"The Case Against Reality" seems more right than wrong

It's rare that I find it difficult to put down a non-fiction book because I'm so eager to read the final chapters and grasp the author's concluding arguments.

Such was the case, though, with The Case Against Reality: Why Evolution Hid the Truth From Our Eyes, by Donald Hoffman. I hadn't planned to spend so much time reading the book this morning, but I carried on until I'd read all but a technical appendix.

Hoffman's Big Idea is this: evolution selects for fitness, not truth. If a living organism perceives reality well enough to be able to pass on its genes, that's what evolution is all about. Or at least, mostly about. In shorthand, FBT, Fitness Beats Truth.

Another acronym Hoffman uses a lot is ITP, the Interface Theory of Perception. Here's a paragraph that encapsulates key ideas in the book.

Perception is not about truth. It's about having kids. Genes that fashion perceptions that help us raise kids are genes that may win the fitness game and elbow their way into the next generation. The FBT Theorem tells us that winning genes do not code for perceiving truth.

ITP tells us that they code instead for an interface that hides the truth about objective reality and provides us with icons -- physical objects with colors, textures, shapes, motions, and smells -- that allow us to manipulate that unseen reality in just the ways we need to survive and reproduce. 

Physical objects in spacetime are simply our icons in our desktop.

This Big Idea strikes me as being more right than wrong. Which means that I agree with most of what Hoffman says in his engrossing book.

Still, a Publisher's Weekly review had some key words that reflect how I see The Case Against Reality. "Intriguing but overreaching treatise."

I'm a believer in objective reality. So I resonated with Hoffman's contention in all but the final chapter that objective reality exists. For example, he writes:

According to the FBT Theorem, if selection shapes perceptions, then perceptions guide useful behaviors rather than report objective truths about an independent world. Something exists independent of us, but that something doesn't match our perceptions. This feels difficult to understand because of our penchant to reify our interface. 

Hoffman notes that a Maserati certainly seems real. It can be seen, and touched with eyes closed. However, Hoffman says:

It proves nothing. It suggests, but does not prove, that there is something objective. But that something could be wildly different from anything you perceive. 

When you open your eyes, you interact with that unknown something and create a visual icon of a Maserati. When you close your eyes and reach out your hand, you create a tactile icon. The same is true for all the other senses.

OK, that seems reasonable.

There's an objective reality, but all sentient beings perceive it differently. We humans view reality in one fashion, while other species view it quite differently. An ant, bat, dolphin, and eagle all have their own way of looking upon the world, as would, almost certainly, aliens from a galaxy far, far away.

I certainly agree that there is no one way, or preferred way, to perceive reality. Evolution has led each species here on Earth to possess different reality interfaces, in Hoffman's language. So the icons that populate these interfaces also are going to be unique.

No two people perceive the world in exactly the same way, and certainly no two species do. Hoffman appears to be on solid ground when he says this in his Preface:

The purpose of a desktop interface is not to show you the "truth" of the computer -- where "truth," in this metaphor, refers to circuits, voltages, and layers of software.

Rather, the purpose of an interface is to hide the "truth" and to show simple graphics that help you perform useful tasks such as crafting emails and editing photos. If you had to toggle voltages to craft an email, your friends would never hear from you.

That is what evolution has done. It has endowed us with senses that hide the truth and display the simple icons we need to survive long enough to raise offspring. Space, as you perceive it when you look around, is just your desktop -- a 3D desktop. Apples, snakes, and other physical objects are simply icons in your 3D desktop.

Those icons are useful, in part, because they hide the complex truth about objective reality. Your senses have evolved to give you what you need. You may want truth, but you don't need truth. Peceiving truth would drive our species extinct. You need simple icons that show you how to act to stay alive.

Perception is not a window on objective reality. It is an interface that hides objective reality behind a veil of helpful icons.

However, Hoffman casts independently existing objective reality aside in his final chapter. I found this intellectually dubious. He spends nine chapters arguing that evolution has fashioned interfaces for determining what is useful for us, fitness-wise. So what we perceive is objective reality filtered through both a species-specific interface and our personal interface.

(A blind person, for example, has a decidedly different interface than a sighted person.)

Then, in chapter 10, Hoffman casts objective reality aside. Or at least, objective reality that is independent of conscious agents. He writes:

"But," you might object, "didn't you earlier define 'objective reality' as that which exists when no one observes? And don't conscious experiences exist only when some agent observes? Haven't you contradicted yourself when you propose conscious realism, and claim that objective reality consists of conscious agents?"

Indeed, for sake of argument, I adopted a notion of objective reality that is accepted by most physicalists. Then I used evolutionary assumptions that are also accepted by most physicalists to make the case against physicalism and its notion of objective reality.

Now that I have presented that case, I am proposing a new ontology, and with it a new notion of objective reality in which conscious agents, with their experiences and structures, are central.

Well, I think his original ontology was stronger. Somehow Hoffman ends up arguing that "Objects, shapes, space, and time reside in consciousness. If the living creature were removed, all these qualities would be annihilated." 

That's a huge argument to make in the concluding pages of a book where Hoffman argued quite differently up to that point. Understand: he isn't saying that living creatures perceive space and time from their own unique evolutionary perspective. Rather, he claims that there is no such thing as space and time absent a conscious observer.

He may be right. Perhaps the universe was just sitting there doing nothing for billions of years after the big bang, waiting for conscious observers to bring it into being.

But how did conscious observers come to exist if there was no space and time for evolution to work its magic? This strikes me as a major flaw in Hoffman's replacement ontology. His final two paragraphs sound way too New Age'y for my tastes.

What is spacetime? This book has offered you the red pill. Spacetime is your virtual reality, a headset of your own making. The objects you see are your invention. You create them with a glance and destroy them with a blink.

You have worn this headset all your life. What happens if you take it off?

That said, I still hugely enjoyed his book. Again, it seems much more right than wrong. Check out his TED talk, and I think you'll agree.

Comments

[David Christopher Lane]

Related little film on The HOFFMAN conjecture

https://youtu.be/LEXUD5hoGMU

[Vinny]

Biggest objective reality is infinite energy in atoms and all the universe. Sant Mat was intended to be the way by which the carnal thoughts ought to be replaced by new paradigm of Sant Mat Social imagination of Saints/ Mystics plus Sant Mat Trivia/Social gathering discussing these concepts.

[Unicorn]

Over thinking, over analytical, too much information, just another "conjecture" to make a few real iconic dollars! Full of horseshit!

[Spence Tepper]

There is subjective reality, which is what we see and hear and believe...
And there is objective reality, what's actually there.

The two are always connected. Every fantasy has elements that are fed from experience. Imagination itself is a predictable outcome of other real forces, experiences, desires and fears.

Philosophy is the love of objective reality by subjective human beings. Though the two lovers are forever separated, occasionally they meet and can hold hands for a few moments.

[Spence Tepper]

So when you see the blazing image of your Master inside, that's real. But it is reality filtered through our symbol - making brain. That is informed by something very real. It's not imagination, but it is a symbolic overlay. When we go past that, part all the impressions, physical symbols are replaced with more and more abstract ones. The differences between touch, vision, hearing, smell and movement become arbitrary and we experience things directly, stages. The inner journey. Even our intelligence and awareness changes. Intelligence presumes a process and a result, we call thinking. But in deep meditation that is replaced with the process of awareness... 'ah ha!' but in time everything is 'ah ha!' our entry into universal consciousness. Then that immediate awareness and oneness, which feels infinite (but isn't) is just one more stage of altered perception.

This is one reason everyone should meditate... To journey within through these layers which, doing so, erases fear and replaces it with understanding.

[Spence Tepper]

If there really is the potential to rise above the prison house that separates our inner reality from the outer reality, and that separates us from each other, it is to first and foremost make friends with the hidden parts of ourself.

And that is meditation. Because we are part of this creation, and are connected to it all, just as a single grain of sand on a beach is physically connected to every atom and light wave in this creation. We are also. We are connected to whatever time, space and reality are.

To suggest we are separate, and only when we observe it does it change, is really a half truth. We are always connected and nothing actually changes. We see only the ripple we made from our own change of attention. But the 'ah ha!' moment where we are not limited to a single point of attention waits. Then we become the electron cloud that is everywhere and no where. Time was linear only because of our linear and granular attention.

Those subtle connections await our visit, and that visit is the reunion we form first with each part of ourself on that inner journey. So let's integrate and become more aware of who and what we are. Any progress there at all is worth our time.

[Amar]

Hi Spence. Nice write up. To play this thru, I ask: To what end do we (you) meditate? Is it to have those "feelings, experiences, or ah ha moments"? Is it the assumption that once one experiences these things, that I will cease to be me, and just "One"?

If yes, then does the karmic theory have any bearing on this? So if there is only a higher consciousness that one "realizes" through meditation, then what triggers (for lack of a better word) the Oneness? Is the simple realization of this the key? I'm starting to understand the beginnings of what's being talked about here, but I still don't see what the end game is, or how someone can explain the mechanics of why someone who meditates is "free", and someone who doesn't, is not. What if our consciousness bubble pops and we all, regardless of anything else, "pop" back into the that Oneness...

I hope I made my questions clear there? Appreciate your responses.

[Spence Tepper]

Hi Amar!
Good questions!
I'm still asking those also!
You asked
"To what end do we (you) meditate? Is it to have those "feelings, experiences, or ah ha moments"? Is it the assumption that once one experiences these things, that I will cease to be me, and just "One"?"

There is a stage in meditation, attendent with Shabd, where you realize a lot more. And your normal daily thinking looks ignorant, absent minded and blinkered, hoplessly limited to biological functioning. It's just some small guy. The larger sensation is free of that, multi - factorial. Once you get a glimpse of that, this becomes the benchmark for meditation... The work, the struggle, to go back there as often as possible.

[Chy]

spence 1014 am aug 23rd your post
Great!

This continues around the idea of the unconscious mind and the conscious mind. The feed back and forth where its ALL TRUE but on different levels and only the EXPERIENCER can interpret the meanings and information.
Its not in generic for all textbooks and can become confusing if a persons unconscious mind is more active than their conscious mind....
Chy

[Amar]

Thanks Spence. But back to probably my more important question: to what end?

Let me rephrase the question: if you didn't experience the things you do in meditation, why would you keep doing it?

I'm having difficulty trying to piece together the idea that unless you do something extra ordinary, you're shit out of luck. Then we're back to the precious few who found a guru who "enlightened " you and now you're one of the chosen few. Not my cup of tea.

I understand where you're coming from, but the angle or bias is still from a Sant Mat perspective, same a a mine, but I'm trying break from that bias and try a fresh perspective. I don't pretend to ask you because you know everything, but since you've explained previously so eloquently, I thought I'd dig a bit deeper.

Why do anything? If it's all there, then what's the point of experiencing it if everyone has it within them, then it will happen naturally anyways.

[Jen]

Meh. We are living in some kind of simulation, some kind of matrix and it is a trap. How to escape? When we die and see the light in the tunnel do not enter, this will throw you back into another life time in this simulated universe on and on forever. Who created this simulation? Not some heavenly god thats for sure. Will we ever know?!

"Our brain simulates reality. So, our everyday experiences are a form of dreaming, which is to say, they are mental models, simulations, not the things they appear to be."
Stephen LaBerge

[Meditator]

Dear Amar,
One can not push oneself beyond a point in meditation by sheer efforts alone i. e. keeping oneself static and one-pointed for some periods until something extraordinary triggers- stables you inside. In fact there we yearn for His help and it becomes a game of volleyball where we pray ( as also repetitions) and expect and He rejects or accepts.

As a matter of fact each of us are plainly helpless and can not command our release as also early nice funny bright experiences, thats my experience as we never entered these bodies of our wills and will never know at what. next moment we may not be here( no more) to share a deeply thoughtful comment on this blog. So is It in between two extreme ends of a life cycle of a creature including Human beings-Topmost species in this creation.

We are just helpless!
( no puns or. sensation intended)

[Jesse]

"Over thinking, over analytical, too much information, just another "conjecture" to make a few real iconic dollars! Full of horseshit!"

Maybe you're kidding, but this was literally as close to expressing the simple fact of unknowingness as one can get to.

[Chy]

Hi Jen.
I know what you mean about the matrixes...I just am not comfortable with the feelings of like we are some kind of weird science experiment that can be thrown from one universe to the next.
Im not into sci fi movies..yet they are fun ... but I dont want to think that they could be the reality.?!
Like our computer high tech age were in now.
People used to get together for visits...like this. Now its online with strangers making friends but yet its not the same its tech world friends..
Chy

[Dungeness]

I ask: To what end do we (you) meditate? Is it to have those "feelings, experiences, or ah ha moments"? Is it the assumption that once one experiences these things, that I will cease to be me, and just "One"?

The mystic I think would say you have no choice but to meditate.
In reality, you're pulled relentlessly inside to experience that ineffable
bliss of awareness which is our real and only identity.

Who pulls you? You do... from a level you've lost touch with. You're in
the hands of a puppeteer. You've forgotten you're pulling your own
strings. GIHF is right within you and is identical with our real self.

This super awareness, this puppet master, is our essence. It's our
true self without the cloud of ignorance we've cloaked ourself in.
It stands on its own. It can't be intellectualized as "experiencing the
One and ceasing to be something else". That's our mind trapped in
duality trying to explain a level it hasn't understood and never will.

[Spence Tepper]

Hi Amar
If any practice, be it meditation or opening a book, increases your understanding, it is natural to do more of that.

[Unicorn]

My "point" was, will be, and IS - present tense - for goodness sake, just live and be! All we ever have is now! We should all be living every precious second we have in a constant state of mindfulness and awareness! In this present moment! Life will just pass by and as we look back and reflect, ah ha, we forgot to just live and enjoy!🙏😇

[Unicorn]

Always too subtle for most! Can't see the thought beyond the words! The programme behind the "fairy" ICON.
"You're here to understand why you made the choice" " We are all here to do what we are all here to do." "The path of the ONE ends, when the programme ends." "We can never see past the choices we don't understand."
The Oracle. The agent (The Many) says, "We are here because of purpose!" The Matrix.
This little unknowing one, thinks it is totally beyond us in our present evolutionary state to know what the purpose of it all is. The intelligence of complete design far supercedes our meagre human mental capacities and mind abilities. Eat, Love, Pray. Oh and don't worry, be happy!

[Vinny]

Homework for Churchless students, In which video there is this expression used -I met a Sikh man, Sikh not sick man. I'm not implying Hindus and Moslems are in any way better.

[Mediatator]

It is scripted in Holy books that only He existed before this creation. Implying we all were He.

Next Only He will re- exist alone after this grand creation - as Dhundhukar, in traditional language in silence allwhere Impying we all may again merge in Him.

All this if we believe so as in the script laid before us by Ssints.

So no bias finally.

All are important in equal measure for Him as He being an intrinsic part of one and all.

So till then... Cheers!
as being separate entities.

[Fairy]

Quote of the Day
"No aim can be greater than the wish to be changed from the limitations and miseries of a transient human being into the eternal joy of the Perfect One."
— Maharaj Charan Singh —

[Spence Tepper]

Hi Fairy
Can you please provide the book and page of your quote?
Thanks
Spence

[Fairy]

Hi Spence

I got the quote from the official RSSB website. Every day a different quote is posted in the headline. These quotes are by all geat men of the past, philosophers, writers, and past leaders alike. This was today's quote.

[SP]

Hey Mediatater,

There shouldn't be any doubt that all of us are no different from the One. We just consider ourselves to be distinct from Him. So self realisation before God realisation.

It must be also true that the spiritual wealth we have within us is the same.

But no bias - I have a big struggle accepting it. I was born into Santmat. Was it a reward for my past deeds or did the Almighty showered his grace ensuring that I wasn't born into an Amazon tribe? What fault is theirs that their lives will be spent light years away from God realisation we discuss in here. Forget this, there are non-believers right outside the Dera. How does it work - who is in and who is out.

No bias finally you say - when is this finality? At Grand dissolution i.e. Maha pralay?

My understanding is that even at Maha pralay both Kaal and the souls in the creation carry on until recreation. Except of course the initiated souls for these are not under Kaal.

GSD isn't likely to entertain such questions - for his approach seems to be these are all distractions and one should keep the focus on Bhajan and simran.

Cheers,

[SP]

Or get all the answers within

[Native]

SP
I would suggest that those born into a tribe in the Amazon jungle are far more in touch with their true being and in tune with the infinite and nature, than those of us in the so called civilised world will ever be.

[Chy]

Hi SP

Your post 503am aug 25
recently I heard a recording...assuming I heard it right and I think I did because it stuck in my mind.. by m. Charan...that at grand dissolution ALL souls go back to their creator....
Not just satsangiis....

Me :
We just need to have love in our hearts IMO and do our best here and let go of worrying about all this inner dimensions and where we are...its just overwhelming.relax and know that it will all work out for our highest good
Contradictions abound. This could be? babaji doesnt answer everything to get folks to keep it simple....
Chy