Embodied Realism Part III: Is this realism?

Let us continue our survey of the philosophy of embodied realism as expounded in Philosophy of the Flesh (first two posts here and here). We now turn our attention to probably one of the biggest topics in philosophy, with which embodied realism actively comments on, namely that of metaphysical realism. Metaphysical realism is the position that an external reality exists apart from our consciousness, and that our apprehensions of this reality are determined mostly by the actual properties inherent in it. The opposite of realism is anti-realism, which states either that an external reality does not exist, or that we cannot know this reality in itself.

So, where does embodied realism stand in this dichotomy? Well, embodied realism is called realism, and thus it would seem to fit neatly in this category. And indeed this would be prima facie correct, since the authors explicitly state their belief that an external world exists. So then, are we finished here? Well, not exactly. For while the authors will admit the existence of an objective reality, they deny that there is any neutral vantage point from which we can know anything about this objective reality apart from our embodiment:

[C]lassical metaphysical realism cannot be right, since the properties of categories are mediated by the body rather than determined directly by a mind-independent reality. (p. 28)

[Embodied realism] gives up on being able to know things-in-themselves, but, through embodiment, explains how we can have knowledge that, although it is not absolute, is nonetheless sufficient to allow us to function and flourish. (p. 95)

[Embodied realism] denies that we can have objective and absolute knowledge of the world-in-itself…[E]mbodied realism denies on empirical grounds, that there exists one and only one correct description of the world[.] (p. 96)

We will deal with the inherent problems with these claims in just a moment. Primarily, we need to observe why they are being made. This is to ask why the authors are claiming that we cannot have objective knowledge of reality-in-itself, and why does our embodiment keep us from predicating properties of reality from a neutral vantage point? The main reason is due to the levels of embodiment (neural, phenomenological, and cognitive unconscious) that we surveyed in the first post of this series. Remember that embodied realism claims that, based on our embodiment, we don’t have a neutral vantage point to say “X is or isn’t the case,” because things are or are not “the case” (i.e. real or unreal) relative to our understanding at a certain level of embodiment. Therefore, we can only say “X is or isn’t the case, at a certain level of embodiment.” So, what we mean by something being “true” and “real”, on embodied realism, depends upon the perspective and level of embodiment being considered. To take the example the authors utilize—and which we saw was false in the first post—color isn’t “actually” real, if we are attempting to promulgate this statement from a neutral standpoint. Rather, color is “real” only when considered from the level of phenomenology, but is it “unreal” when considered from the neural level. That is, the existence of color is “real” only relative to the perspective, here the phenomenological level of embodiment, being considered.

Now, remember that in the aforementioned post we saw these arguments to be false. Not only can we make absolute predications of reality from a privileged perspective, but we must do so. In fact, the author’s own theses contradict their very claims. When they say, for instance, that we cannot know “things-in-themselves”, or that we cannot have objective and absolute knowledge of the world, the authors are predicating these propositions as objective predications of reality from their own privileged vantage point! That is, they’re saying that it is an objective fact that we cannot know things in themselves, and it is objectively true that we cannot have objective knowledge. This is, to say the least, self-refuting. For the embodied realist’s claim that reality cannot be known is not simply made at the neural level, or the phenomenological level, or the cognitive unconscious level. No, it’s made from a unique perspective that says “reality is this way, period,” even though this is what the embodied realist says cannot be done.

The embodied realist, thus, is blind to the absurd implications of their philosophy. If one level of embodiment cannot be privileged over and above another, then no single proposition can be seen as an adequate predication of reality in any domain whatsoever—since any single proposition can only represent one level of embodiment at a time. But if no single proposition can be an adequate predication of reality in any domain, then the embodied realist’s very claims about objectivity, knowledge, reality, and ontology cannot be adequate predications of reality either, and thus we should pay them no heed.

Furthermore, if we truly cannot know reality-in-itself, and can have no objective or absolute knowledge of this reality, then we cannot make those very same claims—i.e. that we cannot know reality-in-itself and that we cannot have objective knowledge of the world. That is to say, if we can’t know objective reality, then the statement “we can’t know objective reality” is also false, since it is predicated on a knowledge claim about the nature of reality. Everywhere we turn embodied realism shoots itself in the foot. This is why, as I said in the last post, embodied realism is junkyard of poor philosophy.

So, is embodied realism a misnomer? Should it even be labeled a form of realism? Not really. While it admits the existence of an external reality, it discards the proposition that we can have any real knowledge of the objective properties of this reality, and thus it belongs in the camp of anti-realism.

Embodied Realism Part I: Correspondence Theory of Truth

After much prodding from Mike D over at The A-unicornist—which he has now stopped writing for, unfortunately—to read his Holy Bible on embodied cognition, namely Philosophy in the Flesh, I have begun to do just that. And rarely does a page goes by where I don’t find myself scribbling in the margins regarding the things I find fallacious. With that in mind I felt the need to write up a series of posts regarding the parts I vehemently disagree with as I read along. So stay tuned for many posts to come regarding Embodied Realism.

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Embodied Realism (or Embodied Cognition), as articulated by Lakoff and Johnson, is predicated on a few themes: 1) The mind is embodied, 2) reason is mostly unconscious and 3) is structured by neural connections that conflate conceptual domains which lead to metaphor—which means that most of our concepts and cognition are metaphorical. Embodied Realism does not simply say that we need a body to reason, but, rather, that our reason itself is shaped and structured in unconscious ways by our embodiment.

My first bone to pick with Embodied Realism is its jettison of the correspondence theory of truth. The correspondence theory of truth basically says that a statement—what is called a truth-bearer—is true if it corresponds to an actual state of affairs—what is called a truth-maker--or obtains, in reality. As an example, the statement “There is a computer in front of me” is true if, in reality, there is actually a computer in front of me, and false if there is not.

It is this very theory that is called into question because of the supposed embodiment of cognition promulgated by embodied realism. To argue against the correspondence theory the authors attempt to demonstrate that concepts are embodied at the neural level, the phenomenological level, and the cognitive unconscious level. Let me illuminate these as best as I can, so we can articulate where the asserted difficulty arises.

The neural level basically regards the physical circuitry that characterizes, grounds, and structures all cognition and conception. The phenomenological level is the level that we are consciously aware of, and the level where we experience all of our qualia. And the cognitive unconscious level is the level of cognitive operation that evades our conscious subjective experience; that is, it is what structures our conscious experience, but is something that we have no internal access to—hence the term unconscious.

So, how does positing these different levels of embodiment call into question the theory of correspondence? Well, Lakoff and Johnson explain that “Truth claims at one level may be inconsistent with those at another.” In order to illustrate this problem, the authors discuss the embodiment of color concepts.  For example, consider the statement “Grass is green.” Surely we experience greenness inhering in grass, and thus this statement would seem to be true based on the correspondence theory of truth. However, the authors argue, this is only true at the phenomenological level of embodiment. On the neural level of embodiment “greenness” does not “inhere” in objects or things; rather, it is created by reflected light, our retinas, and our neural circuitry etc. The authors further articulate the alleged difficulty:

 At the neural level, green is a multiplace interactional property, while at the phenomenological level, green is a one-place predicate characterizing a property that inheres in an object. Here is the dilemma: A scientific truth claim based on knowledge about the neural level is contradicting a truth claim at the phenomenological level. The dilemma arises because the philosophical theory of truth as correspondence does not distinguish such levels and assumes that all truths can be stated at once from a neutral perspective.

 It is here where I believe the authors are mistaken, on multiple levels (see what I did there?).

Effects, formal and virtual

First, even though a Scholastic, like myself, would utter a proposition like “Grass is green” and indeed say that such a proposition is true, what they mean by such a statement is utterly foreign to what the authors attribute to any type of metaphysical realism—namely, that color is a single thing or property that inheres in substances. Thomist Peter Coffey illustrates:

 When, for instance, the normal perceiver apprehends snow as white, and spontaneously asserts that “snow is white,” he means not that the color-quality in question is wholly independent of the nature, structure, and conditions of his visual sense organs for its specific character as present to his consciousness.

 The point here is that when us Scholastics say “Grass is green” we don’t mean that there is a single property of greenness that inheres objectively in objects or things—that is, we do not say that color exists formally or actually. Rather, we would say that color exists virtually, or potentially. Therefore a Scholastic would agree with the authors when they say the following: “Colors are not objective; there is in the grass or the sky no greenness or blueness independent of retinas, color cones, neural circuitry, and brains.” Thus, to say that color exists virtually is to say that when all the necessary prerequisites are conjoined—the reflective properties of objects, our bodies and brains etc.—then and only then can we have the actuality of color. Upon taking this into account, proposing that color does not exist would only be true if effects could only obtain formally, which is something the Scholastic would not concede. For, to reiterate, effects can exist formally, but they can also exist virtually. And therefore to claim that only formal effects can obtain is to beg the question against the metaphysical realist.

Now, the significance here is that the statement “Grass is green” is still in fact objectively true, as long as what we mean by this statement is that grass is virtually, and not formally, green. However, the authors would still say that this cannot be an objective truth, because the property of greenness does not inhere objectively in the world. But to do so would be to conflate objective truth with truth obtaining objectively. That is to say, since color requires the existence of human embodiment for it to obtain, then color does obtain objectively, by definition. However, this doesn’t mean that the truth “Grass is green” is therefore not objective. Remember that all that’s required for the correspondence theory is for a truth-bearer to correspond to a truth-maker—again, either formally or virtually. And since grass is in fact (virtually) green, then the statement “Grass is green” is objectively true.

Levels of embodiment

Unfortunately (for the reader still awake at this point) this has all only constituted the first objection to the claims of Lakoff and Johnson. For the authors would still fire back that all my musings above assume a neutral perspective from which to promulgate my supposed truth. That is to say, my arguments above about the reality of color are all predicated on only one level of embodiment (or are they?) and to do so is to erect one level of embodiment as superior over another, thereby doing an injustice to the other levels. The authors articulate:

 Both the phenomenology-first and science-first strategies are inadequate in one way or other. If we take the phenomenology-first strategy, we miss what we know scientifically is true about color. We get the scientific metaphysics of color wrong. Our “truth conditions” do not reflect what we know to be true. If we take the science-first strategy, we do violence to the normal meaning of the word and to what ordinary people mean by “truth.”

 This is all to say that by claiming color exists virtually is to do damage to the phenomenological level of embodiment upon which color seems to exist formally. But my retort is this: so what? On the phenomenological view we can only talk about how we perceive sense qualities, and just because we perceive something does not mean it is there, or that it’s there in the fashion we perceive it to be, or that it inheres in the world. A perfect example to knock down the authors’ claims here is the experience of hallucinations. At the phenomenological level a hallucination is very real, in that we experience qualia with regards to said hallucination. But it is only at the neural level that we know that the hallucination is not actually real. And the crucial point is that everybody, including the authors, would take a "science-first strategy" here and claim that when somebody hallucinates a dead relative (for instance), the statement “my dead relative appeared to me” is unequivocally false. And the really unreasonable thing to do here would be to say that the existence of the dead relative is true at the phenomenological level, but just not at the neural level! Hence, it seems that, contrary to the authors, we must, and do, utilize certain levels of embodiment over and above others in different circumstances. Thus, there is no dilemma when one level of embodiment contradicts another.

So, the authors are simply mistaken to say that the correspondence theory is false for not distinguishing the different levels of embodiment. For the levels of embodiment do not at all call truth, as classically conceived, into question. In fact, we’ll see next post that this conception of truth is unavoidable, and that it is the truth of Embodied Realism that runs into various difficulties.

Model-Dependent Realism revisited

Awhile back I wrote a post on Model-Dependent Realism—the view that we form models of the world through our sense datum, but that these models cannot be said to be real or true—attempting to demonstrate why I found it to be untenable. Mike D over at The A-unicornist—my favorite atheist blog to frequent--has since written his own post devoted to demonstrating 1) how I have supposedly misunderstood MDR and 2) how nothing I said actually refutes it. I do in fact disagree (surprise!) with Mike’s assessment of my comprehension and my arguments, and thus this post has manifest. Let’s see what Mike has to say:

MDR does not claim that models "conform to reality" at all; it summarily rejects the idea of an absolute reality to which we have unfettered access — this means we cannot, in principle, know whether a model "conforms to reality". Rather, it claims that our very concept of what reality is is contingent upon our ability to construct models and test them against observation. We assign the term "real" to concepts that allow us to successfully model and predict the world around us.

First, I never claimed that MDR stated that models conform to reality—in fact this is my point of contention with MDR! I agree that MDR states that our models are only interpretive structures, so to speak.

Yet this is, as I demonstrated in the first post, where MDR runs into problems. For unless one is a solipsist then one does have to admit of an objective reality (for even the sense datum that help form our models must come from somewhere outside of ourselves); and sure enough this is what Mike does: “Of course most philosophers and scientists (including Hawking) operate on the provisional, inductively-derived assumption that an absolute reality does exist.” So, since an objective reality must exist, yet on MDR we cannot have direct access to this reality, then the only warranted claim MDR can make is that we simply cannot determine which model conforms to reality—not that no models conform to reality, or that conformation with reality is meaningless. For if objective reality exists, then certain things can be predicated of it, and certain things cannot. But for MDR to state that nothing at all can conform to reality, or that talk of models conforming to reality is meaningless, is to refute oneself, since this assertion itself is a claim about the nature of reality. And this is one fact that Mike never addressed. The point is that MDR essentially claims the following: No model or theory is real, except, you know, the theory of MDR.

Mike continues:

Steven has fundamentally misunderstood what MDR means in saying that no model can be said to be more 'real' than any other; it is simply saying that different 'frames of reference', such as the neural and cognitive models of the mind, overlap and converge to form our picture of reality, even though they may in some ways be semantically or theoretically incompatible (that is, no one frame of reference can fully explain all phenomena).

On the contrary, I maintain that Mike has misunderstood MDR here. For when Hawking was discussing his theory that one model cannot be more real than another, he uses a very specific and revealing example—namely, that of creationism and the Big Bang theory. Examine this quote straight from the horse’s mouth: “this model—the big bang theory—is more useful than [creationism]. Still, neither model can be said to be more real than the other.” Did you catch that? The big bang cannot be said to be more real than creationism! Herein lies the absurdity of MDR. Again, remember that Hawking is not claiming that we can’t determine which theory accurately conforms to reality, rather neither theory conforms to reality at all, since conformity with reality is meaningless.

To demonstrate the absurdity of this line of thought in my first post, I contrasted, as an example, two theories (“models”) of reality: realism and solipsism. I argued that on MDR “neither is true.” Here’s what Mike said regarding my illustration:

MDR would say that both classical realism and solipsism (specifically, ontological solipsism) make fundamentally untenable assumptions. We do not have unfettered access to an ultimate absolute reality, and we have ample reason to assume, based on evidence arrived at through induction, that a reality external to our minds does in fact exist. MDR does not summarily declare either position false, as Steven asserts; rather, neither can be said to be true or false.

Mike has misunderstood me. I never said that on MDR both theories must be false, rather I said neither is true. And this is exactly what Mike is saying here. So Mike and I are in agreement here, he just didn’t know it. So to return to my intended point, on MDR neither realism nor solipsism is true, or false. In fact, such talk is, on MDR, superfluous. But this, again, is where the absurdity lies. For either a reality exists apart from subjective observers, or it doesn’t. This pure logic: either A or not-A. What we cannot say is “neither.”

To press this point further, let’s imagine two exclusive theories (different than the ones utilized above): Either you (the reader) exist, or you do not. It seems purely common sense to say that only one of these can be true and one at least must be true—the law of non-contradiction necessitates this. But on MDR we cannot say this, rather we must say neither is true or false—talk of truth is meaningless here. Yeah…good luck with that. If this is not enough to demonstrate the nonsense and absurdity of MDR then I do not know what is.

But the point can be pressed even further than this. For the main point of Mike’s post is an attempt to demonstrate that I have misunderstood MDR, and that my attacks against it are invalid. But wait. How, on MDR can Mike say that any “model” one espouses, whether mine or anyone else’s, is incorrect? He can’t. Remember Hawking: “it is pointless to ask whether a model is real[.]” Talk of real, unreal, true, or false, is meaningless here. So, why then is Mike so determined to show that my own model is wrong? Is he perhaps convinced that his model is correct, and that therefore it accurately describes an actual state of affairs? Of course he is. And thus, although he claims to adhere to MDR, his actions betray his beliefs.

Mike then wraps up his post by stating the “most important point” of MDR:

MDR renders meaningless the distinction between "reality accessible to us" and "reality in itself". Of course most philosophers and scientists (including Hawking) operate on the provisional, inductively-derived assumption that an absolute reality does exist. But we do not have an unfettered, privileged access to such a reality in which one level of explanation (or one 'frame of reference') successfully describes all phenomena.

Mike, again, seems to miss the blatant contradictory nature of MDR here. He, and Hawking, claim that we do not have a model-independent concept of reality, and that we can only find utility in models, not truth or reality in them. But this itself is a claim about the nature of reality. Just ask the question “Is it really the case that we have no model-independent picture of reality?” The answer will commit one to make an objective claim about reality. You see, MDR attempts to bypass the metaphysical debate about the nature of reality—it’s trying to say that the whole debate itself is superfluous and meaningless. But by doing this MDR is throwing itself into the debate, whether one likes it or not!

Hitherto I don’t believe Mike has accomplished what he set out to do. First, He didn’t really show that I misunderstood MDR. In fact he seems to have misunderstood me, and at times our understanding was exactly the same, even though he failed to recognize such. Second, Mike has failed to salvage, in my opinion, any remains of a coherent and respectable theory in MDR. It remains an incoherent, absurd, and self-refuting philosophic position. As Hume would say, let us commit it to the flames.