by Greg Goode
I can testify from personal experience that dropping the representationalist scheme is wonderfully freeing and liberating.
Representationalism Makes No Sense
How can we be sure that representationalism is really taking place? How can we assess whether the word “cup” actually represents the short, round, hollow object on my desk? To really be sure, we would need an independent way of comparing the object to the word. Only then would we be able to check if representation was taking place.
What do we mean by “independent”? We would need some sort of access to the object, and to our language, which didn’t already depend on either one. We would have to place ourselves outside both sides, like an art gallery owner who gets to look back and forth between a portrait of Daniel Craig and Daniel Craig in the flesh, who happens to be attending the opening.
But between language and an extra-linguistic reality, where could we possibly stand in order to make this assessment? This sort of test would require a sort of God’s-eye view or “view from nowhere,” where the spectator is a totally uninvolved observer, with absolutely no effect on the things that are observed. Even modern science casts doubt upon such a view: Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle in physics explains how our measurement of a particle actually affects the behavior of that particle.
Clearly, when it comes to getting between language and reality, we cannot get ourselves into such an observer’s position. But this is what would be required to verify the claim of representation. Without this kind of independent access to the two sides of the relation (both objects and their representations), we simply cannot make any sense of the notion of representation. We have no idea of what it would be to verify it successfully. So we are not obliged to keep the representationalist model onboard as an explanation of experience. We can set it aside.
Let’s try some meditations to put this discovery in closer focus. We will first try to find a sheet of paper on our desk, without relying on language. Then we will try to see if representation helps us understand a new sentence.
Meditation – Finding a Sheet of Paper
According to representationalism, a word is supposed to represent an object in the world. The object, all by itself, is supposed to be all it takes to give meaning to the word. Let’s see if this makes any sense in the following meditation, inspired by Ludwig Wittgenstein:
Take a few moments, clear off the table in front of you, and put a blank sheet of paper down on the table’s surface.
Now sit back and try to imagine that you don’t know what paper is, and that you don’t know the meaning of “paper” in your language. You are looking at a brown table surface, along with a smaller white quadrilateral shape. Now imagine that someone walks up to the table and directs a finger downwards. You hear this person say, “Paper.”
Do you instantly know to what the word refers? Do you even know that the finger is pointing? Perhaps the speaker is showing you a cut on their finger. Even if you knew that the finger is pointing, how do you know what is being pointed at? Remember that you don’t know the meaning of the word “paper,” so perhaps the speaker is pointing down at the basement, telling you that it is flooded. Perhaps the speaker is pointing to the table itself, indicating that it has just been polished.
So now, you ask for clarification. The speaker moves the finger around the edges of the white, and says, “Paper.” Do you now know what is being pointed at? Perhaps it is simply the color. Perhaps it is the shape. Perhaps the speaker is pointing to a magazine page lying underneath our piece of paper The pointing by itself is not enough to narrow down the options. Also, the word is not enough by itself to represent the object without ambiguity.
Take a few more moments and try to visualize how you would learn that the word “paper” is supposed to represent whatever is lying on the table. Just how is the relationship of “representation” functioning in this case?
The main idea in this meditation is that meaning is not “atomic.” That is, meaning does not originate from separate “atom”-like words or objects, and then get joined together into larger units. We don’t learn a word or an object by matching a bit of language to a bit of the world. In order to learn the meaning of “paper” we must already know many other things, such as what “pointing” is. We also have to know that this act of the person is an attempt to teach us something and not tell us about a hurt finger or a flood in the basement. We have to know that the person is not referring to color or shape. In other words, there is a huge, holistic network of other meanings that we already need to know, in order to come to know what “paper” is.
The notions of representation or picturing do not help explain the relation between a word and an object in the world. A more holistic approach makes much more sense. That is, it makes more sense to think of a word and an object as part of a holistic web-work of interactions that include many other words and objects as well.
Meditation – The Cat Is on the Mat
According to representationalism, a sentence represents a fact about the world that is external to language. A sentence is supposed to represent a sentence-shaped bit of reality. Let’s see if this makes sense with the following sentence:
(S1) The cat is on the mat.
According to representationalism, we build up command of the language by matching words to the world. We match the word “cat” to the warm, furry, sometimes aristocratic household creature that, as Rudyard Kipling says, likes to walk by himself. We match the word “mat” to a rectangle of protective rubber or fiber that is placed outside of a door and that we wipe our feet on. And we supposedly match the word “on” with cases of things being in a “position in contact with and supported by the top surface of” something (according to Merriam Webster).
So in this case, our sentence (S1) represents a fact or state of affairs in the world. The fact is this:
(F1) The warm, furry animal that likes to walk by himself is currently occupying a position supported by a rectangle of fiber placed outside the door.
Sentence (S1) represents fact (F1). This representation is built up by matching bits of language to bits of the world.
OK, so let’s do a meditation to see if representation makes sense in another case.
Take a few moments and visualize this situation. You are a teenage girl named Amanda who is a member of a Brad Pitt fan club. For years, you’ve been a fan with a not-so-secret crush on Brad. You have a girlfriend, Barbara, living down the block, who is also a member of the club. Barbara is a little slow on the uptake about many things, but she’s a great friend. And she’s more mature and level-headed than you are.
You have a boyfriend, Cameron, as well. Cameron is handsome. He likes movies, and he treats you very well. He looks a little like Brad Pitt. Cameron even knows about your crush on Brad, but he isn’t too jealous, since the actor is nowhere around.
This evening, you’re watching TV, and Moneyball, the recent Brad Pitt movie, comes on Showtime. Wow! You can’t wait! You call your friend Barbara and tell her with a certain inflection, hoping that she’ll get the point,
Hurry, turn on Showtime! My boyfriend is on TV.
So here is our other sentence,
(S2) My boyfriend is on TV.
Let’s examine the idea of representation in this case! Just what fact in the world is being represented by (S2)? Barbara just heard about “the cat is on the mat,” so at first, she has a very literal “representation,”
(F2) Cameron is sitting on top of Amanda’s television set.
Take a few moments and think how representationalism does not provide a very good explanation of (S2). This sentence cannot be understood by means of matching bits of language to bits of the world. Even if the representational notion of language made some basic sense in the beginning, we can see that sentence (S2) does not represent a fact in the same way that (S1) does. Among other things, the ambiguity of “on” and the figurative, metaphorical sense of “boyfriend” are unable to be captured by the representational m
odel of language. Representationalists tend to count such sentences as unwelcome exceptions.
We will learn more about the holistic approach to language below. But for now, take a few minutes to think about how a holistic notion of language might be able to explain (S2) quite nicely. The holistic notion of language is much richer, with words and sentences relating to each other. Holism takes context into consideration in a very deep way. It predicts that we need to know a lot of other sentences before understanding (S2). For example, we need to know sentences such as “Amanda calls Brad Pitt her boyfriend” and “There are different senses of the word ‘on’.”
We find that thinking about language holistically reduces the sense that objects and words have inherent existence.
Holism Is a Helpful Alternative to Representationalism
This is the third problem with representationalism – that holism makes better sense. We find it to be a very helpful alternative. Holism is even congruent with the Buddhist idea of interdependence. We will devote the rest of the chapter to holism.
The Holistic Approach to Meaning
According to the holistic approach to meaning, no sentence you speak, no belief you hold, and no event in your life means anything in isolation! Their meanings depend on everything else. We will debunk the view of any isolated meaning. Instead of meaning in isolation, we suggest meaning in connection, meaning in relation to other things, including other meaning. Such a view of interconnectedness is called holism. We believe that people today are quite open to the idea that everything is connected with everything else, for example from thinking about the environment. In this chapter, we will show you how holism can apply to you, and how it may lead to a radical shift in how you think about yourself in relation to the world. Of course, holism has obvious spiritual, even mystical overtones, and the meditations we present can be used to that end as well.
Our main tool is a famous and fun thought experiment from Harvard philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine. We’ll also use some experiments from Ludwig Wittgenstein. Holism is not uncommon as a view and the list of holists is a Who’s Who of twentieth-century philosophy. In addition to Quine and Wittgenstein, there are Donald Davidson, Martin Heidegger, Hilary Putnam, Wilfrid Sellars, Richard Rorty. The German 19th-century philosopher, G. W. F. Hegel, is another famous holist whose work revolutionized European philosophy.
Holism, or the radical interdependence of beliefs, words, sentences and language, as we present it here, is also a powerful master argument to realize emptiness and is quite effective in reducing suffering. More on that later, but first let’s get to work:
Four Arguments That Motivate Holism
We start with four intuitive arguments that show that holism is a highly plausible idea. These examples will also help to bring the kind of holism we’re talking about into view.
1) The meaning of words and sentences. To understand the meaning of one word, we need to understand many words. To understand the word “bank,” we need to understand what “money” is (as well as “security,” “loan,” “building,” “counter,” etc.). To grasp the meaning of “money,” we need to grasp that it’s needed to buy “food.” To understood “food,” we need to understand “agriculture,” and for that the “seasons,” and for that the “solar system,” and for that the “universe,” and so on. To fully understand the meaning of one word, we thus need to understand the meaning of many other words in our language.
2) Testing a scientific hypothesis. It is impossible to test a scientific hypothesis in isolation, as empirical tests require multiple background assumptions. When you verify a hypothesis about the behavior of an electron, you trust that the measuring device gives you reliable results. But the correct working of that device is itself already based on many other assumptions. As Quine put it, “Our statements about the external world face the tribunal of sense experience, not individually but only as a corporate body.”
3) Learning a scientific theory. When we learn scientific theories, we usually learn a group of concepts together that only make sense in relation to each other.
...in learning the Newtonian concepts of “ force”, “mass”, “kinetic energy” and “momentum”, one doesn’t learn any definitions of these terms in terms that are understood beforehand, for there are no such definitions. Rather, these theoretical terms were all learned together in conjunction with procedures for solving problems.... As Quine and Putnam argued, local “definitions” in a scientific theory tend to be mere passing expository devices of no lasting importance for the theory itself. And this is quite ubiquitous in theories – a circle of interdefined theoretical terms none of which are definable in terms outside the theory.
Block (1998)
4) Language acquisition by children. As Wittgenstein argued, when a child learns new words, for instance through pointing to an object, a lot of stage setting is required, so the child knows which object is meant and how it fits into the rest of the language. For example, if you want to explain to a child the color “sepia” by pointing at a sepia-colored object, the child needs to already know that what you’re pointing at is a color and not, say, the shape or texture of the object.
These examples give you a first idea about holism’s breadth. Words and sentences are closely related to our mental states such as beliefs, thoughts and desires, and many philosophers view them holistically as well. Holism affects all of your inner life! Not only that, because scientific theories tell us what the external world is like. According to holism, when we change our beliefs, we also change our view of the external world, and vice versa.
Holism and Emptiness
Let us informally draw out one significant consequence for you as an emptiness meditator right. Because the meaning of a word depends on the meaning of all other words in your language, none of the individual words has an intrinsic meaning in itself. Furthermore, the meaning of words is in constant flux, as everyday events happening in your life affect the meaning of at least some of your words, which influences the meaning of other words as well. Words are empty of inherent meaning.
Holism opens up possibilities to see language and meaning in different ways. For example, you can regard language as a tool, and not as an essential reflective medium.
...language is not a medium of representation. Rather, it is an exchange of marks and noises, carried out in order to achieve specific purposes.
Rorty (2000)
At this stage, it will surely become apparent to you how significant the idea of holism can be for helping you look first-hand into the “abyss” of emptiness, as one might say for dramatic effect. Indeed, the plan of this chapter is to go all the way. We’ll successively investigate the emptiness of the world, our beliefs, our memories and thoughts, our meditative states, and our self. So hang in there and “Fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy night,” as Bette Davis said in All About Eve.
On Safari with Quine
We’ll now perform Quine’s famous thought experiment about “radical translation.” Imagine yourself to be a field linguist who goes on a safari in the jungle with Quine. Your goal is to translate an entirely unknown language of the natives into English. Watch out! There’s a rabbit hopping by while a native is uttering “gavagai.” How are you going to translate “gavagai” into English? As “rabbit”? As “a source of fur”? A movement? As “Lo, a rabbit!”? As “pet”? As “rabbit-god”? How would you know?
Remember that the only thing you have to go by are your observations and the utterance of the native. It could also mean “undetached rabbit part,” “temporal stage of a rabbit” or “set of undetached rabbit parts,” “rabbit or Dalek.” You can’t know for sure what the right translation is. What to do? You may look for further observations and utterances, and for that, perhaps, follow the native into his village. You hear “gavagai” again while the natives are performing what seems (!) at least to you to be a religious ritual. So perhaps “gavagai” should be translated as “rabbit god”? But couldn’t it also b
e “rabbit god before the year 3000 and bear god after that”? You still don’t know for sure! And even if you collected many more observations of the natives, you could never know for certain.
We now draw seven startling, radical consequences from this thought experiment:
1) There is no unique way to fix the references in English for the utterances of the native. You”ll never know how you should “really” translate “gavagai”. Quine calls this the “inscrutability of reference.”
2) The meaning of a sentence cannot be derived from some extra magic dust flying through the air, but only from what is publicly, empirically observable to us. Thus, the only meaning available to us, the observer, is the meaning of whatever translation we decided to make. And that meaning depends on how the sentence relates to all the other interrelated beliefs we have, in short, how it relates to our so-called “web of belief.” If you decided to translate “gavagai” as “rabbit god,” whatever our beliefs about “gods” are will factor into that, and in fact, all our other beliefs are relevant.
3) When new observations are made, for instance about the natives, some of the beliefs in your web of belief may need to be readjusted. However, there are always choices as to which ones. In particular, there is the possibility of continuing to hold any belief as true by readjusting other sentences in your web of belief, so no belief is immune from revision. This includes even logical laws and other sentences that seem to us to be necessarily true. Thus it no longer makes sense to speak of any sentence or law as necessarily true.
4) Observations underdetermine our theories. A more serious consideration is this: the possibility of multiple, incommensurable theories fitting the same data cannot be eliminated. If those theories fit the set of observations equally well, none of these can be called more correct or more true than the other. There is no fact of the matter (Quine) about correct translation. You may still prefer one theory over another, but that may not necessarily be because it is correct, but for more pragmatic reasons, such as one theory being more elegant than the other. There is a fundamental “indeterminacy of translation.”