there is a fundamental reality

No, i understand perfectly well that you're employing a linguistic dodge. Your "physiological findings" can only be used as a starting point if they accurately describe an objective reality--otherwise, they are just unsubstantiated assertions, a priori assumptions without a valid basis. Without an objective reality from which the physiological findings can be extrapolated, it's just so much self-serving chin music.

I find it hilarious that you're willing to accept said physiological findings, but are unwilling to accept the metrics and results of the naturalistic scientific method. The only subtlety here is the bait and switch game you're attempting to play, and it's not very damned subtle.

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!

The aspect that I do not understand is why a simple statement of fact needs to be qualified by referring to cognitive processes, physiology, culture, politics, bias, etc. This seems like such a waste of time.

I find the position of Varela, et.al. confusing. While I do not assume that physiological findings will open the door to how and why we see and think the world that we do (after all amputations of limbs or the removal of any organ other than those with neurological function are not likely to affect our view of the World), I DO identify the commonalities between all human worldviews as an expression of our common species. Ants, eagles, germs, elephants, etc. etc. cannot, because of the physiologies that define and distinguish their species, share our lifeworld. I conclude from this presupposition that other galaxiess will generate many "intelligent" creatures who will not be able to grasp our efforts at communication--even so-called culturally neutral mathematical efforts--because of their physiological constitutions. Moreover, and more importantly, our species' physiology makes it unlikely that we will ever achieve Absolute and Objective knowledge of Fundamental Reality*. I find comfort in the notion that we (and all other species), live ONLY in our (and they in their) bedrock realities. There is only bedrock reality. How is that for a Grand Relativism?

*To assume that we might also assumes that we WERE actually made in the image of God.

I find the position of Varela, et.al. confusing. While I do not assume that physiological findings will open the door to how and why we see and think the world that we do (after all amputations of limbs or the removal of any organ other than those with neurological function are not likely to affect our view of the World), I DO identify the commonalities between all human worldviews as an expression of our common species. Ants, eagles, germs, elephants, etc. etc. cannot, because of the physiologies that define and distinguish their species, share our lifeworld. I conclude from this presupposition that other galaxiess will generate many "intelligent" creatures who will not be able to grasp our efforts at communication--even so-called culturally neutral mathematical efforts--because of their physiological constitutions. Moreover, and more importantly, our species' physiology makes it unlikely that we will ever achieve Absolute and Objective knowledge of Fundamental Reality*. I find comfort in the notion that we (and all other species), live ONLY in our (and they in their) bedrock realities. There is only bedrock reality. How is that for a Grand Relativism?

*To assume that we might also assumes that we WERE actually made in the image of God.

Basically, you're saying that if we assume A, we can deduce B, which denies that we''re entitled to assume A.

I gotta say, though, my hat is off to you guys. I suspect that none of you will ever get rich from the scam you're running, but that thousands, nay, tens of thousands of you make a decent living peddling this nonsense is breathtaking. The flim-flam man of the Old South could only look on in awe.

I think your confusion is epitomised by your phrase "share our life world". That is not the case according to Varela (etc). Each lifeform and its world are co extensive and co-existent. It is only if you make the assumption of holistic life that we can sensibly talk about its holistic world.

But we're not clowns?

That depends on the nature of the line of bullshit you're attempting to peddle.

The embodied cognitivists (Varela etc) are offering a potential alternative to "naive realism" following the demise of the latter as a substrate for cognitive science. The fact that fruitful results have been forthcoming gives support to the "embodied" position. This does not mean that "embodiment" is "right or wrong" (such polarization is scientifically facile), it means that like any other paradigm it may yield useful data which otherwise might have been overlooked. The problem is that such an analysis is counter-intuitive to the lay concept of "an external reality". Such counter-intuition is nothing new in what we call "science"....take the definition of a positron as "an electron travelling backwards in time" as just one example.

Thanks, fresco. My problem is that I do not see every statement of fact as constrained by a paradigm.

All systems require axioms from which to proceed, at least one of which cannot be substantiated (Godel). The significance of the embodied position lies in its pragmatic results, NOT the validity of its axioms.

Certainly there is no validity to that as an axiom. However, your typical, pathetic appeal to authority doesn't work, because although axioms define the realm of analysis within which one intends to argue, and cannot be subject to analysis within that realm, your axiom is contradicted within that realm, and therefore either it fails as an axiom, or your argument within the realm of analysis is flawed because it does not in fact proceed from the axiom.

Edit: And by the way, it's not even an axiom--it's just an unfounded assertion.

The recognition of paradigmatic constraints will only operate in the case of counter-examples. For example, studies of "pain in missing limbs" cannot be accounted for neurologically (Merleau-Ponty). One solution offered is that limb sensations cannot be separated from the total contexts in which they are used.
Its a lttle bit like those "lines" that won't disappear in this optical illusion.
http://blog.sciseek.com/2009/01/28/optical-illusions-are-they-of-scientific-value-or-just-ephemeral-entertainment/
The amputee's limb is still "there" as a result of the supporting context (Gestalt).
Now just step back a little and consider the application of the word "reality"
to this situation, and then you get an idea of the need to deconstruct our assumptions about it.

That ignores the power of suggestion, as in the case of false pregnancies, when a woman's abdomen will swell and she will lactate. Not because she is pregnant, but because she has convinced herself she is pregnant, because she wants to believe she is pregnant. That is simply evidence of the authority of the brain over the physical reality of the body.

(My reply to you would be to reiterate the history of the utility of "the non-existent ether" as a temporary axiom which gave rise to Clerk-Maxwell's equations....but I've said all this before .)

Set, your accusation that Fresco makes a "pathetic" appear to authority is inaccurate and unfair. Surely you realize that all of us base our notions on those of previous generations of philosophers and scientists. Post-modernism (today's dominant orientation) would not be what it is were it not for thinkers like Nietzsche, who rested more than he would admit, on Voltaire, Goethe, Kant, Emerson, and Schopenhauer (not to mention some Eastern thought). As I see it, Fresco rests his thought on the products of such a wide range of innovators and schools of thought that he cannot be accused of "limiting himself" by means of appeals to authority. What do you think of the charge that you limit yourself philosophically by your Naive Realism, a clearly inadequate criterion of truth?

The thesis (not axiom) of the luminous aether was not a basis upon which anyone was able to deploy the scientific method. The first order "experiments" were flawed because they attempted to detect the aether based on an assumption that it existed, therefore effectively begging the question. As Einstein was able to show, gravity can "bend" light. Even without knowing that, those so-called first order experiments failed to demonstrate the existence of the luminous aether.

In fact, the first attempt to do so, in the second order experiments, the Michelson–Morley experiment, falsified the theory of the luminous aether, as well as Kelvin's vortex theory.

It's kind of hilarious, though, so see you falling back on naturalistic science to defend your thesis that there can be no validation of naturalistic science--rather like your axiom which wasn't an axiom.

That you've demonstrated in the past that you don't understand this particular aspect of naturalistic science is hardly a basis upon which you can preen yourself for your profound understanding.

I do not base any "notions" on the work of previous generations of philosophers. If they cannot deploy logic, or a valid reference to a successful use of the scientific method, i have no notion of philosophy at all.

I think that philosophers invented the term naive realism to protect their livelihoods, and certainly not because they have any special access to "truth."