Destroying the ultimate dichotomy

Introduction

In several posts, I have defended ideas of anti-representationalism and correlationism, such as:
- Beliefs and concepts are not representational tools, they do not “stand for” external things.
- Truth and objectivity are constitutively normative concepts that emerge (in a way similar to morality) in a social context.
- Beliefs are not different from emotions or very fine-grained personality traits.
- The idea of an external, objective, mind-independent, thing-in-itself is incoherent.
- Etc.

The thing I want to discuss in this post is the mental mess it is to defend and try to assimilate ideas like that. I'll also explain how to overcome these difficulties.

The limits of language and thought

A first problem (which I touched on a little in a previous post) is that the representationalism/anti-representationalism debate doesn't seem to take place “within the scope” of language/thought.
We can imagine a kind of space of views that can be asserted or defended. Our activities of language and thought are always things that are practiced in this “assertoric space”. (This space may not be the same depending on presuppositions and frameworks, it may be modified, extended, reduced, etc.)

But the representationalism/anti-representationalism debate doesn't seem to be locatable in this assertoric space. This debate seems to be about how to treat or live our activities of language and thought.
As I said in a previous post, one can be an anti-representationalist and still defend a correspondence theory of truth or a strong theory of the metaphysics of reference. For example, if one considers that we should believe what is useful (a caricature of pragmatism for simplicity's sake) and that the correspondence theory of truth is useful, one can adopt it while being anti-representationalist.
If this is the case, it seems we can't “find a place” in the assertoric space where to place anti-representationalism, and by the same token, it seems we can't find a place where to place anti-representationalism in our doxastic web; we can't place it at the level of meta-semantics, because we can support a strong theory of the metaphysics of reference “in an anti-representationalist way”; we can't place it at the level of meta-meta-semantics, because...
It seems that as soon as one asserts anti-representationalism, it must be withdrawn.

Let's imagine a group of roleplayer friends who agree to spend the day playing a certain role. If a member of this group wanted to ask his friends to change the rules of the game during that day, he might run into the problem that, technically, every one of his sentences is supposed to be understood as part of his roleplay.

This seems “somewhat” to be the problem with the representationalism/anti-representationalism debate, but in a much deeper way. It seems that in order to defend a position in the debate, one must necessarily break rules that cannot be broken.
It seems that engaging in this debate leads to breaking the rules of the assertoric space, rules that cannot be broken because they are its foundation. In the roleplay analogy, the member who wants to change the rules of the game can probably find a way to make his friends understand that he's talking by placing himself outside the game. In our case, however, there's no such thing as “outside language and thought”. Like a fish that wants to get out of the water to show what water is, it seems that engaging in the debate breaks the only framework in which it can take place.

Instability

A second problem is that adopting these ideas can sometimes lead to forms of instability. For example, adopting anti-representationalism may lead us to adopt a new epistemology, but this epistemology may not support anti-representationalism.
If, in adopting anti-representationalism, we start to consider that we should believe what is useful (a caricature of pragmatism for simplicity's sake), imagine the situation we find ourselves in if we judge that anti-representationalism is not useful.

It can create a kind of mentally unstable situation. A bit like if we start believing in Boltzmann brains because of our physical theories, but that the Boltzmann brains hypothesis undermines our justifications for our physical theories.

Another unstable situation can arise if we are a normative anti-realist and adopt anti-representationalism because we adopt the idea that truth is a constitutively normative notion. Adopting anti-representationalism can alter our epistemology by making us conclude that all that matters for accepting moral language is its usefulness, or that anti-realist arguments are pseudo-problems à la Carnap's “external questions”.

In such a phase of instability, one can find oneself in a strange situation where one has the impression of “falsely/fictionally” accepting representationalism but “really” accepting anti-representationalism. But you can't really give a coherent notion of what it might be like to falsely accept representationalism but really accept anti-representationalism.

Loops

A third problem is that we can sometimes find ourselves in a kind of loop where we try to detach ourselves from kinds of representationalist feelings, only to realize that this detachment itself employs representationalist feelings.

For example, we may try to defusion from one thought only to realize that when we finally succeed, we are fused with other thoughts that seem to ground the defusion of the first thought.

Or we can try to eliminate the feeling of normativity from our head only to realize that this attempt at elimination is accompanied/motivated by a feeling of normativity. We can defend anti-representationalism and then come to wonder “but is anti-representationalism a better belief/attitude?” when our anti-representationalism is itself motivated by normative anti-realism.

The exit

The thing is, by “meditating” on the ideas of anti-representationalism, many problems end up “dissolving”. It's not that we “find answers to the problems” by reflection, but that the “problems” cease to be perceived as problems. There's a kind of shift in consciousness that transforms the way we see/experience something (a kind of insight), and what were previously perceived as problems are seen as residues of an old “way of living”.

It's pretty hard to explain what this shift looks like. But I think something important to realize is the central place of dichotomies in tensions.
Consider these dichotomies:
World for us vs. world in itself
Analytic statement vs. synthetic statement
Subjective statement vs. factual statement
Non-cognitive vs. cognitive
Normative vs. factual
Description vs. what is described
Representation vs. referent
Relationships vs essences
Feeling of correctness vs correctness
Phenomenal experience vs. beliefs
Fiction vs. reality
Etc.

We live by these dichotomies, and anti-representationalism/correlationism attack these dichotomies. The problem is that, sometimes, an anti-representationalist argument only attacks one pole of a dichotomy, and you can keep the dichotomy but with an anti-realism of one of the two poles. This is wrong: the anti-representationalist attack should make the whole dichotomy collapse.
But that's normal, these dichotomies are so ingrained in the mind that it's hard to lose them at the snap of a finger, and you can end up with a strange situation where you retain a “one-pole dichotomy”.

When the dichotomy persists but with only one pole, we're faced with misguided questions like “oh, you say there's no difference between the world for us and the world in itself, so for you there's just one big idealistic fiction, one big subjective novel? how do our theories work so well if they're just a fiction?”. This problem is flawed in that the anti-representationalist attack should cause the world-for-us/world-in-itself dichotomy to collapse entirely. When this dichotomy collapses, this problem can no longer be formulated; the problem dissolves, because it can only be articulated within the old, erroneous framework. The problem thus appears to us as absurd as someone saying “oh, you say there's no analytic-synthetic distinction, so for you it's all tautology?”.

The real collapse of the dichotomies targeted by anti-representationalism solves many problems. People who accuse anti-representationalism of being about anti-realism, nihilism, relativism, etc., are stuck in the dichotomies that anti-representationalism seeks to destroy.
But when a dichotomy is actually broken, there's a shift of consciousness, an insight. The two poles strangely disappear or merge, and this leads to a dissolution of many problems.

(I myself haven't always paid attention in the past to the distinction between destroying one pole of a dichotomy and destroying the dichotomy. When I say, for example, that there is no distinction between sensations and beliefs, and that everything is therefore only sensations, you can see that this doesn't really point to the destruction of the non-cognitive/cognitive dichotomy, but to the destruction of the cognitive pole of the dichotomy).

The ultimate dichotomy

Breaking down “well-known” dichotomies helps many problems, but not all, and sometimes it creates new ones.
I think there's a kind of “ultimate dichotomy” that has to be destroyed after all the previous ones have been destroyed; the fiction/reality dichotomy.

Take the problem of the limits of language, in which it seems you can't place anti-representationalism in the assertoric space or the doxastic web.

The thing is that anti-representationalism should not be treated as “competing” with other theories. You have to treat anti-representationalist meta-semantics and representationalist meta-semantics as two equally valid descriptions.
To make a dubious analogy, one person may describe a triangle as an arrow while another person may describe it as a body. Neither the description as an arrow nor the description as a body is “more valid”, not even the description as a triangle.

We need to stop seeing anti-representationalism as a position that explains what language “really is”. There is not anti-representationalism which is somehow above representationalism and tells deep truths about our activities of language and thought that we must not formulate in order to fictionally accept representationalism.

When we come to accept both the anti-representationalist and the representationalist description as equally valid, the fiction/reality dichotomy collapses. It's accepting both descriptions as equally valid that leads to a transformation in our attitude of belief. We stop experiencing language, thought and the world in the same way, not because we “really do accept anti-representationalism deep down”, but because accepting the anti-representationalist description and the representationalist description as equally valid means that belief is no longer the same thing.

So there's no longer this assertoric space in which we can't place the representationalism/anti-representationalism debate. This debate is clearly positioned at the level of meta-semantics. But transformation doesn't come through the acceptance of one position or the other, it comes through the acceptance of both, as two relevant descriptions. And through the acceptance of both, the “feeling it does” to “accept a position” is transformed.
And this transformation is also perfectly locatable in the assertoric space; it's perfectly possible to say “accepting both positions as valid leads to a transformation in the experience of belief” without having the impression of trying in vain to get out of language.

This sort of common feeling among those with strange meta-semantics of banging their heads against the walls of the language cage comes from the fact that they feel they are trying to say something “profoundly true” “about” the “ultimate nature” of language. But if they only saw their theory as a relevant description as valid as the other, this tension would dissipate.

“But how can you say you've had this transformation of the attitude of belief? Isn't the description that you didn't have it just as valid?”
Yes, both are equally valid, but I have no use for the other. The problem here doesn't represent an ineffability of anti-representationalism, it comes from an inability to grasp the collapse of the fiction/reality dichotomy.

Conclusion

So here's what I think.
Anti-representationalism/correlationism destroy dichotomies.
Sometimes, false problems emerge because people don't understand that it's the dichotomy that needs to be destroyed, not just one of the two poles.
After destroying several dichotomies, the “ultimate dichotomy”, the fiction/reality dichotomy, must be destroyed, otherwise false problems will persist, such as the impression of banging one's head against the walls of the language cage.
To destroy this ultimate dichotomy, we must begin to see the teachings of anti-representationalism/correlationism solely as alternative descriptions that are no more or less valid. By doing this, the ultimate dichotomy collapses, so that the attitude of belief or its experience is transformed, eliminating all doxastic tensions.
It's precisely by realizing that “there's a fiction/reality dichotomy” and “there's no fiction/reality dichotomy” are equally valid descriptions that we achieve transformation in our relationship to the doxastic.

During the whole process of eliminating dichotomies, anti-representationalism/correlationism were taken as revealing deep truths, which created a lot of tension. But at the end, by destroying the ultimate dichotomy, we realize that anti-representationalism doesn't reveal deep truths, that it only proposes alternative descriptions that are neither superior nor inferior.

We must go all the way to the very end of the anti-representationalist project.
We have to climb all the rungs of anti-representationalist ultimate truths that reveal the falsity of cognitive/non-cognitive, normative/factual dichotomies, etc., to finally reach the top and realize that the “ultimate truths” of anti-representationalism are in fact conventional truths.

As I see it, what I'm saying in this post is somewhat in line with what Nagarjuna, the father of Madhyamaka, says. I'm no expert in the field, but at least some interpretations seem to point in that direction. For example, the idea that the distinction between conventional truth and ultimate truth is itself conventional, or when Nagarjuna says that he has no thesis, or when he says that we shouldn't take emptiness as a thesis because emptiness is empty, or when he says that there's no difference between samsara and nirvana, etc.