Well, as I think about it I realize I’m not really sure what we’re talking about, as the initial context was established by the OP, who was making a point about relationships between talking about experiences and being conscious of those experiences that I’m still not quite sure I understand, and I seem to be keeping one foot in the closest approximation of that context I can manage, which in retrospect is not very helpful of me. I apologize.
So, dropping that context altogether: absolutely agreed that it’s possible for me to have an experience E1 but to not be able to communicate E1 to person X in a way that inspires an imaginative experience E2 in X that we are both confident shares salient properties with E1. And absolutely agreed that when that happens, X may lack confidence that I’m actually having E1 at all… they may think I’m describing E3 in a strange way, or they may doubt that I had any experience at all, etc.
I have a few of those experiences from when I was in the ICU after my stroke that not only can I not readily communicate to others, but don’t even make any sense to me when I recall them.
Come to think of it, that happens all the time, though the most common cases are so conventional that we’ve evolved social standards around them… the experience of holding your child for the first time is one so routine as to be cliche, for example. (There are many other traditional “firsts” in the same vein.) If I try to express those experiences to someone whose life doesn’t include something roughly comparable, I’ll likely fail… but that failure is routine and no big deal. (The traditional wrapper for it is “You’ll understand when you’re older.”)
Agreed that it’s pretty common for me to say things that, prior to my saying them, I wasn’t conscious of knowing, and after I say them, it’s clear I’ve known all along. (This is one reason the “talk about”/”conscious of” equation that started this whole garden path is problematic for me.)
Well, as I think about it I realize I’m not really sure what we’re talking about, as the initial context was established by the OP, who was making a point about relationships between talking about experiences and being conscious of those experiences that I’m still not quite sure I understand, and I seem to be keeping one foot in the closest approximation of that context I can manage, which in retrospect is not very helpful of me. I apologize.
So, dropping that context altogether: absolutely agreed that it’s possible for me to have an experience E1 but to not be able to communicate E1 to person X in a way that inspires an imaginative experience E2 in X that we are both confident shares salient properties with E1. And absolutely agreed that when that happens, X may lack confidence that I’m actually having E1 at all… they may think I’m describing E3 in a strange way, or they may doubt that I had any experience at all, etc.
I have a few of those experiences from when I was in the ICU after my stroke that not only can I not readily communicate to others, but don’t even make any sense to me when I recall them.
Come to think of it, that happens all the time, though the most common cases are so conventional that we’ve evolved social standards around them… the experience of holding your child for the first time is one so routine as to be cliche, for example. (There are many other traditional “firsts” in the same vein.) If I try to express those experiences to someone whose life doesn’t include something roughly comparable, I’ll likely fail… but that failure is routine and no big deal. (The traditional wrapper for it is “You’ll understand when you’re older.”)
Agreed that it’s pretty common for me to say things that, prior to my saying them, I wasn’t conscious of knowing, and after I say them, it’s clear I’ve known all along. (This is one reason the “talk about”/”conscious of” equation that started this whole garden path is problematic for me.)
Sounds like we’re on the same page after all, then. ^.^