The Concept of Independent Reality in Discussions of Philosophy

Sorry, but anybody coming up with a statement like

has no place on an ontology thread, especially when apparent similarities of perception can easily be accounted for by common physiology and language. It minimally shows a complete ignorance or disregard for Kant, and the phenomenological movement, without even touching on recent developments involving systems theory.

I don't think we can prove either one of them. God and creation is a story, we cannot prove that it is true. The same goes for big bang theory. We cannot prove that it is true. We can perhaps prove all the little facts the theory is constructed from, but the story itself can never be proven, because it is a narrative that has to fit into certain frames to be accessible by human understanding.
Those frames make up human subjectivity, and since we can never bypass those frames, we can never know if "objective reality" is anything more than yet another idea.

Very insightful of you. Hinduism is--as I understand--all about that, the unity of Reality, how Brahma and Atman are one, i.e., tat tvam asi: that (the experienced) IS thou (the experiencer)..."reality experiencing reality."

Yes, and that's true for most of us--i.e., somewhat familiar with the literature but not interested in every issue. I do believe we are all "out of our depth" regarding issues we have not explored or for which we do not have the emotional disposition. I should express my gratitude to him: it's naughtily fun to talk ABOUT someone who looks like Mayor Daley. But I didn't know Chicago had cowboys.

I appreciate your compassion.

Apparently the proper form on this thread is to respond only to those who have a sympathetic viewpoint, rather than directly addressing those with whom one is in disagreement. So I'll address my remarks to you, wandeljw, and talk about everyone else in the third person.

If fresco thinks I'm out of my depth in this discussion, he can show it by actually addressing the points that I made in response to him. The problem for his position is that, even if there's no independent reality, it can't explain why people act as if there's an independent reality. For fresco and JLN, the brick wall may be illusory, it may be nothing more than a social construction, it may share the same identity with them, it may even be indeterminate on a quantum level, but you can be sure that they both walk around it just the same.

That's why fresco and JLN and the rest of their misguided ilk are the same naive realists that they accuse the rest of us as being -- they just can't bring themselves to admit it. And that's why their protestations to the contrary bear the characteristics of classic psychological projection. That which they hate most about themselves they criticize in others.

Surely, if fresco were so confident that cognitive science and linguistics and phenomenology have proved my position to be absolutely untenable, he'd offer some argument or evidence to support that claim. But he doesn't. Instead, he airily waves it off as if it were not worthy of one so inflated as himself. That's not a problem -- I've come to expect that kind of vaporous condescension from him. It certainly says more about the intellectual poverty of his position than of mine.

You insulted me and now you backtrack. You ended up responding almost exactly as I anticipated, like a total coward. Next time, if you have anything to say about me, you can say it to me. I prefer to be insulted wholesale rather than retail.

F*ck off you cowboy lawyer jerk.

He brings out the best in me
.

Don't feel bad about it.
A pat on the back is indistinguishable from a punch in the face to a person who is on the defensive.

A refreshingly honest and direct response. Keep up the good work!

Hypocrite ! Your opening post was typically derogatory and now you appeal to the audience about my condescension. Not only have you have not done sufficient reading to get anywhere with standard objections to naive realism, but you refuse to do anything about it. I have merely suggested the same references which I gave to my colleagues at my local philosophy group and an enjoyable evening on the related topic of "embodied cognition" was had by all, including the dissenters, who at least gave me a run for my money. So a bit of high school heckling on your part is hardly worthy of a reply. Forget about your bete noir called fresco. If an acclaimed genius like Wittgenstein was sufficiently moved by the issues to repudiate his earlier logical positivist position, don't expect me to take your protest seriously.

I posted this on the previous page, and wondered if "embodied cognition" fits into my description?

Not quite. Embodied cognition is the thesis that cognitive processes extend beyond the brain and nervous system to whole body interaction with its environment, such that "reality is brought forth" by such interaction. (Experimental data supports such a view) Since we can assume physiological similarity we can argue that we share a common core of cognitive "items" But the concept of embodiment raises the issue of the extent of the domain of cognition, which might include non bodily artifacts (like a blind man's stick),and also socially acquired categories called "prototypes" which are transmitted by language and serve to focus bodily activity (schemas). Such an extension of embodied cognition is termed embedded cognition.

Now the concept of "reality" only raises its head when the "bringing forth" operation fails to satisfy personal or joint social needs. Concepts of subjectivity and objectivity may then be ascribed but the dichotomy has no ontological significance in its own right, or outside such re-assessment scenarios.

(Background reading might include Heidegger on Being, Merleau-Ponty on phenomenology and schemas, and Varela on cognition. )

It's understandable that cognition is a function of the body, but I still maintain that what I listed all have an impact on what we call our reality. Most living things have a "body." How they function is processed through evolution, and their ability to adapt. All that entails culture, language, genes, environment, education, and financial success. A body without food or water will just die.

Yes, that touches the essence of the definition of cognition as "the general life process", but by leveling cognition to "all life" we need to deflate anthropocentric concepts like "language" and "culture" to languaging behavior and social behavior. So according to the embodiment thesis, a languaging episode (such as your post) which uses the term "reality" might be deflated to an episode of social interaction, rather expressing anything of ontological significance. Yet that interactional deflationary issue per se does tell us something about "reality"in a transcendent sense. In short, the bringing forth of my response is what "reality" is about !

Interesting post. We DO learn new things here. Nietzsche suggested somewhere that cognition extends beyond the brain to the entire body. I dismissed the notion at the time, but the "embodiment of meaning" has been applied usefully to the visual arts (cf. Arthur Danto's Embodied Meanings). I can see how an abstract painting (like a passage of music) can "bring forth" (extra-utilitarian) connotations of reality by registering in a viewer's consciousness only peripherally. Phenomenal reality is more complex and subtle than imagined in the literalist ontology of naive realism which may be considered the moral equivalence of religious fundamentalism.

The experimental evidence for embodied cognition includes the observation of the establishment of standard "optimum" bodily postures and distances for observing paintings. Also experiments with kittens suggest the ability to move freely around "objects" is required to visually recognize those objects. Kittens who were pulled around in carts by the free movers did not later recognize the objects. In the Heideggerian sense, objects are not "separate things" but "affordances for interaction" involved in the Gestalt of a bodily schema.

Wow, an open door to new understandings.
I wonder if there are " bodily postures used by yogis for optimum receptibility to mystical "understandings."
I've got to work on your last sentence!

Wow, an open door to new understandings.
I wonder if there are " bodily postures used by yogis for optimum receptibility to mystical "understandings."
I've got to work on your last sentence!

Is it possible to have no distinction with embodied cognitive processes and the environment which brings forth this reality? In other words, where does cognition begin and end?