78
5 The Mind-Made Firmament
are “condemned by our constitution to treat these representations as if they
were the world, for our everyday experience feels as if it were of a given and
immediate world.” Thus, according to Varela, we are twice deceived: First in
believing that the world is the way we see it, and next, in believing that even if
we’re mistaken in our first belief, at least there is some way the world is. Then
we realize that isn’t true either. 8
We are now in the last chamber of direct realism: It is assumed in common
sense that even in the external, mind-independent world, objects have features
and qualities. The features might be different from the way we perceive them,
and might be directly linked to physical properties. For example, an object feels
hot to us because its molecules are vibrating energetically. Physical features
and the features we discern are different, but nonetheless they correspond in a
systematic way.
Indeed, how could objects fail to have features? Quite simply because features
are something perceived by observers—and without a living subject looking at
a thing, it has no specific features, nothing it “looks like”. If an object is red,
or round, or straight or bent, it has those features in the eyes of a subject that
observes it. The world in itself, divorced from observation and observers, does
not have any specific form. Without features and characteristics, it cannot
have a description. The description we know is a description of our mental
representation of an object.
The idea that objects and events give rise to representations which depict it
faithfully goes back to the earliest days of philosophy. Aristotle said that the
things we perceive are reproduced in the mind in the same way as a signet
ring leaves an impression in soft wax. This implies that the representation is
an exact replica of the thing represented—or as we would say in contemporary
terms, is isomorphic to the original. Few people today believe that is true: Kant
was among the first philosophers to point out that describing the world is not
simply copying it. In order to describe something we must first understand it
in our terms, for otherwise our description will have no meaning to us. Thus,
what we put forward in a description says as much about us as about what
we’re describing.
As a matter of fact, Kant went further than that, for he claimed that what
we experience is never the thing in itself, but always the thing as it is represented in our mind. The reason is that minds did not evolve to plumb the
depths of reality—but merely to allow living creatures to understand the events
pertinent to their daily lives. Sensory perception is assigned the task of redirecting ambient information and transforming it into the categories of what’s
comprehensible by an animal mind. Features and appearances are what the
mind is comfortable with and designed to understand. The external world,
5 The Mind-Made Firmament
are “condemned by our constitution to treat these representations as if they
were the world, for our everyday experience feels as if it were of a given and
immediate world.” Thus, according to Varela, we are twice deceived: First in
believing that the world is the way we see it, and next, in believing that even if
we’re mistaken in our first belief, at least there is some way the world is. Then
we realize that isn’t true either. 8
We are now in the last chamber of direct realism: It is assumed in common
sense that even in the external, mind-independent world, objects have features
and qualities. The features might be different from the way we perceive them,
and might be directly linked to physical properties. For example, an object feels
hot to us because its molecules are vibrating energetically. Physical features
and the features we discern are different, but nonetheless they correspond in a
systematic way.
Indeed, how could objects fail to have features? Quite simply because features
are something perceived by observers—and without a living subject looking at
a thing, it has no specific features, nothing it “looks like”. If an object is red,
or round, or straight or bent, it has those features in the eyes of a subject that
observes it. The world in itself, divorced from observation and observers, does
not have any specific form. Without features and characteristics, it cannot
have a description. The description we know is a description of our mental
representation of an object.
The idea that objects and events give rise to representations which depict it
faithfully goes back to the earliest days of philosophy. Aristotle said that the
things we perceive are reproduced in the mind in the same way as a signet
ring leaves an impression in soft wax. This implies that the representation is
an exact replica of the thing represented—or as we would say in contemporary
terms, is isomorphic to the original. Few people today believe that is true: Kant
was among the first philosophers to point out that describing the world is not
simply copying it. In order to describe something we must first understand it
in our terms, for otherwise our description will have no meaning to us. Thus,
what we put forward in a description says as much about us as about what
we’re describing.
As a matter of fact, Kant went further than that, for he claimed that what
we experience is never the thing in itself, but always the thing as it is represented in our mind. The reason is that minds did not evolve to plumb the
depths of reality—but merely to allow living creatures to understand the events
pertinent to their daily lives. Sensory perception is assigned the task of redirecting ambient information and transforming it into the categories of what’s
comprehensible by an animal mind. Features and appearances are what the
mind is comfortable with and designed to understand. The external world,