Realism
77
The most important objection to the correspondence theory of language is
that it implies there’s a mysterious mapping (projection) from thoughts in a
mind to objects and events in the world. On a superficial level, this belief seems
to be correct: Nouns of our language refer to material objects, verbs to actions
we carry out, and so on. But how is such a mapping set up? For instance, we
are born with a segmentation of reality: Does the segmentation come with a
one-to-one correspondence between thoughts and objects in the world?
Superficially, that too might appear to be the case—but in reality, a segmentation gives us a correspondence between thoughts and our mental representations of objects. Thus, we don’t get a mapping between thoughts and worldly
things, but a mapping between thoughts and thoughts. Indeed, a segmentation
has no effect on the material world: It is merely a classification of our representations of things. Once you realize that, you understand why the mapping is
not from ideas (or words) to external things, but is purely internal to the mind.
This is far more plausible than to claim the existence of a mystical connection
between words and objects of the external world. To Hilary Putnam, belief in
such a connection is a vestige of magical thinking.
By the semantics of language we mean the things that words and sentences
refer to. Once we understand that semantics is not so much a relation between
words and things, as a relation between words and internal representations of
things, we are forced to change some of our commonsense ideas. We are then
less committed to direct realism, and open to a more flexible kind of realism
which accepts the fact that there is more of a gap between the world and the
mind than common sense seems to admit. We know the world through our
senses, and in principle there’s no reason to assume our senses work as a mirror
of nature, able to reconstruct nature exactly as it is. 7
In fact, the very idea that nature is a certain way—that things in nature
have an appearance or a way they are independently of being perceived—is
incoherent. Such an idea is the very essence of direct realism: The core thinking
in direct realism is not merely that there exists an objective world independent
of the mind, but that there exists one way of representing it correctly, without
distortions. In other words, according to realism, objects in the external world
have real features and real properties, and consequently can be described fully
and correctly if only you use the right kind of language and concepts. It is this
belief that most succinctly characterizes direct realism.
Abandoning direct realism is traumatic: It is a little like leaving the safety
of the womb. The biologist and philosopher Francisco Varela refers to this
sense of loss as the Cartesian Anxiety: We set out in life with the belief that
we inhabit a real world and can get to know it as it is. Then we find out that
all we truly know are our own representations of the world. Even worse, we
77
The most important objection to the correspondence theory of language is
that it implies there’s a mysterious mapping (projection) from thoughts in a
mind to objects and events in the world. On a superficial level, this belief seems
to be correct: Nouns of our language refer to material objects, verbs to actions
we carry out, and so on. But how is such a mapping set up? For instance, we
are born with a segmentation of reality: Does the segmentation come with a
one-to-one correspondence between thoughts and objects in the world?
Superficially, that too might appear to be the case—but in reality, a segmentation gives us a correspondence between thoughts and our mental representations of objects. Thus, we don’t get a mapping between thoughts and worldly
things, but a mapping between thoughts and thoughts. Indeed, a segmentation
has no effect on the material world: It is merely a classification of our representations of things. Once you realize that, you understand why the mapping is
not from ideas (or words) to external things, but is purely internal to the mind.
This is far more plausible than to claim the existence of a mystical connection
between words and objects of the external world. To Hilary Putnam, belief in
such a connection is a vestige of magical thinking.
By the semantics of language we mean the things that words and sentences
refer to. Once we understand that semantics is not so much a relation between
words and things, as a relation between words and internal representations of
things, we are forced to change some of our commonsense ideas. We are then
less committed to direct realism, and open to a more flexible kind of realism
which accepts the fact that there is more of a gap between the world and the
mind than common sense seems to admit. We know the world through our
senses, and in principle there’s no reason to assume our senses work as a mirror
of nature, able to reconstruct nature exactly as it is. 7
In fact, the very idea that nature is a certain way—that things in nature
have an appearance or a way they are independently of being perceived—is
incoherent. Such an idea is the very essence of direct realism: The core thinking
in direct realism is not merely that there exists an objective world independent
of the mind, but that there exists one way of representing it correctly, without
distortions. In other words, according to realism, objects in the external world
have real features and real properties, and consequently can be described fully
and correctly if only you use the right kind of language and concepts. It is this
belief that most succinctly characterizes direct realism.
Abandoning direct realism is traumatic: It is a little like leaving the safety
of the womb. The biologist and philosopher Francisco Varela refers to this
sense of loss as the Cartesian Anxiety: We set out in life with the belief that
we inhabit a real world and can get to know it as it is. Then we find out that
all we truly know are our own representations of the world. Even worse, we