Talk:Ineffability

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Contents 1 Quotes 2 Voldemort and other villians from fiction. 3 New sections for ineffable 4 ineffable villains. 5 Move "Things said to be unutterable because of fear" to "Taboo"? 6 love

[edit] Quotes

"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." - Ludwig Wittgenstein

I really want to follow this up with "If a person can't communicate, the very least he can do is to shut up." - Tom Lehrer; but I don't suppose it would actually be relevant to the article. Sigh.

Ajd 07:22, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

This looks like a candidate for transwiki-ing.... - Orborde 04:15, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

It can be expanded into why certain things are ineffable - ineffability in various cultures etc. Secretlondon 15:44, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

A friend of mine knew Alan Watts very well. He mentioned one of his sayings: "I'm in the business of effing the ineffable" which I think bears inclusion. Whether this is verifiable, ie. in one of his books or recordings, is something I am not willing to spend months on. Can this go in Wiki otherwise? [unsigned]

Tom Lehrer's "If a person can't communicate, the very least he can do is to shut up" may be at least in part a parodic paraphrase of Wittgenstein's "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent", but that's hardly an argument for its inclusion here. The Lehrer quote sheds no light on ineffability, and belongs in a list of parodies, not this article. MIchael 16:42, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Voldemort and other villians from fiction.

I object to the idea that "Voldemort" in the Harry Potter books is ineffable. If people in the story *would* say the word, it would identify precisely what is said. Thus, there is nothing ineffable about it. Are the authors of this wiki word suggesting that the N-word is ineffable? or the F-word? I think that the societal pressure to make words unsaid is a crazy business that the Harry Potter books lampoon. --Enkido 20:42, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

I deleted a list of so-called ineffable villians' names from fiction. In order to hype the scariness and power of their villians, some sci fi authors make characters' names unsaid. This is not the same as a word being truly ineffable, where naming something/someone makes knowing what's being talked about less understandable. [A name for God may be ineffable if it believed to lead us away from understanding the infinite nature of God, whereas naming Voldemort is helpful in identifying the villian.] --Enkido 16:19, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New sections for ineffable

Currently, the main section of this article is "Things said to be ineffable." That is not a proper standard for inclusion on a list of what is ineffable. We should be trying to identify that which is truly ineffable. Or, at least, there should be two sections, each devoted to the separate meanings given the word. This, the two-part definition from dictionary.com: 1. incapable of being expressed or described in words; inexpressible: ineffable joy. 2. not to be spoken because of its sacredness; unutterable: the ineffable name of the deity. In either case, I do not think that fictional villians or superstitious non-named words would qualify. "Macbeth" not being spoken backstage in theatres is not a matter of ineffability, imho. --Enkido 16:31, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Things incapable of being expressed are incapable of being expressed because that's how language works. You can not experience another person's sensations, so they can't properly label them. You can only understand something you can perceive or deduct from previous sensations -- words are labels, not something magical. How those labels are resolved depends on the (listening) individual's experience -- the word "yellow" only means something to someone who learned to use the word as a label for something. It's basic linguistics / media theory. This whole article is too mysticistic for my taste -- 62.143.100.92 14:10, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Ideas that are ineffable are often also mystical. I don't think the article is overally mystical, it's just describing mystical ideas, as it should. Hugh2323 (talk) 05:38, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] ineffable villains.

The list of ineffable villains has been removed, and while it is often an over-used ploy, one of them does fit the description. Yawgmoth from Magic: The Gathering is a 'being' that could be said to be ineffible. "I exist at all time, yet I exist at no time." He cannot be fully comprehended as a being, although he was once a human. He is also multiple entities, that are all a collective conscious that uses "we" to describe actions to itself. I am having a hard time describing him, because, you guessed it. It is my humble oppinion that Yawgmoth could be added to the list of things that are ineffable. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.109.253.240 (talk) 05:27, 16 January 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Move "Things said to be unutterable because of fear" to "Taboo"?

These don't appear to me to be examples of ineffability.Apeman 05:43, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

• True, but the list has the useful function of uncluttering the more serious parts of the article. It seems that people will always continue to add such examples, and this makes it fairly harmless. PJTraill 14:19, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] love

is that too subjective for wikipedia? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.65.237.222 (talk) 14:51, 25 May 2008 (UTC)