The Symbolic Power of Embodied Cognition
Intro and Part One (to be continued)
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Introduction: embodied cognition and the economy of symbolism
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1. Embodied cognition is a philosophical project expected to yield a new understanding of cognition. At the same time, it is a postulated new paradigm for cognitive science that is supposed to deliver new, solid, empirically based scientific explanations. And yet, here I want to talk about neither of those, but about something else: its symbolic potential or broadly spiritual/meditational potential. First, to anchor this meditation on solid ground, I will discuss how the embodied cognition project relates to the most fundamental symbolic repertoire present in our culture(s) for centuries.
1.1 It's not material for an academic paper, at least not a publishable one given the problematic publishing standards nowadays. Rather, it's material for a meditation, if that's not too big of a word.
1.2 The immediate prompt to carry out this meditation was Matthieu Pageau's book, The Language of Creation, his brother Jonathan Pageau's YouTube materials, and the rise of a broader "school of meaning" (a term I borrow from Anna Riedl), which also includes John Vervaeke and Evan Thompson, thus linking embodied cognition. I will start by discussing a couple of topics from the aforementioned book. Where it goes next, I don't know—if anywhere. I'll see; we'll see.
1.3 In this context, it is important to clarify upfront what I mean by symbolism and symbols. This is not an original interpretation, but rather my understanding of what J. Pageau advocates in his podcasts. Given my formal training and relatively thorough expertise in philosophy, I could refer to the idea of presentation and clearly oppose it to the standard understanding of symbols as representing something or articulating content. However, they are more like lenses through which something presents or manifests itself in a way that is available to the senses. However, I'm afraid this is not entirely accurate, too.
1.3.1 Given my formal training in economics — which, though not in-depth, provided me with some heuristic tools — I would like to share an idea that some people may find offensive. However, mere controversy is not my goal. Here it is: Symbols are condensed information, somewhat like market prices of goods. Consider the vast amount of potential knowledge about a single good, such as shoes or Wedel chocolate, in relation to the various idiosyncratic preferences of different people. If the market is competitive, all this knowledge is condensed into the market price of the good. In a sense, it distills the essence from all the contextual idiosyncrasies and "tells" all potential buyers what it's worth. This information is as imperfect and coarse-grained as possible, but sufficient to deliver the "essence" needed to decide whether to buy the good. Now, consider the symbol of a tree, which, in my view, is an analogous, coarse-grained, but usable condensation of billions of cases involving gradual and anchored growth. Or consider the symbol of a serpent. If Lynne Isbell is right about its evolutionary origins, then it condenses information about an uncalculable number of dangerous and uncertain encounters written into our evolutionary heritage as mammals—quite a powerful idea!
2. At its core, embodied cognition is the idea that cognitive functions or capacities are not constituted by internal computational processes run by the mind (or brain) that happen to occur in the physical, biochemical, biological, and social environment, but rather, they are constituted by interactions and multiple bonds with this environment. This may sound trivial to some, but it is not. Embodied (or ecological, as I'd prefer to call it) cognition offers a different conceptualization of the relationship between the mind and the world, and of the nature of the cognitive bond between your conscious mind and the world around you.
2.1 This new conceptualization breaks with the idea, going back to René Descartes, that there is a sharp, unnegotiable boundary between subjective, doubtful things and objective, external things.
2.2 In the foundational book for the ecological (4E) cognition movement, Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch write:
„(…) cognition is not the representation of a pregiven world by a pregiven mind but is rather the enactment of the world and a mind on the basis of a history of the variety of actions that a being in the world performs” (Varela et al 1991: 9)
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Of course, this concept of enactment sparked many controversies and absurd accusations, including claims that it's just a new form of subjective idealism or solipsism, which is to say the idea that there is no real world and that everything is constructed in our minds. Nothing could be further from the truth.
2.2.1 There’s no time here to discuss the concept of enactment. I have addressed it in some of my papers and in my book The Ontology of Ecological Cognition. For now, think for the sake of an illustration of opening a graphic file on your laptop. The file itself, if this notion makes sense, is a cluster of physical events run by the hardware, whose information load is measured in bits. However, approached from this angle, it is not yet and not actually a graphic file. You need to open it in a suitable program so that an image displays on your screen. Therefore, opening the file is not a projection "off the top of your head" — the file is already on your laptop. However, you need a program to make it an actual image. Metaphorically speaking, enactment does this with the physical stuff around you – it „brings them to presentation,” as Edmund Husserl would put it.
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2.2.1.1 Note that each opened image already has meaning for you! An enacted world is a realm of meaning. This meaning starts from the "meaning" suitable for unicellular organisms, continues with the "meaning" (or no quotation marks here?) suitable for complex mammals with highly developed emotionality, and ends (does it?) with the meaning suitable for you—a moral or aesthetic meaning. This evolutionary "development" will prove crucial below.
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2.2.2 More philosophically, enactment is akin to actualizing a potentiality within a given entity, in a manner similar to Aristotle's thinking.
3. Pageau's book is like an introduction to a foreign language, as he explicitly states at the beginning of Chapter 4. Reading it is frequently like learning hieroglyphs for a modern person. It is akin to regaining a language and bringing it back to life, as happened with the Lithuanian language, for example (Don DeLillo’s novel Names comes to mind as I write this). In any case, the sentiment is rooted in the realization that this fundamental array of Biblical symbolism, which has played a pivotal role in shaping our identity (or our lack thereof) across the Mediterranean region and in regions where its influence has extended, has largely been either forgotten or pushed to the sidelines. Despite this, it continues to influence our worldview, though we often remain unaware of its origins (see Tom Holland's brilliant book Dominion). What do symbolic images mean, such as Heaven and Earth, the Tree of Knowledge, the tree as a symbol with multiple applications, or the mountain as a symbol?
3.1 The book is not a theological treatise. You need to understand the language in which such a treatise might be written. You need to learn the basics of playing the piano before you can even imagine playing Chopin. This is how I read the book.
3.2 Yet, the temptation to play with these symbols and speculate is stronger than the shame that comes with some of these speculations descending into nonsense. But I will take the risk below.
3.2.1 I believe it's an uncontroversial claim that our understanding of symbols evolves. Moreover, even if we assume the existence of a symbol's most fundamental core/residual meaning, deeply rooted in the past and perhaps even dating back to pre-linguistic periods of human or pre-human existence, the fact remains that we don't currently have direct access to this core level. Therefore, I believe—and this belief drives my amateurish effort here—that we are capable of rediscovering the symbolic legacy given to us by previous generations in light of contemporary conceptual and imaginative frameworks.
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Part One: The Evolution of Heaven and Earth or Meaning and Matter
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4. To recap the aforementioned introductory thoughts, I will reiterate the assumptions, expectations, and modus operandi of this entire non-academic project.
4.1 The first assumption is that the embodied/ecological approach to cognition conveys various means of understanding, including an understanding of our symbolic legacy.
4.2 The expectation is that embodied/ecological cognition can do more than that. Namely, it can lay the groundwork for another stage in the evolution of symbolism. In a sense, this may even subtly change the meanings of some symbolic images while maintaining the necessary continuity.
4.3 Third, I will proceed as follows. I will take some thoughts from Pageau’s book and comment on them as if asking open questions. I will continue this work and, at the same time, bring up topics from other sources—from other readings, for example, if I find them relevant—and from suggestions that readers of this material may offer (hopefully any). I will consider any source whose relevance to the issues under discussion here becomes apparent. I'm not that concerned about whether all these references are academically substantiated, etc.
5. The first thing I would like to address is the foundation of everything else: the relationship between the physical/material and the meaningful/spiritual. In the book, we read that "scientific and traditional cosmologies see reality from two completely different perspectives: 1) in terms of its practical and material implications and 2) in terms of its higher meaning. The first is the specialty of modern science, which conceptualizes all things in terms of meaningless matter and mindless causality. The second is the specialty of religion, which interprets every phenomenon as the manifestation of a spiritual truth” (p. 3). Further on we read that these two perspectives „have always been in competition because they are fundamentally different”, although Pegeau also admits that „they have learned to coexist and even cooperated on the past”. That said, „a series of important scientific discoveries have dealt a fatal blow to the spiritual worldview, one from which it has never recovered” (p. 5).
6. The question is, why bring the traditional perspective back? Here, we learn that the reason is because biblical cosmology „describes reality at the meta-cognitive level”, implying that „the story of the fall is really about the process of knowledge itself and the dangers of acquiring greater material knowledge at the expense of spiritual insight” (p. 6).
6.1 The idea of the metacognitive perspective is crucial and worth developing. As I see it, the cognitive perspective is about gaining new knowledge of how the material world works. However, from this standpoint, we cannot problematize knowledge itself and its function, nor can we consider its ramifications for a broader context of human life, both individual and social. From the cognitive perspective, scientific cognition itself is not visible as an issue. The Book of Genesis, as I interpret Pageau’s remarks, invites us to adopt a broader, meta-cognitive perspective and consider cognition itself. "Meta-cognitive" essentially encompasses the focus of epistemology and cognitive science.
6.2 According to Pageau, we will then see how specific kinds of cognition impact our human condition. The key recognition we will make is that, as soon as humans looked beyond the limits of the Garden of Eden, their "eyes were opened" to a strange universe devoid of spiritual meaning. They ‘knew that they were naked’ and saw their previous worldview as somewhat illusory." This narrative of the Fall "perfectly matches the plight of humanity since the scientific revolution" (p. 7).
7. I believe adopting a metacognitive perspective is crucial. Once I do so, I can explain the major differences in how I see the issues Pageau tackles and how I differ from him. However, the points I am about to make are not simply "here is how I see things." Rather, even when there are no explicit question marks, they are all questions—to Pageau and to all the readers of his book and these remarks—or one general question in the form of "Why not try another reading? How would you combine it with yours?" with multiple concretizations.
7.1 First, the claim that the scientific and spiritual perspectives have always been in competition seems somewhat ahistorical to me. It assumes that the terms "science," "material," and "spiritual" have had stable meanings throughout millennia that clearly delineate relevant worldviews. However, it is more accurate to say that the sense of materiality as opposed to spirituality, and vice versa, emerged gradually over the development and evolution of our cognitive and conceptual tools.
7.1.1 Here is how I propose to approach this issue. First, whose perspective or point of view is the story of Genesis written from? Are there any studies that begin with this kind of problematization? As it stands, the story is written from the perspective of an external observer who sees God’s act of creation and provides an accurate, step-by-step description in symbolic terms. However, this is a peculiar perspective, if not outright absurd, since no person or cognizing creature was present to take this position. After all, the story is about the creation of everything, including all cognizers and possible points of view. The other option is that the story of Genesis is written from God's perspective or from the perspective of someone pretending to have a God's-eye view. This is someone who sees the scene of creation and is capable of "distancing" themselves from it, just as we are capable of taking an external perspective and observing a scene such as "A man is waiting for an approaching bus." However, we are not in a position to occupy this kind of perspective with respect to the act of creation, including the relationship between the meaningful and the material/physical. The embodied cognition paradigm has led us to problematize the figure of the observer. Being embodied means more than just being bodily creatures; it means being situated creatures, and this situatedness applies to all our cognitive endeavors.
7.1.2 So, if we are not pretenders portraying ourselves as gods, but instead place ourselves as an integral part of the creation story, then our capacity to distinguish the layers of meaning and Logos from pure materiality evolved gradually. And it is still evolving! This is the lens through which I view Pageau’s claims as ahistorical: he takes the distinction as given, as if it were ready-made and available to us. Historically speaking, however, there is a story behind each concept and conceptual distinction. There is a process of differentiation, reorganization, and clarification of our conceptual frameworks. As a result, we develop concepts that enable us to make sense of the world. The evolution and development of these conceptual systems can be seen as a multigenerational process of grinding and polishing the intellectual lenses through which we see the world and through which the world first manifests itself to us.
7.1.3 The Book of Genesis does not leave this issue unaddressed, though. Here, the symbol of the Tree of Knowledge enters the scene. For as simple as it gets, the symbol hints at a growth of something, a development of a certain cognitive state, and the moment at which Adam eats the fruit and his eyes are opened, a certain distinction or discrimination in his perception emerges, as a completion of a certain process of growth. Seeing oneself naked, as I read it, is not about finding oneself in a strange universe devoid of spiritual meaning. Rather, it's about seeing oneself delineated from one's surroundings (not overlapping with them, thus not being covered — naked). It's also about seeing the two layers — the spiritual or meaningful and the material or physical — as delineated from each other.
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7.1.4 From this perspective, we should imagine something like this:
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The Tree is anchored in something cognitively opaque and completely inaccessible. Gradually, however, some cognitive transparency and accessibility grow and evolve. The first "level" of branches represents various imperfect conceptual distinctions, like "shades of gray," and the top "level" represents a clear-cut, "black-and-white" dichotomy of matter and meaning. This is, of course, a simplified and idealized scenario since, in reality, there are innumerable intermediate "layers." Furthermore, we never have a clear-cut, final, or ideal distinction in any content, including the differentiation between matter and meaning. It's always better or worse compared to a certain benchmark but is always imperfect overall. Assuming the simplified picture, we take the final "level" of the Tree, "cut it off," and "flip" it so that it stands for what's "up in Heaven," the sphere of meaning, and "down on Earth," matter. This "cut-off" is justified when referring to that distinction and not the entire Tree. However, we should never forget that the distinction is a result of the growth of the Tree of Knowledge as its final "level." Or – this is where the whole story "clicks" in my mind – as the Tree's fruit!
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7.1.5 What is the Garden of Eden, then? What does this image symbolize? And is there (I believe there is; this may come as a surprise to the reader) a concept of modern scientific vocabulary that might flesh out the specificity of this ideal beginning, and—remember! —the ideal end of the evolution of the universe? First, I wouldn't say it's an image of spiritual reality whose "illusory" character becomes apparent when the fruit of knowledge is eaten. Again, there are two perspectives. From our cognitive angle (not God's!), the Garden represents the state of undifferentiation. Thus, it's neither spiritual nor physical. It's a state where the two are mixed because proper knowledge hasn't grown yet (the Tree), resulting in the drawing of the line between the spiritual and physical. Consuming the fruit from the Tree is telling in this context: isn't it interesting that some naturalistic evolutionary conceptions of knowledge, e.g., Ruth Millikan's, speak of consuming information?
7.1.6 But what is even more interesting is that, independently of the fact that the Garden is a state of undifferentiation, its deepest sense is that it is—now, I don't know how to spell it out, since I can't stop being a human observer—from the perspective of the act of creation itself, objectively, the Garden was an actual mix (for lack of a better term) of the spiritual or meaningful and the material or physical. Here is a somewhat surprising fact, already mentioned above: Modern science has a very good concept to describe this peculiar mix of meaning and physicality. This concept is environment.
7.2 The concepts of environment and niche have a history going back to Darwin. However, as is the case with any conceptual tool, they evolved into their current forms in more recent times, including the niche construction theory, which was developed quite recently. First, I will share a brilliant quotation from Richard Lewontin, one of the most influential evolutionary biologists of the 20th century:
“There is a confusion between the correct assertion that there is a physical world outside of an organism which would continue to exist in the absence of the species, and the incorrect claim that environments exist without species. Earth will continue to precess on its axis and produce periodic glacial and interglacial ages, volcanoes will erupt, evaporation from oceans will result in rain and snow, independently of any living beings. But glacial streams, volcanic ash deposits, and pools of water are not environments” (Lewontin 2000, p. 48)
7.2.1 This means that the concept of an environment, as used in biology and as it should be used in cognitive science, has a relatedness encoded in its deepest sense. Environments are composed of smaller units called niches. A specific niche always has a particular organism or species (if we climb up to the population level) as a constructor. A niche is not merely a place. Instead, it is defined by specific conditions related to the needs and capacities of a given organism that are satisfied at a given physical location.
7.2.2 This aligns with claims from the embodied cognition movement that "organisms cast a web of significance on their world" (Di Paolo et al., 2010, p. 39) through an inherent pursuit of sense-making. We read:
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„(…) species bring forth and specifies its own domain of problems to be solved (…) this domain does not exist ‘out there’ in an environment that acts as a landing pad for organisms that somehow drop or parachute into the world. Instead, living beings and their environments stand in relation to each other through mutual specification or codetermination” (Varela et al. 1991, p. 198)
7.3 Thus, niches and larger environments are meaningful matter, not merely matter, and obviously not meaning detached from their material basis. This is the world making sense for a particular living creature with specific needs and capacities (including cognitive capacities). Here, I and others, e.g., Andy Clark, talk of cognitive niches).
7.4 Here comes a somewhat surprising claim: The Garden of Eden can be interpreted as a perfect or ideal environment, one in which every need is satisfied by a certain physical condition and every physical entity is related to some need or capacity. In other words, everything exists for a reason, and each reason is realized in a physical state of affairs.
7.4.1 But the fact that we can interpret the Garden as an environment is not that shocking. What is much more shocking is something I will express in a risky way: Biblical tradition had an intuition underlying the concept of an environment. Yet, there was no place for this intuition at the beginning of the scientific revolution in early modern times. The latter was driven by a resurgence of atomism and the emergence of mechanicism. These developments led to breakthroughs in physics and laid the groundwork for the scientific study of cognition, beginning with sensory perception. However, thinking in terms of systems was also gradually emerging in various places (see a great book by P. Ball, Critical Mass). The actual beginning of thinking in environmental terms, however, was Darwin’s work. It was a sort of reemergence of this kind of thinking, though it must sound strange given the religious outrage it stoked.
7.4.2 You cannot have thinking in terms of evolution without thinking in terms of environment, and vice versa, although this fact is somehow frequently forgotten.
7.4.2 In this context, here is my reading of where Pageau is profoundly right: he is right about the Enlightenment and its view of science and its tacit metaphysics (tacit since Voltaire or even Kant understood very little of what traditional metaphysics had been). Thus, the Enlightenment lost a sense of Logos. Why? Because it lacked a concept of the environment in which matter and meaning converge on a naturalistic basis, even before considering religious spirituality. This kind of naturalism does not open the door for religion, but it also does not close it.
7.4.3 On the other hand, there is no reason to formulate this feature of the Enlightenment as an accusation because it was a certain stage in the evolution of our conceptualization, explanation, and understanding of the world, and that's OK; it laid the foundation for what would come next, so there is neither good reason to cast spells on it nor – which is more important here – to pretend that no evolution has occurred ever since and we are still parts of the Enlightenment movement. Contrary to what Steven Pinker postulates, we're not, and for good reason.
7.5 So why is the embodied cognition movement non-trivial? Generally, it takes the concept of environment seriously, which means it also takes the relatedness and meaning-laden character of environments seriously and applies them to cognition and action. Within the cognitive sciences and philosophy of mind, this brings significant ontological changes. I work on these changes, but they are not that relevant here.
7.5.1 From the perspective undertaken here, it is significant because it allows us to discuss the relatedness of any cognizable feature of the world, including values as we experience them, without relativism in the standard sense, which boils down to a dictum like "you're the judge of what's good and beautiful" or "do what you fancy," and so on. Just as with the perception of colors, it depends on the cognitive apparatus of a specific perceiver. However, it would be absurd to claim that there are no colors in the world. The relatedness we can now discuss says something like, "You are a lens through which what you call 'good' and 'beautiful' manifests itself. Therefore, these are imperfect names, terms, and concepts, but they do channel what would otherwise be cognitively inaccessible."
7.5.2 Second, note that the latter thought makes us rethink, but never abandon, the idea of a hierarchy in—not of, but in—being. For what manifests itself is always "more" than any manifestation. Yet, it serves as an ideal "end" to the pursuit of improving manifestations, making them finer and finer. Thus, there is an aspect of moral obligation.
7.5.3 Third, these thoughts and obligations touch upon the most important issue in Matthieu Pageau’s book and Jonathan Pageau’s online teachings, as I interpret them: how these hierarchies are realized in the microcosm of a human being and the life of an individual.
7.5.4 Fourth, the notion of a manifestation, as used above, as it may be "interpreted out," so to speak, from the embodied cognition movement, is clearly related, as I see it, to the concept of manifestation in the religious tradition, especially in Early Christianity, the iconic tradition, and the mystical idea of an individual as a vessel (another nice connection leads to L. Wittgenstein and how he was inspired—and he was! — by this idea, but that's a topic for another time).
7.6 So far, so good. All these remarks refer to just the beginning of the book. I've read the rest, and there's substantial material to comment on, including several developments of the aforementioned thoughts. If time allows and the reaction to what I've just put here is at least remotely positive and constructive (and, believe me, it is always a risk within the academic community to involve oneself in this kind of free spiritual meditation publicly), I will certainly continue.
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8. Note that, from the perspective of the embodied cognition movement, the individual body is also a merger of matter and meaning (a view inspired by thinkers such as Hans Jonas, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, or Humberto Maturana, among others). This provides us with a possible way of thinking and a way of thinking about the kind of body we are "promised" after the major change referred to in the Biblical text – again, very imperfectly; so imperfectly that it's hard to know what it's all about – resurrection. Was this the body in which Christ appeared? That is the subject of another—even riskier—speculation.
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