idea of community) I (to be precise, “I”, known as I in relation to the idea of “other”) experience ostensively. Now I have to be very careful with what I mean by “ostensive” and exactly how I wish you the reader to interpret this. Ostensive is generally understood to mean ‘to point out’ something. I point at the large black book and say “book”, or of course I may say “black” or even “large”. Here we see the problem of misunderstanding in communication within a community of experiencing people. What I wish to have you consider is the “I”, the “individual”, in isolation from the dichotic ideas associated with an experiencing community of indivduals. By this I am pointing out to the reader that we do not, as individuals, physically ‘point at’ some object of experience and say ‘book’. I do not experience a sequence of “large”, “black” and then “book”, obviously. But is this so obvious in the manner in which we communicate? I would suggest that because of this we are somewhat susceptible, upon occasion, to lead ourselves away from our own experience and perhaps to view experience merely as expression of experience due to our communal day-to-day life as an individual among others. We are afterall defined as the “I” among others not some isolated entity.

All our communication is effectively ostensive (a “pointing out” of this or that). With this it is easy to see that the experience we possess is never fully given over to anyone else. The interesting thing here is that although this is clearly the case we manage to find a way to agree upon certain aspects of our experience and from there build upon these aspects to make declarations about our world. When I say “chair” nobody asks “What is this ‘chair’ you are talking of?”, we accept it as an experience we can all relate to - “relate to” being the important point here because we quite obviously do not own each others experience. What we do is come to both learn and agree upon the relational contexts of terms in language. A baby learns what “water” means by coming to understand where the term is used and in what relation it is used; such as near the kitchen sink, in the bathroom, outside when it rains, mentioned when thirsty/drinking. The term “water” is a whole lot more than simply some combination of hydrogen and oxygen, it is a kind of term just like “babyot”.

In contrast to this I would not say that I experience in this “ostensive” way. I do not make a declaration to myself about this or that. With verbal thought it can appear that we do experience in an ostensive manner because focus shifts from here to there because that is the way we are conditioned to express it to others in a sequential language, we may begin to believe we experience the “black” before the “book” or the “book” before the “black”, because the only other option is for us to say we experience these in synchrony. I argue that all of the above, including “synchrony”, are out of context with regard to experience (this I will attempt to come back to in more depth, if I can, further into this essay).

To return to my orinigal phrase that took us down this path … As an individual I experience ostensively. I have a need to create a certain term here to distinguish from what we commonly understand as ostensive. So I will instead say as an individual I experience without pointing anything out to the other of myself. There is no communication of me with myself because I am a singular, individual “I”. To say I point something out to myself is quite a silly thing to say.

So I hope you see, that according to the above, it makes no sense to say “I experience ostensively”, unless I am conflating “ostensive” with the verbosity of thought. Here is where we notice how easy we can fall into absurdity due to the sequential nature of language and how its grammatical structure impacts on how we explain the world to each other and how this manner of explaining can falsely be drawn back in upon itself to refer to an incomplete expression of an experience to another. Here we see that the best means of communication is often taken as a truth above the actual experience in its immediacy for the individual … from here then we find ourselves turning back in on ourselves and questioning the reliability of expression. And again, a stumbling block. Can we talk about “questioning the reliability of expression”? Surely expression is expression and the reliability is a product of communication. I cannot bring into question the experience, I simply hold the experience immediately and then express it to another. It is clear here that the expression of the experience is a reflection of the experience not the experience itself. The reliablility of the expression would depend upon the intricacies of the expressions used to communicate the immediate experience to another. If I say “It was black”, this expression is understood and relatable to the other persons experience (given that they are able to experience different tones and colours).

[-1-]

Wow wee.

This is tough reading, Ghost.

I could not get through even the first paragraph.

The title threw me off: the puzzle was not solved, and I had to "store" the puzzle in my head for later solvation.

Then came a list of words in quotation marks. I don't handle lists well... lists don't flow, they are impossible to memorize, and they have a significance which can only be understood by memorizing them without any apparent connection. So I could not get through the list, it is hard for me to read lists. Also, they were in "quotes". Which is even more difficult for me to read. Unquoted words mean what they do. Table means a table. But "table" to me is significantly, though only slightly, different from table. "Table" is not really a table; it is, instead, an identifying word designed by the author for a concept that does not readily have a better word for it. I may say to my teacher, "My father loves my mother", but if I say "my father "love" my mother", then it's IMMEDIATELY understood that it's not really love that he feels for her, but some sarcastic or different way of describing his sentiments for my mother.

So, in all: three stumbling blocks: a puzzle which I had to solve but could not, a list, and slightly altered meanings of words which were not explained and there were a lot of them thrown at me right at the beginning.

[Burning ghost]

Really? I thought it was reasonably clear that I was looking at language and experience? I even explained that we do not experience a "sequence" of adjectives, but rather divvy up the experience into a sequence of lingual terms for ease of communication.

When you say "table" I know what you mean. The parenthesis used was to highlight piece by piece nature of language as opposed to the complete experience. This is relation to verbal thought gives us a hint at how we have the habit of sequencing through a need to communicate certain extracted experiences (this principle of plurality is something I was going to move onto next in regard to language, experience and the "experiences" as a facet of language representation rather than as experience. Which will lead to a certain special contradiction too.)

Do I need to remove all the parenthesis? If so would that resolve the problem for you?

note: This is by no means a self contained piece. It is merely an outline/introduction into what I am going to look at and it will meander from place to place because that is part of the exercise I am hoping to make the reader to take for themselves.

-- Updated June 19th, 2017, 11:17 am to add the following --

Maybe if the contrite couple of small paragraphs are too disturbing I should just start at "I will start at the start ..." ? I was hoping to give the reader at least some hint as to where to expect this whole thing will lead from those first two little paragraphs

[-1-]

My only advice to you at this point is to write what you want to, but during the ENTIRE writing process, never letting up for a moment, write as if you were a stranger reading it. This is the bread and butter of the art of writing. You always write for an audience, and you need to be palatable to your audience with your writing. Both in style and in content.

That's all. I am not your audience; but if you aim to please an audience made of people like me, you need to have to learn how I think and process text in my mind.

[Prothero]

Personally I think we use "language" to try to communicate or document our "experience". Experience "itself" does not require language, likewise thought "itself" does not require language.
When I get up in the morning, I don't say to myself "get up" we just do it, and likewise taking the bread out of the fridge, dropping it into the toaster, buttering, and eating. None of them require an internal dialogue, only if I am trying to tell some-else do I have to translate my activity to language.

[Oranssi]

I liked what you wrote and for me it was comprehensible, maybe the only thing that slightly bothered me was that you use too many brackets.
Try to use more virgules or even just small phrases, ending them sooner. So the reader has a more slower pace. I think slower pace is essencial for deep thoughts to arise.

That is why aphorisms is my favorite way to write philosophy. Maybe consider doing that too?

[-1-]

Aphorism creation is a dying art... gone the way of the amphorism: Dissapeared, like camphorism.

[Burning ghost]

I liked what you wrote and for me it was comprehensible, maybe the only thing that slightly bothered me was that you use too many brackets.
Try to use more virgules or even just small phrases, ending them sooner. So the reader has a more slower pace. I think slower pace is essencial for deep thoughts to arise.

That is why aphorisms is my favorite way to write philosophy. Maybe consider doing that too?

Noted. Too many brackets! Aphorisms are going to be a subject at some point no doubt.

Glad it was comprehensible. Can you guess where I am going with this?

[Oranssi]

Yes.
Exformation and the fractal nature of communication. The description of the world, creating itself another world and so on. Complexification (the adding of more points of connection) of the Universe. The sense of order when the observer / listener recognize patterns / language.

[Oranssi]

Aphorism creation is a dying art... gone the way of the amphorism: Dissapeared, like camphorism.

If aphorism is a dying art, that's cool for me.
I don't want to hijack this thread but just a quick question. If you don't mind me asking, what is camphorism? I can't find anything useful in the internet...

[Burning ghost]

CONTINUED FROM OP ...

Approaching

What I feel I have outlined is the approaching nature of language to the experienced world. Our language as a means to ostensively mark this or that tiem of experience in the world and understand it is part of communication. We approach each other and by doing so frame the world about us within our language. The concepts expressed in our communications take on a very real feel as if of experience rather than as expression of experience. This is because through the use of language, language is a felt experience. There is no line discernable between language as experience and language as concept.

What is easier to miss is the use of “approaching”. What does it mean to “approach”? I have no direct intention of floundering in ideas of time or space here. We experience and that is all I wish to say about the matter. In this sense “approaching” in the thematic of experience, meaning I do not experience change, I experience and that is all. The understanding creates the view of experience as a “thing”, and this understanding is where “approaching” looks upon the “other”. In the sense that eveery concept is some “other”. It is possessed in an “as if” something. What is unimportant is the need to make some distinction between physical or non-physical. The “object” (the thing) approached could be the concept of colour or a physical ball. It makes no difference how we place a concept in terms of phsyical reality for our purpose here. The purpose here is to understand that “approaching” is used here as a way of “feeling out” meaning. Method creates meaning. Method and meaning are experience. If there is no method ther eis no meaning, if there is no meaning there is no method. And understand these words as “words” within the method of language that comes at a distance from experience. Here we then may frame this in a different manner and say “experience” is method and “langauge” is meaning, or even “language is method and “experience” is meaning. It is here we uncover the duplicity of langauge, because in these expressions on this page, as hard as I might, I cannot escape the use of language and can never achieve, in this written/spoken symbolic form, a pure expression of the “experience” other than by bring you the reader to an approximation. The last steps taken must be yours of your accord and I can never come to know if you understand. The task of language is infinite in its approach to express experience, and through the experience of language it actually has no need to, yet has a use in its duplistic nature to reveal itself as “other” and as a “thing” like how we frame the term “experience”.

I common thing I see too often is experience playing out as if it is a “thing”, as if time and space are the means of experience and position. They are merely expressions of experience by way of language method. I don’t experience using a hammer and experience a hammer as two different items of experience. Such a thing is a complexion of language expressed back as if it is experience. I experience both “item” and “use” as “experience” (in its entirety, so to speak, even though there is no such “thing” as “entire” experience only experience irrespective of “thing”. The “thing” is the framing of language “thrown about”.)

All this I know will be extremely difficult to understand and you may very well be asking “What are you saying here?” What I want to make apparent more than anything is the “loci”, the “positional”, nature employed in language. What is so incredibly easy to misconstrue, and what is beyond lingual ken, is that experience is postionless and locationless, it is without motion, movement or context. We only see this elusive “experience” by representing it as “it”, as a “thing”.

Some may say that experience in immanent. What they unwittingly gloss over is that the “immanent” is meaningless outside the method of language we employ. It is a concept that relies on a method of “things”, and the idea of “things” has been further employed in day-to-day living by phsyical science. “Thing” is just a language expression of experience. Experience in a positionless sense that we come to call it what it is only as a “thing”.

If you understand what I am saying here then you will understand that I could write and write and write without end and never achieve my goal of bringing the reader to a “thing” that has no “thingness”. The reader may even see it as proposterous and even as a vile corruption of language, an irrational twisted and horrendous tautology. I don’t deny any of these things. What I hope is that the reader sees this unfathomable by not seeing it. By understanding by not understanding. By holding and framing the basic idea of “experience” as a “no thing”, a “thinglessness”, happenstantially framed in a methodology we call language and which I am burden with as the sole means to try and both reveal and cover up this “thingless” “thing”. My failure is its own success.

[Londoner]

I found I was having difficultly with 'experience'. There is a lot about where it differs from language, how we should not let language confuse us. But 'experience' as such seems to be taken as a given, whereas the consequence of the argument seems to be that there is no such thing as 'experience'. Or if there is, we cannot say anything about it. That may be your conclusion; I do not find that absolutely clear. But if it is, then we cannot explain language by reference to it!

To put it another way, if we are discussing the relationship between language and experience, then I think we first have to explain where we think each of those is grounded. But if our argument is that one of them isn't grounded, then there can be no relationship to discuss!

I am only making an observation of the shape of the essay; I think I am probably on much the same page as you regarding the substance.

[Burning ghost]

I am not concluding anything yet, nor outlining a particular theme about the relationship between so called "experience" and "language".

Like I said, this is my first attempt to write something I regard as philosophical and I am trying to do so without resorting to references to other philosophers.

This is still the basic introduction and I likely to wind on into more obscure territory than this before the intro is finished. The point of this intro is to get the reader to feel around the kind of areas that will be covered in regard to what I said in the very first couple of short paragraphs in the OP.

You seem to get the gist. The "gist" could be said to be the "theme" of the introduction I guess?

[Spectrum]

@Burning Ghost

Have you any experiences in writing a thesis at Masters or PhD level?
If not I suggest you get an idea of how it is done in generally.
What is critical is the Problem Statement;
http://dissertationrecipes.com/wp-conte ... tement.pdf
The above will give you an idea of how to be specific and precise with what you theme is.
From what I've read of your posts, you often stray and spray all over the central topic.

To be on the safe side, provide an abstract of your theme.
This is common with most philosophy papers I have read.

On 'knowledge' and 'experience', note

Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (1781) The following is an excerpt from the Introduction ("B" edition).
"That all our knowledge begins with experience there can be no doubt. ... But, though all our knowledge begins with experience, it by no means follows that all arises out of experience."

Thus if you want to write about 'knowledge' you should understand Kant's view on the relation between 'knowledge' and 'experience' re a priori and a posteriori elements that influence experience and knowledge. In addition there are so many areas of the Philosophy of Knowledge, e.g. epistemology, JTB, etc.

'knowledge' and 'experience' are gigantic icebergs.

Linguistics or language is another gigantic iceberg.

If you want to write about 'experience' and 'language' which are gigantic philosophical iceberg individually, you really has to be very specific and precise with your problem statement and abstract.

I don't see any clear abstract or problem statement from you in your OP or later posts.
If you want to write about linking 'experience' and 'language,' are you linking them in total or merely specific parts?
Linking them it total would be difficult. i.e. too massive, thus you are likely to be correlating specific parts of these two subjects, what are they? If it is general, you might as well summarize from someone's paper.
If you google 'language and experience' or 'experience and language' you will get a ton of results.

[Burning ghost]

Spectrum -

If you've read any Wittgenstein, Derrida, Husserl or Heidegger then base what I am attempting on that (more Wittgenstein, although I hope to frame in the readers mind better what I focusing on eventually)

I don't see any clear abstract or problem statement from you in your OP or later posts.

I have no intention of highlighting a clear problem or abstract. I don't know what it is I am writing yet I just thought it about time I tried to get in all down on paper and then work from there. Look at this as a rough draft of what could be a book, a short paper or a series of interrelated essays.

There will most certainly not be any conclusion.

-- Updated July 4th, 2017, 4:14 am to add the following --

CONTINUED (PART 3) ....

(note: What preceded was only the introduction. It was meant to give a gist of what to expect rather than to declare anything outright. It was a means of setting up the reader to deal with the obscure nature of language and the task of philosophy to continually attempt to overcome this problem and to despair at the impossible task of idealizing language into a universal language. It seems to me we have to merely do our best approximation of "ideal" and not forget it as being an approximation rather than a doctrine.)


From here I will proceed to outline a number of philosophical topics during this odyssey. There will be equal attention paid to the “subjects” I deem worthy. Each will correspond as much as possible to three views as follows …

1- The Subject Matter : The item as a subject of knowledge.

2- The Subject Position : The position of a human subject experiencing.

3- The Subject Relationship : The reach of and integration of the subject with other subjects (be they other Subject Matters or other Subject Positions)

PART ONE : Ontology

1) The Subject Matter of Ontology.


Ontology is concerned with things like origins and existence. It covers items such as objects and reality. It simplicistic terms we are dealing with the broad item of “existence” and not in any particular sense, be it physical, abstract or in some theoretcial combination.


We know the clear distinction between universal existences and non-universal existences. Universals are seemingly non-experiential, meaning they are items that exist mentally not physically. More simply put an ideal does not present itself to us in a physical sense, such as “as” or “or”. The same “as” or “or” is meant in every usage, unlike with physical items such as “book” or “table”, which necessarily vary being physical objects rather than purely mental aspects used to express the sensible.


3) The Subject Relationship of Ontology.

Here we move on swiftly to the obvious relationship that the Subject of ontology reveals. That is the relationship of the Physical and Mental. There is a clear distinction played out here between the Physical (such as “book” or “table”) and the mental (such as “as” or “or”). You may argue that “or” or “as” are merely grammar or some illusion of language. This is not really so because “grammar” and “language” differ and are not universal. Numbers such as “one” or “two” possess no physical distinction not merely because they have no physical existence, but because they are always the same. A “book” can mean “this book” or “that book”, but I cannot rationally talk about “this one” and “that one”, the “one” is the very same item across existence it is universal.


The relationship though is apparent for we cannot talk about a universal without opposition. The infinitely extendable “one” is only known counter position, so to speak, to the finitude of “book”, being an object of a changing and ephemeral nature quite unlike “and” which remains meaningful only with finite objects (as all objects are necessarily finite!) by sitting “as if” betwixt said objects in a non-space, in an abstraction called “grammar”.


2) The Subject Position to Ontology.

(note: “to” and “of”, both being the same approximation meaning “of this to that”)


The Position of us, we the human experiencing, to ontology is curious. Our position is imaginary between the universal and non-universal, between the finite and the infinite. It is a relative nonsense and a very distinct confusion set upon us by the abstract influence of language. We are bound within the spell we’ve come to use as a community of people and as a subject about a community of objects (be they physical people or books) known to us as finite and experienced. We hold the experience “as if” universal in order to make rational distinctions. We do not itemise every individual experience with a particular individual coin of phrase or worded concept. Our sensible experience is an unknown universal being through which we fashion the likeness of universality upon objects of attention by similarity of position and consistancy of examination. The true universally abstract nature of things like “or” or “one” do not make themselves apparent to us directly, they are only ever encompassed in our comprehension by taking on an imagined, “as if”, state of mind toward sensibility. I do not look at a singular physical object and know it as “one” object, of course that is not to say I see more than one object similar to this particular item. First comes the imagined universal of the said sensibly experienced object, and by the by only then can we reveal a facet of our universal being.

-- Updated July 4th, 2017, 4:20 am to add the following --

note: I have decided to title this thing PHILOSOPHICAL ODYSSEY and the Introduction under the subheading of "The Conspiracy of Language". Hope this helps give you a better idea of where this plans to go ... not quite sure myself, but it has been a long time brewing in my head and about time I tried spew it into writing rather than letting it run amok in my poor little head!