Experiences of ineffable significance
An ‘experience of ineffable significance’ is sudden feeling of
knowing something very significant but which cannot be described in
words, sometimes accompanied by chills or tears. Amongst its types
are the sublime and (secular) ‘epiphanies’. Drawing on work by Huron
and by Meyer, I propose that it is a type of surprise, arising from
perceptions whose match to our schematic knowledge falls outside the
normal range of discrepancy, either by radical discrepancy or by
uncanny identity. Assuming a theoretical context of Relevance
Theory, and drawing on work by Sperber and by Raffman, I explore
some reasons how we are able to suddenly judge that the perception
produces deeply significant knowledge, and why that knowledge cannot
be expressed in words.
Article outline
- 1.Experiences of ineffable significance
- 2.Etiology: Discrepancies outside a normal range
- 3.Epistemic feelings: Significance
- 4.Ineffability
- 5.Representation and metarepresentation
- 6.An example
- 7.Conclusion
-
Notes
-
References
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Cited by
Cited by 1 other publications
Wharton, Tim
2021.
Relevance.
Pragmatics & Cognition 28:2
► pp. 321 ff.

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