• Art48
    477
    From Wikipedia: Donald David Hoffman (born December 29, 1955) is an American cognitive psychologist and popular science author. He is a professor in the Department of Cognitive Sciences at the University of California, Irvine, with joint appointments in the Department of Philosophy, the Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science, and the School of Computer Science.

    Hoffman uses two metaphors to explain ideas he’s published in journals: the icon metaphor and the headset metaphor. Here’s my understanding of what he says, but he has numerous YouTube videos where he speaks for himself.

    The icon metaphor: You’ve written the Great American Novel in Word. There’s an icon on your screen for the Word file. The icon is square, blue, and in the center of your screen. But the Word file is neither square, nor blue, nor in the center of your screen. If you drag the icon to the trash, the computer will zero our the billions of bits that are your file. The icon is there not to reveal reality, but to hid it. If you had to deal with the billions of transistors that contain the bytes of your file, you’d never be able to.

    Objects in spacetime are like that icon. Evolution has given us icons to manipulate reality. The icons in spacetime hid reality. If we had to deal directly with reality we’d be as helpless; dealing with the transistors, circuits, and voltages in our PC is impossible.

    The headset metaphor: you are playing a virtual reality game, say, Grand Theft Auto. You see a road and other cars. You manipulate your own car using a steering wheel and the brake pedal. No roads, cars, steering wheels, or brake pedals really exist. They are merely the headset you put on to enter the game.

    So, says Hoffman, the material world is a bunch of icons in spacetime, a headset, which we use to manipulate reality. Evolution has given us this headset because if we had to manipulate reality directly, we couldn’t.

    So, matter is like an icon. And drilling down to electrons and quarks is like drilling down to the pixels that compose the icon. Reality is (or, at least, may be) something quite different.

    Of course, it’s best to hear Hoffman’s ideas from Hoffman himself. The following accessible 22 minute YouTube clip is a good start.
    Do we see reality as it is? | Donald Hoffman (TED talk)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYp5XuGYqqY
  • Banno
    24.5k
    Materialism - the view that all that exists is matter - hasn't had a place since Newton.

    So what do you think the "materialism" Hoffman is arguing against is?

    What is it you think he says is "real"?
  • Wayfarer
    22k
    The question I would have for Donald Hoffman is why is his theory not a product of the same evolutionarily-conditioned process that our perception of everything else is? What faculty is it that is capable of arriving at the judgement that he is making? I'm sure he must have considered this, or that it has been asked of him, but I'd like to see the answer.

    Incidentally there's a useful Q&A with Hoffman here The Evolutionary Argument against Reality, in which he says:

    Q: If snakes aren’t snakes and trains aren’t trains, what are they?

    A: Snakes and trains, like the particles of physics, have no objective, observer-independent features. The snake I see is a description created by my sensory system to inform me of the fitness consequences of my actions. Evolution shapes acceptable solutions, not optimal ones. A snake is an acceptable solution to the problem of telling me how to act in a situation. My snakes and trains are my mental representations; your snakes and trains are your mental representations.
  • Banno
    24.5k
    My snakes and trains are my mental representations; your snakes and trains are your mental representations.

    But we can and do talk about the very same snakes and trains.

    Hence his conclusion is wrong, and there is an error somewhere in his theory.
  • Tom Storm
    8.9k
    I think it's folk materialism - the idea that the world is real? Whatever that means.

    The question I would have for Donald Hoffman is why is his theory not a product of the same evolutionarily-conditioned process that our perception of everything else is?Wayfarer

    There's definitely a whiff of self-refutation here but no doubt there's an escape clause - he's a clever sausage.
  • Banno
    24.5k
    Whatever that means.Tom Storm

    That's the bit that needs to be filled in. Folk around here are reticent to do so. I suspect that's because when they do, reality makes itself apparent.
  • Art48
    477
    The question I would have for Donald Hoffman is why is his theory not a product of the same evolutionarily-conditioned process that our perception of everything else is? What faculty is it that is capable of arriving at the judgement that he is making? I'm sure he must have considered this, or that it has been asked of him, but I'd like to see the answer.Wayfarer
    Good question. I've seen him address this, but I don't recall which YouTube clip. In my own understanding, it's as follows. Evolution has conditioned our perceptions of the physical world to see icons rather than truth, but that doesn't necessarily imply our logical faculties have been conditioned the same way. Seeing the icon rather than the truth of transistors gives us an evolutionary advantage but so does being able to reason logically.

    But we can and do talk about the very same snakes and trains.
    Hence his conclusion is wrong, and there is an error somewhere in his theory.
    Banno
    He addresses this in the YouTube clip when he points out everyone in the audience sees the same illusion of the cube.

    So what do you think the "materialism" Hoffman is arguing against is?Banno
    He is arguing against the ultimate reality of objects in spacetime.
  • Wayfarer
    22k
    . Evolution has conditioned our perceptions of the physical world to see icons rather than truth, but that doesn't necessarily imply our logical faculties have been conditioned the same way.Art48

    RIght - just as I would have thought. Ties in rather neatly with the argument from reason. I'll continue to look for where he addresses this, though.
  • Banno
    24.5k
    He addresses this in the YouTube clip when he points out everyone in the audience sees the same illusion of the cube.Art48

    And what do you conclude from this? Everyone also agrees that it is an illusion...

    the ultimate reality of objects in spacetimeArt48

    And what does that mean?

    Put it together!
  • jgill
    3.8k
    He is arguing against the ultimate reality of objects in spacetimeArt48

    Ultimate or not, being bitten by a snake or run over by a train is a strong argument for what appears real.

    I know, "I refute it thus" has fallen into disfavor. But something connects with the kicker's foot, and it might as well be the Illusory rock.
  • Tom Storm
    8.9k
    Ties in rather neatly with the argument from reason. I'll continue to look for where he addresses this, though.Wayfarer

    As you know, Christian presuppositional apologists argue that atheism and naturalism is self-refuting and maintain that god grounds intelligibility, and is the guarantor for the logical absolutes and morality. Of course such an argument might potentially get you to deism, but not a particular Protestant god who hates fags... But you can't have everything.

    Do you think it might be a possible that just as Kant argued that space and time were essentially part of the human cognitive apparatus which help us make sense of our world, that perhaps reason - e.g., identity, non-contradiction and excluded middle, might not have similar source? In which case, reason is not true as such - or located outside of the human domain - it is rather a condition of human experience and an unavoidable product of our perspective.

    Hoffman is on record saying 'natural selection favours perception which hide truth and guide useful action.' It's not far from CS Lewis. Let us know when you find how he grounds his own truth seeking.

    We know that things don't have to be true to allow us to make incredibly useful interventions in the world. For instance, star signs helped sailors successfully navigate all over the world centuries ago.
  • Banno
    24.5k
    Yep.

    , , ,

    Here's an extract from Hoffman's book. Hoffman makes this out as showing that we are nto sufficiently critical of our perceptions. I think it also has a somewhat different import.
    Our penchant to misread our perceptions, as philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein pointed out to his fellow philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe, stems in part from an uncritical attitude toward our perceptions, toward what we mean by "it looks as if. Anscombe says of Wittgenstein that, "He once greeted me with the question: 'Why do people say that it was natural to think that the sun went round the earth rather than that the earth turned on its axis?' I replied. 'I suppose, because it looked as if the sun went round the earth! "Well, he asked, what would it have looked like if it had looked as if the earth turned on its axis?' The question brought it out that I had hitherto given no relevant meaning to 'it looks as if in 'it looks as if the sun goes around the earth. "1 Wittgenstein's point is germane any time we wish to claim that reality matches or mismatches our perceptions. There is, as we shall see, a way to give precise meaning to this claim using the tools of evolutionary game theory: we can prove that if our perceptions were shaped by natural selection then they almost surely evolved to hide reality. They just report fitness. — The Case Against Realiy, p19

    Why do people say that it is natural to think that there are snakes and trains and not only quantum wave functions?

    I suppose, because it looked as if there are snakes and trains and not so much as if there are only quantum wave functions!

    Well, what would it have looked like if it had looked as if there were only quantum wave functions?

    Why could it not be that snakes and trains are just what quantum wave functions look like, viewed by an evolved organism?

    What exactly makes snakes and trains not real?
  • Janus
    16.1k
    I think the salient point is not that the rock as appearance is not real, but that we have no idea what is behind appearances. Even the world understood as quantum field is just another way things can appear to us.
  • Wayfarer
    22k
    Do you think it might be a possible that just as Kant argued that space and time were essentially part of the human cognitive apparatus which help us make sense of our world, that perhaps reason - e.g., identity, non-contradiction and excluded middle, might not have similar source? In which case, reason is not true as such - or located outside of the human domain - it is rather a condition of human experience and an unavoidable product of our perspective.Tom Storm

    Couldn't have said it better myself.

    What exactly makes snakes and trains not real?Banno

    I think point is that it is the experience of the object that is real. A more germane snippet from Hoffman:

    The constructions we invent may not be literally true, but still, he says of his own, “I’ve evolved these symbols to keep me alive, so I have to take them seriously. But it’s a logical flaw to think that if we have to take it seriously, we also have to take it literally.” Of what he identifies as a snake or a train, he says, “Snakes and trains, like the particles of physics, have no objective, observer-independent features. The snake I see is a description created by my sensory system to inform me of the fitness consequences of my actions.”

    It’s worth pointing out that if there can be no “public” objects that aren’t personal constructions, science has a problem: “The idea that what we’re doing is measuring publicly accessible objects, the idea that objectivity results from the fact that you and I can measure the same object in the exact same situation and get the same results — it’s very clear from quantum mechanics that that idea has to go. Physics tells us that there are no public physical objects.” After all, “My snakes and trains are my mental representations; your snakes and trains are your mental representations.”

    It’s not that Hoffman considers our constructed personal realities therefore worthless. In fact, they’re all we’ve got, and being real to us is a way of being true, after all. “I’m claiming that experiences are the real coin of the realm. The experiences of everyday life—my real feeling of a headache, my real taste of chocolate—that really is the ultimate nature of reality.”
    Donald Hoffman

    So we need to be very careful about what is being said here: it's not that objects are unreal, but that they're real as constituents of our experience. This is Hoffman's resolution to the hard problem of consciousness.

    Note this, from Christian Fuchs, founder of QBism:

    QBism would say, it’s not that the world is built up from stuff on “the outside” as the Greeks would have had it. Nor is it built up from stuff on “the inside” as the idealists...would have it. Rather, the stuff of the world is in the character of what each of us encounters every living moment — stuff that is neither inside nor outside, but prior to the very notion of a cut between the two at all.Chris Fuchs

    So snakes and trains have no intrinsic reality outside the reality which is imputed to them by the observer. None of which means you shouldn't avoid snakes, or stop catching trains.
  • Art48
    477
    Ultimate or not, being bitten by a snake or run over by a train is a strong argument for what appears real.jgill
    And standing outside and looking at the sky is a strong argument that the Earth is flat and unmoving.

    Hoffman is on record saying 'natural selection favours perception which hide truth and guide useful action.' It's not far from CS Lewis. Let us know when you find how he grounds his own truth seeking.Tom Storm
    Hoffman says natural selection also favors logical reasoning.

    What exactly makes snakes and trains not real?Banno
    The idea is that snakes and trains are like icons on a computer desktop. The icon for a Word document is really on the screen but it is not the Word document itself, so in that sense is somewhat unreal. The reality of the Word document is computer bits. Janus and Wayfarer make a similar point.
  • Joshs
    5.6k

    The icon for a Word document is really on the screen but it is not the Word document itself, so in that sense is somewhat unreal. The reality of the Word document is computer bits. Janus and Wayfarer make a similar pointArt48

    And what are computer bits an icon for?
  • Art48
    477
    And what are computer bits an icon for?Joshs
    In the metaphor, the icon represent the objects we see and the bits represent the deeper reality.
    So, the bits are not an icon but reality (or, at least, a deeper reality).
  • Joshs
    5.6k
    In the metaphor, the icon represent the objects we see and the bits represent the deeper reality.
    So, the bits are not an icon but reality (or, at least, a deeper reality
    Art48

    But of course the bits are themselves bits of language (mathematics belongs to language) just as the Word icon is. The Word icon can ‘mean’ a program, it can mean the bits, or it can mean anything else that use of language associates it with. The same is true of the concept of a bit. Is there a deeper, truer reality these bits of language anchor themselves to? Or is language self-refential all the way down, not a system of signs hovering over the ‘really real’ but expressing pragmatically how social relationships construct and change a world and what passes for true or false, real or imaginary within it.
  • Manuel
    4k
    I think Raymond Tallis put it best when he said that if Hoffman really believes we didn't evolve for truth, but only for survival, then why should he trust his experiments which rely on evolutionary arguments being true as a necessary condition for how own view?

    I'd elaborate that: either evolution is misleading Hoffman and we can't attain any truths, rendering his view incoherent, or evolution is correct, then Hoffman must grant that we evolved for truth (in some instances), rendering his views false.

    Not that I have any problems with idealism - or at least some versions of it - but the way Hoffman proceeds is far from being a good way to present idealism.
  • Art48
    477
    Manuel, Have you watched the video? I think it addresses your points.
  • Manuel
    4k


    I have seen it and it does not address the issue. It goes against what he is saying, if he is giving evidence that our senses mislead us, why trust the evidence? It too is misleading.

    He goes on to say that in fact, "spacetime is doomed" - meaning, it is not fundamental enough, there has to be something beyond it, or something which supersedes it. But then why trust the data of physics?

    Physics is based on what our senses can capture, which then combine with our intellect to either accept or reject the data within a theoretical farmwork.

    But perceptions systematically mislead us...

    He would need to explain why evolution and physics are special in relation to all other types of knowledge. I don't recall him replying to this rather important point.
  • Gnomon
    3.7k
    The question I would have for Donald Hoffman is why is his theory not a product of the same evolutionarily-conditioned process that our perception of everything else is? What faculty is it that is capable of arriving at the judgement that he is making? I'm sure he must have considered this, or that it has been asked of him, but I'd like to see the answer.Wayfarer
    The title of Hoffman's book was intentionally provocative. The term "illusion" can be interpreted negatively as "deception"*1 or neutrally as "conception"*2 (i.e. imaginary). So some interpret his message as saying that A> there is no mundane material reality or B> there is no Ultimate Reality, from God's perspective, so to speak. But that's beside the practical point he's trying to make with computer metaphors. Instead, he's talking about the differentiation between sensory Perception (Materialistic) and mental Conception (Idealistic).

    Kant addressed the same Real vs Ideal problem in his ding an sich analogy. The thing-in-your-mind is merely a representation of a thing-in-the-material-world, which may also be a single instance of a Platonic Ideal, in the mind of god, as it were. "Donald Hoffman argues that while we should take our perceptions seriously, we should not take them literally". What you conceive figuratively is a merely a model of actual Reality. And that's as close to ultimate Reality as you will ever get.

    Another approach to that basic distinction is the Cartesian Theater model of imagination, in which a little homunculus in the head --- representing the Soul --- makes sense of the flickering images presented by the senses*3. But that merely kicks-the-can of who's doing the perceiving further down the road. The "faculty" of Knowing (Conception) is functionally different from Sensing (Perception). For example, a video camera dumbly records images from external "reality", but to be aware of that externality requires a conscious Mind. And that transformative functionality raises the modern conundrum, taken for granted by the ancients, of how a data-processing Brain can produce a meaning-making Mind.

    Anyway, the mysterious "Faculty" that allows us to interpret sensory data as abstract ideas is old-fashioned Reason : the ability to infer (transform) raw sensory data into personal meaning. The mental Meaning is not the Material Thing, but we use the imaginary model as-if it is real-enough for our practical purposes. An icon on a computer screen compresses all the invisible information processing into a simplified abstract picture, shorn of all its real-world complexities*4. So, what you think you see, is not what's really out there. :smile:


    *1. Illusion : Descartes' Deceptive Demon

    *2. Concept : an abstract idea; a general notion ; mental image

    *3. Sensory shadows : Plato's allegory of the cave

    *4. Interface Reality : Model Dependent Realism
    https://bothandblog6.enformationism.info/page21.html

    CARTESIAN THEATER with "mini-me" Soul in the seat
    1200px-Cartesian_Theater.svg.png
  • plaque flag
    2.7k
    Well, what would it have looked like if it had looked as if there were only quantum wave functions?

    Why could it not be that snakes and trains are just what quantum wave functions look like, viewed by an evolved organism?

    What exactly makes snakes and trains not real?
    Banno

    :up:
  • plaque flag
    2.7k

    I think you need to infinitely nest your Cartesian theatre image. The mini-me needs his own control-room in the skull, with its own screen that shows the first screen. And then mini-mini-me needs...
  • plaque flag
    2.7k
    I think Raymond Tallis put it best when he said that if Hoffman really believes we didn't evolve for truth, but only for survival, then why should he trust his experiments which rely on evolutionary arguments being true as a necessary condition for how own view?Manuel

    Exactly. And this also works against any 'veil-of-ideas' metaphysics. The idea that we are trapped behind a screen is itself based on the content of that screen.

    We are argue that that from which we argue is an illusion.
  • Manuel
    4k
    It depends on how the veil of idea is formulated, if it as was done by Locke and Hume, I don't see it as a trap, but then it is also misleading to call it a "veil".

    As for Hoffman, it's not his idealism or his "consciousness realism", that I have any issues with, it's that the foundation of said arguments are flimsy.

    It even becomes obscure what "truth" or "reality" means as used by Hoffman. It almost sounds like what's true is what we don't find useful for survival.
  • plaque flag
    2.7k
    if it as was done by Locke and Hume, I don't see it as a trap, but then it is also misleading to call it a "veil".Manuel

    How would you fix the issue ? As far as I can tell, it's by looking at sense organs like the eyes and talking to people in the world that we develop the idea of a perspective on the world. This idea seems to evolve until the self is understood to have only indirect access to the world, throwing the very existence of that world into doubt. Incorrigible ideas or intuitions are taken as The Given -- as basically 'mental' even though the framework of a body with sense organs in the world is put in question.

    To me the 'self' and the 'mental' only make sense in a lifeworld that includes their opposites. They are pieces of a social semantic system that don't work on their own.
  • Art48
    477
    I have seen it and it does not address the issue. It goes against what he is saying, if he is giving evidence that our senses mislead us, why trust the evidence? It too is misleading.Manuel
    We should take the evidence seriously but not literally. When we play Grand Theft Auto, we see appearance not the reality of transistors, etc. But we aren't misled because that's what we need to see to play the game. We can trust our senses, i.e., what we see on the monitor, when we play the game. But appearance and reality differ. Does that make sense?
  • Manuel
    4k


    I agree that it's with organs like eyes and ears that we acquire data of objects. These sensations evoke in the mind/brain a powerful interpretive apparatus that includes things like: interpretation, imagination, combination, continuity in time, concept formation, classification and so on.

    We could call these things "ideas", but to imply that we are "stuck" in them suggests that it's a prison. We can also call them thoughts, perceptions, goings-on, object processing, object reactions or any other word.

    Without the mind/brain doing this, we would have no registration of the data of sense, it would be like using a flashlight on lump of wax or a chunk of clay - nothing happens.

    I don't get why this process isn't "direct". I take it that it is directly caused by the object, as we react to them given the brains we have. Why would I doubt the existence of the world and its objects? I have no reason to take skepticism too seriously, or otherwise I couldn't move.
  • plaque flag
    2.7k
    we see appearance not the reality of transistorsArt48

    But why stop with transistors ? They are also abstractions or icons in a particular framing of the situation.

    Consider also that certain structures are curiously independent of their 'medium' or 'host.' A proof of the infinity of the primes is not reducible to the paper it happens to be printed on. Equivalence classes matter. It's hard to figure out their status.
  • plaque flag
    2.7k

    I don't think we have any serious disagreements then. The mentalistic talk is great for practical purposes. I do think Sellars' and Popper's criticisms of the given are convincing though. To me the idea is that there is no 'bottom' or 'elemental' kind of 'pure experience.'
bold
italic
underline
strike
code
quote
ulist
image
url
mention
reveal
youtube
tweet
Add a Comment

Welcome to The Philosophy Forum!

Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.