Representationalism vs Anti-representationism

[Magical Realist]

I find myself drifting more and more towards anti-representationalism. That, as per Rorty and Derrida and Wittgenstein and Merleau-Ponty and Kant and indeed even John Wheeler, reality is not just sitting out there independent of our conceiving it or speaking about it. That it arises organically out of those basic interactions we are always having with it. This is a reality that is never anything separate or discrete from the meaning-making of man's cognitive and linguistic activity.

Reddit
FromTheMargins
•
8mo ago
metaphysics
Profile Badge for the Achievement Top 1% Commenter Top 1% Commenter

"Representationalism is the view that we refer to external things either linguistically when speaking or mentally when "thinking" about something. While it is uncontroversial that referencing occurs in language and intentional states, the debate between representationalism and anti-representationalism concerns the foundational status of referents for thinking and meaning. Representationalists argue that acts of referring derive their meaning from their referents. This position is often coupled with a form of realism, which maintains that referents exist independently of us and that we can access them directly, for example, through sense-data. Anti-representationalism, on the other hand, maintains that the referents do not exist independently of our cognitive or linguistic activities but rather arise from them. Because they are intrinsic to these activities, they cannot serve as an independent foundation that gives them truth or meaning. Anti-representationalism is often paired with anti-realism, which asserts that there is no ultimate reality "outside" of our practices. However, it is also possible to combine anti-representationalism with a realist outlook in which an independent reality functions as a constraint or corrective on our practices, even if we do not refer to it directly.

Kant can be seen as an early figure in anti-representationalism. Even though he keeps a referential structure in which our intuitions refer to appearances, those appearances are not given independently of our cognitive activity but are, at least in part, constituted by it. Another important figure is Wittgenstein, who shifts attention to the use of language: representing is a language-game governed by rules, not something that gets its meaning from a pre-linguistically available reality. Rorty's materialism should be understood primarily as a rejection of sense-data theories and foundational inner representations. Still, he is an anti-realist in the sense that he denies that any access to the world captures reality as it "really is." Consequently, he views science as just one practice, no more privileged than poetry or other cultural activities, when it comes to accessing reality."-------- https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/c...tionalism/

“That which I call a text is practically everything… Speech is a text, gesture is a text, reality is a text in this new sense. This is not about re-establishing graphocentrism alongside logocentrism or phonocentrism or text-centrism. The text is not a centre. The text is an openness without borders, of ever-differentiating references.”― Jacques Derrida

"There is nothing to be known about anything except an initially large, and forever expandable, web of relations to other things. Everything that can serve as a term of relation can be dissolved into another set of relations, and so on for ever. There are, so to speak, relations all the way down, all the way up, and all the way out in every direction: you never reach something which is not just one more nexus of relations."----Richard Rorty

[Magical Realist]

"A participatory epistemology is a theory of knowledge that holds that meaning is enacted through the participation of the human mind with the world. Originally proposed by Goethe, it has been discussed extensively by cultural historian Richard Tarnas.[2]

In a participatory epistemology, meaning is neither solely objective nor solely subjective. That is to say that meaning is not, per modern or positivist views, found solely outside of the human mind, in the objective world, waiting to be discovered. Nor, per postmodern or constructivist views, is meaning simply constructed or projected onto an inherently meaningless world by the subjective human mind.[3] Rather, Tarnas argues that meaning is enacted through the dialectical participation of the human mind with the larger meaning of the cosmos. Thus meaning exists in potentia in the cosmos, but must be articulated by human consciousness before it exists in actuality.

'In this view, the essential reality of nature is not separate, self-contained, and complete in itself, so that the human mind can examine it "objectively" and register it from without. Rather, nature's unfolding truth emerges only with the active participation of the human mind. Nature's reality is not merely phenomenal, nor is it independent and objective; rather, it is something that comes into being through the very act of human cognition. Nature becomes intelligible to itself through the human mind.'"----- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_theory

[Ostronomos]

You make a very compelling argument for a participatory universe. It very much aligns with my position on reality. I believe that the Holographic Principle completely explains the supernatural phenomenon that I have witnessed in the past, while experiencing an altered state of consciousness. I encourage any attempt to reconcile science with religion and metaphysics (note the minor conflation). Our materialistic science is slowly growing suspect. The metaphysical is breaking new ground. And to add to that, the modern scientist is shifting away from a purely physical standpoint, which is promising.

---

That nothingness exists has been overlooked by centuries of pernicious materialistic science. The properties of which must be studied if we hope to meet (among other things including God) our ultimate destiny as a species. This nothingness births countless universes, all of which exist in tandem within an overarching all-inclusive reality, giving rise to the paradox of existence. The sheer magnitude of God's unbound or infinite mind is the glue that binds reality at its seams. This is because God is that which is comparable to the infinite and eternal nature of nothingness. There are hidden forces within material interactions that occur on a day-to-day basis. These are studied within the domain of Physics. We need to unite this Physics with a leap of imagination that goes beyond the strictly 100% material.