92
6 In Search of Reality
version of reality which is built into it from the start. Every language is anchored
in a specific perspective, or world-model. A fact expressed as a sentence in a
language shares the scheme of segmentation which is built into the language.
Commonsense wisdom tells us that our language is a way of referring to
things in the external world. For example, “bird” refers to real birds, “chair”
refers to real chairs, and so on. But this intuition is flawed. The reason is, that it
is the mind that divides the external world into separate objects and relations.
The world outside the purview of any mind is not pre-segmented. Therefore
our words cannot refer to things in the world, because those things don’t
really exist in the world. They only exist when they have been individuated,
separated out, and noted in mind. Thus, in reality, our words refer to things
in our world-model and not in the external universe. 2
This is a very important comment, for it undercuts the commonsense belief
that there is a natural projection which assigns to every word and sentence some
configuration of things in the objective world. (Such a projection is called a
word-to-world mapping.) Instead, everything we say describes a situation in our
inner model of reality. This insight has been discussed at length by the American
philosopher Hilary Putnam. It suggests that it is impossible for us to describe
the external world “as it is”, but limits us to knowing the universe according
to our world-model. This philosophy has been called Internal Realism.
A fact exists only when a mind extrudes it from the undivided flow of ongoing physical process. Indeed, the external world is a seething cauldron of activity
where every molecule is in continual random motion. What we take to be a fact
is deeply embedded in this maelstrom, and must be painstakingly and precisely
cut out by a living mind. This feat is accomplished by an almost uncanny process which requires huge amounts of unconscious mental computation.
The mind-independent world is not naturally divided into individual parts:
At the most fundamental level, we can say that external reality is a continuous
flow of ongoing cosmic process. Consequently, facts or events in the sense of
individual happenings do not exist in the universe at large. When you speak
of a fact or event, you mean something bounded that has been lifted out of
the flow of continuous activity. Since a fact must be very precisely extruded
from the background, this requires that the observer who lifts it out have a
purpose—a motive for undertaking to extract this one particular thing. In a
universe without an observer having a purpose, you cannot have facts.
As you may judge from this, a fact is something far more complex than it
appears to be at first sight. In order for a fact to exist, it must be preceded by
a segmentation of the world into separate things, and requires a brain that is
able to extract it from the background in which it is immersed. Moreover, this
brain must have the power to conceive in Gestalts, because in order to perceive
its outlines and extract it, a fact must be seen whole, together with some of its
context.
6 In Search of Reality
version of reality which is built into it from the start. Every language is anchored
in a specific perspective, or world-model. A fact expressed as a sentence in a
language shares the scheme of segmentation which is built into the language.
Commonsense wisdom tells us that our language is a way of referring to
things in the external world. For example, “bird” refers to real birds, “chair”
refers to real chairs, and so on. But this intuition is flawed. The reason is, that it
is the mind that divides the external world into separate objects and relations.
The world outside the purview of any mind is not pre-segmented. Therefore
our words cannot refer to things in the world, because those things don’t
really exist in the world. They only exist when they have been individuated,
separated out, and noted in mind. Thus, in reality, our words refer to things
in our world-model and not in the external universe. 2
This is a very important comment, for it undercuts the commonsense belief
that there is a natural projection which assigns to every word and sentence some
configuration of things in the objective world. (Such a projection is called a
word-to-world mapping.) Instead, everything we say describes a situation in our
inner model of reality. This insight has been discussed at length by the American
philosopher Hilary Putnam. It suggests that it is impossible for us to describe
the external world “as it is”, but limits us to knowing the universe according
to our world-model. This philosophy has been called Internal Realism.
A fact exists only when a mind extrudes it from the undivided flow of ongoing physical process. Indeed, the external world is a seething cauldron of activity
where every molecule is in continual random motion. What we take to be a fact
is deeply embedded in this maelstrom, and must be painstakingly and precisely
cut out by a living mind. This feat is accomplished by an almost uncanny process which requires huge amounts of unconscious mental computation.
The mind-independent world is not naturally divided into individual parts:
At the most fundamental level, we can say that external reality is a continuous
flow of ongoing cosmic process. Consequently, facts or events in the sense of
individual happenings do not exist in the universe at large. When you speak
of a fact or event, you mean something bounded that has been lifted out of
the flow of continuous activity. Since a fact must be very precisely extruded
from the background, this requires that the observer who lifts it out have a
purpose—a motive for undertaking to extract this one particular thing. In a
universe without an observer having a purpose, you cannot have facts.
As you may judge from this, a fact is something far more complex than it
appears to be at first sight. In order for a fact to exist, it must be preceded by
a segmentation of the world into separate things, and requires a brain that is
able to extract it from the background in which it is immersed. Moreover, this
brain must have the power to conceive in Gestalts, because in order to perceive
its outlines and extract it, a fact must be seen whole, together with some of its
context.