Conceptual epoché and the semantic dismantling of western philosophy
By Rodrigo Cáceres Riquelme
In this essay I will develop and test the concept of conceptual epoché or conceptual bracketing, in order to understand what this concept can tell us about our spontaneous relationship to language and to the claims, theories and descriptions we make within language. I borrow the concept of epoché from Pyrrhonism in greek philosophy, which refers to the exercise of suspending judgment and avoiding to affirm or deny any kind of claim.
I will contrast the attitude underlying the conceptual epoché to what I shall denote as the literal attitude towards language. I will broadly define the literal attitude towards language as the situation in which an observer implicitly accepts that the words and sentences he is using are valid to refer to something that occurs or exists, while he or she explicitly or implicitly fails to investigate what are the implicit assumptions that go onto using specific words together as to convey a certain meaning.
The main reasons why an observer would fail to investigate the assumptions embedded in his choice of words are (i) because he or she is not aware that the words he chooses shape his or her way of thinking; (ii) because he or she simply lacks a method for investigating this, (iii) because he or she fails to engage in self-reflection and (iv) because he or she does not realize that the language he or she uses has an implicit structure that shapes the way he or she thinks.
Let me take a look at how this looks like in practice. Let us say that as a philosopher I ask the question 'What is the mind?'. If I adopt the literal attitude towards language, I will implicitly accept that this question is valid, and that this question is demanding for a description or definition of what the mind is. In this attitude, I can propose answers in the form of 'the mind is A' or 'the mind is B'. In contrast, if I perform a conceptual bracketing of the question 'What is the mind?' I do not take this question literally. Rather, I shall first investigate what needs to happen in order for me to ask this question.
When this question is bracketed, the first thing that we can note is that, in general, the definite article 'the' is used to denote entities, substances or nouns and it is not used to denote processes or verbs. The point is that when we are associating the concept of 'mind' to the definite article 'the', while at the same time taking the literal attitude towards language, we will understand 'mind' as an object or entity and not as a process.
In fact, we do this all the time and Lakoff and Johnson (1980) have denoted these as 'ontological metaphors', that amount to semantic transpositions of entity structure onto phenomena that have not an evident entity structure. For example, if we hear 'the economic crisis hit hard on local employments' we are understanding something (an economic crisis) that is not an object in any evident sense, by transposing onto it the form of a physical substance that is colliding against -and thus affecting- another physical substance (local employments).
When this question is bracketed, the first thing that we can note is that, in general, the definite article 'the' is used to denote entities, substances or nouns and it is not used to denote processes or verbs. The point is that when we are associating the concept of 'mind' to the definite article 'the', while at the same time taking the literal attitude towards language, we will understand 'mind' as an object or entity and not as a process.
In fact, we do this all the time and Lakoff and Johnson (1980) have denoted these as 'ontological metaphors', that amount to semantic transpositions of entity structure onto phenomena that have not an evident entity structure. For example, if we hear 'the economic crisis hit hard on local employments' we are understanding something (an economic crisis) that is not an object in any evident sense, by transposing onto it the form of a physical substance that is colliding against -and thus affecting- another physical substance (local employments).
Back to the topic of the mind, this means that if one takes the literal attitude towards language, the definite article 'the' will entail a substance or entity understanding of the concept 'mind' and, on doing so, it will rule out an understanding of the concept of 'mind' as a process. This is far from being something trivial because we usually understand entities as substantial objects with properties (as in 'this pen is blue') whereas we understand processes or verbs in terms of the capacities of an observer or as specific aspects of that very process (as in 'I am able to write' or 'running is exhausting').
I can now consider the verb 'is' in the question 'What is the mind?'. We need to consider the verb 'is' in relation to its phenomenological counterpart or antithesis, the verb 'becomes'. In fact, all that is the case in this instant is the result of a historical process that gave rise to what is currently the case. What is is that which has become. This relationship between being and becoming was embodied in Greek philosophy by the characters of Parmenides and Heraclitus, respectively. Heraclitus believed that nothing in this world was constant, except change and becoming. Conversely, Parmenides thought that the change or "becoming" we perceive with our senses was deceptive, and that there was a pure perfect and eternal being behind nature. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy refers to this when describing that:
Substance metaphysics proceeds from the intuition—first formulated by the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Parmenides—that being should be thought of as simple, hence as internally undifferentiated and unchangeable. Substance metaphysicians recast this intuition as the claim that the primary units of reality (called “substances”) must be static—they must be what they are at any instant in time.
The implication of this is that the verb 'is' tends to take a supposedly static, stable and permanent snapshot of what has come to be the case, overlooking or failing to incorporate the dynamic that gave rise to what is as well as to consider future possible outcomes that might arise. Conversely, the verb 'become' incorporates this dynamic perspective as it acknowledges a process of change and transformation that gave rise to the current conditions and will continue to shape future conditions.
In practice, this means that if as a philosopher I reply to our question with the answer 'The mind is A', this answer will immediately fix the status of the concept of 'mind'. In other words, my answer will be closed to the perspective that in the future what I denote as 'mind' will cease to 'be A' and morph to 'The mind is Z'. This is exactly how we should interpret Heidegger's critic of the philosophical tradition. He simply notes that the long-held idea of 'subjects knowing objects' was simply one specific attitude in which we can find ourselves (that Varela et al. (1993) call the abstract attitude) but that actually most of the time we are not 'subjects knowing objects' but rather we are unconscious of what we do, as when it comes to doing automatic things like opening doorknobs, breathing or blinking.
Reconsidering our initial question of 'What is the mind?', we are now in a position to understand what occurs if we take the literal attitude towards language and implicitly understand the mind as an entity. We should now consider that in common language we say things like 'thoughts came into my mind', 'I can’t get you out of my head', 'it’s all in your mind'. What this presupposes is that there is an implicit semantic transposition of the container schema onto the concept of mind.
A container schema (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999) is an image of a bounded, isolated, independent object with an inside/outside orientation, an internal/external separation and an input/output dynamic. A container can have contents, it can be empty and things can be put in and out of it. We consequently note that in common language we employ the container concepts of 'in', 'out', 'inside', 'outside' and 'into' in order to talk about the concept of 'mind'.
What this means is that (if we take the literal attitude towards language) in order to answer the question of 'What is the mind?' we can profit from the meaningfulness of the container schema and use all its meaningful aspects in order to provide a meaningful and intuitive answer to what is the mind. In other words, if we say things like 'thoughts came into my mind', then it is intuitive for us to believe that the mind is a kind of jar that is separated and independent from the world. As we saw, the definite article 'the' already implied an entity understanding of the mind. Now that the container is added to the picture, 'the mind' is no longer any kind of object but a very specific one: a container with contents, an inside and an outside.
What we can infer from this exposition is that the literal attitude to language is actually effective to produce meaning. And this attitude is the one used by philosophers in general, and specifically by someone like René Descartes with his famous mind/matter dualism. He is an example of someone that took literally the entity interpretation of 'mind' as well as the container schema when he referred to an “internal mind” or res cogitans that forms perceptions and ideas from the “external material world” or res extensa.
Figure 1. Diagram of the semantic transposition of the container schema understanding onto the mind understanding
Figure 1. Diagram of the semantic transposition of the container schema understanding onto the mind understanding
The point is that this internal/external dualism requires the availability and meaningful aspects of the container concepts (i.e. in, out, inside, outside, internal, external, interior, exterior, content). These container concepts are subsequently transposed onto the concept of mind in the very form that they are used in common language. When transposed onto the mind, the container schema entails a strict separation from what is 'inside the mind' and what is 'outside the mind'. In turn, this inside/outside separation is transposed onto the classic western dualities of subject/object and subjective/objective, the subject supposedly being us, the ones that inhabit the “internal mind” and the objects being the “external material reality”. Furthermore, from this container schema arises the belief that 'external objects' exist independently from 'the mind' (for a discussion on this belief, see Maturana 1988).
To sum up, through the conceptual epoché we were able to consider different aspects of how the literal attitude towards language accepts a set of implicit claims that remain unexamined. We saw the example of the concept of 'mind' and how in this attitude the question 'What is the mind?' leads to an entity understanding as opposed to a processual understanding of this concept. The verb 'is' leads to formulate static answers that cannot account for change or novelty. Furthermore, it leads to the formulation of monolithic mutually exclusive answers in the form of 'the mind is A or B, but not both'. This kind of attitude towards answers fail to consider that the concept 'mind' might be multimodal and have multiple aspects to it. The container schema is then mapped or transposed onto the projected entity understanding of 'mind' in order to get intuitive theories about what this mind-object is supposed to be, that imply a neat distinction of inside/outside and subjective/objective that have lasted for centuries in western philosophy.
What the conceptual epoché allows us to do is to observe what are the beliefs that need to be explicitly or implicitly accepted in order for a philosophical question or answer to be accepted as valid. In the case studied in this essay, the basic western belief that 'mind' is a entity or substance (in particular, a container) and not a process. The fundamental issue that comes at hand is that there is no basis to believe that 'mind' is a stable substance and not a process. As we saw, Parmenides' belief in a static structure of being, was made for the sake of simplicity, which has led to simplified descriptions of 'mind' that cannot explain the multimodality of human first-person experience, cannot anticipate nor consider future change.
The gesture made with the help of the conceptual epoché effectively disassembles the scaffolded beliefs and meaning systems of western philosophy. Semantic disassembling should be understood as the opposite of semantic scaffolding (or semiotic scaffolding, Hoffmeyer, 2015). Semantic scaffolding refers to the idea that living systems operate on stabilized patterns or habits of interpretation and build new meanings on top of already stabilized patterns of meaningful interpretation.
The idea is that since we are born in a culture, which is a system of stabilized patterns of meanings, we implicitly accept the metaphysics of our culture precisely because we learn the language, the concepts and the conceptual systems of our culture in order to operate effectively in that culture. In other words, we are enculturated beings because we become individuals in the midst of a system of stable patterns of meaning that are scaffolded upon the acceptance of more basic kinds of meanings.
Perhaps the best way of understanding semantic dismantling with the tool of the conceptual epoché, is through an allegory. Imagine that a culture is a building made out of scaffolded meanings that keep the building in place. Through a historic process of scaffolding meanings, this culture has reached 16 floors of height. As a consequence, all the people that live in the 16th floor talk, discuss and think with the meanings that are available at the 16th level. This means that they implicitly accept all the assumptions made in the preceding levels because this 16th level language relies upon those underlying beliefs.
The conceptual epoché should be thought here as a rope that one throws out the window in order to gradually descend to the ground floor. In the descent, one is able to see what are the beliefs that were implicitly accepted in order to have the 16th floor meanings. Once one has gotten to ground floor, the task is to evaluate if the meanings and beliefs that were at the foundation of the building are justified or warranted beliefs. In the case study of this essay, we are unable to affirm that an entity understanding of 'mind' is more justified than a processual understanding of 'mind'. Choosing one or the other makes this nothing more than a matter of preference, and as Parmenides reveals, his concern particularly was a preference for simplicity.
In a certain way, this allegory can be blended with Plato’s allegory of the cave. The cave where we inhabit would correspond to the 16th level. Moreover, we can add the aspect that Plato’s prisoners take seriously, love and identify with the shadows that they are presented. This happens because in the beginning of our ontogeny, the spontaneous attitude of the baby is one of acceptance of the world into which he is thrown. The modern cinematic version of Plato’s cave is The Truman Show, and in this film, we get a confession from the hidden hand in charge of the shadows, who explains that “we accept the reality with which we are presented. It is as simple as that”. Similarly, we accept the discourses and the conceptual systems in which we are born and with which our culture operates. In doing so, we fail to recognize the underlying, lower-level beliefs that keep this 16th level cave operational.
This allegory is, of course, in the spirit of the deconstruction of Jacques Derrida.
What for Plato was 'going outside the cave' is here different because it amounts to suspending our spontaneous validation of our conceptual and philosophical meaning systems, and then descending to ground floor in order to see how our collective actions are the result of the rules of action inferred through those meaning systems.
One of the beliefs at the basis of this western edifice is the one identified by french anthropologist Philippe Descola: the belief that human is the only living being which has mind or psyche, which makes human the only being towards which one should have moral concern (Descola, 2014). This is also a belief that is not justified because evidence from zoology, primatology and plant neurobiology point towards the idea of continuity: that mind or psyche is a spontaneous phenomenon that occurs throughout all living beings.
The conceptual epoché should be thought here as a rope that one throws out the window in order to gradually descend to the ground floor. In the descent, one is able to see what are the beliefs that were implicitly accepted in order to have the 16th floor meanings. Once one has gotten to ground floor, the task is to evaluate if the meanings and beliefs that were at the foundation of the building are justified or warranted beliefs. In the case study of this essay, we are unable to affirm that an entity understanding of 'mind' is more justified than a processual understanding of 'mind'. Choosing one or the other makes this nothing more than a matter of preference, and as Parmenides reveals, his concern particularly was a preference for simplicity.
In a certain way, this allegory can be blended with Plato’s allegory of the cave. The cave where we inhabit would correspond to the 16th level. Moreover, we can add the aspect that Plato’s prisoners take seriously, love and identify with the shadows that they are presented. This happens because in the beginning of our ontogeny, the spontaneous attitude of the baby is one of acceptance of the world into which he is thrown. The modern cinematic version of Plato’s cave is The Truman Show, and in this film, we get a confession from the hidden hand in charge of the shadows, who explains that “we accept the reality with which we are presented. It is as simple as that”. Similarly, we accept the discourses and the conceptual systems in which we are born and with which our culture operates. In doing so, we fail to recognize the underlying, lower-level beliefs that keep this 16th level cave operational.
This allegory is, of course, in the spirit of the deconstruction of Jacques Derrida.
What for Plato was 'going outside the cave' is here different because it amounts to suspending our spontaneous validation of our conceptual and philosophical meaning systems, and then descending to ground floor in order to see how our collective actions are the result of the rules of action inferred through those meaning systems.
One of the beliefs at the basis of this western edifice is the one identified by french anthropologist Philippe Descola: the belief that human is the only living being which has mind or psyche, which makes human the only being towards which one should have moral concern (Descola, 2014). This is also a belief that is not justified because evidence from zoology, primatology and plant neurobiology point towards the idea of continuity: that mind or psyche is a spontaneous phenomenon that occurs throughout all living beings.
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