Following up an interesting discussion we had on Tuesday In section 1 (I think ) about the limits of language. Words are great, on this view, but they do not capture or convey the totality of feeling associated with human perceptual experience. Sometimes, as the Old saying goes, “you’ve just got to be there.”
William James:
“Philosophy lives in words, but truth and fact well up into our lives in ways that exceed verbal formulation. There is in the living act of perception always something that glimmers and twinkles and will not be caught, and for which reflection comes too late. No one knows this as well as the philosopher. He must fire his volley of new vocables out of his conceptual shotgun, for his profession condemns him to this industry, but he secretly knows the hollowness and irrelevancy. His formulas are like stereoscopic or kinetoscopic photographs seen outside the instrument; they lack the depth, the motion, the vitality. In the religious sphere, in particular, the belief that formulas are true can never wholly take the place of personal experience.” VRE
This sounds like it was an interesting discussion. I think about the "you've just got to be there" saying pretty often, and I really like what you included from William James! That really captures the way I feel and think about it in words I haven't been able to explain. Do you have any suggestions on readings that go into this topic a bit more?
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