There're plenty of vague abstract ideas running around which we all understand but none of us can describe.
What's "intelligence"? Nobody knows. What's "mind"? Nobody knows. "Space"? "Time"? "Art"? "Left" and "right", "up" and "down"? We all have the ideas of it in our heads, but when it comes to putting them into words, nobody has any.
It's fascinating. Somehow, we understand those ideas without describing them, learning about them as we go, with nobody telling us about it - and yet, we can't describe any of those. We understand that space is the... space we exist in, where matters exists in, like, where we can walk, fly and stuff; and art is a process of creating something which has... some traits which attract us in a certain way - but we can barely touch their meaning with words.
It feels like, for most of those ideas - those that composite the vague ideas listed - we don't have words. Describing space using "space" is recursive and, therefore, useless in understanding of it. Same goes for time and the directions we're so used to. You can easily say while standing on the ground where "up" and "down" is, but as you leave the affect of terrestrial gravity, you lose those directions: where's up and where's down in a space which has no sky and no ground? It's the same for "left" and "right", and not only in the gravity-affected space.
What got me thinking about it is the concept of "fish". Stephen Jay Gould, after a lifetime of research, concluded that there's no such thing as a fish: that the sea creatures we call "fish" are as diverse and unrelated to each other as air-life is (with, for example, a salmon being closer to a camel than to a hagfish). Still, we feel pretty comfortable calling those sea creatures "fish" because they appear very similar to our view - and we can probably tell that a fish is a creature that lives underwater and breathes using gills, but that's a far as we can go, and ever here we've already hit a few bumps: dolphins and whales are mammals, which, ideally, puts them outside of the certain "seafood" category.
Still, we feel pretty confident calling those animals fish along with the rest of the small, legless crowd. I wonder if a fish, had it mind to comprehend it, coming out of the water for a time, see the earthly animals similar to each other, in the similar way to Europeans seeing Asians very similar to each other - or us, seeing fish...
Definitely. I've been interested in language since as long ago as I don't remember. Language is an interesting thing: some parts make perfect sense, others struggle with it, and yet other parts are missing completely, even though it's the most important tool of communication between us.
This is a great book about how man might be the first animal to find consciousness, but we don't have to be the last.
Language is inherently flawed; Language will never be able to reciprocate exactly what is in one's minds eye. A great example which sheds light on the fallibility of language are Zen Koans.
"Whats the sound of hand clapping?"
An even more explicit example
Zen master Jiufeng Daoqian Dajue was once asked by a monastic, "I heard that you said that one who transmits words is outstanding among the sages. Is it true?"1Jiufeng said, "That's right."2
The monastic said, "Sakyamuni emerged in this world, pointed to heaven and earth, and said, 'Above earth and under heaven, I alone am venerable.' How can you call him one who transmits words?"3
Jiufeng said, "I call him one who transmits words because he pointed to heaven and earth."
- "Whats the sound of hand clapping?"
That's easy: either a crack, or a pop, depending on a handful of factors; you'll hear the difference when you encounter it.
Language isn't flawed as much as it is incomplete. There are words missing for things perfectly commonplace not because there can't be any (because language is somehow flawed and incapable of transmitting those) but because there's little use to them. Here's a good example: what do you call the two lines on your face that come down from your nose to the extremes of your lips?
It's not that there can't be a word - those lines happened to be meaningless to us, useless in daily life that we didn't bother to name them; when we have to, we call them long-hand "you know, those two lines that come down from nose to lips - yeah, those ones". Apparently, thinking of a name is more difficult or resource-inefficient in this situation. It's a fascinating condition that we've invented.
- Here's a good example: what do you call the two lines on your face that come down from your nose to the extremes of your lips?
This would be true if only we were talking about knowing words themselves. The issue here is the definition and the inexplicable, not the word nor prevalency. We can point out those lines on your face because they are there, but this logic breaks down when talking about abstractions. Knowing what the two lines on your face are called and meeting head on with sudden short-term aphasia when trying to describe what "Art" or "God" is are two different scenarios and can't be compared.
Well, I was talking about knowing words in the quote. Often enough, we merely don't have the lexicon to describe those, and had we it, we'd describe it just fine.
However, I understand what you mean when you talk about what "Art" or "God" is, and I agree with you. Here, it's not what we lack the lexicon - it's that we lack the understanding of the idea, which is why it's impossible to describe.
Yet... we understand it, at the same time, do we not? We can grasp that this is art and this isn't in a manner that's inaccessible to us yet working all the time. We understand art, but don't know it. Which means, to me, that there's some sort of idea of art in the background - subconsciousness, if you will - and with right words and ideas, we can probably access it - or, at least, move ourselves closer to understanding it. This is what fascinates me about it.