Realism: Evolution-Based

[coberst]

Realism: Metaphysical, Representational, Symbol-Based, and Evolution-Based

 

What is real and how can we know it?

 

Aristotle gave us classical metaphysical realism. Aristotle concluded that we can know reality because our mind grasped directly the essences of things in the world.

 

Descartes gave us representational realism. Ideas in the mind were representational of things in the world. Ideas correspond to things in the world.

 

Analytic Philosophy gave us symbol-based realism. I will not even try to say what this means because I do not know and it appears to me that there are multiple variations on this concept.

 

Cognitive science has given us evolution-based realism. This is also called embodied-realism because it has abandoned the mind/body dichotomy that characterizes other forms of realism and is convinced that natural selection is the process by which the human species has developed.

 

There are two major world views of cognitive scientists; Artificial Intelligence and embodied-realism. AI is a symbol based realism and embodied-realism is an evolution-based realism.

 

The ‘bible’ for embodied-realism is “Philosophy in the Flesh” by Lakoff and Johnson. The paradigm of this cognitive science is ‘conceptual metaphor’. The fundamental findings from which all principles flow are:

• The mind is inherently embodied.

• Thought is mostly unconscious.

• Abstract concepts are largely metaphorical.

 

The ‘bible’ states that “What we take to be true [real] in a situation depends on our embodied understanding of the situation, which is in turn shaped by all these factors.”

 

It seems to me that all of Western traditional philosophy and thus almost everyone’s comprehension is based upon classical metaphysical reality or some aspect of that philosophy. If so, I would expect all of these forces to find error in this Book. That does not mean that there is not error but only time will tell. Darwin is still being attacked as misguided constantly by many if not most citizens in the US.

[Kriminal99]

Wow I had never heard of that book but from what little you mention of it, it seems to voice ideas similar to mine.

[coberst]

Kriminal

 

This is a big book and is filled with new ideas of how to 'see' and 'know'. I suspect you will find it very interesting. I suspect you can find a copy at most college libraries so that you could evaluate it for yourself. Most college libraries have a 'Friend of the Library' card such that for a small yearly fee you can check out any of that librarie's books.

[Tarantism]

when we explore our surroundings we immidietly being to discern what is real and what isnt based on our sense and our perception...what we know to be real, what we have been taught is real and what we could imagine could be real. the imagination is a funny thing in this sense because, as far as im concerned, as soon as you imagine something you create a relm of possibility where what you have thought of as probable or possible could be real...and therefore while it has no "real" matter, it is real in some dimension of the mind's innerspace. another interesting fuction of reality is dreams. those of us who are dreamers...that is we practice the ancient art of lucid dreaming in our quest of consciousness, know also that there is a dream-fabric world where the known physical laws of this "reality" do not apply. we can fly, turn invisible, the possibilities are seemingly infinate. thsi suggests that there are at least three aspects to our reality, not only one. i think that narrowing it to only three would also not do this beautiful fabric of infinity justice.

 

coberst: does this view fit into any of your catagories? i am not sure.

[coberst]

when we explore our surroundings we immidietly being to discern what is real and what isnt based on our sense and our perception...what we know to be real, what we have been taught is real and what we could imagine could be real. the imagination is a funny thing in this sense because, as far as im concerned, as soon as you imagine something you create a relm of possibility where what you have thought of as probable or possible could be real...and therefore while it has no "real" matter, it is real in some dimension of the mind's innerspace. another interesting fuction of reality is dreams. those of us who are dreamers...that is we practice the ancient art of lucid dreaming in our quest of consciousness, know also that there is a dream-fabric world where the known physical laws of this "reality" do not apply. we can fly, turn invisible, the possibilities are seemingly infinate. thsi suggests that there are at least three aspects to our reality, not only one. i think that narrowing it to only three would also not do this beautiful fabric of infinity justice.

 

coberst: does this view fit into any of your catagories? i am not sure.

 

 

Metaphor is often used to help define the meaning of another concept. ‘Know is see’ is a metaphor that is obvious. ‘More is up’ is less obvious but a person trying to bake cornbread and pours milk into a measuring cup will comprehend its meaning.

 

The ‘conceptual metaphor’ that is defined in “Philosophy in The Flesh” and will be, I think, the first paradigm of cognitive science is something a little different but shares some of the same characteristics. The conceptual metaphor is similar to our normally used metaphor in that the conceptual metaphor forms the foundation of the new concept just as the regular metaphor forms the bases for comprehension of a new concept.

 

An infant is born and when embraced for the first time by its mother the infant experiences the sensation of warmth. In succeeding experiences the warmth is felt along with other sensations.

 

Empirical data verifies that there often happens a conflation (blending) of this sensation experience together with the development of a subjective (abstract) concept we can call affection. With each similar experience the infant fortifies both the sensation experience and the affection experience and a little later this conflation aspect ends and the child has these two concepts in different mental spaces.

 

This conflation leads us to readily recognize the metaphor ‘affection is warmth’.

 

Cognitive science uses metaphor in the standard usage as we are all accustomed to but it also uses a new concept that you are unfamiliar with unless you have been reading this book. This new concept is called ‘conceptual metaphor’. Conceptual metaphor is the heart of this new cognitive science and represents what will be in my opinion the first paradigm of cognitive science.

 

In my example I speak of two separate mental spaces one being the experience of being held and the other is the subjective experience of affection. The theory behind the ‘conceptual metaphor’ is that the structure of the sense experience can and is often automatically without conscious intention mapped into a new mental space.

 

The experience structure can be mapped into a new mental space and thereby becomes part of the structure of that new mental space. In this fashion these conceptual metaphors can act somewhat like atoms that join together to make a molecule.