76
5 The Mind-Made Firmament
does a foot begin, or a nose or an ear? Such things are separate objects for us,
though not separately bounded.
The underlying rationale for justifying direct realism is the fact that the
universe came into being long before minds did, hence there exists a mindindependent world which is prior to and radically separate from human thought
or reason. For realism, the purpose of minds is to understand the world as it
actually is, and come into harmony with it. The mind should therefore be the
Mirror of Nature. Ideally, it should reflect nature as nature is.
As a result—according to direct realism—we are able to think and talk about
things truly, as they exist independently of our minds. We are able to do this by
virtue of a natural association between the world and the way it is represented
in the mind. This idea is usually combined with another, equally venerable
notion rooted in the tradition of realism: It is the idea that the words of our
language correspond to real things of the world. So when we communicate,
our sentences refer to actual objects and events “out there”.
This suggestion is not unreasonable, and in fact it’s the first idea that comes
to mind if you’re asked to explain what language is. For example, your sentence
“the dog is under my bed” makes reference to the objects dog and bed, and the
position under. However, when you give the matter a little more thought, you
realize that your sentence is meant to evoke a certain mental picture in your
listener, and the components of that picture are the listener’s mental images
of dog, bed and under. So your words actually correspond to mental images
which you and your listener have in common. Indeed, the words don’t act
singly, but together as a sentence they evoke a situation in mind.
The theory which claims that words are directly mapped to worldly objects
is called the correspondence theory of language. Though perfectly reasonable, it
fails because language does not work that way. Such a correspondence is useful
if you’re learning a foreign language, and your teacher points to a cup and says
une tasse. But children don’t learn language that way—they pick up the sense
of whole idioms and sentences as units of meaning. Indeed, as the philosopher
W.V. Quine says, a language is what it is as a whole, because it embodies an
entire culture and a way of life. 6
Despite recent findings on the relation between language and mind, the
philosopher on the street continues to stand by the correspondence theory. It
is natural for people to hold such a theory, because it is another example of
necessary deception. When communicating in speech, it is essential to assume
that we’re referring to real objects and events, and not to a staged production in
the theatre of the mind. We could not function verbally if there remained any
doubt at all that what we take to be true statements are about things that are
really there. When you talk, surely you assume you’re referring to real things.
5 The Mind-Made Firmament
does a foot begin, or a nose or an ear? Such things are separate objects for us,
though not separately bounded.
The underlying rationale for justifying direct realism is the fact that the
universe came into being long before minds did, hence there exists a mindindependent world which is prior to and radically separate from human thought
or reason. For realism, the purpose of minds is to understand the world as it
actually is, and come into harmony with it. The mind should therefore be the
Mirror of Nature. Ideally, it should reflect nature as nature is.
As a result—according to direct realism—we are able to think and talk about
things truly, as they exist independently of our minds. We are able to do this by
virtue of a natural association between the world and the way it is represented
in the mind. This idea is usually combined with another, equally venerable
notion rooted in the tradition of realism: It is the idea that the words of our
language correspond to real things of the world. So when we communicate,
our sentences refer to actual objects and events “out there”.
This suggestion is not unreasonable, and in fact it’s the first idea that comes
to mind if you’re asked to explain what language is. For example, your sentence
“the dog is under my bed” makes reference to the objects dog and bed, and the
position under. However, when you give the matter a little more thought, you
realize that your sentence is meant to evoke a certain mental picture in your
listener, and the components of that picture are the listener’s mental images
of dog, bed and under. So your words actually correspond to mental images
which you and your listener have in common. Indeed, the words don’t act
singly, but together as a sentence they evoke a situation in mind.
The theory which claims that words are directly mapped to worldly objects
is called the correspondence theory of language. Though perfectly reasonable, it
fails because language does not work that way. Such a correspondence is useful
if you’re learning a foreign language, and your teacher points to a cup and says
une tasse. But children don’t learn language that way—they pick up the sense
of whole idioms and sentences as units of meaning. Indeed, as the philosopher
W.V. Quine says, a language is what it is as a whole, because it embodies an
entire culture and a way of life. 6
Despite recent findings on the relation between language and mind, the
philosopher on the street continues to stand by the correspondence theory. It
is natural for people to hold such a theory, because it is another example of
necessary deception. When communicating in speech, it is essential to assume
that we’re referring to real objects and events, and not to a staged production in
the theatre of the mind. We could not function verbally if there remained any
doubt at all that what we take to be true statements are about things that are
really there. When you talk, surely you assume you’re referring to real things.