Richard Rorty (1931–2007) turned consciously to pragmatism to rectify what he saw as mainstream epistemology’s crucial mistake: naively conceiving of language and thought as ‘mirroring’ the world. Rorty’s bold and iconoclastic attacks on this ‘representationalism’ birthed a so-called neopragmatism to which a number of influential recent philosophers have contributed (e.g. Hilary Putnam, Robert Brandom and Huw Price). Other pragmatists have objected to Rorty’s blithe dismissal of truth as a topic better left undiscussed (Rorty 1982), and have sought to rehabilitate classical pragmatist ideals of objectivity (e.g. Susan Haack, Christopher Hookway and Cheryl Misak). These philosophers are now sometimes referred to as New Pragmatists.1

I think Rorty gets a fundamental point right: “mainstream epistemology’s crucial mistake: naively conceiving of language and thought as ‘mirroring’ the world.” It’s not a mirror of the world, rather part of a neuron-constructed stand-in (or model) for a world that is in its nature unknowable.

When I read the Stanford article on pragmatism, I notice an inadequate emphasize on the biological nature of experience—by which I mean, a failure to realize that all experience is created by the brain, and therefore all knowing is (1) species-specific and (2) a stand-in for the world, not an interaction with the world.

Yes, we exist within the world and interact with it, but our minds do not interact with the world. Our bodies sample the world in various ways (collecting photons, etc) and from those samples our brains construct our senses (which are the first level of the stand-in). On top of the first level (possible only because the first level is sensual, that is, composed of qualia) objectification occurs which creates objects with properties—and this enables knowing (including cognition, language and concepts, etc).

Where pragmatism comes in is that the whole aim of this sensual/objectification/knowledge/memory/learning system is to benefit us in navigating an otherwise unknown/unknowable world.

Where skepticism comes in is that the whole reason we evolved this sensual/objectification/knowledge/memory/learning system is precisely because the world is fundamentally unknowable, and the system stands-in for the world in order to give us a map/model we can “know” and utilize to navigate. Thus knowing is extremely valuable to us, and yet we never know the external world “as it is.”

We can’t know the world as it is because it is not composed of the same stuff as knowing. The world is physical, and knowing is sensual and mental—the stuff of consciousness.

And right here we have the central hypothesis of naturalism: that knowing is the stuff of consciousness, and that the world is not. The hypothesis says that the world (devoid of consciousness) existed, and then some organisms in the world evolved neurons able to create consciousness within themselves.

And that is where consciousness exists, in there with the neurons creating it. Consciousness interacts with those neurons, is bound to them. And so consciousness—from senses to meanings to emotions—interacts only with neurons within organisms in the physical world. There alone is where sensations exist, mathematics exists, information exists, meanings exist.

Immediately, you likely object that information exists in books, in computer files, in road signs, even in flowers and trees and bugs and so on. Yes, we talk that way. But it doesn’t.

Information, like all consciousness, is an experience created by neurons in our brain. Yes we have invented an ingenious thing called written language which allows us to modify the world around us in a way that enables us to share common information experiences between us, inside our collective brains. We talk very inexactly when we call written words or symbols “information.” They are the code that enables each of us (if we know the language or code) to have similar information experiences. Similar thoughts.

This is an important point worth repeating. Meanings don’t actually exist on the paper or the screen. Meanings only exist in us when we read words on the paper or screen. If we are a foreigner, or a non-human species who only sees squiggly crud when looking at the screen, its “meanings” aren’t experienced.

Writing is a code to generate shared meanings in our brains. Don’t know the code? You won’t experience the meanings.

You might argue, well, our consciousness interacted with the physical world when we wrote words on the paper. No, we interacted with the paper, our consciousness did not. Its only role was within our brain, which in turn decided to move our arm and fingers to write on the paper. We interact.

In contrast, our consciousness is a tool used within the brain by the brain. A tool for the brain. Just as the brain is a tool for the body (among other roles, the brain is the body’s decider).

Modern neuroscience makes these points clear. As Jeff Hawkins, author of A Thousand Brains (2022), explains

There are no sensors in the brain itself, so the neurons that make up your brain are sitting in the dark, isolated from the world outside. The only way your brain knows anything about reality is through the sensory nerve fibers that enter the skull. The nerve fibers coming from the eyes, ears and skin look the same, and the spikes that travel along them are identical. There is no light or sound entering the skull, only electrical spikes.2

He continues

“And since we do not perceive spikes, everything we do perceive must be fabricated in the brain. Even the most basic feelings of light, sound and touch are creations of the brain; they only exist in its model of the world.”3

This means that we don’t perceive the world; what we perceive is instead a sensual “stand-in” for the world, a “virtual reality” created by the brain. Hawkins again,

“The truth is, we perceive our model of the world, not the world itself or the rapidly changing spikes entering the skull. As we go about our day, the sensory inputs to the brain invoke the appropriate parts of our world model, but what we perceive and what we believe is happening is the model. Our reality is similar to the brain-in-a-vat hypothesis; we live in a simulated world, but it is not in a computer—it is in our head.”4

Thus, we do not “perceive” the world around us; what we “perceive” is a virtual reality or simulacrum created by the brain and which evolved to stand-in for the world. It provides the organism (hopefully) with a reliable basis for action.

In this context, philosophical skepticism begins to make a lot of sense.

Again, this bears repeating. Biological organisms like us have no way of perceiving or knowing the organism-independent external (“physical”) reality. What we know is the “virtual reality” and corresponding cortical “model” which the brain creates and presents to us from hints the body has obtained via its sense organs. This virtual reality is what we naively mistake for the external world around us.

From this it follows…

(1) Knowledge is part of a stand-in the brain uses in order to improve its decision-making.

(2) There is no direct interaction between the stand-in and the world outside us.

(3) The “physical” world outside us is not what we actually “know” (even though it’s what we are concerned with). What we know is the brain’s stand-in.

(4) We make the stand-in more useful by acting in the world—that is, testing for usefulness and modifying the stand-in accordingly.

Again Hawkins

Recall that the neocortex is constantly making predictions. Predictions are how the brain tests whether its model of the world is correct; an incorrect prediction indicates something is wrong with the model and needs to be fixed. A prediction error causes a burst of activity in the neocortex, which directs our attention to the input that caused the error. By attending to the mis-predicted input, the neocortex relearns that part of the model. This ultimately leads to a modification of the brain’s model to more accurately reflect the world. Model repair is built into the neocortex, and normally it works reliably.5

I call this pragmatic empiricism—which turns out to be the method of the sciences.