3.3.4.2 - words and experiences
Just like music, consciousness is ineffable.
There is a physical side both to music and consciousness, pitch, amplitude and duration of sounds, neuronal states and behavior, etc.
The ineffable side is what provides value to music and consciousness, its beauty and "content".
Paradoxically, everything we talk about has "content", but we do not describe this experience,
Most of the time words are just meant to point to, or elicit, experiences of things we have already had: for instance the word "yellow" is usually intended as a way to elicit the experience of seeing the color yellow (even if only through the eyes of the imagination). Just like the expressions "Beethoven's fifth" or "Gould's Goldberg variations" are intended to elicit the experience of hearing Beethoven's Fifth Symphony or Bach's Goldberg variations.
In some cases words are able to elicit new experiences. For instance the a "dodecagon" is any polygon with twelve sides and twelve angles. Now we might never imagined a figure with twelve sides, but it is relatively easy to do. The same if we say "dog with the face of a seagull", which is not very interesting, but easy to imagine.
In some few but very important cases, words describe objects which we cannot experience, for instance "hypersphere" (the analogue of a sphere that may have more than three spatial dimensions) or the "M Theory". Either because they involve more dimensions than we can experience, or because the scales surpass the limits of our imagination (like saying the Earth has four thousand million years, an atom's size is between 30 and 300 pm (trillionths of a meter), our the milky way is about 200 thousand light-years across or that the sun has a core temperature of more than 13 million degrees. These things are simply outside of what a primate was designed to imagine. So we can't. Most of our science develops outside our imaginable area, that is, with concepts that are outside what can be imagined as our direct experience. Mathematics however allows us to relate those events precisely, and we can and do imagine those relations, in an abstract manner.
It is possible that we are not designed to experience the processes that lead to consciousness, and that we may find ourselves in a situation in which we can only understand "mathematically" or otherwise, the processes that lead to our inner experiences.
When we hear music we have words that can point to particular instruments, like the oboe, particular sounds, like "high pitch", we can even say if the music is being performed in a shallow, precise or passionate manner.
Of course, the word "oboe" does not produce an oboe, just like the words "galaxy" or "whale" produce neither galaxies nor whales. Words, at most, produce mental states
words point to things
lack of words for the inner world
we have many words to describe common material objects
but the world of states of mind is much vaster, and it is difficult to find words for them, for a series of reasons, including the lack of interest of mankind in such unprofitable task...
so, much of the mental world goes unnoticed because we have no words for it, it passes as if it does not exist or does not matter.
a new language would have to be invented, to release the inner world ... so that music could find words to describe it...
words are not knowledge
knowledge does not demand words - we can have practical, direct, complex, scientific knowledge without words.
Vision, anticipation, understanding of the causal relations, is what is necessary to have knowledge.
Human language is a way of transmitting and preserve knowledge, given appropriate and prepared brains.
Words can do this because brains are permeable to them, mental states can be changed through vocal or visual words.
These mental states can then be perfected and integrated by the individual so that they become knowledge.
Knowledge is essentially the ability to see the world as it really is, which is demonstrated by the ability to deal with it and get expectable results
To understand something is, first, to understand what it is (which probably no human does regarding anything)
Secondly it is to be able to relate to it in a predictable manner.
Absolute knowledge in this second sense is what happens when we can't be surprised.
Absolute knowledge in this previous sense can only be obtained through the first sense, that is, by understanding what something is.
But no one understands what anything is (it may all be a dream, etc).
The only knowledge we have so far is instrumental knowledge: how things usually behave.
The science or knowledge of consciousness will be divided in different parts:
1. The inner ability to change states of consciousness and to understand or map their connections (ways to travel from happiness to unhappiness and vice-versa, for instance, or to recreate the feelings provided by Jean Michel Jarre's Oxygen).
This is already done in some level regarding the inspiration of specific states of mind: through music, drugs, conversations, and others
Also many individuals map their voyages through these different states and become able to recreate them throughout their lives.
This ability to deal with the inner world is part of an understanding of consciousness.
2. Another part is to be able to deal with the relation between consciousness and physical reality.
This would imply, among other things, the ability to recreate consciousness in a physical medium. That is part of the plan to achieve immortality. In fact immortality is not mainly the survival of the body but of the mind. If we can keep the mind alive for eternity, it can be easily hoped that we can achieve all manner of artificial bodies it can then use. To recreate the mind from zero is perhaps one of the most sought-after goals for any one that has imagined the consequences of such power.
3. Finally we would also have to know what consciousness is, but, since we don't know what anything is so far, not energy, space or time, and we are limited to observe how things are without understanding why they are the way they are, so, the same should happen regarding consciousness even if we are able fill the above two points (inner and physical connection). This limitation, of course, does not stop us from having a great practical control over the surrounding universe, and it would also not stop us from having this same control over consciousness. Of course we wouldn't know why we have this control, or if it could suddenly stop at some moment, etc. But there seems to be no imaginable way to overcome this obstacle through observation and/or deduction (just as there is no way to disprove solipsism).
some things are easily seen (like hammers)
others are difficult to see (like galaxy or cell)
some are impossible to be seen but are easily imagined (like pain, the value of a 100 dollar bill, etc)
others are impossible to be seen and are difficult to imagine (like the beauty of Hindmith's music)