Is this done by playing with language, by conceptional framing, or by looking the other way? :razz: — Tom Storm

Joseph Rouse argues:

“This account blocks both realism and anti-realism by showing how the contentfulness of scientific claims about the world is worked out as part of ongoing interaction with our developmental and selective environment. Scientific claims and the conditions for their intelligibility are part of that environment, and only acquire meaning and justification as part of our ongoing efforts to articulate that environment conceptually from within. There is no gap between how the world appears to us and how it “really” is for realists to overcome, or for anti-realists to remain safely on the side of those appearances. Scientific understanding instead develops hard-won, partial articulations of the world. Within those conceptually articulated domains we can differentiate locally between what our theories and models say about the world, and whether what they say is correct or in need of some form of revision. Both conceptual understanding and its assessment nevertheless presuppose the kind of access to the world that antirealists deny and realists seek to secure.
​In the wake of these arguments, we should stop asking the questions to which realism or anti-realism would pose answers. Unless they can develop an adequate critical response to these arguments, realists must abandon any commitment to philosophical naturalism. They would instead share with their anti-realist opponents the need to defend their conceptions of scientific understanding with the recognition that these conceptions conflict with what the sciences have to say about our own conceptual capacities

Does the world when not being seen resemble how it looks to us? We need to answer these questions to solve the epistemological problem of perception. All this other talk is a red herring — Michael

Maybe it would be better to dissolve the epistemological problem of perception by dissolving the alleged gap between perceiver and world and along with it representational realism.

Joseph Rouse argues:

“This account blocks both realism and anti-realism by showing how the contentfulness of scientific claims about the world is worked out as part of ongoing interaction with our developmental and selective environment. Scientific claims and the conditions for their intelligibility are part of that environment, and only acquire meaning and justification as part of our ongoing efforts to articulate that environment conceptually from within. There is no gap between how the world appears to us and how it “really” is for realists to overcome, or for anti-realists to remain safely on the side of those appearances. Scientific understanding instead develops hard-won, partial articulations of the world. Within those conceptually articulated domains we can differentiate locally between what our theories and models say about the world, and whether what they say is correct or in need of some form of revision. Both conceptual understanding and its assessment nevertheless presuppose the kind of access to the world that antirealists deny and realists seek to secure.
​In the wake of these arguments, we should stop asking the questions to which realism or anti-realism would pose answers. Unless they can develop an adequate critical response to these arguments, realists must abandon any commitment to philosophical naturalism. They would instead share with their anti-realist opponents the need to defend their conceptions of scientific understanding with the recognition that these conceptions conflict with what the sciences have to say about our own conceptual capacities.”

Do you and your friends do this impromptu in the middle of the street sometimes? — Tate

I was in a philosophy meetup yesterday and the moderator insisted that I admit there are bald facts
about aspects of the world, and denying such concrete facts in the name of postmodernism or whatever is dangerous because it can lead to an ‘anything goes’ atmosphere that breeds fascism. He pointed to the embrace of relativism by some Trump supporters. I told him Trump supporters were the complete opposite of relativists.

Heidegger also saw the boundaries of language as a problem for the articulation of being
— Joshs

So he opted to express 'what it's like' from the first person view, right? — Tate

For Heidegger, ‘what it’s like’ means ‘how it changes’.

The very idea of a concept of everything as all the furniture of the universe is what the grammatical structure of language imposes on us.
— Joshs

From what vantage point are you making this observation? Where are you standing? How did you get there? — Tate

For a vantage with a particular history, which remakes itself in creating and recreating a stance. The ‘standing ‘ of the stance isn’t a fact but a performance.

Nevertheless we run up against the boundaries of language.

Kierkegaard also saw this running-up and similarly pointed it out (as running up against the paradox). This running up against the boundaries of language is Ethics. — Tate

Heidegger also saw the boundaries of language as a problem for the articulation of being But it should be understood that what he saw language as standing in the way of was not an explanation of everything in the sense of capturing a world of things outside the bounds of human experience. The very idea of a concept of everything as all the furniture of the universe is what the grammatical structure of language imposes on us.
Subject-predicate propositional grammar uses the copula ‘is’ as a neutral glue to force on us the idea of things as entities with intrinsic content. ‘This is a chair.’ ‘That is a mountain’. Heidegger and Wittgenstein wanted to explain being in terms of becoming rather than interms imposed by the static ‘is’.

The reason we think we need a theory of everything is because of what Wittgenstein called our bewitchment by language.

Wittgenstein warned that Heidegger was trying to do something that can't be done — Tate

Really? Can you find a quote for that?

Then I asked if it could explain Everything. It said I was talking about God as a symbol of the ultimate cause. — Tate

Contemporary philosophy doesn’t look for first causes to explain Everything. They look for formal structures of becoming and transformation. Hegel was among those who started this trend with his dialectic of becoming.

↪Joshs

Turns out I prefer the copy paste.

Your view on Gallagher and Feldman-Barrett's relative merits is noted. Not sure what to do with it... but noted anyway. — Isaac

Let’s get back to the larger topic of realism and cognitive science. I want to shift tone here; I think a bit of nuance is in order. Anthony Chemero wrote a book titled Radical Embodied Cognitive Science. Although he is also a philosopher, you may be more impressed with his credentials as a researcher than you were with Gallagher. At any rate , he asks the question as to whether a radical embodied cognitive science necessarily requires an abandonment of realism. After discussing some
of the many varieties of realism he concludes that, no, one does not have to follow Varela and some others in insisting on this. Chemero thinks that Ian Hacking’s
brand of realism is a more than adequate fit for enactivist embodied cognition.

So I should amend my original claim to read that , to the extent that we can consider enactivism as a definable
category, identifying with its premises no more requires a rejection of all forms of realism than does the embrace of quantum physics. We can, however, locate a subgroup within the larger enactivist community that considers rejection of realism as a requirement for membership in their club.

Perhaps we can agree that in general theoretical empirical orientations do impact on metaphysical
positions. While quantum physics doesn’t necessarily threaten realism as a whole , it does seem to be incompatible with naive (direct) realism.

Yes. I mean I can't believe there's any debate about this. Lisa Feldman-Barrett is a professor of psychology. Gallagher is a professor of philosophy. That means that Professor Feldman-Barrett has demonstrated that she's familiar with all the background research in psychology and can conduct research of her own in the field of a standard suitable to obtain a doctorate. Professor Gallagher has made no such demonstration. How is this remotely controversial? — Isaac

You have to be kidding me. You’re right about one thing, there should be no debate here. My undergraduate degree is in biopsychology. My graduate degree
degree is in experimental psychology. Well before I read any works on philosophy, I familiarized myself
with much background research in psychology. Almost all of it is the ‘normal science’ type stuff which attempts to discover new variations within a framework which is itself accepted implicitly and unquestioningly.

Shaun Gallagher is one of a rare few thinkers existing in a given era who moves effortlessly and expertly among schools of thought, synthesizing their conclusions. I have found very few writing today , especially outside of Europe, who have delved in scholarly fashion into philosophical hermeneutics , phenomenology , poststructuralism, pragmatism, integrated their contributions, and applied them to a renewed understanding of the psychological sciences. I can assure your that in any conversation concerning the intellectual foundations of cognitive science Gallagher would run circles around Barrett, who does a competent job of contributing to and summarizing the results obtained from within the PP framework but has nowhere near Gallagher’s breadth of understanding. Let me make it clear. To write and think at the level that Gallagher does on these issues requires much much more than your cliched impression of what a philosopher does ( sitting in an armchair having a bit of reckon). I’m not simply arguing that Gallagher can babble philosophy better than Barrett can. I am claiming that the elements of training in your field that you consider most essential to making valid scientific discovery are directly in the crosshairs of Gallagher’s research, and the proof of it is that you don’t even understand the presuppositions of your field , or of the recent history of science, well enough to realize it.

Barrett articulates and adds to the contributions of pp to modeling such concepts as emotion, motivation and perception. Gallagher articulates and adds to the contributions of a radically embodied enactivism that questions her conclusions and methodology. You don’t recognize his methods as properly scientific. In your mind they cannot securely add to objective empirical knowledge or effectively critique her results, so you privilege a moderately talented scientist like Barrett over a more original thinker
like Gallagher because she is a proper scientist and he is not. For you there is a clear separation between science and philosophy in this regard. At the heart of your assumption is your embrace of realism. If realism
is successfully critiqued, then the science-philosophy-art boundaries fall.

It is your belief in realism that makes it utterly inconceivable to you that someone sitting in a armchair could invalidate the results of properly replicated empirical knowledge.

Btw, Gallagher is far and away not my favorite philosopher. If you were to ask me , for instance , who offers the most advance and insightful understanding of the nature of emotion, I would say that Heidegger’s account of affect towers over Barrett’s. But that can’t be, right? He’s an armchair reckoner and she’s a bonified scientist. How could an armchair reckoner’s fantasies cause a hard-nosed scientist to have to go back to the drawing board?

But they are contributions from philosophy to cognitive science, they are not discoveries of cognitive science, those are made by cognitive scientists. I had a paper once published in a Political Science journal. I'm not a political scientist. It was, in that case, a contribution from my work in Psychology, to the political scientists, it was not research in political science. — Isaac

How is this not research in cognitive science?

Arntzen,E.C.,Normann,B.Øberg,G.K.andGallagher,S.2019.Perceived bodily changes individualized, group-based exercises are a source of strengthening self in individuals with MS: A qualitative interview study. Physiotherapy Theory and Practice

Vincini,S.Jhang,Y.,Buder,E.H.andGallagher,S.2017.Neonatal imitation:Theory,experimental
design and significance for the field of social cognition. Frontiers in Psychology – Cognitive Science.

Rode,G.,Lacour,S.,Jacquin-Courtois,S.,Pisella,L.,Michel,C.,Revol,P.,Luauté,J.,Gallagher,S., P., Pélisson, D. & Rossetti, Y. 2015. Long-term sensorimotor and therapeutical effects of a mild regime of prism adaptation in spatial neglect. A double-blind RCT essay / Effets sensori-moteurs et fonctionnels à long terme d’un traitement hebdomadaire par adaptation prismatique dans la négligence : un essai randomisé et contrôlé en double insu [in English and French]. Annals of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine 58

But this begs the question. Arent you defining ‘cognitive science’ in conveniently narrow terms such that it preemptively shuts out precisely the kinds of challenges to its methods and assumptions that non-realist enactivists like Gallagher are presenting? Haven’t you set up a catch-22? Galagher rejects reductive, representational realist approaches to cognitive science. You work within a community of scientists who define cognitive science in those terms. Therefore, Gallagher can’t be a cognitive scientist. 60 years ago, when behaviorism reigned supreme, given the methods you embrace, you yourself would not have been considered a scientist by that psychological community , only a speculating philosopher. It would be an interesting study to track how long it took for cogntivists like Ulrich Neisser to be accepted as scientists by the larger research community. It’s a classic situation, described by Thomas Kuhn , of newer paradigmatic communities having their methods delegitimized by the older community as non-scientific.

I’m guessing that enactivism has been around long enough that a mature community of active scientific researchers has by now formed around it. If Gallagher doesn’t fit the bill , then certainly you can agree that a list can be pulled together from repeatedly cited references in the journals they publish in. Unless you want to insist thar, by definition , none of these people are real cognitive scientists. So why don’t you help me out here. I’m sure you can provide a name or two from
within the enactivist research community. Then we can see what, if anything, they say about realism, pro or con.

I’m curious , do you consider Lisa Barrett to be more of a ‘real’ cognitive scientist than Gallagher?

We discuss Rouse’s book in a 2 hour meetup every other Sunday beginning at 6 pm London time. You’re welcome to join.

https://www.meetup.com/the-toronto-philosophy-meetup/events/286979563/?_xtd=gqFyqTIxNzgyMzQ2OKFwo2FwaQ&from=ref

It seems to me that any science relies on there being some inter-subjectively determinable reality to warrant the veracity of its observations. I have no argument against the free-flowing associations and insights of postmodern thought; they may indeed be illuminating and open new avenues for contemplation and research, but they can never command the kind of inter-subjective corroborability that science or everyday empirical observation can, as far as I can see — Janus

I highly recommend Joseph Rouse’s ‘Articulating the World’. His postmodern rejection of realism , rather than being based on “free-flowing associations” , is grounded in evolutionary biology. He uses the model of biological niche construction to characterize the intersubjective discursive practices that create scientific communities, tracing their origin to the communicative practices of non-linguistic animals. Intersubjective corroborability requires a shared set of practices. Only within that ‘niche’ does the notion of observation , agreement , and truth and falsity, make any sense. Niches are constantly changing and being rebuilt , and as a result what is at stake and at issue in a scientific practice changes along with it.

In other words, a thoroughgoing naturalism leads one to reject realism.

Dan Zahavi is a philosopher at University of Copenhagen.
Where are the cognitive scientists you're referring to? — Isaac

Here is a small sampling of Gallagher’s ‘philosophical’ work. Notice the wide range of scientific journals that have published him as well as the specific contributions he has made to empirical research in such areas as autism , schizophrenia, distributed cognition and anosognosia.

Newen, A., De Bruin, L. and Gallagher, S. (eds.) 2018. Oxford Handbook of 4E-Cognition. Oxford: Oxford University Press

Gallagher, S. and Daly, A. 2018. Dynamical relations in the self-pattern. Frontiers in Psychology 9: 664. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00664 (open access link: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00664/full)

Gallagher, S. 2017. Embodied intersubjective understanding and communication in congenital deafblindness. Journal of Deafblind Studies on Communication 3: 46-58.

Gallagher, S. and Trigg, D. 2016. Agency and anxiety: Delusions of control and loss of control in Schizophrenia and Agoraphobia. Frontiers in Neuroscience 10: 459. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2016.00459.

Gallagher, S. and Varga, S. 2015. Conceptual issues in autism spectrum disorders. Current Opinion in Psychiatry 28 (2): 127-32. doi: 10.1097/YCO.0000000000000142.

Arntzen,E.C.,Normann,B.Øberg,G.K.andGallagher,S.2019.Perceived bodily changes
individualized, group-based exercises are a source of strengthening self in individuals with MS: A qualitative interview study. Physiotherapy Theory and Practice. Online First: https://doi.org/10.1080/09593985.2019.1683923

Gallagher,S.2018.The therapeutic reconstruction of affordances.ResPhilosophica95(4):719-736

Gallagher,S.2018.Mindfulness and mindlessness in performance.TheItalianJournalofCognitive
Sciences 5 (1): 5-18, DOI: 10.12832/90966

Gallagher,S.2018.Deep brain stimulation,self and relational autonomy .Neuroethics.DOI:
10.1007/s12152-018-9355-x.

Natvik,E.,Groven,K.S.,Råheim,M.,Gjengedal,E.and Gallager,S.2018.Space-perception,
movement and insight: Attuning to the space of everyday life after major weight loss. Physiotherapy
Theory and Practice. doi.org/10.1080/09593985.2018.1441934

Bitbol,M.andGallagher,S.2018.Autopoiesis and the free erergy principle .CommentonRamsted,
Badcock, and Friston. Physics of Life Review. 24: 24-26 doi.org/10.1016/j.plrev.2017.12.011

Vincini,S.Jhang,Y.,Buder,E.H.andGallagher,S.2017.Neonatal imitation:Theory,experimental
design and significance for the field of social cognition. Frontiers in Psychology – Cognitive Science.
8:1323. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01323

Gallagher, S. and Trigg, D. 2016. Agency and anxiety: Delusions of control and loss of control in
Schizophrenia and Agoraphobia. Frontiers in Neuroscience 10: 459. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2016.00459

Gallagher,S.2015.Doing the math:Calculating the role of evolution and enculturation in the origins of
mathematical reasoning. Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology 119: 341-346

Rode,G.,Lacour,S.,Jacquin-Courtois,S.,Pisella,L.,Michel,C.,Revol,P.,Luauté,J.,Gallagher,S., P., Pélisson, D. & Rossetti, Y. 2015. Long-term sensorimotor and therapeutical effects of a mild regime of prism adaptation in spatial neglect. A double-blind RCT essay / Effets sensori-moteurs et fonctionnels à long terme d’un traitement hebdomadaire par adaptation prismatique dans la négligence : un essai randomisé et contrôlé en double insu [in English and French]. Annals of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine 58

Gallagher,S.2014.In your face :Transcendence in embodied interaction.Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 8: 495. Reprinted 2016.

Here’s some more for ya:

103. Gallagher, S. 2012. The body in social context: Some qualifications on the ‘warmth and intimacy’ of bodily self-consciousness. Grazer Philosophische Studien 84: 91–121
104. Gallagher, S. 2012. Time, emotion and depression. Emotion Review 4 (2): 127-32. doi: 10.1177/1754073911430142
105. Gallagher, S. 2012. In defense of phenomenological approaches to social cognition: Interacting with the critics. Review of Philosophy and Psychology 3 (2): 187-212.
106. Gallagher, S. 2012. Multiple aspects of agency. New Ideas in Psychology 30: 15–31.
107. De Bruin, L. and Gallagher, S. 2012. Embodied simulation: An unproductive explanation. Trends in
Cognitive Sciences 16 (2): 98-99.
108. Gallagher, S. 2011. Embodiment and phenomenal qualities: An enactive interpretation. Philosophical
Topics 39 (1): 1-14.
109. Gallagher, S. 2011. The self in the Cartesian brain. Perspectives on the Self: Conversations on Identity
and Consciousness. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1234: 100–103.
110. Sternberg, E., Critchley, S., Gallagher, S. and Raman, V.V. 2011. A self-fulfilling prophecy: linking
belief to behavior. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1234: 83–97.
111. Gallagher, S. 2011. Fantasies and facts: Epistemological and methodological perspectives on first- and
third-person perspectives. Phenomenology and Mind 1: 49-58.
112. Gallagher, S. 2011. Somaesthetics and the care of the body. Metaphilosophy 42 (3): 305-313.
113. Gallagher, S. 2011. The overextended mind. Versus: Quaderni di studi semiotici 113-115: 55-66.
114. Gallagher, S. 2011. Strong interaction and self-agency. Humana-Mente: Journal of Philosophical
Studies 15: 55-76
115. Gallagher, S. and Cole, J. 2011. Dissociation in self-narrative. Consciousness and Cognition 20: 149-
155 doi:10.1016/j.concog.2010.10.003.
116. Bedwell, J., Gallagher, S. Whitten, S. and Fiore, S. 2011. Linguistic correlates of self in deceptive oral
autobiographical narratives. Consciousness and Cognition. 20: 547–555. Published online, October
2010. doi:10.1016/j.concog.2010.10.001.
117. Gallagher, S. 2010. Defining consciousness: The importance of non-reflective self-awareneess.
Pragmatics and Cognition 18 (3): 561-69.
118. Cole, J. Dascal, M., Gallagher, S. and Frith, C. 2010. Final discussion. Pragmatics and Cognition 18
(3): 553-59.
119. Gallagher, S. 2010. Joint attention, joint action, and participatory sense making. Alter:Revue de
Phénoménologie 18: 111-124.
120. De Jaegher, H., Di Paolo, E. and Gallagher, S. 2010. Does social interaction constitute social cognition?
Trends in Cognitive Sciences 14 (10): 441-447.
121. Froese, T. and Gallagher, S. 2010. Phenomenology and artificial life: Toward a technological
supplementation of phenomenological methodology. Husserl Studies 26 (2): 83-107.
122. Crisafi, A. and Gallagher S. 2010. Hegel and the extended mind. Artificial Intelligence & Society. 25
(1): 123-29.
123. Gallagher, S. 2009. Two problems of intersubjectivity. Journal of Consciousness Studies 16 (6-8): 289-
308.
124. Gallagher, S. 2009. Deep and dynamic interaction: Response to Hanne De Jaegher. Consciousness and
Cognition 18 (2): 547-548
125. Gallagher, S. and A. Crisafi. 2009. Mental institutions. Topoi 28 (1): 45-51.
126. Gallagher, S. 2008-09. Intercorporality and intersubjectivity: Merleau-Ponty and the critique of theory
of mind [in Japanese]. Gendai Shiso (Review of Contemporary Thought) 36 (16): 288-299.
127. Gallagher, S. 2008. Inference or interaction: Social cognition without precursors. Philosophical
Explorations 11 (3): 163-73.
128. Zahavi, D. and Gallagher, S. 2008. The (in)visibility of others: A reply to Herschbach. Philosophical
Explorations 11 (3): 237-43.
129. Gallagher, S. 2008. Intersubjectivity in perception. Continental Philosophy Review 41 (2): 163-178
130. Gallagher, S. 2008. Are minimal representations still representations? International Journal of
Philosophical Studies 16 (3): 351-69.
131. Ratcliffe, M. and Gallagher, S. 2008. Introduction to special issue on situated cognition. International
Journal of Philosophical Studies 16 (3): 279-280.
132. Gallagher, S. 2008. Another look at intentions: A response to Raphael van Riel's “Seeing the invisible’.
Consciousness and Cognition 17 (2008) 553–555

133. Gallagher, S. 2008. Direct perception in the intersubjective context. Consciousness and Cognition 17: 535–543
134. Zahavi, D. and Gallagher, S. 2008. A phenomenology with legs and brains. Abstracta 2: 86-107.
135. Gallagher, S. and Zahavi, D. 2008. Précis: The Phenomenological Mind. Abstracta 2: 4-9.
136. Overgaard, M, Ramsoy, T. and Gallagher, S. 2008. The subjective turn: Towards an integration of first-
person methodologies in cognitive science. Journal of Consciousness Studies 15 (5): 100-120.
137. McNeill, D. Duncan, S. Cole, J. Gallagher, S. & Bertenthal, B. 2008. Neither or both: Growth points
from the very beginning. Interaction Studies 9 (1): 117-132.
138. Gallagher, S. 2007. The natural philosophy of agency. Philosophy Compass. 2 (2): 347–357
(http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1747-9991.2007.00067.x)
139. Tsakiris, M. Bosbach S. and Gallagher, S. 2007. On agency and body-ownership: Phenomenological
and neuroscientific reflections. Consciousness and Cognition 16 (3): 645-60.
140. Gallagher, S. 2007. The spatiality of situation: Comment on Legrand et al. Consciousness and
Cognition. 16 (3): 700-702.
141. Gallagher, S. 2007. Social cognition and social robots. Pragmatics and Cognition 15 (3): 435-54.
142. Gallagher, S. 2007. Sense of agency and higher-order cognition: Levels of explanation for
schizophrenia. Cognitive Semiotics 0: 32-48.
143. Gallagher, S. 2007. Moral agency, self-consciousness, and practical wisdom. Journal of Consciousness
Studies 14 (5-6): 199-223.
144. Gallagher, S. 2007. Pathologies in narrative structure. Philosophy (Royal Institute of Philosophy)
Supplement, 60: 65-86.
145. Gallagher, S. 2007. Simulation trouble. Social Neuroscience. 2 (3-4): 353-65.
146. Gallagher, S. 2007. Moral personhood and phronesis. Moving Bodies 4 (2): 31-57
147. Gallagher, S. 2007. Introduction: The arts and sciences of the situated body. Janus Head 9.2: 293-95.
148. Gallagher, S. and Jesper Brøsted Sørensen. 2006. Experimenting with phenomenology. Consciousness
and Cognition 15 (1): 119-134
149. Gallagher, S. 2005. Intentionality and intentional action. Synthesis Philosophica 40 (2): 319-26.
Croatian translation: 2006. Intencionalnost I intencionalno djelovanje. Trans. S. Selak. Filozofska
Istrazivanja 102, 26 (2): 339-346.
150. McNeill, D., Bertenthal, B., Cole, J. and Gallagher, S. 2005. Gesture-first, but no gestures?
Commentary on Michael A. Arbib. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 28: 138-39
151. Gallagher, S. 2005. Phenomenological contributions to a theory of social cognition [The Aron
Gurwitsch Memorial Lecture, 2003]. Husserl Studies 21: 95–110.
152. Gallagher, S. 2004. Consciousness and free will. Danish Yearbook of Philosophy 39: 7-16.
153. Gallagher, S. 2004. Les conditions corporéité et d'intersubjectivité de la personne morale [Embodied
and intersubjective conditions for moral personhood]. Theologiques 12 (1-2): 135-64; includes comment by S. Mansour-Robaey. Le corps, ses représentations et le statut de la personne morale. Theologiques 12 (1-2): 156-59.
154. Gallagher, S. 2004. Understanding interpersonal problems in autism: Interaction theory as an alternative to theory of mind. Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 11 (3): 199-217.
155. Gallagher, S. 2004. Body experiments. Interfaces 21-22 (2): 401-405
156. Gallagher, S. 2004. Hermeneutics and the cognitive sciences. Journal of Consciousness Studies 11 (10-
11): 162-174. Chinese translation (2004), Polish translation (2011), Italian translation (2019).
157. Gallagher, S. 2004. Neurocognitive models of schizophrenia: A neurophenomenological critique.
Psychopathology 37: 8-19. Invited paper with response by Christopher Frith: Comments on Shaun
Gallagher. Psychopathology, 37 (2004): 20-22.
158. Gallagher, S. and Francisco Varela. 2003. Redrawing the map and resetting the time: Phenomenology
and the cognitive sciences. Canadian Journal of Philosophy. Supplementary Volume 29: 93-132.
Polish translation: (2005; 2010).
159. Gallagher, S. 2003. Phenomenology and experimental design. Journal of Consciousness Studies 10 (9-
10): 85-99. Polish translation (2014).
160. Gallagher, S. 2003. Bodily self-awareness and object-perception. Theoria et Historia Scientiarum:
International Journal for Interdisciplinary Studies, 7 (1): 53-68.
161. Gallagher, S. 2003. Hylétická zkusenost a prozívane telo. Trans. Michal Sasma. Philosophica (The
Czech Republic) 5: 103-126. Czech translation of: Gallagher, S. 1986. Hyletic experience and the lived

ody. Husserl Studies 3: 131-166
162. Gallagher, S. 2002. Født med en krop: Fænomenologisk og eksperimentel forskning om oplevelse af
kroppen [Born with a body: Phenomenological and experimental contributions to understanding embodied experience]. In Danish. Trans. Ejgil Jespersen. Tidsskrift for Dansk Idraetspsykologisk Forum (Danish Yearbook for Sport Psychology ) 29: 11-51. Polish translation (2005).
163. Gallagher, S. 2002. Experimenting with introspection (Comment). Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6 (9): 374-375.
164. Cole, J., Gallagher, S., and McNeill, D. 2002. Gesture following deafferentation: A phenomenologically informed experimental study. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 1 (1): 49-67.
165. Gallagher, S., Cole, J. and McNeill, D. 2002. Social cognition and the primacy of movement revisited (Comment). Trends in Cognitive Science, 6 (4): 155-56.
166. Gallagher, S. 2001. The practice of mind: Theory, simulation, or primary interaction? Journal of Consciousness Studies, 8 (5–7): 83–107
167. Gallagher, S. 2000. Philosophical conceptions of the self: implications for cognitive science. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 4 (1): 14-21.
168. Gallagher, S. 2000. Reply to Cole, Sacks, and Waterman. Trends in Cognitive Science 4 (5): 167-68. [A reply to commentary on my article by Jonathan Cole, Oliver Sacks, and Ian Waterman. 2000. On the immunity principle: A view from a robot. Trends in Cognitive Science 4 (5): 167].
169. Gallagher, S. and Anthony J. Marcel. 1999. The self in contextualized action. Journal of Consciousness Studies 6 (4): 4-30.
170. Gallagher, S. 1999. A cognitive way to the transcendental reduction. Journal of Consciousness Studies 6: 348-51.
171. Gallagher, S., G. Butterworth, A. Lew, and J. Cole. 1998. Hand-mouth coordination, congenital absence of limb, and evidence for innate body schemas. Brain and Cognition 38: 53-65.
172. Gallagher, S. 1997. Mutual enlightenment: Recent phenomenology in cognitive science. Journal of Consciousness Studies 4 (3): 195-214.
173. Gallagher, S. 1996. The moral significance of primitive self-consciousness. Ethics 107 (1): 129-140.
174. Gallagher, S. and A. Meltzoff. 1996. The earliest sense of self and others: Merleau-Ponty and recent
developmental studies. Philosophical Psychology 9: 213-236. French translation: 2010. Le sens précoce de soi et d'autrui. Merleau-Ponty et les etudes developpementales récentes, trad. Jéremie Rollot. In B. Andrieu (ed.), Philosophie du corps. Paris, Vrin, 2010, p. 83-126.
175. Gallagher, S. 1996. Critique and extension: A response to Robert Young. Studies in Philosophy and Education 15 (4): 323-328.
176. Gallagher, S. and J. Cole. 1995. Body schema and body image in a deafferented subject. Journal of Mind and Behavior 16: 369-390.
177. Gallagher, S. 1993. The Historikerstreit and the critique of nationalism. History of European Ideas 16: 921-926.
178. Gallagher, S. 1993. The place of phronesis in postmodern hermeneutics. Philosophy Today 37: 298- 305.
179. Gallagher, S. 1992. The theater of personal identity: From Hume to Derrida. The Personalist Forum 8: 21-30.
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I note that you've downgraded your claim from "undermining" to "challenging". I'm not sure QM even challenges realism, although I think it's fair to say that some interpretations don't offer a realistic picture of what is going on at the "fundamental" level. I guess you could count that as a challenge for realism if you accept an anti-realist interpretation. — Janus

So we're back to scientific discoveries having an impact on metaphysical theories again. Perhaps now you could explain why the discoveries of cognitive science are excluded from this allowance? — Isaac

For my money, it is not quantum physics that clearly begs for a non-realist metaphysics , but certain approaches within cognitive science billing themselves as postmodern. There is a cohesive community advocating for a post-realist postmodern science with Shaun Gallagher , Dan Zahavi, Michel Bitbol, Hanne De Jaegher and Joseph Rouse, among others. I dont think you’ll find a comparable commitment among physicists (yet. It’s only a matter of time)

As Rouse writes:

“ Epistemic objectivity as an ideal presumes a gap between us as knowers and the world to be known. An objective method, stance, attitude, or disposi­tion is put forward to bridge that gap. But any such proposal as a form of subject-positioning finds itself firmly placed on our side of the gap be­tween us as knowers and the world as “beyond” our representations of it.
The objection is that the gap between knowers and the world is thereby conceived in advance in a way that renders it unbridgeable. Moreover, this conception can itself be challenged as a dogmatic presupposition that we should reject. As Heidegger once suggested, the problem is not that the refutation of skepti­cism has yet to be accomplished once and for all but that it continues to be attempted again and again out of a dogged commitment to an un­derlying conception of a gap between knower and world to be known.”

I'd say that the equipment involved and the economic model of science at the time and all that goes into the context of discovery would change the meanings of the terms.


I'd say that what the scientists were doing to improve measurements of water boiling point would count as normal science, for sure -- I'm not sure where the loss actually occurred. But what they meant by "water boils
But what they meant by "water boils at 100 degrees C" and what we mean seem different to my eyes. — Moliere

For Kuhn a paradigmatic normal science community can function perfectly well without agreement on basic theoretic issues , such as what exactly is the causal explanation of the concept of boiling, or whether atoms
exist.
I dont think one could say a significant shift in meaning of scientific concepts has taken place until a large set of agreed upon practices , forms of measurement , interpretation of measurement results and use of apparatus have also been transformed. I think the alternative explanations for boiling that Change discusses
we’re forgotten because they mattered little to the goals and practices of scientists. I suppose in some small sense a conceptual shift is involved in understanding these alternative models, but they seem to leave intact the nature of the assumed building blocks (thermodynamic behavior of gases and solids), recombining the patterns of their interactions in novel ways.

↪Joshs Doesn't boiling point count? Hasok Chang speaks of two ways of speaking about boiling points -- the "Standard Temperature and Pressure" modern sense, and the variable-empirical route from the 18/19th centuries gone over in the paper which includes marking where water begins to boil and when it's a full boil — Moliere

I read the paper you linked to. These two ways of speaking about boiling point don’t seem to
present us with the alternative meanings of ‘boiling point’. They are not disputing what it means for water to boil, or what a threshold ‘point’ means , or what water or temperature mean( these basic concepts are the sort that would be in question in a paradigm shift) . The only issue in question here is how many factors come into play in influencing boiling point ( atmospheric pressure , type of coating of the vessel, presence of bubbles in the water). No translation of sense is required to shift from the Standard temperature and pressure model to the variable-empirical model.
This is not a transformation of the meaning of boiling point. Instead, this is an example of an attempt to increase the accuracy and scope with which a conventionally accepted concept of boiling point is determined, and as such it represents what research in a period of normal science is about.

Here's a pretty clear case of Kuhn loss, I think. Note that Kuhn-loss doesn't mean that these things are irretrievable -- only that they are lost due to the accidents of history (focusing on cutting edge research, as the author puts it here -- or, in the case of Kuhn, during scientific revolutions). — Moliere

Kuhn loss is exemplified by the continued use of an empirical concept, but with a changed sense. To get from the old to the new use and back again requires an act of translation.

“ Briefly put, what the participants in a communication breakdown can do is recognize each other as members of different language communities and then become translators.Taking the differences between their own intra- and inter-group discourse as itself a subject for study, they can first attempt to discover the terms and locutions that, used unproblematically within each community, are nevertheless foci of trouble for inter-group discussions. (Locutions that present no such difficulties may be homophonically translated.) Having isolated such areas of difficulty in scientific communication, they can next resort to their shared everyday vocabularies in an effort further to elucidate their troubles.

Each may, that is, try to discover what the other would see and say when presented with a stimulus to which his own verbal response would be different. If they can sufficiently refrain from explaining anomalous behavior as the consequence of mere error or madness, they may in time become very good predictors of each other’s behavior. Each will have learned to translate the other’s theory and its consequences into his own language and simultaneously to describe in his language the world to which that theory applies. That is what the historian of science regularly does (or should) when dealing with out-of-date scientific theories.”(Thomas Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolutions)

Thing is....mind is just a catch-all, a logical placeholder to prevent infinite regress, having nothing to do with speculative theoretics as a system. For instance, in searchable Guyer/Wood (1998) CPR, brain has four returns, mind 176, but reason has 1400+. — Mww

How would you articulate a model of reason that didn’t make use of a notion of mind( or subjectivity)?

But I don't even know why I even need to quote this. The previous quote of Friston, especially about seeing red, is enough. It's quite clearly a form of indirect realism. It just replaces the usual notion of "raw sense data" with something else. — Michael

You could also call it neo-Kantianism.

1

Forthcoming in Husserl Studies. Please quote from published version.

Brain, Mind, World: Predictive coding, neo-Kantianism, and transcendental idealism:

https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/54174325/Predictive_coding-libre.pdf?1503060419=&response-content-disposition=attachment%3B+filename%3DBrain_Mind_World_Predictive_coding_neo_K.pdf&Expires=1658349141&Signature=TJReJgoXSnrRGvSTjMJaS3tz2IQ~hDWuXZYU4wRrOJz39Z8153gr7B5I2PRAvZVrU4hM7qlXWolX~Yt8sPnoPuROVJrLLv5G1J~G1EQKXVUwnmgXcq6Pu-t5kCgGXw~CHlm7wmoX91ej5iKrDfsG67W9MJdOTvPPCwb4jmirprYFBld2GOF3b4m8KZbZr24jcYJlEVdan1gQ5elYii4oaU1sVRFBbOM5FqjJ9-yVueeGYOxp0Vzjbw~meSlCKY74Y36Q-5nCh5lrEMAX5uQlWRGz7KUl3k9J0oudgjmxICP3SkUp~Nb3NTLp6PdhEGOerJHMBvOu38Y-cLqCAZkFbA__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA

What would be the ontological difference between a potentially real object and an actually real object? The idea of a potentially real object seems to conflate epistemic uncertainty with ontological uncertainty, something I would call a "naive idealist view". I don't think there is any ontological uncertainty, because it seems that any object can be structurally defined as a pure set, which is a determinate structure. Pure set theory can define all mathematical structures as pure sets, including the mathematical structure of quantum mechanics. — litewave

What is the relation between language and real, nameable objects? This is the question of the basis of the concept of an object or category of objects. Doesn’t the mathematical determination follow upon the linguistic-semantic determination? Are you assuming that language is referential: we assign a semantic meaning and then associate it with a linguistic token? How do I know that my token means the same thing as your token? Is there a fact of the matter that will settle such disputes of meaning and sense? Do the empirical facts of the world ( or dictionary definitions) intervene to settle these matters?

To study the mind presupposes it. So.....if mind is the unconditioned relative to human cognitive systems, what is there that can presuppose? To posit an antecedent to an unconditioned is a contradiction. Which relates to introspection, in that the mind ends up studying itself, which must be impossible. Now we got all kindsa metaphysical roadblocks, in that we are mistaking the replication of the doing of the deed, for the deed itself being done. It just may be Kant’s greatest philosophical gift was not to try to explain stuff that didn’t need it — Mww

The Zahavi paper that Wayfarer linked to tries to show how Husserlian phenomenology allows us to avoid the metaphysical trap that you , Kant and Dennett are stuck in. Specifically, it doesn’t begin from a notion of mind as an unconditioned ‘inside’. It begins from an irreducible
a priori of correlation that produces both what we call mind and what we call external objects.

Psychologist George Kelly said what matters is not whether the universe exists, but what we can make of it.
— Joshs

Yes, but it's a basic fact that postmodernism rejects meta-narratives, so that tends to consign a great deal of what has been made of it in the past to the wastepaper basket. — Wayfarer

A meta narrative is a claim to universal truth. Personally constructed narratives draw from our own history with others. They are pragmatic and oriented toward predictive sense-making in changeable conditions. Whatever has been made of the world in the past , to the extent that we are aware of it , can be made use of if it proves to be relevant and predictive for our circumstances. Past cultural history( sciences. philosophy , art) is made use of in a transformed way.

↪Joshs I agree. It seems to me that idealism or not - people's embedded values tend to persist above and beyond their ontological assumptions. — Tom Storm

I guess what I meant was that embedded values and ontological assumptions are two ways of talking about the same thing. Most of the world’s ethical dilemmas and history of violence results not from a disconnect between embedded values and ontological assumptions, but from their connectedness. It is not hypocrites but sincere zealots we need fear most.

All this might be illusory, or it might be connected to unknowable transcendence - but I don't think it makes any functional difference as I go about my business — Tom Storm

Psychologist George Kelly said what matters is not whether the universe exists, but what we can make of it. Of course, how successful we are at this endeavor will have a lot to do with our criteria of successful
understanding. For instance, if we perceive another as disappointing us, whether we see them
as making an understandable mistake in judgement, or we believe there are always socially mitigating circumstances shaping them, or whether we think they are simply autonomously free subjects doing evil , will
depend on the kinds of embedded assumptions
that you dont believe make any functional difference in you daily life. People kill, torture, punish and condemn
others based on such embedded assumptions that they don’t think matter to their daily choices.

You frequently seem to have this dichotomy on how you express these ideas which makes them unconvincing. You'll talk a lot about unexamined preconceptions, culturally embedded narratives, the ephemeral nature of what is real... (all ideas I'm very sympathetic to). Until....

Until it comes to your personal favorites. Then the rhetoric suddenly changes. Now it's all 'actual', 'must', 'is', 'are'... You begin by saying that ideas are shackled by unexamined presuppositions, culturally embedded narratives, etc, then proceed to announce replacement concepts as if they were the unshackled 'Truths' of the way things are. — Isaac

If you were arguing that all of us should abandon realism and avoid the tendency to use terms that suggest we believe there is an unshackled truth beyond our models I’m all for that. By all means challenge me whenever I let such vocabulary slip in. But if I understand you correctly,
you believe such realist terms SHOULD be part of our scientific and philosophical claims , and furthermore , we can’t help but have them be implicit in our thinking because , as the cliche goes , insisting there is no objective truth out outside of local conventions is itself a claim to universality. But as Rouse argues “Nothing matters from the imag­ined standpoint of the universe (which is itself only conceivable from a specific location within it), but we do not and cannot actually occupy such a standpoint.”

The point isn’t that there is no objective
truth , or no independently existing world outside cultural assumptions, but that 1) anything we say about such a cultural-independent realm is contingent on and relative to our practices, which are always changing.

2)Any claim of an asymptotic movement of scientific knowledge toward representation of something independent of that movement itself is a claim within a practice that is itself changing , and changing in qualitative ways that do allow of linear , cumulative or even Popperian progression. Is this a claim to universality? No, it is an invitation to look very closely at what you and I are doing right now in this conversation , or what you do day to day at your job. It is an invitation to see for yourself if what appears to be an internally generated representational model of an outside doesn’t qualtiatively alter the sense of that outside in the act of representing it. If one does not see this then one has no reason to abandon representational reason.

All I can tell you is that once one sees qualitative change within quantitative continuity , difference in kind within difference in degree , in everything that representational realism counts on as subject only to change in degree , one cannot unsee it. We postmodernists don’t want to make truth claims , we only want to share with others the incessantly dynamic qualitative movement we cannot help seeing in every context that realists render as qualitatively frozen.

All ideas are culturally embedded narratives. All of them. That includes Heidegger, that includes Rouse, that includes Zahavi, that includes the idea that all ideas are culturally embedded narratives... All of them — Isaac

Yes, but it seems that to you this is a bug, a contextual imposition of cultural bias and distortion on an autonomous scientific enter­prise from the “outside”. To me it is a feature. It is the place where truth happens , rather than truth residing in the attempt to transcend such narratives in the interest of objectivity.

I get it that we don't always see what's there, In fact most of what is in the visual, auditory, olfactory and somato-sensory fields is generally not noticed; and I know this simply by self-reflection; I don't need scientific experiments to tell me that.

But that's not what I'm talking about anyway; I'm saying that what we are immediately aware of, we are immediately aware of; that's just what we experience, and I'm not attempting to draw any further conclusions from that. — Janus

Notice that when psychologists play ‘gotcha!’ and talk about how our naive perception is fooled by illusions and tricks, that the ‘real’ truth of what we experience is hidden from us , they are referring to a level of analysis that first needs to be constructed by us as a fresh perspective. In other words, in order for some some phenomenon to be declared ‘hidden’, the conceptual framework within which its hiddenness is intelligible must first be invented as a fresh form of conceptualization. Could one not then follow the phenomenologists and say that both the ‘naive’ and the hiddenness-savvy frameworks are different varieties of direct perception, the second being an elaboration and transformation of the former?

... then it seems likely to me that when...

Postmodern sciences, along with postmodern philosophies, abandon realism
— Joshs

...they merely replace it with another culturally constructed presupposition.

To assume otherwise requires us to believe that modern philosophy has miraculously broken free of ten thousand year old shackles. — Isaac

What I appreciate most about Rouse’s approach is that rather than treating philosophical or scientific conceptual norms as grounding starting points for understanding the nature of scientific thought, he begins from the actual contextual discursive engagements from which such grand ideas are generated. It is through such actual temporal practices that we determine what is at stake and what is at issue in such practices. Agreement or disagreement on what is true or false within a given set of shared activities must rest upon a prior agreement concerning larger goals and what matters for that activity. Even within agreed upon conventions, the shared truths will never be total, but partially ambiguous and thus contestable. Forms of realism tend to give short shrift to these features of scientific conceptualizations as a form of niche building , by assuming certain norms of naturalism as absolutely determinative rather than as included within the continual contextual redetermination of what is at stake in scientific inquiry.

As Rouse says

“Sellars shares with the disunifiers (Nancy Cartwright, Ian Hacking) a conception of scientific understanding as representing the world, whether or not these various representations can be unified into a single, idealized, systematic “image.” Scientific understanding is taken to be embodied in scientific knowledge. Whether that knowledge primarily takes propositional form or is substantially realized through mathematical, material, visual, or com putational models, scientific understanding is mediated in whole or part by a representational simulacrum of the world it seeks to understand.”

“Sellars himself provides a key formulation for my naturalistic alternative to representationalist conceptions of scientific understanding. In a justly famous passage from Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind, he argued that “in characterizing an episode or a state as that of knowing, we are not giving an empirical description of that episode or state; we are placing it in the logical space of reasons, of justifying and being able to justify what one says” (Sellars 1997, 76). Representationalist conceptions identify scientific understanding with some position or set of positions within the space of reasons—that is, as a body of knowledge. I instead locate scientific understanding in the ongoing reconfiguration of the entire space. The sciences continually revise the terms and inferential relations through which we understand the world, which aspects of the world are salient and significant within that understanding, and how those aspects of the world matter to our overall understanding. Scientific research also enables the expansion of the space of reasons by articulating aspects of the world conceptually.”

It seems odd to say that scientists as a group are blinkered by some presupposition (that is nonetheless clear enough for Mr Zahavi to see without trouble), and yet assume that the mere mention of the problem is sufficient for phenomenologists to shed presuppositions like unwanted clothing in a heatwave.

What is it about the mind of a scientist that shackles them in chains so unbreakable, yet as gossamer in the hands of the philosopher? — Isaac

I agree with Husserl’s and Heidegger’s critiques of realist assumptions undergirding much scientific thinking. But I don’t find it necessary , as they do, to distinguish in categorical fashion between what scientists supposedly do and what philosophers do. Realism is a metaphysical presupposition common to an era of philosophy and science. Postmodern sciences, along with postmodern philosophies, abandon realism ( or at least most forms of it). Science , like philosophy , is a culturally constructed niche. Truth gets its authority and coherence only within specific cultural practices.

As Joseph Rouse argues in Articulating the World:

“Scientific understanding specifically and con­ceptually articulated understanding more generally are not perennial pos­sibilities always available in human history or to rational or intelligent beings of different biological species or planetary ecologies. Sciences are historically specific practices that emerged within human history, with significance and justificatory standards that continue to change. This recognition ought to broaden the scope of philosophical reflection upon the sciences.

The specter of epistemic or conceptual relativism has often haunted any philosophical acknowledgment of the historical specificity and con­tingency of scientific understanding. Such concerns dissipate with the
recognition that what is historically specific is the truth-­or-­falsity and the significance of scientific claims rather their truth. The sciences mat­ter, and make authoritative claims upon us, because of rather than de­spite their historical and cultural specificity, and truth is a concept that expresses that authority. Sciences are powerful but historically specific extensions of the conceptually articulated way of life that is our bio­logical heritage. They do not instantiate an ideal possibility perennially
available with sufficient intellect and social support. They likewise can­not transcend our historical contingency in order to take on a “god’s-­eye view” of ourselves and the world. Science is indeed a precarious and risky possibility that only emerged in specific circumstances, and could disappear.”

My personal beef? Since we're griping. I think philosopher types think they're reporting from introspection, but are actually repeating stories they've learnt from culture, books etc and merely satisfying themselves post hoc that this, in fact, describes how they think. — Isaac

You may have phenomenology in mind here. One might argue that both the theories of scientists and philosophers are influenced by the cultural stories that they grow up surrounded by. And yet phenomenology may have a certain advantage here with respect to those sciences holding onto indirect realism, as Dan Zahavi argues:

“Husserl often contrasts philosophy proper with the work done by the positive sciences. The latter are so absorbed in their investigation of the natural (or social/cultural) world that they do not pause to reflect upon their own presuppositions and conditions of possibility. They all operate on the basis of a natural (and necessary) naivety, namely the tacit belief in the existence of a mind-independent reality. This realist assumption is so fundamental and deeply rooted that it is not only accepted by the positive sciences, it also permeates our daily pre-theoretical life, for which reason Husserl calls it the ‘natural attitude'. Regardless of how natural this attitude might be, if philosophy is supposed to amount to a radical form of critical elucidation, it cannot simply take our natural realist assumptions for granted, but must instead engage in a reflective move that allows it to explore and assess the epistemic and metaphysical presuppositions of the latter.”

Here’s an interesting analysis of the issue from an enactivist perspective:

Active inference, enactivism and the hermeneutics of social cognition: Shaun Gallagher and Micah Allen

Abstract:

We distinguish between three philosophical views on the neuroscience of predictive models: predictive coding (associated with internal Bayesian models and prediction error minimization), predictive processing (associated with radical connectionism and ‘simple’ embodiment)
and predictive engagement (associated with enactivist approaches to cognition). We examine the concept of active inference under each model and then ask how this concept informs discussions of social cognition. In this context we consider Frith and Friston’s proposal for a
neural hermeneutics, and we explore the alternative model of enactivist hermeneutics.

Snippet:

Conceiving of the differences or continuities among the positions of PC, PP, and PE depends on how one views the boundaries of the Markov blanket, not just where the boundaries are drawn, but the nature of the boundaries—whether they keep the world ‘off limits’, as Clark suggests, or enable coupling. For PC and PP, active inference is part of a process that produces sensory experiences that confirm or test my expectations; e.g., active ballistic saccades do not merely passively orient to features but actively sample the bits of the world that fit my expectations or resolve uncertainty (Friston et al 2012)—‘sampling the world in ways designed to test our hypotheses and to yield better information for the control of action itself’ (Clark 2016, p. 7; see Hohwy 2013, p. 79). On the enactivist view, however, the dynamical
adjustment/attunement process that encompasses the whole of the system is not a mere testing or sampling that serves better neural prediction; active inference is more action than inference; it’s a doing, an enactive adjustment, a worldly engagement—with anticipatory and
corrective aspects already included.
Enactivists suggest that the brain is not located at the center, conducting tests along the radiuses; it’s on the circumference, one station amongst other stations involved in the loop that also navigates through the body and environment and forms the whole. Neural
accommodation occurs via constant reciprocal interaction between the brain and body, and notions of adjustment and attunement can be cashed out in terms of physical dynamical processes that involve brain and body, including autonomic and peripheral nervous systems. We can see how this enactivist interpretation can work by exploring a more basic conception operating in these predictive models, namely, the free energy principle (FEP).

https://www.researchgate.net/journal/Synthese-1573-0964/publication/311166903_Active_inference_enactivism_and_the_hermeneutics_of_social_cognition/links/5f75e89e92851c14bca49c36/Active-inference-enactivism-and-the-hermeneutics-of-social-cognition.pdf

'studying the mind' is different to studying (say) the motions of the planets or of solid bodies or the tides or movements of animals, for the obvious reason that in this case, we are what we seek to know. We can't stand aside from our own mind and treat it as an object of instrospection (as Wundt tried to do). It requires a very different stance or attitude - something which is pioneered in some of those very enactive/embodied cognition approaches you frequently bring up. It is the domain of 'mindfulness-awareness — Wayfarer

I should mention that mindfulness awareness is not quite what Hussel or Merleau-Ponty had in mind. For them there is no purely reflexive non-intentional awareness. All awareness is self-transformation, it is about something other than itself even when reflecting back on ‘itself’.

So we are already studying the mind when we study the motions of the planets or the tides. We are merely doing so in the mode of the naive naturalistic attitude. We can also study these phenomena from within the transcendental attitude, by showing how such material phenomena emerge as higher constitutive performances of intentionality. Notice that this is the opposite of what Pinter is doing. He is attempting to explain mental features such as gestalt perception as evolutionarily formed products of simple mechanisms of material reality.
But since he can’t find a way to reconcile the causal mechanisms of material reality as he formulates it with the gestalt patterning of animals , he settles for a dualism and hopes for some substance to be found within physics at some point in the future that will bridge the gap between mind and matter. There is no such problem for phenomenology, since they deconstruct Pinter’s causal metaphysics and reveal it to be derivative from intentional processes that precede both mind and matter.

What’s missing here is a recognition that the we don't just model the world, we continuously rebuild it.
— Joshs

Pinter doesn't miss that - he comments extensively on the implications of the 'neural binding problem'. The whole point of his book is that we (and all creatures) are constantly engaged in that process. That is how cognition works, but we mistakenly identify what is going on in our own minds with what is 'out there — Wayfarer

I think you both miss that. By rebuilding I don’t mean adding an emergent mental reality onto a more primary material one that it cannot alter but is based on, I mean altering the rules of the ‘material’ reality. Pinter posits two distinct realities , the mental and the material, each with their own rules, and neither realm can change the rules of the other. Even if physics is reformed as he suggest it may be , such that it can account directly for gestalt perception , we would still be dealing with a set of fixed rules, only now places within a single reality rahther than dual realities. Phenomenology dumps Pinter’s rule-based material and mental realities in favor of a united reality that is relationally relative through and through. This is what I mean by rebuilding the building.
Pinter leaves the foundation intact , they reinvent it over and over.

That's the point that Pinter makes about 'figments' - that qualia, and indeed not only qualia, but the 'subjective unity of perception', cannot be detected as objectively existent. Yet, they're real, and to deny it, leads to Dennett's absurd 'eliminativism'. — Wayfarer

Pinter is closer to Dennett than you might think, and although I don’t think Dennett understands phenomenology, Pinter understands it even less. Dennett offered a spot-on critique of Strawson’s argument for qualia and panpsychism, which could apply as well to Pinter’s embrace of qualia. I dont agree with Dennett’s eliminativism , but I find Pinter’s panpsychist dualism and qualia notion to be in some respects even more ‘eliminativist’, by which I mean it misses the intricate relational textures that Dennett recognizes in living systems( Pinter’s sympathy for
Penrose’s quantum solution to the hard problem is a giveaway here).

Recent biological models accommodate a relentlessly interactively self-transforming impetus within ecosystems, within organisms, within cells and within dna environments.
— Joshs

Indeed, as I mentioned, Pinter provides a voluminous biography which references many of these texts. He's very much part of those developments, not at all an antagonist of it. — Wayfarer

His reading of these texts is skewed in favor of free energy-based predictive processing approaches , which many ( including Andy Clark) lump together with phenomenologically informed enactivism. But like the pp approaches, it relies on a split between internal representation and outer world , whereas enactivism is non-representational. Pinter, like pp, say we dont see reality directly, but the phenomenologists say we do see reality directly ( to the things themselves!), within various modes and attitudes of comportment (objective naturalism, personalism, etc).
Are you familiar with enactivist critiques of pp, and of Clark’s attempts to package pp in enactivist clothing? This will give you a sense of my beef with Pinter.

My emotions are immediate to me, what you call interpreting is encoding them symbolically into language. This encoding is a necessary step to use the emotion in symbolic thought. If I can't encode then I can't think about them. In the same way, without my conscious intervention my body encodes my emotions into the symbology of expression and body language.

Whereas you immediately perceive only symbols of my inner state: my face, body, and words.

You see the symbols of my emotions, I encode my emotions into symbols. — hypericin

You’re using a cognitive science vocabulary that differs somewhat from the psychological approaches to affectivity that I identify with. Your model tends to rely on a computer metaphor: We input a stimulus, encode it symbolically and process and store it. Emotions are meanings that attach to and color cognitions.
The enactive approaches I follow see affectivity as that aspect of sense-making that deals with the relative fit between events and my expectations of them. They are forms of situational assessment. All of my experiences have this affective aspect to them, since all perception is evaluative. This is the basis of language as well. Language isnt merely the encoding of meanings by linking them to arbitrary symbols. Language doesn’t passively refer, it actively construes. Feeling and perception is already proto-language in that it formulates fresh meaning.

When we ‘encode’ emotions , we articulate them expressively. The expression doesn’t just convey something already formed , it also changes what it invokes by giving it expression. What I am doing when I see your affective expression isnt simply reading a code. I am inventing a construction that comes neither from me nor from your behavior , but from a mesh between the two. This mesh is what I immediately construe , just as your feelings and heir elaboration are what you immediately construct from your situation.

The fact that it seems immediate does not negate that it is an interpretive act. This interpretive facility must exist for it's failure as Autism to also exist. — hypericin

Yes , it is both immediate and interpretive, as is all perception. What I directly perceive of your feelings and intentions is a version of them, just as you who are experiencing them are also interpreting them
for yourself , and as a result you may also not recognize or understand them, and as they change you will need to reinterpret them. If I experienced your states exactly as you do we would be the same person. My point was that this interpretive act is not the consulting of an inner script.

I don't think Pinter juxtaposes a real, physical world, with a world of appearances. It's not as if the real thing is hiding behind the sensory depiction of it. The first words in the book are:

Imagine that all life has vanished from the universe, but everything else is undisturbed. Matter is scattered about in space in the same way as it is now, there is sunlight, there are stars, planets and galaxies—but all of it is unseen. There is no human or animal eye to cast a glance at objects, hence nothing is discerned, recognized or even noticed. Objects in the unobserved universe have no shape, color or individual appearance, because shape and appearance are created by minds. Nor do they have features, because features correspond to categories of animal sensation.
— Pinter, Charles. Mind and the Cosmic Order p1

He doesn't go on to say much about the world as it is in the absence of any observer, because (I think) in his view, there's nothing to be said about it. — Wayfarer

So the question is, from Pinter’s vantage what is left of reality when we remove color, shape, features and individual appearance? Is a wavelength of light devoid of these properties? I think Pinter believes it is. For instance, he argues “Physical motion is real but altogether different from the moving window we perceive.” How would he know? Different by what standards? I think I have the answer. You were right. Pinter does not posit a real physical world of shapes or colors or gestalt features. The real objective world he posits is based on the simple rules of the Game of Life. He says observer-independent reality is simple , mechanical. not gestalt-based but rule-bound:

“A law involving just two—or a small number—of separate objects is said to be simple. And when a simple law acts on every pair of objects in a swarm, resulting in a complex global pattern of the whole throng, the overall pattern is caused by what is called an addition of simples.”

“Physics would not exist if it were not possible to analyze phenomena of the world by decomposing them in this manner into elementary interactions. We are able to do this because nature itself is constituted that way. It appears that all of the physical world is an addition of
simples.”

“Simple rules, acting over and over on each of a large number of objects, are able to give rise to astonishingly complex collective behavior. In fact, they often generate repetitive patterns having great regularity and symmetry.” “Animal perception isn’t designed to see elementary physical relationships between subatomic particles, and bring these low-level events to awareness.”
“The perplexing intricacy that we see in the world is actually the cumulative result of simple laws that have been operating for billions of years, creating patterns upon patterns.” “The midlevel universe has energy and mass, but does not have “features”” It also has ‘information’.

In mentioning mass, energy and information, I dont believe he is speaking here of observer-dependent features of the natural world but of that world as it is intrinsically. One might ask what an observer-independent rule could possibly mean. How is a rule , mass , energy or information not a gestalt? Pinter wants to claim that the gestalts humans impose on the world in order to create uniform objects, shapes, features and pattens adds a lawfulness not present in the actual material world. Put differently. he takes the Humean approach that gestalts are the result of evolutionary guided causal processes. But he wants to hold on to the idea of a primordial , or ‘simple’ lawfulness in material reality.

I think it is this semantic realism which cause hi
to see a rift between subjective sensation and feeling on the one hand, and objectivity on the other.

“Claims about mental phenomena depend ineliminably on the meanings of terms such as feelings and sensations, and cannot be treated as the objects of physics are treated. One can study the material universe while pretending there is no mind, but one cannot study mind while pretending there is no mind…phenomena which don’t allow themselves to be studied objectively are not material phenomena. This suggests that we may define material phenomena to be exactly those phenomena that are amenable to be studied objectively, as formal systems. Phenomena which are not amenable to being treated objectively are not material. They are phenomena of a different kind, located in a different order of reality.”

Question : If the world is ‘material’ because of the way it responds to our interactions with it, why can’t we study our mind the same way, by reflecting on it ? Isn’t this what phenomenological analysis does? And what is the difference between phenomena such that only some are amenable to objective study while others are not? What makes physics a formal system and science of mind a non-formal system?

As Pinter knows, the reason one can study the material universe while pretending there is no mind is the same reason scientists in the past have studied the mind while pretending there is no mind. Pinter recognizes that in the past accepted notions of scientific objectivity required that we ignore individual differences in the sense of meaning of material concepts. But this is not true for all sciences. Recent biological models accommodate a relentlessly interactively self-transforming impetus within ecosystems, within organisms, within cells and within dna environments. Neurophenomenologists draw from these approaches to understand consciousness and language in naturalistic terms that don’t require ignoring subjective perspective in favor of a formalistic objectivism. The problem isnt that the mind operates differently than other aspects of the world, it is that we have for too long assumed, as Pinter does, that “subjective categories such as sensations and impressions are nothing but
the way they feel to us”. This is precisely the view that phenomenology and enactivism are challenging by showing how feeling arises out of social ecosystems rather than from purely ‘private’ feeling( (Wittgenstein also
showed the primarily expressive and discursive function of feeling. By the same token, if we jettison Pinter’s realist assumption to conceding the simple causal lawfulness of material reality we need no longer see feeling -based subjectivity and what would be called objective nature as belonging to separate realities


His is a one-way interaction. We probe the world and it responds in certain ways based on the nature of our actions and perceptual dispositions. On the basis of these constraints and affordances we build gestalt models of the world , imbuing it with all sorts of features different from its ‘own inherent ‘simple’ lawful objective reality.

“It is nature’s prohibitions that guide our hand as we segment our world and form a model of it. Although there may be alternative ways of segmenting reality
—hence different, non-similar world models may be constructed—few are actually possible: The prohibitions whittle down the possibilities to a very few, or perhaps to just one.”

This sounds like Popper; we asymptotically approximate a final picture of the world.

What’s missing here is a recognition that the we dont just model the world, we continuously rebuild it , and this means that the constraints and affordances that we receive from the world as feedback from our engagements with it change along with our constructions in a reciprocal process. The material world Pinter sees as having certain set simple properties responds to our constructive efforts by changing those properties.

Pinter uses the image of a hollow bust of Caesar. We are inside that bust and want to know the features of the outside of the bust so we infer the outside from our explorations of the inside. I suggest a better image is the at we have created a giant bust of Caesar as a shelter that we live inside of. We have reasons to try and improve the structure in various ways in order to make it more weatherproof as well as aesthetically pleasing. The very process of constructing these improvements through invention of new tools , new means of labor organization and the feedback from the structure itself redefines what is at issue for us in our empirical endeavor. This reciprocal shaping and reshaping taking place between us and the objects of our investigations not only is a better depiction of science than ‘modeling’, it can apply equally well to a pre-living world.

Pinter senses that his minimalist version of causal realism doesn’t quite do justice to the powers of what he calls gestalt perception, but he leaves us with the confusing picture of subjectivity as a wonder that emerges mysteriously out of a mechanistic ground.

“An easy answer might be that the material world of physics is the foundation which is the platform for all reality:
Complex objects are constructed out of the material “stuff” that exists in physical reality. In this perspective, matter and energy provide the foundation: Everything composite, manifold or structured is fashioned out of matter and energy. This is the commonsense solution. It’s not wrong, but it’s simplistic. Like the philosophy of materialism, it disregards Gestalts, which provide a
whole new opening to reality.”

I certainly don’t want to posit physics as ‘normatively determinative ’, and I don’t think Pinter does that, either. — Wayfarer

Let me use Pinter’s own words to make the case that his is a classic neo-Kantian appearance-reality dualism.

To begin with, one of his chapter headings is ‘Do We See the World Realistically?’Does he mean by this that it makes no sense to distinguish between human or animal perceptions of the world, and the world as it supposedly is in some factual naturalistic sense? Or does he mean that there is a real world with intrinsic properties which sensate creatures do not represent accurately? It sounds like the latter to me:

“What an animal experiences seeing may be unlike a high-fidelity reproduction of reality, with all its complexity and inscrutability…. so long as all the experiences a creature has with objects are consistent with one another— with no discrepancies of any kind—the creature is far better off interacting in mind with usefully simplified and schematized replicas.”

“It is no different when you set out to solve a technical problem involving a real-world situation: You don’t want a photograph of the objective situation, but a diagram showing just the necessary information.”

Studies have show that “faithful representation is driven to extinction by non-veridical strategies based on utility rather than objective reality.”

“So long as its segmentation is self-consistent, the animal cannot ever become aware of a difference between its world-model and reality.”

So our accounts are a replica , a non-faithful representation of the ‘physical facts’ of an ‘objective situation’.

“Though our segmentation of reality is partly bound to physical facts, much of it is arbitrary.”

Pinter uses as an example of this arbitrary association between external reality and our conceptions of it the difference between color and wavelengths of light. The former are subjective representations and the latter are the physical facts.

“There is no logical connection between perceived color and the wavelength of light: It is an arbitrary association invented by nature.”

Neo-Kantianism courts skepticism because our representational filters prevent us from seeing the world as it is.

A Gestalt picture does not merely bind separate objects together, but creates an entirely new complex entity which did not exist before. It creates a new world of hierarchically structured new objects—a world which could not exist without Gestalt perception.

Our biologically-designed model of reality is thus superposed on the physical stuff of the world and structures it. It is with this reality that we interact.

It is useful to compare Pinter’s model of gestalt with that of Merleau-Ponty. For Pinter , a gestalt “is a complex of images that we may call the concept of dog. Visually, it includes a fluid composite image of what the most commonly seen dogs look like, viewed in various positions and from different angles. It includes general notions of the temperament and character of dogs, and the knowledge that dogs may be both loving and, in some circumstances, dangerous.”

From MP’s vantage , this definition of gestalt remains embedded in objective naturalism, which explains gestalts a s the result of a causal process of concept formation. For MP, as for the later Wittgenstein, a gestalt is never a move from the particular to the general. It neither involves composition nor decomposition.
A perceived object has its sense in relation to a background gestalt field as its irreducible basis. A gestalt is both subjective and intersubjective, producing perceptual and social fields of action.

Pinter’s contention that gestalts are ‘superimposed on the physical stuff of the world’ is problematic, and suggests that he, like Quine, take the results of physics to be normatively determinative. Only this orientation, I believe, can justify belief in the 'unreasonable effectiveness' of mathematics. We have to begin with a reified notion of the object which transcends the relativity of Pinter’s subjective gestalts in order to see mathematical logic as unreasonably effective. If you’re looking for a transcendental basis for scientific truth you’re better off with Putnam’s valuative realism than with an idealization of the objectivity of natural objects.

Patterns emerge and are reinforced or altered in actual
contexts of interaction, rather than in rules or properties that supposedly exist before or outside of actual contexts
— Joshs

So why would those patterns emerge variable? What causes the variance? — Isaac

Variance cause variance. As Deleuze said, a change is a difference that makes a difference. Laws and patterned regularities are idealizations of continuous
qualitative change.

The atoms do collude together to form a teacup. That's why we can all see them as a teacup. That's why one of the available gestalts is that of a teacup. Because the atoms do indeed form the shape of a teacup. They also form the shape of dozens of other things which we ignore, choosing, instead, to focus on the teacup option. But it's wrong to say they're not in the form of a teacup just because they're also in the form of many other options. — Isaac

It’s not just a matter of shapes that atoms
form , but of the relationship between accounts and the varying senses of concepts like shape, size, space. Of these potentially infinite variety of accounts, are you giving priority to a certain empirical account from physics? Is this a ‘bedrock’ account, as Quine claimed, one which grounds all the others in an irreducibly real beginning?

I think Wayfarer might agree that the way to bedrock is to begin by asking what all possible accounts of any aspect of the world have in common, that is , what is the condition of possibility of empirical account-building?
I think an answer compatible with naturalism is possible, but it requires a naturalism utilizing recent models from biology, centering on niche construction. As the thinking goes ( I draw from Joseph Rouse here), linguistic conceptual accounts of the world are elaborations of practical perceptual interactions that are continuous with the role of niche building in non-linguistic animals under selective evolutionary pressure. I don’t think such models warrant taking an account from physics as normatively determinative. That’s a way of saying that physics is just beginning to take into account the temporal notions that Darwinism has contributed.

Or how humans tend to anthropomorphize the world around us? How we find cartoon characters, puppets and animals to have beliefs and desires like us? Or the belief that natures if full of spirts and gods? — Marchesk

I’m not at all denying that humans understand the world by reference to a system of constructs , channels
of meaning by which we interpret, organize and anticipate events. What I am arguing against is the idea any element of this system is unchanged by moment to moment events. The whole system is in motion at all times like an interwoven tapestry.

Do you damn that they can experience themselves
performing this action, or that this is something they do whether they are aware of it or not?
— Joshs

No, I don't damn. It would be rather extreme. I'm more inclined to bless. But I don't think either is particularly called for. — Cuthbert

Oh shit.. I meant ‘deny’

How does this account for autism, or "mind-blindness"? Or how humans tend to anthropomorphize the world around us? How we find cartoon characters, puppets and animals to have beliefs and desires like us? Or the belief that natures if full of spirts and gods? — Marchesk

A lot of work has been done on autism within the enactivist community.

Take a look at these articles:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3607806/

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236792668_Understanding_Interpersonal_Problems_in_Autism_Interaction_Theory_as_An_Alternative_to_Theory_of_Mind

ABSTRACT: I argue that theory theory approaches to autism offer a wholly inadequate explanation of au- tistic symptoms because they offer a wholly inade- quate account of the non-autistic understanding of others. As an alternative I outline interaction theory, which incorporates evidence from both developmen- tal and phenomenological studies to show that hu- mans are endowed with important capacities for in- tersubjective understanding from birth or early infancy. As part of a neurophenomenological analysis of au- tism, interaction theory offers an account of interper- sonal problems that is fully consistent with the variety of social and nonsocial symptoms found in autism.