Kilgore Trout
Misanthropic Humanist
Atoms are easily described with words.
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"All Notions of Deity are Necessarily False"
- Thread starter Sunstone
- Start date
Atoms are easily described with words.
Ineffable means unable to put properly into words, not that one is lacking a concept. Your question amounts to a trick question.
"God" is a word.
Indeed.
Kilgore Trout
Misanthropic Humanist
Putting a context into words renders it no longer ineffable.
More that it was never ineffable to begin with.
A word that is part of the wider Germanic vernacular. It's spelled the same in most of the other West Germanic languages (though English, Scots, and Saterland Frisian seem to be the only ones that capitalizes it), except German where it's spelled "Gott." In North Germanic languages, it's generally spelled "guþ/guð", which would be rendered as "guth" in English's surviving Roman letters; the exception being Danish where it's spelled "gud". There's also the Lombardic word "Godan", which is their name for Woden. I'm honestly not sure how that fits in, if at all, but it's still pretty neat.
According to Wiktionary, the Proto-Germanic word was *gudą, which probably meant more or less what it means now, but the Proto-Indo-European source is *ǵʰuto, meaning two things: "invoked", and "poured." That word also gave us the Ancient Greek word khutós or "poured", "piled", "liquid", "washed up"; the Sanskrit word hótṛ, or "priest who makes a sacrificial (particularly burnt) offering/invokes the Gods during such a ritual"; and Persian word zowr, or "libation."
(In case anyone's wondering, the word "god" is completely unrelated to the word "good.")
This ... disparity tells me that the word has always been pretty nebulous in exact meaning, though perhaps not as much as it is now. It seems to largely refer to offerings, or the ones who make said offerings. Only in the Germanic languages did this word seem to replace the one generally preferred for such beings in Indo-European languages, which Modern English uses the Latin "deity" for, but which might more natively have been "tiw" or "tue." Incidentally, Old Norse had a word, goði ("gothi"), which referred to heathen priests. Wiktionary doesn't list an etymology further back, but I do find it interesting, and wonder if this is the "proper" meaning (if such a thing can exist) of the word "god": a priest.
Then of course there's the Gothic (Eastern Germanic) peoples. How do they fit in with that name?
Kilgore Trout
Misanthropic Humanist
Indeed, anything that can be conceptualized isn't ineffable.
"Ineffable" refers to the inability (or undesirability) to put something into words, not whether it can be conceptualized or not.
How do you figure? There is the argument that we "think" in languages, but I'm not well versed in that topic.
I believe you're referring to what's called "Linguistic Determinism." That is, that our entire mental processes are directly influenced by what language we speak.
While there is some truth to it, there's also plenty of evidence against it. Personally, I'm in the camp of the softer "Linguistic Relativism", which is more that language and mental processes are linked together, but not necessarily dependent on each other.
Kilgore Trout
Misanthropic Humanist
Yes, I'm aware of the definition of ineffable.
Kilgore Trout
Misanthropic Humanist
I think a lot of people confuse not having the ability to describe something with it not being able to be described. I have no experience with not being able to describe something I can conceptualize. Then again, my vocabulary is more expansive than most people's.
And yet make a statement that seems to contradict that.
Since it has to do with being able to communicate a concept with words, then it's entirely possible to conceptualize something that's ineffable, because the language that one speaks doesn't have the necessary vocabulary to accurately do so.
I remind you that this is a trait you share with the English language itself, relative to other languages.
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That "something" in your first sentence is a concept, and it is acknowledged as possibly being not able to be described.
Aupmanyav
Be your own guru
Do we exactly know what is energy? Whether it arises from 'absolute nothing'? Do we know exactly how energy works in an atom? IMHO, the way we describe an atom is totally inadequate.
It's complicated.
blue taylor
Active Member
Humans have limited tools and senses. We can not see radio waves, but we have made tools to sense them. We can not see atoms or molecules but we invent things to see them. We can not see radiation but we invented tools to detect it and measure it. We can not sense small vibrations in the earth, like some other animals can, but we invent devices that can sense them better than animals. We can not see in very little light like some animals, but we invent machines that can see for us. We can't see black holes or dark matter, but we know they exist because we developed tools to detect them. Technically speaking all matter is essentially empty space. We still do not know what gives matter it's weight and mass, higgs-boson is probably not it. Antimatter was just a star-trek fable, until it was captured and held for 17 minutes by a group of scientist. Because you can not know whether a god exists or not, is not because a god cannot exist, but because you yourself can not detect it. As humans we have other senses than the five attributed to us. We have intellectual and subtle perception ability, which allows us to reach conclusions that have no basis in the scientific world until we invent a device to confirm or deny it, as we have with countless other things. Want to meet a god? Broaden and enhance your perception, know what you are looking for and seek it out.
Agondonter
Active Member
I mentally have a concept of what I am. Yet I Am ineffable to my mind. This, IMO, may apply to everyone.