by Greg Goode
According to the realist gestalt:
There is an actual way that the world is “in itself.”
The world is the way it is, independently of all human interests and conceptualizations. The world already comes “cut up at its joints.” It is ready-made.
It is the job of language to accurately mirror or correspond to this natural state of affairs.
Every sentence is either true or false (this principle is called bivalence). Even if we don’t know which alternative holds, we can be sure that there is either a satisfactory relationship of correspondence, or there is not.
A sentence then is true if and only if it corresponds to some mind-independently obtained facts in the real world out there.
The structure of our language is similar to the structure of the objects referred to in the world.
Language and thinking are able to provide an accurate picture of the independent world.
You may also think of the mind-world relationship as relations we find in a museum. The world comes pre-sorted in exhibits, we stick a suitable label on them and thus we can talk about them.
The Realist Gestalt Comes Apart at the Seams
Although the realist gestalt seems natural and intuitive, it becomes entirely “unintelligible” (Putnam) under just a small amount of pressure. Its fatal flaw is that it makes no sense. Our mind and the world are defined as independent from each other, and these two independent sides somehow hook up together for the corresponding relation to take place.
We will examine several suggestions in favor of this correspondence relation, and see that they are all incoherent.
How Can This Help?
When we see reality and truth as empty, we allow things and the way we think about them to depend on each other. This opens the mind and the heart. When we no longer think that our ideas correspond to reality as it is in itself, then we are much more open to interact with others who think differently.
The result is the realization of emptiness!
Fortunately, it is not too hard to break out of the prison of realism and the idea of truth as correspondence. The prison doors only seem solid, but, in fact, you can walk right through them into the open world. We think of meditation as action. Actively reflecting on truth and the nature of reality is likely to be one of the most revolutionary, rebellious and empowering things you’ve ever done in your life. And its effects can be consequential in your own life and the life of those whom you touch.
Deconstructing the realist gestalt amounts to a realization of emptiness as we come to an understanding of the emptiness both of the world and of truth. We then become freed up from rigid, black-and-white thinking. Even hurtful ideas about ourselves, such as “I am unsuccessful,” are loosened up. And we don’t even have to try to disprove them one by one!
Of course, the defender of the realist gestalt might reply that he’s only talking about scientific truths, those pertaining to the spatiotemporal aspects of the world. But the rigid, privileged habit of mind is all too easy to generalize. It is easy to let the same sense of objective certainty spread out to all sentences we believe, and not just sentences about rocks, trees and molecules. This is why we deconstruct the entire realist gestalt, not just the statements contained within certain topics.
When we see truth and reality as empty, we see them (and ourselves) as fluid and relational, not as fixed and essential. This brings up an interpersonal, social benefit to realizing the emptiness of truth and reality. We are more likely to be motivated to act for social improvement.
For example, one of our favorite emptiness teachers, Richard Rorty, considered himself an anti-dualist. He was greatly inspired by the American visionary pragmatist John Dewey. Through Dewey, Rorty hoped to help change how we think about human inquiry. Rorty hoped to stop seeking the eternal, and work for a better future instead. Rorty (2000) quotes John Dewey on how this may be able to happen.
Dewey argues that so far the thrust of philosophy has been conservative; it has typically been on the side of the leisure class, favoring stability over change. Philosophy has been an attempt to lend the past the prestige of the eternal. “The leading theme of the classic philosophy of Europe,” he says, has been to make metaphysics “a substitute for custom as the source and guarantor of higher moral and social values”. Dewey wanted to shift attention from the eternal to the future, and to do so by making philosophy an instrument of change rather than of conservation...
Emptiness is not Idealism
We would like to distinguish the kind of emptiness teachings we are talking about from the view known as idealism. Idealism commonly claims that everything is “just mind” or “just ideas.” Quite often, when the emptiness teachings are misunderstood, they are interpreted as idealism. But the emptiness teachings are not saying this, and they are also not saying that the world bends to our will.
The emptiness teachings merely point out how things and conceptions of things are dependent upon each other. There is no privilege given to either side.
Idealism, on the other hand, says that minds or ideas are basic, and that things spring from them; that ideas are not empty, only non-ideas are.
According to the emptiness teachings, there is nothing that is basic in this privileged way. Everything is equally empty. So the emptiness of truth doesn’t mean that whatever we think is true. The emptiness of an object doesn’t mean that an object is whatever anyone thinks it is. Instead, the emptiness teachings show how nothing has an essence. Nothing stands on its own, independent from other things. Whenever you look at a thing or an idea very deeply, you never find it. In the everyday sense, when you are using things or ideas, they are nothing more than casually conventional attributions based on a web of relations. This is very different from idealism, in which mind and ideas are taken very seriously as fundamental.
Realism, Anti-Realism and Joyful Irony
Refuting realism is called anti-realism in Western philosophy. When we refute realism, we refute the claim that the world is mind-independent. Again, this is not the same as idealism. It merely says that the world is not independent of the mind. Of course, it is more common to see that the mind is not independent of the world.
The emptiness teachings can be thought of as a kind of anti-realism. In fact, Mark Siderits, one of the foremost Western philosophers commenting on the Buddhist emptiness teachings, sees them as a form of “global anti-realism.”33
Many of the Western strategies and arguments you find in this book could also be broadly construed as anti-realist, at least about something. Some of the Western writers might be anti-realists about almost everything. Not all authors need to be global anti-realists in order for us to find them helpful.
How can that be?
It is because we are not following any one author on all issues. This brings out an irony that applies to many forms of non-dual teaching. Sometimes in a provisional way, the teaching will utilize the student’s realism about one thing to undermine their realism about another thing. For instance, if the non-dual teaching is any more complicated than “nothing exists and that’s it,” then it will usually change tactics as it proceeds.
Our own chapter entitled “Seeing Through the Illusion of the Self” is a case in point. Its refutation of the self is more powerful if you are a realist about neuroscience and evolution. The Buddha himself worked this way. He refuted the self by reducing it to the psychophysical elements, known as “aggregates”. Being a realist about these psychophysical elements allows you to debunk your notions of the self.
Even though we are fans of many anti-realist approaches, in the end, we support dropping any fixed view, including anti-realist ones. This must be done before your realization of emptiness can be global. To question your favorite teaching is not always easy, and it might require that you make a special effort to subject it to scrutiny. But the benefits are immense. And the emptiness teachings help you along, by seeing themselves as empty.
We describe the fruition of seeing things as
empty, including your favorite teaching, as joyful irony. As a joyful ironist, you may inhabit a favorite teaching, but you deeply regard it as empty, like everything else. There is freedom, enthusiasm and compassion in joyful irony. As far as truth goes, Mark Siderits recommends: “No Truth, but truths.”
This chapter is about truth in the philosophical sense, not about telling the truth, as in “I shouldn’t lie.” We can regard this latter idea as an attitude of truthfulness. We support the attitude of truthfulness. We continue to recommend that whatever you choose to do with the emptiness teachings should be motivated by an ethical framework and an attitude of caring.
Refuting Truth as Correspondence
The arguments and meditations we present next are meant to begin the deconstruction of the idea of correspondence between the mind and the world. With the arguments and meditations in this chapter, we will try to:
Show you how “picturing the world” doesn’t need to be taken literally. We can picture the world without any actual picturing in the metaphysical sense.
Take the God’s-eye view and see that it can’t be done.
Explore the idea that the meaning of words comes from their use in language, and not from the intrinsic nature of things in the world.
Picturing the World Without Actual Correspondence
When we think of the correspondence between words and the world, we usually assume that what we have in our mind is a picture of something that is really out there.
How can this happen? One way, suggested by Ludwig Wittgenstein, is for the items in our mind to have the same “form” as the items they represent in the world. That means that items in our mind should combine and relate in a similar way to the things in the external world. This kind of parallelism would require a mapping of structure between the mind and the world.
Doesn’t it seem obvious and natural that the books, tables and chair in my mind form a picture of external objects and their spatial relations in just the right way? When I move them around it works exactly as my picture predicts! So it certainly looks to me that there is a correspondence relation!
But what if there was an alternative explanation for how it looks to you? What if your “picture” didn’t actually require a parallel relation to external objects? Then you couldn’t be so sure about the fact of correspondence. Wittgenstein gives us just such an alternative explanation.
Meditation – The Ruler
Think of a ruler. Imagine measuring a table. Take a few moments and contemplate how you actually do this. Using the ruler does not require that there is anything out there that is one foot in length There is no requirement that there’s anything corresponding to “length.” There’s no requirement that anything looks like the straight line that the ruler “represents.” Instead, all that is needed is that you have a way to use the ruler within the world.
Now take a few moments and try to look at the pictures in your mind. They are like the ruler, in a way. Do they really picture something? Or is the relationship already defined by our requirement of what a picture should do? A picture already contains the built-in idea that it pictures something. That it actually does picture something in a true metaphysical sense is not required for your picture to look like it does. As Wittgenstein puts it:
According to this view, the representing relation which makes it a picture also belongs to the picture.
Wittgenstein (2001)
We know we can use pictures in the world, but that’s all we know. In this way, Wittgenstein explains how we can have the sense of having pictures in our mind, without them actually being pictures in the metaphysical sense outlined above. There is something wonderfully liberating about this.
Meditation – The Causes of Our Ideas
According to the realist gestalt, the objects in the world cause our ideas about them. Let’s check this out.
What are the causes of your idea of electrons? As Hilary Putnam (1981) suggests, it is not the electrons themselves, but the science textbooks that talk about electrons. Take a few moments and think about your ideas about atoms, molecules, electrons, and even the Great Wall of China. Can you trace a chain of causation between those items and your thought of those items? Would you say that your ideas about these items come from the items themselves, or from what you have heard and read about them?
It looks like the idea for a matching, mapping correspondence between mind and the world is losing support rapidly!
Let’s keep looking at more examples.
Meditation – The God’s-Eye View
The correspondence theory requires that there’s a mapping between
1) our ideas and images and
2) the world as it is, independently of our mind.
How can the correspondence between (1) and (2) be established? To be systematic about this and prove it, we would need independent access to (1) and (2) at the same time in order to observe whether they correspond to each other. This kind of point of view is called the God’s-eye view. It is as though we could stand between or above (1) and (2) and see how they relate to each other. Can we do this? If we cannot do this, then how can we insist that correspondence is actually taking place and that the two sides are inherently independent from each other?
Let’s give it a try!
Try to inhabit the God’s-eye view in your own experience. Start small. Try to imagine (1) your idea of a table on one side, and (2) the objective, inherently existent table on the other side.
Take a few minutes with this. Can you do it? Can you inhabit the God’s-eye view? Are you able to confirm that the idea and the object look alike? Can you even assess whether they are similar? In what way? Is your idea round or square? Does it have legs? And the table – how can you access the table without already having the idea appear? How can you access the table without already perceiving it or conceiving of it? How can you gain independent access to the cup to observe whether it resembles your idea?
How can you judge the correctness or incorrectness of the mapping? Where can you stand to inhabit this view? How can you perform the comparison? Can you climb outside your mind and stand above it for a view of the mind-independent table that is supposed to be there? Does this kind of view even make sense?
Take a few more moments and contemplate how just such an impossible view would be necessary in order to confirm the whole idea of correspondence.
You have most likely discovered that the God’s-eye view is an incoherent notion for you as a human being. It is impossible for a human being to inhabit this view. It may seem vaguely plausible at first, but once we look into it, its incoherence is revealed. So this realization helps weaken our usual way of thinking about objects as really out there, and truth as correspondence with these objects.
The realist gestalt is making less and less sense.
Meaning as Use
In chess, the meaning of the queen does not come from its being a piece of wood. The meaning does not come from resemblance to Queen Elizabeth or any other person, but by how this piece is used according to the rules of chess. The queen can only be understood within the wider context of the game.
According to the later work of Wittgenstein, words in our language should be thought of in the same way – like pieces on a game board, and not like little mirrors reflecting reality. Words are not properly understood as labels that we stick on objects, but through the “language game” in which the words play their role.
The meaning of the words “high school diploma” is not exhausted by referring to a piece of printed paper. The high school diploma receives its significance by opening doors of opportunity for the student. This is the role it plays. It is closely linked to the language game of formal education, in which many other words, such as “entrance exam,” “library,” “tests,” “freshman,” also play a role. And the language game of formal education is incomprehensible apart from its context in our human practices.
As we saw in the “Loosening up Fixed Meaning In Language” chapter, it makes more se
nse to see the meaning of words and sentences as part of a holistic web rather than coming from separate, individual objects.
So Then, What Is Truth?
If truth as the correspondence between language and reality doesn’t make sense, then what is truth? According to the emptiness teachings, truth is empty, so it has no inherent nature. There is nothing that truth in itself really is.
The various holistic, anti-essentialist, anti-representationalist, anti-realist thinkers that we mention in this book do not accept the correspondence theory of truth. But they don’t reject the idea of truth altogether either. Here are some examples of how you can possibly think about truth without falling into the realist gestalt.
In Buddhism, conventional truths are objects of valid, reliable conventional cognition. Ultimate truths are objects of ultimate cognition, that is, they are revealed in emptiness meditation. What makes the Buddhist idea of truth different from correspondence is that in Buddhism, both the cognitions and the cognized truths are dependent upon each other.
Brand Blanshard thought of truth as the maximum coherence within a set of beliefs.
Richard Rorty liked a pragmatist notion of truth, where truth is what’s good in the way of belief. At other times he says that we apply the word “true” to the beliefs that we’ve justified. He repeatedly characterized truth as a compliment paid to sentences seen to be paying their way.
Paul de Man, a literary critic and friend of Jacques Derrida, talked about truth in a way that is reminiscent of both Heisenberg and Buddhism:
The observing subject is no more constant than the observed, and each time the observer actually succeeds in interpreting his subject he changes it, and changes it all the more as his interpretation comes closer to the truth. But every change of the observed subject requires a subsequent change in the observer, and the oscillating process seems to be endless.
de Man (1983)
Friedrich Nietzsche gives us something characteristically poetic: