How do you experience what cannot be experienced?

[ZenKitty]

We have certain senses, sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch. Each of these has been studied scientifically and found to have limits. So how do we come to know of things beyond these senses and say we have experienced them?

[Duality]

Are you referring to the Beatific Vision?

[Moreno]

We have certain senses, sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch. Each of these has been studied scientifically and found to have limits. So how do we come to know of things beyond these senses and say we have experienced them?

Well, there is critical realism's 'what must be true if.....' we can know the things we know/experience the things we can. Though in my terms, not being a critical realist, we don't just experience a waterfall of sensations. We organize these. I cannot seem to experience the organizer/organizing principles or the 'choices', yet I find myself with all sorts of interpretations, stories, models, judgments. Something beyond pure empiricism has always been happening in me as far back as a I remember. And speaking of memory, there must be some 'place' where memories 'are' when I am not 'having them'. But I can't experience this place. Unless we reinvent the wheel all the time, and rather conveniently well in fact. How pure empiricists EVER woke up from the realm of pure sensation and wrote books, took positions or managed to get food into their mouths, without some knowledge of things beyond what they experience directly....well, they are making magical claims if they think they managed without non-empirical knowledge. They should be - as pure empiricists - merely a sludge of uninterpreted sensations, perpetual psychotic breaks, though not deluded and hence superior.....

[ZenKitty]

We have certain senses, sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch. Each of these has been studied scientifically and found to have limits. So how do we come to know of things beyond these senses and say we have experienced them?

Well, there is critical realism's 'what must be true if.....' we can know the things we know/experience the things we can. Though in my terms, not being a critical realist, we don't just experience a waterfall of sensations. We organize these. I cannot seem to experience the organizer/organizing principles or the 'choices', yet I find myself with all sorts of interpretations, stories, models, judgments. Something beyond pure empiricism has always been happening in me as far back as a I remember. And speaking of memory, there must be some 'place' where memories 'are' when I am not 'having them'. But I can't experience this place. Unless we reinvent the wheel all the time, and rather conveniently well in fact. How pure empiricists EVER woke up from the realm of pure sensation and wrote books, took positions or managed to get food into their mouths, without some knowledge of things beyond what they experience directly....well, they are making magical claims if they think they managed without non-empirical knowledge. They should be - as pure empiricists - merely a sludge of uninterpreted sensations, perpetual psychotic breaks, though not deluded and hence superior.....

I do not think this plays into my question. The things you bring up, like the organizer and all of that, might not be in experience but they work with experience. But I asked about those things that are not in experience by principle, which means that not even the organizer and all of that could not work with it. So my question is neutral on this question, and I do tend to agree with your position within a certain extent.

[Ierrellus]

If senses were the only way in which an organism can gain information, I would have to agree that there are limits to what can be known. IMHO, that is not the case.

[WW_III_ANGRY]

We have certain senses, sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch. Each of these has been studied scientifically and found to have limits. So how do we come to know of things beyond these senses and say we have experienced them?

Who says we have experienced what could not have been experienced? This is malarkey.

[finishedman]

So how do we come to know of things beyond these senses and say we have experienced them?

How do you come to know anything?

[James S Saint]

So how do we come to know of things beyond these senses and say we have experienced them?

How do you come to know anything?

Via logical deduction.

[von Rivers]

We have certain senses, sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch. Each of these has been studied scientifically and found to have limits. So how do we come to know of things beyond these senses and say we have experienced them?

You can't experience what cannot be experienced---that's just an analytic truth. But there are all kinds of ways that we can be justified in making knowledge claims about things that we have not experienced. Deduction, transcendental or otherwise, such as in Moreno's point, or abduction, such as inference to the best explanation. These don't get you Cartesian certainty, but nobody except iambiguous misses that, not even Descartes. Claiming to know doesn't require experience in these cases any more than convicting someone requires being at the crime in progress. And typically, even if you experience something directly, you'd need more premises involved to be justified in making a knowledge claim. You might have provided an example yourself, if the limits of our senses are unsensed---and I don't see how they couldn't be.

[finishedman]

If senses were the only way in which an organism can gain information, I would have to agree that there are limits to what can be known. IMHO, that is not the case.

It’s not the case… in that the senses do not say anything about what they are detecting. The eye does not see nor the ear hear unless the signals are interpreted lest everything be fuzzy. Even when thought becomes present, it also is limited to what is known.

I do not think this plays into my question. The things you bring up, like the organizer and all of that, might not be in experience but they work with experience. But I asked about those things that are not in experience by principle, which means that not even the organizer and all of that could not work with it. So my question is neutral on this question, and I do tend to agree with your position within a certain extent.

A claim to any experience presupposes not only an awareness of the experience as an object, but also a recognition of it as an experience. These conditions imply a division between the subject and the object. Whether there can be an experience of unity where there is a subject left out of the object of experience is another matter.

[finishedman]

So how do we come to know of things beyond these senses and say we have experienced them?

How do you come to know anything?

Via logical deduction.

Does your logic tell you that you can experience something outside the knowledge you have of it?

[Flannel Jesus]

We have certain senses, sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch. Each of these has been studied scientifically and found to have limits. So how do we come to know of things beyond these senses and say we have experienced them?

I'm not sure if I understand your question in exactly the way you meant it, but if I do then I think I have a pretty satisfactory answer, maybe:

Let's talk about sight first and foremost. We see "the visible spectrum" of electromagnetic radiation. That's the only thing we can see. It's actually quite a small portion of the possible wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation:



So, if all we can personally experience, as you say, is visible light, how do we know about all the other stuff? How could we possibly know about them? That's a very good question. Let's take Infra-Red for example: we can't see infra-red. However, there are "infra-red" pictures -- what the fuck? How can there be a picture of something we can't see? The answer is, quite simply, TRANSLATION. We can use tools to translate a certain range of wavelengths into visible wavelengths. So, what we can do is take the entirety of Infra-Red wavelengths and map them onto Visible wavelengths -- it's actually quite simple, really.

And that's basically what happens with everything we can't experience personally but know about -- we map them onto things we can experience.

[von Rivers]

Bravo FJ, I think Moreno gave the original question way too much credit (ahem, and so did I for that matter)...

[Smears]

You see the effects and reason your way to what caused them. Like a blanket moving with something underneath. You don't know what it is under there, but you know its there. You might know that its an it, but the unknown stuff, that's what we are taking about right?

[Drusus]

We have certain senses, sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch. Each of these has been studied scientifically and found to have limits. So how do we come to know of things beyond these senses and say we have experienced them?

It's very simple we can convery information through media, books, sound files, video.

Sometimes the description can be so good that people deprived from a certain sense can imagine what they can't experience.

[James S Saint]

How do you come to know anything?

Via logical deduction.

Does your logic tell you that you can experience something outside the knowledge you have of it?

I'm not sure that I can make sense of that question, but...

It is Logic that tells you that your experiences came from other things that you do not experience directly. The Logic is what lets you know that they are there. It is rationality that lets you name your experiences and classify them. Logic then allows you to ensure consistency in those classifications/definitions. By having the definitions logically coherent and the deductions carefully eliminating any alternative possible causes, you can reliably deduce the existence of things that you could not have experienced and name them, thus "knowing experiences" that you have not directly experienced.

Of course technically, we don't call it "experience" if we didn't directly perceive it, but without that degree of charity, the OP question would make no sense.

[ZenKitty]

Let's take Infra-Red for example: we can't see infra-red. However, there are "infra-red" pictures -- what the fuck? How can there be a picture of something we can't see? The answer is, quite simply, TRANSLATION. We can use tools to translate a certain range of wavelengths into visible wavelengths. So, what we can do is take the entirety of Infra-Red wavelengths and map them onto Visible wavelengths -- it's actually quite simple, really.

And that's basically what happens with everything we can't experience personally but know about -- we map them onto things we can experience.

Just to be clear, the wavelengths you talk about are themselves numbers, so we manipulate numbers of something we cannot see (i.e. wavelengths). And you translate from what you have no experience at all to what you have experience, and say that what you experienced maps what you do not experience. How would you even know it maps? What you see with an infer red picture is a visible spectrum image, and so what you see is not infer red to even saying it is similar to infer red when you cannot compare them. Translations also involve some sort of key to turn symbols into something meaningful, so how would one know that they used the correct key when false ones can translate those symbols differently but give same output, and the key relies on something that you cannot even experience to know if it the correct key.

[ZenKitty]

You can't experience what cannot be experienced---that's just an analytic truth. But there are all kinds of ways that we can be justified in making knowledge claims about things that we have not experienced. Deduction, transcendental or otherwise, such as in Moreno's point, or abduction, such as inference to the best explanation. These don't get you Cartesian certainty, but nobody except iambiguous misses that, not even Descartes. Claiming to know doesn't require experience in these cases any more than convicting someone requires being at the crime in progress. And typically, even if you experience something directly, you'd need more premises involved to be justified in making a knowledge claim. You might have provided an example yourself, if the limits of our senses are unsensed---and I don't see how they couldn't be.

I do not see how this really touches what I asked. I have not observed an asteroid hitting a planet, but I can experience that because it is within the limits of the human senses. I can be justified in making claims about things like this, it would appear, and this would be some knowledge. But when talk about things that we cannot experience at all, then there appears to be no justification for such a claim. We cannot tell by experience.

[ZenKitty]

You see the effects and reason your way to what caused them. Like a blanket moving with something underneath. You don't know what it is under there, but you know its there. You might know that its an it, but the unknown stuff, that's what we are taking about right?

That is not quite what we are talking about, but similar in some respects. Take your example of the blanket. The blanket is something that is within the limits of my senses and so I can experience it. I also find that the blanket is moving and do not experience what is under it to move it. But I check under the covers to see, this is within the limits of human senses. I also have similar experiences of situations similar to that to find that either only this thing is associated with the other, or a couple of things have been found to be associated with this other thing. But with those things that are not within the limits of human senses would be categorically different. It would appear that one would be using reasoning that works with these things within the limits of human senses, or even psychological, and try to use that same type of reasoning on something that is categorically different from it.

[von Rivers]

I do not see how this really touches what I asked. I have not observed an asteroid hitting a planet, but I can experience that because it is within the limits of the human senses. I can be justified in making claims about things like this, it would appear, and this would be some knowledge. But when talk about things that we cannot experience at all, then there appears to be no justification for such a claim. We cannot tell by experience.

There is no experiential justification for the claim that the only kind of justification is experiential. You are making the claim that you are, about 'justification', based on something other than experience, because you are making a universal claim, rather than a claim about the justification of some particular propositions. In ways like the ones you are using, we can make knowledge claims. My favorite example is abduction---inference to the best explanation.

[ZenKitty]

There is no experiential justification for the claim that the only kind of justification is experiential. You are making the claim that you are, about 'justification', based on something other than experience, because you are making a universal claim, rather than a claim about the justification of some particular propositions. In ways like the ones you are using, we can make knowledge claims. My favorite example is abduction---inference to the best explanation.

Inference to the best explanation is making no knowledge claim. They are just claiming that you have an explanation and that it is the best of the alternatives. That is not justification for a knowledge claim, other than "this is the best explanation we have relative to our standards of "best"." If you have no experience then you are building castles in the clouds and saying this is the best castle in the clouds.

[fuse]

What is it we can't experience?

Everything we 'know' about we 'know' about because we can experience its effects on the world. In addition to our knowledge of the non-visible light spectrum, we also understand that a dog whistle produces sound even if we can't hear it. We experience the effects of blowing the whistle.

[Moreno]

I do not think this plays into my question. The things you bring up, like the organizer and all of that, might not be in experience but they work with experience. But I asked about those things that are not in experience by principle, which means that not even the organizer and all of that could not work with it. So my question is neutral on this question, and I do tend to agree with your position within a certain extent.

I am not sure I understand the difference between not being in experience and not being in experience in principle. Could you give me some example of 'things' that would fit in the category of things some people - I assume - think they experience that are in principle not in experience?

is this getting at the issue of non-observables in science?

[ZenKitty]

What is it we can't experience?

Everything we 'know' about we 'know' about because we can experience its effects on the world. In addition to our knowledge of the non-visible light spectrum, we also understand that a dog whistle produces sound even if we can't hear it. We experience the effects of blowing the whistle.

Actually, not everything we know we know because we can experience its effects on the world. Most of it has not even found it in experience to even say it has effects on the world. One of them would be the assumed heat death of the universe, because by this hypothesis we would not be around and so cannot experience it.

We actually have no "knowledge" of the non-visible light spectrum, but we do have a bunch of mathematical equations. We know these equations but this does not show anything but mathematical equations. These are also written in the visible spectrum for others to see. In regard to your example of the dog whistle, we have experienced sound and so we know what sound is like, and we have observed the bodily behavior of people who hear a whistle and notice something similar to a dog when we blow a whistle, even though we do not hear it ourselves. We have experienced sound and so what it is like at least, while those things that are beyond the limits of our senses we cannot even know what they are like. Now everything we do starts in the senses and ends in the senses, as Einstein once pointed out.

[WW_III_ANGRY]

What is it we can't experience?

Everything we 'know' about we 'know' about because we can experience its effects on the world. In addition to our knowledge of the non-visible light spectrum, we also understand that a dog whistle produces sound even if we can't hear it. We experience the effects of blowing the whistle.

Actually, not everything we know we know because we can experience its effects on the world. Most of it has not even found it in experience to even say it has effects on the world. One of them would be the assumed heat death of the universe, because by this hypothesis we would not be around and so cannot experience it.

We actually have no "knowledge" of the non-visible light spectrum, but we do have a bunch of mathematical equations. We know these equations but this does not show anything but mathematical equations. These are also written in the visible spectrum for others to see. In regard to your example of the dog whistle, we have experienced sound and so we know what sound is like, and we have observed the bodily behavior of people who hear a whistle and notice something similar to a dog when we blow a whistle, even though we do not hear it ourselves. We have experienced sound and so what it is like at least, while those things that are beyond the limits of our senses we cannot even know what they are like. Now everything we do starts in the senses and ends in the senses, as Einstein once pointed out.

Why did you ask this question if you knew the answer?