Empty Words and Euphemism

reply to post by daskakik

Yes, but I can't pull out a lump and show it to you so, is it actually being experienced?

The problem is you keep treating it like a noun which implies it is a "thing". Feeling is an action. "Feelings" are the things, sensations, and environtments associated with and performing that action. Actions can be experienced because we can experience the things performing those actions.

In linguistic jargon these words are called nominalizations. Are they useful? I suppose. But they are merely actions spoken as if they were nouns.

reply to post by LesMisanthrope

Originally posted by LesMisanthrope
Actions can be experienced because we can experience the things performing those actions.

So are you implying here that there is a separation between the "we" experiencing the actions and the "things" performing the actions? It sounds like that, but I want to make sure.

reply to post by bb23108

Well hopefully when an intimate tells you they have great love and tremendous feelings for you, LesMis, you don't have that conversation!

Ha. Yes, my pedantry can get in the way sometimes. But luckily, pedantry is rarely called for in romantic situations.

It does seem stupid to think about these things, I must admit. But could the confusion in our language be connected to the confusion between people, their environment and how they see things?

reply to post by akushla99

The color red...anyone?

Here is the color red.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

reply to post by bb23108

So are you implying here that there is a separation between the experiencing of actions and the performing of actions? It sounds like that, but I want to make sure.

I meant that actions cannot be experienced without something performing that action. The action is in no way separate from that which performs or does it.

Originally posted by LesMisanthrope
reply to post by bb23108

 

Ha. Yes, my pedantry can get in the way sometimes. But luckily, pedantry is rarely called for in romantic situations.

And of course, as they say, "Timing is everything". Hmmm, that commonly used sentence is making a very bold assumption, and I am quite certain, I cannot agree with it. How can timing be everything? I wonder what LesMis will have to say about this...

Originally posted by LesMisanthrope
It does seem stupid to think about these things, I must admit. But could the confusion in our language be connected to the confusion between people, their environment and how they see things?

It doesn't seem stupid to me, and I think you are right - the more clarified things are relative to word usage and meaning, the better the communication. Of course, there are also great cultural differences between people, and words may have different meanings, how they are used, intonation, etc. Take the word "consciousness" for instance...

Anyway, I think your threads are very informative and thought-provoking. They may even help to clarify one's considerations about reality - and this thread, certainly about one's use of language, its inherent limits, the need for a real definition of terms, etc.

reply to post by LesMisanthrope

The problem is that you want to treat similar experiences (actions) as nouns and ask for quantification when, just like feelings, there are none.

This does not mean that those actions don't happen.

reply to post by LesMisanthrope

Originally posted by LesMisanthrope
I meant that actions cannot be experienced without something performing that action. The action is in no way separate from that which performs or does it.

Yes, but is the experiencer of the action the same as the "things" doing the action? It did not sound that they are in your earlier post.

Originally posted by mysticnoon

Originally posted by NorEaster

Unless you've allowed someone else to define YOU to you, which seems to be just another hijacking of yet another human mind by yet another religion/ideology cobbled together by yet another group of people.

Someone else may help me to understand what I am not, but what defines the self that I am is something which only the self can realise.

How can someone help you to understand what you are not, while not passively defining you to you?

Take a moment and think about it.

reply to post by daskakik

The problem is that you want to treat similar experiences (actions) as nouns and ask for quantification when, just like feelings, there are none.

This does not mean that those actions don't happen.

It also doesn't mean that rain doesn't fall upwards. It also doesn't mean that farts don't smell like lavender. It also doesn't mean that you live on Jupiter. It doesn't mean a lot of things. If you want to argue what it doesn't mean we could do this infinitely.

I think you're just arguing for the sake of arguing at this point. Any points in regards to the OP?

reply to post by LesMisanthrope


Actually what I pointed out is in regards to the OP. They only seem like empty words to you because you don't have a point of reference. You have to experience whatever it is someone is talking about to know what they mean because they are not things that they can pull out and show to you.

This isn't the fault of the person trying to explain something.

Originally posted by NorEaster
.
How can someone help you to understand what you are not, while not passively defining you to you?

Sure, others may use various words to describe the essence of self, but until the moment of direct experience of self, the words merely point to a potential or possibility.

I understand that there may be some people who happily take on labels given to them by others, and that they identify with those labels. This is still the ego.

Self-realization cannot be claimed by adopting another person's defintion, be it passive or active. Realize the self by the self - not simply believe or take it on faith. Realize the self means to experience it directly and essentially.

Originally posted by LesMisanthrope
I meant that actions cannot be experienced without something performing that action. The action is in no way separate from that which performs or does it.

So an actor portraying the feelings of a character he is playing cannot be separate from those feelings?

Originally posted by piequal3because14
reply to post by akushla99

 

The color red...anyone?

Here is the color red.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

That's very sweet TY.
...but alas, no red
...love however, I can relate to...chiefly because I feel it...granted it's not some'thing' you can hold in your hand, or really measure...which is why I am perplexed as to why no-one can describe to me the sensation of red...clearly, its frequency can be measured (remembering there was a time when machinery could not measure it)...the empty words and euphemisms lead me to believe that this red thing does not exist, and y'all are hallucinating...
I really haven't seen any evidence to the contrary...

A99

I will use the example of Martin Luther King’s Letters from a Birmingham Jail to maybe help my point.

How can one explain something to another when they have never experienced it? If we were to do as Martin Luther King, you write the most powerful letter ever written. He employed Aristotle’s logos, ethos and pathos in a perfect unity to destroy any doubt.

The clergymen to whom he wrote had likely no first hand experience of segregation (a euphemism). Mistakenly, they urged King abstain from action, to fight in the courts rather than face disorder on the streets, not because they are evil or stupid, but because they were completely unaware of the gross injustice of segregation, simply because the idea had no connection to their lives. It wasn’t until King spoke about it that they began to understand.

He opens a window into segregation by explaining more clearly what it entails, and although these people have never experienced segregation, they are able to understand, through King’s rhetoric, the injustice of segregation.

Simple logical arguments that appeal to both the moralities and emotions lead people down King’s path of understanding, by allowing the clergymen to experience as best as possible something they have never experienced.

He appeals to our logic:

Let us consider a more concrete example of just and unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal.

He appeals to our ethics:

We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was "illegal." It was "illegal" to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers. If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country's anti-religious laws.

And he appeals to our emotions:

Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "'n-word'," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you go forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness"–then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.

It is ignorant to be unconvinced by Letters to a Birmingham Jail.

I’ve never robbed a liquor store before. Therefore I have never experienced it. But I have held a gun. I know what it feels like to have an adrenaline rush. I’ve been in a liquor store before. I have worn a mask. I have felt nervous. I have seen fear in another’s eyes. By refering to these and other concrete things, an armed-robber can conceivably explain what it’s like to rob a liquor store and aid in my understanding.

If someone has experienced God or a soul, and I haven’t, how come they are unable to explain it to me? This is what I wonder.

Originally posted by LesMisanthrope

How can one explain something to another when they have never experienced it? If we were to do as Martin Luther King, you write the most powerful letter ever written. He employed Aristotle’s logos, ethos and pathos in a perfect unity to destroy any doubt.

I struggle just to put together a coherent sentence, so using "ethos and pathos in a perfect unity" is well beyond my writing skills.

Perhaps this highlights one of the reasons why nothing I write contributes to your understanding of the matter being discussed?

reply to post by LesMisanthrope

Having a discussion with someone can be difficult—especially when you have no clue what they are talking about. Try talking to someone about God, or consciousness, or the soul, or the afterlife. Every single word and idea they use is like the ethical intent of the argument—quite empty.

It would seem your premise, and indeed Aristotle's "Modes of Persuasion" both presuppose that all knowledge is rational (obtained through thought) and empirical (obtained through experience).

It would seem that if this were to be the case, then limiting oneself to discussions of concrete, tangible objects like bananas and trees would save one a lot of grief. To do so otherwise, one must appeal to the possibility of non-rational knowledge (not based on thought or direct observation) or even intuitive knowledge.

If you are lending yourself to conversations that require modals of thought that exceed rationalism (abstract concepts like God, the soul, consciousness, etc), then some ambiguity should be expected. Granted, the limitations of language DO prove a difficult obstacle - but not insurmountable

Just a lay girl's perspective.

Interesting thread btw, gave me pause ...

Regards,

FTE

Originally posted by LesMisanthrope

I get no imagery from such words. Because of this I am unable to find any reason to become connected with it in any way, nor can I find any reason to allow my emotions to respond positively or negatively towards it.

Well, see what I have found with some other atheists is that it is the concept the word habitually vehicles that they find offensive- because it suggests there is a non-physical reality (which is contrary to their basic beliefs about existence) ,
and also because they associate theism with a lot of violence, war, social injustice and danger to society and individuals. This stimulates emotional repulsion and defensiveness.

Without choosing to become emotional, the word, with time, becomes emotionally charged for them , as words tend to do....

But okay, if that is not the case, you are not someone with a knee jerk reaction to God, I'll take your word for it.
I am just still trying to make sense of

how or why you think people who believe in the concept of God would find the notion of God being non-material, non-physical, offensive or a source of discomfort?.
For the most part they embrace and assert that as being part of the nature of God. Some very primitive religions will claim objects as God , but most religions of the modern world have non-physical entities as Gods.

How could it offend their tastes then (sorry for the mistake in wording earlier) if it is something they profess to acknowledge and understand and embrace ?

I see you tried to answer it though, so maybe I am just not understanding your explanation.

Originally posted by akushla99

Originally posted by akushla99

Originally posted by woodwardjnr

Originally posted by akushla99
I am colorblind red...describe the color red to me...

A99

I assume you still have the senses of temperature? If so I would describe that red is the temperature that comes out of the hot tap. You know that blue represents the cold and red the hot.

You can assume as much as you like...neither the assumption, nor the comparison used describes the color...incidentally, using terms such as temperature to describe are a form of euphemism...please describe without euphemism of any sort...to convince me the color red exists...

A99

The color red...anyone?...I'm not asking for a description of a religious experience!...the experience of the color red...

A99

It's subjective, I suppose, because no one can be completely sure that what he or she sees as "red" is that same color in the mind of another. There are "gestalt reds" and outliers, that I might think is closer to purple or pink or orange, but another person will disagree, and say, "no, that's red."

Description will be culture based and dependent on metaphor...for instance, what red conjures up in our mind will be based on our experience with it in our environment. Red is linked with anger and passion, perhaps because of blood or how people blush or have red faces when embarrassed or ashamed, etc. I don't know about red, in other circumstances, but I know that blue does not mean "sad" in all cultures, it's associated with peace/tranquility and even valor in Spanish (ex: Prince Charming is principe azul, the blue prince).

Some languages don't have color boundaries that neatly mesh with those of English. And most languages seem to have proscribed many color words after the fact - that is to say, pink in Spanish is from the word rose, orange in any European language I know is linked to the fruit.

Colors aside, the deeper we dig, the more metaphor rears its head. Few things in any language are NOT spoken about in terms of something else. There is rarely a 1:1 correspondence between the represented and the word(s) that represent it.

(Double post due to editing bug, too much editing to do, and then hitting reply instead.)