Do Philosophers ever take Evolution into account?

Philosophy
81

I didn’t say they did, I said we don’t fully understand it yet!

The brain in a vat is fine and dandy is a mind experiment. And a fine and dandy engineering project for some medical students.

Damit that’s not what I’ve claimed. I’m claiming there’s more going on than we understand and that much that we do understand, we’re looking at from a myopic perspective.
Don’t we have enough medical science examples of additional subtle layers of complexity being found, where none was ever suspected before. That’s what I’m talking about.

Or, my own first hand experience with sleep and sleep deprivation and traveling between deep sleep and awake and functioning makes clear to me that sleep and consciousness is not as simple and limited as some claim (based on scant experimental evidence, where every experiment has it’s own limitation, and needs to be interpreted by scientists full of their own pet hunches and feelings.

+++++++++++++++++

82

YOU HAVE GOT TO BE JOKING. Hoffman’s book and idea is a total snow job! I am profoundly disappointed write4u.

Content

Cc’s Students’ Study Guide for The Case Against Reality .

(a non-scholar’s “scholarly” effort)

©2020 Peter Miesler

I intend to be a witness for a fact based Deep Time,

Evolutionary perspective on our Human Mind ~ Physical Reality interface.

Donald Hoffman Playing Basketball in Zero-Gravity ,

a critical review of, The Case Against Reality: Why Evolution Hid The Truth From Our Eyes, by Donald Hoffman, ©2019, W.W.Norton Company

(Titles are linked)

(1.01) The Prelude, Prof Donald Hoffman Playing Basketball In Zero-Gravity

(1.02) Chapter 10a, Community: Network of Conscious Agents (1/3)

(1.03) Chapter 10b, Community: Network of Conscious Agents (2/3)

(1.04) Chapter 10c, Community: Network of Hoffmanian Conscious Agents (3/3)

(1.05) Chapter 1, Mystery: The Scalpel That Split Consciousness

(1.06) Chapter 2, Beauty: Siren of the Gene

(1.07) Chapter 3, Reality: Capers of the Unseen Sun

(1.08) Chapter 4, Sensory: Fitness beats Truth

(1.09) Chapter 5, Illusory: The Bluff of the Desktop

(1.10) Chapter 6, Gravity: Spacetime is Doomed

(1.11) Chapter 7, Virtuality: Inflating a Holoworld

(1.12) Chapter 8, Polychromy: Mutations of an Interface

(1.13) Chapter 9, Scrutiny: You Get What You Need, in Both Life and Business

(1.14) Appendix, Precisely: The Right to Be (Foolish)

Hoffman/Prakash’s Objects of Consciousness , Objections and Replies

Frontiers in Psychology - June 17, 2014

(2.01) 4/4_Hoffman, Objects of Consciousness, (conclusion)

(2.02) 1/4_Hoffman, Objects of Consciousness, questions + replies (1-12)

(2.03) 2/4_Hoffman, Objects of Consciousness, questions + replies (13-17)

(2.04) 3/4_Hoffman, Objects of Consciousness, questions + replies (18-21)

(3.01) Diary - But, wait! There’s more. Ten Learned Responses :

“ Probing the interface theory of perception: Reply to commentaries , by Donald D. Hoffman, Manish Singh & Chetan Prakash"

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review . volume 22, pages1551–1576(2015)

Abstract

We propose that selection favors nonveridical perceptions that are tuned to fitness. Current textbooks assert, to the contrary, that perception is useful because, in the normal case, it is veridical. Intuition, both lay and expert, clearly sides with the textbooks. We thus expected that some commentators would reject our proposal and provide counterarguments that could stimulate a productive debate. … (HSP)

(3.02) Barton Anderson - Where does fitness fit in theories of perception?

doi:10.3758/s13423-014-0748-5

(3.03) Jonathan Cohen - Perceptual representation, veridicality, and the interface theory of perception.

doi:10.3758/s13423-014-0782-3

(3.04) Shimon Edelman - Varieties of perceptual truth and their possible evolutionary roots.

doi:10.3758/s13423-014-0741-z

(3.05) Jacob Feldman - Bayesian inference and “truth”: a comment on Hoffman, Singh, and Prakash.

doi:10.3758/s13423-014-0795-y

(3.06) Chris Fields - Reverse engineering the world: a commentary on Hoffman, Singh, and Prakash, “The interface theory of perception”.

doi:10.3758/s13423-014-0742-y

(3.07) Jan Koenderink - Esse est Percipi & Verum est Factum.

doi:10.3758/s13423-014-0754-7

(3.08) Rainer Mausfeld - Notions such as “truth” or “correspondence to the objective world” play no role in explanatory accounts of perception.

doi:10.3758/s13423-014-0763-6

(3.09) Brian P. McLaughlin and E. J. Green - Are icons sense data ?

doi:10.3758/s13423-014-0780-5

(3.10) Zygmunt Pizlo - Philosophizing cannot substitute for experimentation: comment on Hoffman, Singh & Prakash.

doi:10.3758/s13423-014-0760-9

(3.11) Matthew Schlesinger - Interface theory of perception leaves me hungry for more.

doi:10.3758/s13423-014-0776-

Student Resources - Background info:

(4.01) Rainer Mausfeld : ‘Truth’ has no role in explanatory accounts of perception.

(4.02) Paul Mealing : considers Hoffman’s "Objects of Consciousness.”

(4.03) The Case For Reality : Because Apparently Someone Needs to Make One

(4.04) Sabine Hossenfelder : in Defense of Scientific Realism and Physical Reality

(4.05) “Emergence” - A Handy Summary and Resources

(4.06) Physical Origins of Mind: Dr. Siegel , Allen Institute Brain Science, Tononi, Koch .

(4.07) Can you trust Frontiers in Psychology research papers ? Student Resource

(4.08) Critical Thinking Skills - In Defense of Reality - A Student Resource

(4.09) Philo+Sophia - Love of Wisdom - A Student Resource

(5.01) Summary,

explaining why I’ve pursued this project.

Dr. Mark Solms deftly demystifies Chalmers’ “Hard Problem” of Consciousness, while coincidentally highlighting why Hoffman’s “Conscious Agents” are luftgeschäft.

(6.01) Dr. Mark Solms demystifies Chalmers’ “Hard Problem” of Consciousness.

(6.02) The Other Side of Mark Solms PhD, farmer, vintner, humanitarian.

(6.03) Students’ Resource: A representative cross-section of Dr. Mark Solms’ scientific publications.

My homemade philosophical underpinnings.

(7.01) An Alternative Philosophical Perspective - “ Earth Centrism ”

(7.02) Appreciating the Physical Reality ~ Human Mindscape divide

(7.03) Being an element in Earth’s Pageant of Evolution

(7.04) It’s not a “ Body-Mind problem ” it’s an “ Ego-God problem .”

Feel free to copy and share

confrontingsciencecontrarians.blogspot.com

Email: citizenschallenge gmail com

The bottom line, courtesy of:

Mysteries of Modern Physics by Sean Carroll

Jan 29, 2020 - Darwin College Lecture Series

Sean Carroll, 10:45

. . . these are the particles that make up you and this table and me and this laptop and really everything that you have ever seen with your eyes touched with your fingers smelled with your nose in your life.

Furthermore we know how they interact with each other and even better than that, the most i mpressive fact is that there will not be a discovery tomorrow or next century or a million years from now which says you know what there was another particle or another force that we didn’t know about but now we realize plays a crucial role in our everyday life.

As far as our everyday life is concerned by which I really mean what you can see with your eyes touch with your hands etc we’re done finding the underlying ingredients. That is an enormous achievement in human history one that does not get enough credit, because of course as soon as we do it we go on to the next thing.

Physics is not done. I’m not saying that physics is done, but physics has understood certain things and those things include everything you encounter in your everyday life - unless you’re a professional experimental physicist or unless you’re looking of course outside our everyday life at the universe and other places where we don’t know what’s going on. …

NOVEMBER 30, 2021

A preview of Cc’s “Hoffman playing Basketball in zero-gravity” a critical review of his “Case Against Reality”

83

I was only responding to your claim that the skull does not isolate the brain from external stimulation.

Actually Anil Seth agrees with him and demonstrated it in his lecture. I have found an excellent falsification that proves the brain is no longer able to see reality as it is.

Explain to me How the brain insists on misinterpreting this simple example of looking at an object in a shadow. (shadows hide predators!)

This is an evolved survival mechanism and the brain has learned to alter the actual shading regardless how hard you try to see the reality.

Try to see if you can match the colors even if you KNOW that they are the same shade.
Your brain refuses and keeps altering reality for your own good.

84

[quote=“citizenschallengev4, post:76, topic:7913”]

That is physically not true. Your bony skull is no absolute barrier to outside stimulus (such as various pressures, temperature, sun exposure, others[/quote]
We don’t understand the brain well enough to say, but we do know those subtle physical impingements do exist -

Yes the skull does a wonderful job of isolating and protecting the brain, and yes, most all the brain’s stimuli come through our senses, although we haven’t even really gotten our sense figured out yet. Have we? So don’t go overboard with certainty and limits.

Allow my words to speak for themselves, rather than reading something I didn’t say - I’m talking about not ignoring the real potential that some more subtle stuff is going on below the surface we understand, we simply don’t fully recognize yet.

Heck, consider the many ways our brain monitors our bodies, we are far, from fully mapping and understanding all the levels of communication going on. Worth repeating, we don’t even really understand how many sense people possess. So I take your certitude with a grain of salt.

The Interstitium is an excellent example of something always there under our noses*, but only recently have we started to appreciate its startling functions.

Structure and Distribution of an Unrecognized Interstitium in Human Tissues | Scientific Reports

Structure and Distribution of an Unrecognized Interstitium in Human Tissues

(*Also know as the butcher’s guide, in that it helps us find and define muscle groups as we’re cutting.)

Then you toss out that garbage of Hoffman’s, that sadly undercut the legitimacy that you’ve earned around here. He’s totally off the edge, playing his game in zero gravity.

I think that’s the big thing about my constant harping on the Appreciate Physical Reality ~ Human Mindscape divide - because it provides a fundamental Bench Mark, that help keep us oriented between the fixed reality of out there and our minds, with their endless curiosity and need to answer questions and gather knowledge.

Once ya recognize it, it’s amazing how many serious scientists, good ones, and not so good, have never really absorbed that fundamental reality of our human condition on a visceral level.

I’ve come to believe it’s a part of the reason we’re busy destroying our civilization and Earth rather than nurturing them for future generations.

85

Well, as you know I am convinced that microtubules in the cytoskeleton of all Eukaryotic cells communicate with each other and that includes skull cells. But that does not affect the neural network in the brain itself . The brain floats in a liquid bath to protect it from injury if jolted .

Any homeostatic activity would be subconscious and only control tissue health itself.

The brain is a biological computer and has no need of internal sensory experiences,
Processing the data provided by the sensory neural network of the body gives rise to the cognition and emergent conscious awareness as stored in the pyramidal memory cells of the brain.
It is that cognitive processing that gives rise to self-aware cognition and emotional experience.

That is what I gathered from the literature and lectures I have read and listened to.

Descartes was spot on. If we could imitated the sensory data in neurons and transmit that into the brain, we could make it believe it was walking in the sun on a sandy beach.

The brain has no other referential relationships with anything but its own memory and the sensory data that is constantly streaming from the bottom to the top.

86

You are talking about an optical illusion. Besides, color, shading, tones, are constantly shifting, read up on Color Theory.

Where do folks get off with their baseline expectation that we’re supposed to have some perfect photographic vision (which actually isn’t so perfect either, being itself susceptible to illusion and distortion)?

Our brains are dealing with specific sensory organs, they vary in type and quality, and the brain with its specific “programming” in place - yes we process incoming input in order to create an image in the brain - and just as variety of cameras and other observation equipment will produce a unique variety of images, even when all pointed at the same object, so to the eyes/brains do the same. That they are susceptible to being tricked is nothing more than business as usual.

Where is the mystery? Where is the profundity? What does it teach us, beyond brain hardware and wiring details?

We have no foundation for expecting perfect vision. Or?
Remember Seth’s other lesson, the brain does the best it can with the abilities and resources it has.

Then Hoffman conflates 'perceiving’ with 'the perceived’ and starts down a troubling path.

It’s no secret that our visual system edits and composes the moving images our mind’s eye perceives. Nothing reality shattering about it. Or is there?

Hoffman tells us something more important is going on. That there’s a hidden reality inside of the reality we experience every day. Something humanity really needs to tap into before we can feel whole.

Something like what? Like inside atoms? Is that justified? If so? So what?

Or, might it simply be escapism that’s driving this Case Against Reality?
…
In order to help it go down Hoffman dispenses with some inconvenient truths, such as: light must first bounce off an object before our eye’s, then mind can perceive it.* Seems like solid proof that stuff exists before we perceive it! (* after appropriate processing)

87

I merely agree with the perspective that our brains create our reality from the inside out as much as from the outside in and that this reality is only a best guess by the brain inasmuch that the brain has absolutely no direct interaction with exterior reality and every thought is a result of secondary interpretation evolved for survival rather than exactness.

Right, and that “adaptation” to the environment does not always need an exact observation of reality

After all we can only observe a small sliver of reality within the range of observable wavelengths. It is remarkable what we are able to do with that limited range of observation.
All Arts and Sciences are primarily based on what we can observe. The rest of our knowledge is derived from logical and mathematical extensions of the observable physical reality.

88

Don’t you mean to say ‘an exact observation of reality’ is impossible.

But, what about asking where this philosophical need, to expect (or assume) that we should have ‘an exact observation of reality’ comes from and why it remains unquestioned?

That’s all I hear when I see/hear people using optical illusion to try and make conclusions about consciousness. It’s unreasonable and unjustified, but done all the time. It’s entertainment with a profit value, if one plays it right, such as our pal Donald Hoffman, who’s laughing all the way to the bank, as he’s counting his google hits.

You won’t hear me saying otherwise.
What you hear me saying is that

too many skip right over a fundamental first base, namely an

Appreciation for the Physical Reality ~ Human Mindscape divide

with it’s inevitable conclusion that our very existence is proof that creation, that is, the world as we know it, unfolded down one particular pathway, one internally consistent cascade since the earliest moments of time, no matter what stories we humans create for ourselves."

Ignoring that, leaves us without a Benchmark for sorting out our thoughts, as Hoffman’s flailing exemplifies.

89

It’s at the beginning of the video right until up to the first minute.

As far as @write4u is saying in regards to “brain in a vat” that does make sense from a material perspective but I’d like to know where do The Monks fit into that theory.
Monks who deny themselves a lot of sensory input as well as basic instincts like hunger , while not hallucinating.

90

Why do you consider optical illusions as unsuitable for making conclusions about how the brain interprets sensory data.

The point of an optical illusion is that the brain doesn’t know the difference, much as any computer doesn’t “know” the difference between truth and illusion.

It just proves that the brain can only make a “best guess” and that this guess is not necessarily based on actual reality but on learned survival mechanisms under certain circumstances.

It does not have to do with the brain’s abilities but with the brain’s conditioning.

I like your analogy of the “mindscape”. But as Seth observes all of it is a “controlled hallucination”, because all it can do is rely on the conditioned processing of incoming sensory data.

I don’t think we are that far apart but I agree that we approach and process observation of natural phenomena from different perspectives.

As Seth observes , without the brain there is no experiential reality at all, just as conscious reality disappears when under anesthesia.

91

Also if our conscious experience is a hallucination during our whole life (aka matrix theory) then how do we explain hallucinations such as apparitions of Virgin Mary, saints or God himself?
One example:

Are these hallucinations a sub-category of the main hallucination?
Or are they a glitch from the main hallucination?

92

It’s been fun Eli, but no matter how many of these I respond to, you will come up with another. The internet has millions of these “questions”. The answers are just slightly harder to find. It used to be fun for me to research them, but once i saw that some people don’t care what you show them, their minds are made up, i stopped bothering providing links to them.

I showed you my methods, and I’m glad you asked that, but you dismissed me. So…

93

I agree that most people have their minds already set on something just like your mind is already set but I think you’re missing the point here again.
I’m following a logic.
The logic (from a particular researcher or theory) says that we hallucinate reality.
Following this logic I ask:
Are these hallucinations a sub-category of the main hallucination?
Or are they a glitch from the main hallucination?

Also I’m not sure what methods you think you’ve shown me so far but the only method you’ve mentioned is the Bayesian method which is a statistical method which don’t involve a lot of logic but statistic. The logic that is used by other researcher as as Elizondo is:
Does it have a heat signature?
Yes no ?
Move to next question.
Does it go underwater?
Yes no.
Move on to next question.

Not statistics.
But if you’d like to discuss your method in detail I would love to.

94

I’ve just heard claims

You’ve confused his analogy of brain functions with hallucinating unreal things

What main hallucination?

As i stated, it’s a way to show our common sense, our natural ability to use reason. There is nothing below reason. You have used it in most of your posts. But you ignore facts, and reach wrong conclusions.

Elizondo is using reason too.

95

Oh wow I dont think we’re understanding each other then so let’s try to resolve this statement below which I think might bring us closer to some common understanding.

How have I confused this?
He clearly states this in his video. Also write4you said this in a few of his posts where the “brain is hallucinating” or “best guessing” reality.
So then I asked my questions about apparitions.

So how do you interpret this “brain in a vat” theory so I don’t confuse its real meaning?

96

Look it up. The number one definition of “hallucination”

“hallucination” = A perception of having seen, heard, touched, tasted, or smelled something that wasn’t actually there.

We’ve been over this many times and to me it simply indications that despite your protestations you don’t grasp the Physical Reality ~ Human Mindscape divide.

Seth was very lazy when he settled for that word, and to me it indicated he places a higher value on audience reaction, then on finding a more relevant metaphor. He doesn’t even have the decency to put an asterisk behind his “hallucination”.

No that’s a misunderstanding.

Optical illusions are unsuitable for studying consciousness, I’ve always agreed that they may be great for understanding the brains valves and pistons, so to speak.

But that conclusions beyond neuroscience and into consciousness, or questioning the physical reality of what we are looking at - such a Hoffman’s constant confusion between the perceived and the perceiver - is indulgent intellectual entertainment more than anything.

If you want to understand consciousness, you need to start at the bottom of evolutionary ladder, not at today’s modern society-conditioned humans and optical illusions.

97

A brain in a vat could still determine what’s real within a reasonable margin of error. It could still figure out that some puff of smoke or trick of light is not a spiritual being. It could tell the difference between real and imagined. Otherwise, those words are meaningless

98

I thought you were going to tell some new revelation here but instead you’ve revealed other things. Things such as bias.
Let’s discuss this.

If a brain in a vat can still determine reality within a margin or error, then how would it know that a spiritual apparition is true or false? Also what is the margin of error and the margin of “normal”? And how have we determined this?
If a brain in a vat is sitting in a lab in a building, how would it know it’s sitting in a lab in a building when it’s fed a stream of reality which is not the true reality? When it’s fed that it lives in a universe, on planet earth , with other living and conscious beings and where things like taste, sight and touch are 100% real? In the mean time the real reality is that the brain is in a vat, in a lab, in the building.
This is where my question applies:
Where do apparitions fit?
A glitch from the main reality that is fed to the brain?
Or, a sub-program in the hallucination that is fed to the brain?
Also, where do drugs fit here?

So, either this is a crap theory and that guy in the video is clueless or we need some logical consistency of the consequences of the words that he’s saying.

You’ve also mentioned the meaning of words which is a topic that I love because that’s where most of my convos lead to. Meanings, definitions and the logic that follows.
Maybe we can leave this for another topic but we do think alike here.

99

I’ll get back to you

100

Thanks.
I’d also like to add that the context of this theory changes completely when we call it “God”.
Because at that point, I as a believer, admit that a Creator for reasons that go a bit beyond this topic, has created us in this manner and we are at his mercy.

But the matrix theory (aka brain in vast) is basically describing God without calling it God. So in that context I have no problem with it. But as it it presented in this video from a “scientific” process then my questions arise.