Minding the Abyss: World Building without radical relativism

(by Jonny)

In their influential book “The Embodied Mind” (1991) Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson and Eleanor Rosch made a pioneering journey through many of the themes that the contemporary field of embodied cognition continues to spend a great deal of its resources exploring. One theme that hasn’t caught on in the same way that, say its emphasis on ecological perception has, is the notion that there is no pre-existing world with a given set of properties, a rejection of the “realism” that pervades most contemporary “analytic philosophy”. They express a position which takes the idea of embodied action, that the way in which we make sense of the world is necessarily dependent on contingent sensorimotor capacities, to imply that a perceiver-dependent world is an incoherent notion. Instead, it is perceivers who build worlds out of their contingent physical circumstances. The authors contend that the thesis of embodied mind leads us to believe that are no properties out there in the world independent of perceivers, that there is no independent or objective world.

Clearly published in the 90s...

Varela et al seem to believe that embodied cognition must tell us something profound about the metaphysical nature of reality. Yet it seems to me that this belief is an unnecessary chasm-leap of logic, one which if taken too seriously threatens the much more mundane claims of this research project. The jump seems to be this: why does the fact that perception is dependent upon action (in turn dependent on a contingent physical apparatus) imply that the world has independent, given properties. Why does the fact that our own knowledge of the world depends on the our particular and happenstance bodily form, imply that the world does not exist prior to our particular and happenstance knowledge of it? Such radically relativist theories about the metaphysic of the world do not seem to me to follow.  Andy Clark nicely reflect the worry about relativism’s unnecessary influence.

This high tech diagram I just stole from the internet has little to do with what we're talking about and probably won't help. ( http://www.unc.edu/~megw/TheoriesofPerception.html ) 

“Varela et al. use their reflections as evidence against realist and objectivist views of the world. I deliberately avoid this extension, which runs the risk of obscuring the scientific value of an embodied, embedded approach by linking it to the problematic idea that objects are not independent of the mind. My claim, in contrast, is simply that the aspects of real-world structure which biological brains represent will often be tightly geared to specific needs and sensorimotor capacities” (1997: 173).

Andy Clark. Nuff said.

“Continental  philosophy”, which I contend at this point in the history of ideas has more time for more radically relativaist theories, has influenced and continues to influence embodied cognition in a tolerant and healthy way that should continue. Yet undoubtedly the majority of research within embodied cognition still takes place within the tradition of “analytic philosophy”, which itself assumes a common sense realism, and whilst it is always healthy to question our paradigms, I believe we would be too quick to throw away the ever prudent belief in an world independent of perception.

Nevertheless, I believe relativist theories do teach the traditional analytic approach important lessons- lessons I believe Varela et al touch upon but take too far. The way human agents carve up the world is heavily shaped by theoretical-framework/s; our relative cultural, historical and physical context. Richard Rorty seems right in some sense when he says the concept of “giraffe” is ultimately contingent (1999: xxvi). It seems to me perfectly plausible that some alien species would not perceive the world as containing giraffes. Giraffes (organisms and their categorization) happen to be a useful object for us to conceptualise for obvious evolutionary reasons. However, this does not mean that there is nothing independent of our cognitive systems, independent of our descriptions, independent of our history, which allows us to pick out giraffes. We can learn from Rorty that for example “our linguistic practices are so bound up with our other social practices that our descriptions of nature… will always be a function of our social needs” without needing to agree that there is no underlying “dough” from which to cut out cookies (1999: 48). We can likewise learn from Varela et al that our contingent physical makeup must determine the way in which we perceive the world without needing claim that there is no world beyond our perception. 

Andy Clark (1997) Being There: Putting Brain, Body and World Together

Again. MIT Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts

Rorty, R (1999) Philosophy and Social Hope Penguin: New York

Varela, F., Thompson, E. and Rosch, E. (1991). The embodied mind. MIT Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts