Embodied Realism:
Mind: Seen as fundamentally embodied, meaning it is shaped by and inseparable from the body and its interactions with the environment.
Thought: Considered as largely unconscious and grounded in embodied experiences like sensorimotor activities and emotions.
Knowledge: Arises from embodied interactions, with basic-level concepts (e.g., chair, hot) being directly linked to bodily experiences.
Metaphors: Seen as not just linguistic but also as fundamental structures of thought, shaping how we categorize, reason, and understand the world.
Here are some key points to remember:
and
Non-Conceptualization
•Definition: Direct, unmediated experience without the use of concepts or categories.
•Role of Thought: Pre-conceptual, based on immediate sensory input and emotional response.
•Source of Knowledge: Direct engagement with the world through the senses and emotions.
•Examples: Experiencing the taste of a piece of chocolate, appreciating the beauty of a sunset, feeling the connection with another person.
Do not work together, but they have been presented as representing VA and their negations as representing the people who disagree with him.
Direct, unmediated experience, the very idea of it goes directly against Embodied realism.
Embodied realism is ALL ABOUT MEDIATION. Contradiction 1
If one wants to say there are preconceptual and conceptual stages in experiences or types of experiencing the problem is (for VA) that we are dealing with a form of realism. Raw experience of X. Of something, and this is somehow unaffected by the filters and non-verbal attitudes and outlooks our bodies give us. This does not fit with antirealisms or idealisms.
Direct, unmediated experience
In dreams perhaps, but not in situations using our senses. Unless one wants to throw out the entire FSK of sensory physiology where ALL perception is mediated (literally involved a number of media and also involving all sorts of translations processes: in vision photons travelling t hrough the air, striking the retina, triggering nerve cascades, interpreted by the brain and so on. this is mediation several times over and is not in any way DIRECT. all this coming from the scientific FSK (physics/sensory physiology) the FSK that VA has said many, many times is the most reliable.) Contradiction s (though it could be argued there are several involved)
And notice this
: “We have no direct access to the world as it is in itself, independent of any conceptualization. We can only experience the world as we can conceptualize it, using our conceptual systems.”
That ought to put the nail in the coffin of mixing embodied realism and non-conceptualism. It also causes problems for claiming he isn't a realist. That is a realist formulation.
And let's put a nail in that second coffin.
“We are realists in the sense that we believe that there is a real world that exists independently of us and that we can know something about it. But we are not naive realists in the sense that we do not believe that we have direct, unmediated, or complete access to that world. We are cognitive realists in the sense that we take seriously the results of cognitive science, which show that human understanding is shaped by the body and the brain, and that all thought is embodied in some way.”