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.

God is not good

One issue that is constantly at the back of my mind is the so-called problem of evil. This problem is formulated in many (usually philosophical) ways—e.g. as Epicurus’ or Hume’s famous dilemma between forfeiting God’s goodness or his sovereignty in the light of evil. Yet, I think that when most people feel the weight of this dilemma, they feel it emotionally and not intellectually—at least that’s the case with me. When confronted with the callous reality of suffering in the world, the question immediately arises regarding how a good and loving God could be behind the scenes, pulling the strings as it were. I mean, if the God of Christianity exists, then why do children die by the thousands every day—by starvation and disease to name a couple--or why do natural disasters constantly kill significant percentages of the inhabitants of the world in a cyclical fashion? Why is there so much filth, injustice, suffering, disease, abuse, neglect, terror, sorrow, and death in a world supposedly created and sustained by a good and loving God?

One common apologetic response is the “We cannot see the whole picture” adage. I think we’ve all heard this, and maybe thought it: God’s ways are not our ways, therefore while we look at this or that act of suffering, we are not in a position to step back from it as a whole and see how it all woves into the fabric of all of existence. The point articulated here is basically that our view of things is incomplete and because of that we lack a God’s eye view with which to see how the evils in the world relate to one another. Therefore, these acts which we mistakenly characterize as evil could actually be good when the entire picture is unraveled, and thus we lack justification for pinning these evils on the character of God.

 Surprisingly, to some of my readers, I am not sympathetic to this view. Don’t get me wrong, I agree that our vantage point as humans is finite and that we should be careful when attempting to extend this viewpoint beyond its reach to make judgements that we have no right to make. Nevertheless, the aforementioned apologetic script runs into many problems of its own. For instance, if the seeming evils of this world are really instruments for good, then it seems hard to absolve God of the label of evil. For it seems quite obvious that the rape of a woman or the death of a child is evil, and no matter what good comes of it the individual who arranged these events is morally culpable for using these acts of evil as instruments to achieve some good. More than this, the argument could also be made that if God’s purpose is to achieve certain goods, then, since he is omnipotent, he could achieve those goods without the utilization of evil—at least without the evil that is not tied to free will.

However, I still think that even these objections given are wrong-headed, and this is where I make my transition into the real subject of this post. My argument is that all this talk of God as morally culpable or morally virtuous, as well-behaved or misbehaved, is simply the wrong way to conceive of and speak of God’s relation to the world and man. You see, when one begins talking about whether an individual is morally justified or morally culpable regarding specific acts, they are assuming that that individual is a moral agent. That is, they are assuming that the individual is an agent among others and is somehow part of a moral community. When determining one’s moral standing we are asking questions regarding the moral obligations and duties of that individual and how they relate to a moral community, and subsequently we desire to determine whether or not that individual has satisfied those obligations. But the question that needs to be posed with respect to God is whether or not he is a moral agent in this way. And the answer seems to be a resounding “No.”

Remember that God, as classical theism has conceived of him, is not a being among beings, or an agent among agents. He is not, as many contemporary theologians have promulgated, simply a person with all good attributes maximized. That is to say, he is not a being with the attributes of omnipotence, omniscience, and benevolence etc. No, he is being, he is existence, he is goodness etc., and his being is his goodness which is his power which is his knowledge. So the significance of this to our discussion is that God is not a creature among creatures, or a being among beings, or a person among persons, or an agent among agents, or an existent among existents, therefore it seems that God is not one among many, and thus is not part of any moral community. This seems to entail that God is not a moral agent. That is to say, there are no moral obligations or duties that God needs to fulfill, and therefore he cannot be seen as morally virtuous nor unrighteous. Again, these terms simply don’t apply unequivocally or literally to God. God cannot be morally good or evil, the way we use these terms, any more than God can be corporeal.

Now even many Christians, or theists, will feel uncomfortable with this. For isn’t a central claim of orthodox theology (whatever that is) that God is morally good and just? Sure, but classical theists have always understood these terms to apply to God analogously, and not literally—just like any predications of God. So, we can indeed say that God is good, as long we know that we don’t mean that God is literally morally good.

Now the skeptic is most likely yelling at the computer screen right about now, articulating the following response: If this whole post was simply to show that moral terms cannot be applied literally but only analogously, then nothing has been solved. For we can still say that God is analogously evil, instead of literally evil, and the problem of evil still rears its ugly head. However, this is simply not the case, because for a scholastic perfection is the tell-tale standard of goodness, and perfection is achieved when a substance perfectly achieves the ends set down by its nature—that is, when an end is actualized—and evil is seen as a privation—that is, the absence of an end that should have been actualized. Therefore since God is pure actuality and pure being, it follows that he is a perfect being, and thus is good. Furthermore, since God is purely actual then he contains no privations, and thus no evil—again, with the understanding that these terms are being used analogously when applied to God.

So, in the grand scenario of things this means that the problem of evil is a category mistake when promulgated to question the existence of God. The whole talk of good and evil, well behaved and misbehaved, morally culpable or morally virtuous, simply doesn’t apply to God. God is not evil, and he is not good, as long as these are predicated literally.

The inconsistency of Bart Ehrman

Despite the hostility of evangelical Christians towards the work of Bart Ehrman, I usually line up behind his scholarship. I agree with his views regarding Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet, Jesus’s divinity as being projected on him by his followers, contradictions in the gospels etc. And for the most part I have found him a valuable resource regarding enlightening laymen about the details and conclusions of New Testament scholarship.

However, recently I had been rummaging through his popular works—along with his latest book How Jesus Became God—and found some glaring inconsistencies that make me question any type of confidence I previously had in his scholarship. I will only highlight a couple of examples here.

The first book I read from Ehrman was his Jesus Interrupted, wherein he really just attempts to shine the light of scholarly consensus on issues of the New Testament. Now, take a look at what he says here:

[H]istorians have problems using the Gospels as historical sources, in view of their discrepancies and the fact that they were written decades after the life of Jesus by unknown authors who had inherited their accounts about him from the highly malleable oral tradition. (p. 13)

 Examine the first aspect of this sentence. Ehrman seems to insinuate that the Gospels are dubious as historical sources. Yet, compare this with his claims in Did Jesus Exist?:

If historians prefer lots of witnesses that corroborate one another’s claims without showing evidence of collaboration, we have that in relative abundance in the written sources that attest to the existence of the historical Jesus. (p. 92)

 Let me say right away that these claims do not directly contradict the above claims by Ehrman, and that is not my assertion here. Rather, my point is that Ehrman seems quick to discredit the Gospels as valuable historical sources in one case, yet he is eager to uphold them as the exact opposite in order to bolster his argument in another instance. This is inconsistent.

Now examine the latter part of Ehrman’s claims above in Jesus Interrupted, namely, his comment regarding the problems of oral tradition. In said book Ehrman expands on this comment and compares the oral tradition of the Jews to a game of telephone carried out between different countries, different languages, and different contexts over forty or more years. He then claims that, with this analogy in mind, we would therefore expect the Gospels to be riddled with discrepancies and contradictions. This, again, would seem to frame the historicity of the Gospels in an unfavorable light. Yet, here are Ehrman’s comments on oral tradition in DJE:

Where did all these sources [for the Gospels] come from? They could not have been dreamed up independently of one another by Christians all over the map because they agree on too many of the fundamentals. Instead, they are based on oral tradition. (p. 86)

 Again, Ehrman’s claims on oral tradition are not in direct contradiction here. But, in one instance he highlights oral tradition as the main reason for the contradictions and discrepancies of the Gospels that make salvaging historical material from them extremely difficult, yet, in another instance he asserts that the very same oral tradition is a necessity for the agreement of the Gospels and is something that is quite valuable for the historical study of the Gospels.

Now, while we’ve only examined inconsistencies in Ehrman’s books so far, I maintain that he has in fact outright contradicted himself. For instance, one of the main points utilized to combat Jesus-Mythicism in Ehrman’s book DJE is his claim that the immediate followers of Jesus did not regard him as divine in any sense of the word:

[J]esus could not have been invented as a dying-rising god because his earliest followers did not think he was God. (p. 222)

 And again:

That the earliest Christians did not consider Jesus God is not a controversial point among scholars…[S]cholars are unified in thinking that the view that Jesus was God was a later development within Christian circles. (p. 231)

 These sentences are unequivocal. It is quite clear what Ehrman is asserting here. Jesus was not seen as God by his immediate followers, rather, this title was simply thrust upon him by Christian followers of a subsequent time. Got it. But then Ehrman, in his new book How Jesus Became God, writes this gem: 

The idea that Jesus is God is not an invention of modern times…it was the view of the very earliest Christians soon after Jesus’s death. (p. 3).

 Uh, say what? Now Jesus’s earliest followers believed he was God. Which is it? Ehrman subsequently elaborates in the book that “soon after Jesus’s death, the belief in his resurrection led some of his followers to say he was God” (p. 83). So, here is where Ehrman, I claim, explicitly contradicts himself. In one of Ehrman’s books Jesus’s immediate followers do not take him to be God, and such a title is only given to him decades later, whereas in Ehrman’s new book Jesus’s immediate followers labeled him divine right from the get-go. This is clearly a contradiction, to say the least.

Now, it could be the case that Ehrman simply changed his mind due to an examination of the evidence. There’s nothing wrong with this, right? Well, no. However, Ehrman makes no insinuation that this is what happened. Moreover, Ehrman always writes with the conviction like he’s giving you just the facts. I mean just look at his quote above from DJE; his assertion is explicit, and uncompromising. And anyone reading those sentences would never think that there was intellectual room to disagree. Yet, a couple years later the sentence is turned on its head, by the same person who wrote it.

So, the point is that Bart Ehrman, the layman’s tour guide of critical scholarship, is not always reliable as an authority in his own field of study. And these examples are not the only ones, trust me. Ehrman is inconsistent, and sometimes self-contradicting, and the even bigger lesson to be learned here is the subjectivity involved in scholarship today. We often hear of the “consensus of critical scholars,” but how reliable is this consensus, and how much heed should we pay to it when even the best known scholars can’t get their facts and convictions straight? I’m not saying we should completely jettison the so-called scholarly consensus, but perhaps such a consensus is not as valuable as we once thought.

Embodied Realism Part II: Embodied Truth

Let us continue our series of posts reviewing the philosophy of embodied realism as promulgated in the book Philosophy in the Flesh. In our last post we discovered that embodied realism claimed that, due to our levels of embodiment, the correspondence theory of truth could no longer be upheld. However, we came to realize that this assertion rested on mischaracterizations, misunderstandings, and poor epistemology. Nevertheless, embodied realism has another dog in the fight against classical realism and the correspondence theory of truth, namely, that of embodied truth.

Before I explicate what exactly the tenets are of embodied truth, I want to survey a quote about truth that the authors make:

Any truth must be in a humanly conceptualized and understandable form if it is to be a truth for us. If it’s not a truth for us, how can we make sense of its being a truth at all? (p. 106)

 This is quite strange. The authors are question-beggingly assuming that there are truths “for us.” But this is not something a classicist would concede. The proposition “the earth is round” is true regardless of how we conceptualize and understand it. In fact, said proposition in no way relies on human cognition in order to ground its truth. That is to say, the earth is round whether or not there is anyone around to contemplate its being round. So what is this talk of “truth for us?” You see, the authors are trying to sneak embodiment through the back door here. They seem to think that embodied cognition forces us to admit of truth as somehow being tied to that embodiment. But this only begs the question of what truth is in the first place!

Basically the authors are putting the cart before the horse. They’re trying to define truth in light of their idiosyncratic scientific “results” of embodied cognition. But before one can even embark in scientific investigation one already needs a theory of what truth is! So, the authors have their philosophy backwards, and thus it’s no wonder that their theories lead to such contradictory conclusions—we’ll see this claim come to fruition in future posts.

Now let us keep those remarks in mind and see what the author’s main theory of embodied truth is:

 A person takes a sentence as “true” of a situation if what he or she understands the sentence to be expressing accords with what he or she understand the situation to be. (p. 106)

 Before we even delve into the manifold problems with this, there’s one important thing the reader should understand. The authors here are explicating why a person identifies a statement to be true. But the problem here is that nowhere is it articulated regarding what truth actually is. To simply explain why a person recognizes a statement as true is all well and good, but it is not any type of theory of truth in and of itself—that is to say, what a person takes to be true is not the same as what truth actually is. The point here is that embodied realism has attempted to throw the correspondence theory of truth under the bus, yet it fails to give any competing theory to put in its place.  

Now that that’s been said, we can dissect this “theory” of embodied truth on its own terms. So, this theory seems to entail that a statement is true if what the statement expresses accords (corresponds?) with what a certain individual understands a certain state of affairs to be—isn’t this just a relativized version of the correspondence theory? The consequences of this theory are readily apparent. To run with the example above, we currently believe the earth to be round and spherical. Yet there once was a time when individuals believed the earth to be flat. Now obviously the two statements “the earth is round” and “the earth is flat” are mutually exclusive. Yet, on embodied truth they can both be true. Why? Because the individuals who affirmed the flatness of earth took the sentence “the earth is flat” to accord with what they understood the situation to be.

We see, then, that embodied truth is simply a form of relativism. In fact, the authors admit such: “Embodied truth is not, of course, absolute objective truth. It accords with how people use the word true, namely, relative to understanding (p. 107).” But the authors don’t see this as a problem, because while their truth isn’t objective, it isn’t purely subjective either: “Embodied truth is also not purely subjective truth. Embodiment keeps it from being purely subjective. Because we all have pretty much the same embodied basic-level and spatial-relations concepts, there will be an enormous range of shared ‘truths’ (p.107) [.]” Uh, what? So, truth isn’t objective, but it isn’t subjective either. Apparently there’s a third choice between the two that we’ve missed, despite this violating the laws of logic—those are just metaphorical don’t you know?

Now the fact that the authors are trying to wiggle a middle option between objectivity and subjectivity isn’t even the most laughable problem here. No. The most laughable problem is that they actually haven’t avoided the subjectivity of their theory of truth like they think they have. For they claim that since, as humans, we are embodied therefore we share our embodied concepts with each other. Um, ok, but this does not absolve their theory of truth from pure subjectivity. Remember that something is subjective if it relates to or is dependent on a person’s mind. And this is precisely what embodiment entails! In fact because it is embodied truth, this places it nice and neatly in the category of subjectivity. So far from embodied truth moving away from subjectivity, it is as subjective as one can get.

This obviously has drastic consequences for embodied truth, the most obvious consequence, while likewise being the most damaging, being that it’s self-refuting. You see, if truth is subjective and relative, then one cannot claim superiority of one truth claim over another. That is, one cannot say “X is objectively true,” rather they can only be say that X is true for them, but possibly not for you. Nor can they say that any truths existed prior to or in the absence of humans.

But why is this self-refuting? Well, keep in mind that embodied truth, and embodied realism, are philosophies and theories in and of themselves. That is, they make specific claims about what obtains in reality and how it obtains—if they didn’t then they need not be heeded. But this means that these theories are saying quite specifically “X is the case,” which doesn’t mean “only relative to me, or us, X is the case” but rather “X is the way the world works, period.” Yet how can this be if truth is relative and subjective? That is, how can they say that embodied realism is true, and metaphysical realism is false? Or how can they say that the correspondence theory is false, and embodied truth is true? Well, they cannot, and thus they cannot uphold the objective validity of their own worldview, which amounts to a contradiction.

Such is the philosophical wreckage of embodied realism.