Objectivity is our security blanket

i dislike the tone you have, you are implying that reliance on reality and facts is somehow immature and like have a "blanky" how is it that knowing "truth" or facts, or having knowledge, is like being a baby?

"Most postmodern philosophers and other post-Kuhnian philosophers of science deny that cognitive science can have "truths" that could provide a basis for criticizing a particular philosophical view…they argue, cognitive science can neither function as the basis for a critique of existing philosophy nor provide the basis for an alternative philosophical theory."

There are at least two versions of cognitive science: a first-generation that has assumed most of the fundamental tenets of traditional Anglo-American philosophy and a second generation that has called most of these same tenets into question on empirical grounds.

First generation cognitive science evolved in the 1950s and 60s centering their concern about symbol-manipulation, which accepted without question the disembodied nature of reason. The mind from this functionalist view was seen to resemble a computer program that could run on any appropriate hardware. "This was philosophy without flesh…This was a modern version of Cartesian view that reason is transcendental, universal, disembodied, and literal."

The realist views of first generation cognitive science are based upon specific a priori commitments such as:

• Functionalism: The mind is disembodied, meaning that mind can be studied without concern about the brain and the rest of the body.
• Symbol Manipulation: Cognition operates upon symbols without regard to the meaning of those symbols.
• Representational theory of meaning: Mental representations are merely symbolic without inherent meaning
• Classical categories: Categories are consciously defined by that which is necessary and sufficient.
• Literal Meaning: All meaning is literal without imaginative or metaphorical content.

SGCS (Second Generation Cognitive Science)is committed
to what might be called ESR (Embodied Scientific Realism).

Disembodied scientific realism is committed to at least three scientific claims: 1) There is a world independent of our perception and comprehension of it, 2) We can have a stable knowledge of this independent world, and 3) That our manner and structure of thinking are unaffected by our bodies but is determined completely by the external world and that these external truths are absolute.

ESR accepts (1) and (2) while rejecting (3). "At the heart of embodied realism is our physical engagement with an environment in an ongoing series of interactions…Our embodied system of basic level concepts has evolved to "fit" the ways in which our bodies, over the course of evolution, have been coupled to our environment, partly for the sake of survival, partly for the sake of human flourishing beyond mere survival, and partly by chance…The basic level of conceptualization is the cornerstone of embodied realism."

The problem with Objectivity is that if life and truth are infinite, as I believe they clearly are, then how did we choose what to objectify....focus on? It was what caught our attention but what is the difference between a smidgen of truth that catches our attention and the smidgen that we never see? Like the ego objectivity is an illusion that has its uses, but in the end it does not exist. Everything is subjective. That is of course a little bit of reality that science in completely incapable of dealing with, this perhaps being its fatal flaw.

Like it or not like it, this is how a lot of people use "facts" and objectivity. Many people cling to rationality, and refuse to acknowledge that objectivity might not be the end-all, be-all of discovering truth.

I can't quite figure out what you are saying but it seems on the right track from my perspective. The Tao teaches that once it is named it is lost, that is consciousness is chained to language, language being a product of the collective. Once we have run truth though the screen of language and chopped it up into little bits, then ordered those little bits according to the conceptual grid-work of our intellect, we have already lost much of truth. We hope that we have captured what we need to know, religion and language have been handed down to us from those who have come before us to assist us. But one never knows if we have gotten the right bits of truth and understood them in a helpful way until we have lived our life.

The problem with objectivity is that no one is, but most think they are.

Hawkeye

Cognitive science has introduced a new way of viewing the world and our self by declaring a new paradigm which I call the embodied mind. The primary focus is upon the fact that there is no mind/body duality but that there is indeed an integrated mind and body. The mind and body are as integrated as is the heart and the body.

The human thought process is dominated by the characteristic of our integrated body. The sensorimotor neural network is an integral part of our mind. The neural network that makes movement and perception possible is the same network that processes our thinking.

The unconscious categories that guide our human response to the world are constructed in the same way as are the categories that make it possible of other animals to survive in the world. We form categories both consciously and unconsciously.

Why do we feel that both our consciously created and unconsciously created categories fit the world?

Our consciously formed concepts fit the world, more or less, because we consciously examine the world with our senses and our reason and classify that world into these concepts we call categories.

Our unconsciously formed categories are a different matter. Our unconsciously formed categories fit our world because these basic-level categories "have evolved to form at least one important class of categories that optimally fit our bodily experiences of entities and certain extremely important differences in the natural environment".

Our perceptual system has little difficulty distinguishing between dogs and cows or rats and squirrels. Investigation of this matter makes clear that we distinguish most readily those folk versions of biological genera, i.e. those "that have evolved significantly distinct shapes so as to take advantage of different features of their environment."The differences between basic-level and non basic-level categories is based upon bodily characteristics. The basic-level categories are dependent upon gestalt perception, sensorimotor programs, and mental images. "Because of this, classical metaphysical realism cannot be true, since the properties of categories are mediated by the body rather than determined directly by a mind-independent reality"

In humans basic level categories are developed primarily based upon our bodily configuration and its interrelationship with the environment. For other animals almost all, if not all, categories are basic-level categories.