What we don't have, and have never had, is a 'language of experience' which shares experience directly

And will never have as

, without having to rely on invocation, memory or association.

the brain don't work.  

You can't even get from level one to level two in the visual cortex without association.  That's what the two levels do.  See: here for cite [Emphasis added]:

They found that some neurons fired rapidly when presented with lines at one angle, while others responded best to another angle. Some of these neurons responded differently to light patterns than to dark patterns. Hubel and Wiesel called these neurons "simple cells."  Still other neurons, which they termed "complex cells," had identical responses to light and dark patterns. These studies showed how the visual system constructs complex representations of visual information from simple stimulus features.

Motion happens "out there" but we perceive it "in here" and then go on to do other stuff based on that perception as determined by memory, association, instinct (sic), and so on, blah blah.

To underscore my point, there's some nasty genetically carried neurological diseases where the brain doesn't properly associate neural signals to 'doing stuff.'  Most of the time these people die very quickly as it's hard to keep living if the heart doesn't pump regularly or you "forget" to breathe.


She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre

Art hints at this, sometimes, a little, but it's a pale shadow of what would be possible if something like this could be invented with technology, or made to work in some other way.

i agree with you fully on this one. art is at the flintstone stage, and yet is the  only language set that seeks consciously to expand and express simultaneously, to root in familiar and branch into the abstract, to leaf, flower and fruit in ways that may be novel, even though their elements remain pretty constant.

a few well blended primary colours and you can have van gogh. five pentatonic notes can move millions into gear.

what makes a beethoven, a one in a million fluke of gene combos, what are the last elements to digitise, the most resistant to cloning, what are the details that distinguish us from each other and the worlds around us? a computer cannot respond to us with true animus, there's no homunculus inside that be truly original, it can just rejumble man's old offerings in rejigged ways. that's why most electronic music is so dull, it doesn't matter if that snare drum was recorded with the best mikes on the finest instrument in the finest room, or if it's been quantised to be more 'humanised', or it's programmed by a sengalese shaman, it will never ask you to take a leap deep into the present such as is offered by (an)other musician(s) in an improvisational combo when he, she or they is/are (jeez what language is this) inspired in the realtime moment, and on whose artistic response you can build conversation, set your sails.

as tech tries ever harder to make a facsimile of verisimilitude, it throws up such fascinating stuff, it's like it wants to mate with us sometimes. other times suck our brains out our eyes and ears while probing for our souls.

do we want to mate with it? or just mess around a little once in a while?

if you try and play a snare drum exactly the same way twice, you quickly realise how hard it is, the instrument is so subtle in its response to a wide variety of attack, vector, and intention.

computer drum tracks are like artificial flowers, they can be works of art, but they'll never perfume your room, and their depth of field is smoke and mirrors compared to the real they are so cleverly faking.

but there's a huge market for rubber women men actually have sex with, so there's no telling how strange can human desire be?

then maybe we'll fully grok how expensive it is to be real, and how it needn't and shouldn't be...

but miking and producing real drums...that's a work that may seem like buggy whip making, i know, i know...

;)  

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

We have writing and language, which are good for abstract ideas

When is an idea not abstract? When it is tangible perhaps?

What we don't have, and have never had, is a 'language of experience' which shares experience directly

I know of such a "language" --abstract of experience, sign of experience. It is psychology, lexicon of association and assimilation. Set aside my and your understandings of and competencies in manipulating this language --its many dialects inclusive-- though.

There isn't even a word for the concept, which is why it's hard to explain. But if you imagine being able to share, interpret, and store for posterity all of the details of a lifetime, without having to experience them in real time - that would be close to what I mean.

Oh, but this concept has been done. VR-clips, Strange Days (1995), a provocative and entertaining film: Lenny's addiction, as well as the recreational utility of "direct experience" sought by others, raises questions you may be interested in exploring. For example, the extinction of language.  

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.