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Evolutionary Biology, Perception, and Quantum Reality

By Anonymous
The Case Against Reality is an interview with neuroscientist, quantum physicist and professor at University of California, Irvine, Donald D. Hoffman regarding a study he published here. His argument is essentially that human beings did not evolve to perceive the world accurately, but rather, advantageously. He claims that what is advantageous to perceive may look nothing like "reality," provided an external reality exists at all. He goes so far as to posit an idealist metaphysic grounded in his studies in quantum cognitive science, claiming that a very possible structure of the world could be a network of first-person perspectives creating a pseudo-collective reality which we all experience together. What type of epistemic state would the explanations posited by Hoffman leave us in? On one hand, "truth" goes out the window, but on the other, we have immediate access to all the "objects" of our perceptions and, to some extent, create those "objects" ourselves.

Sources:
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/04/the-illusion-of-reality/479559/
http://cogsci.uci.edu/~ddhoff/PerceptualEvolution.pdf

Related Work:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150604-quantum-bayesianism-qbism/

Donald D. Hoffman:
http://www.cogsci.uci.edu/~ddhoff/

Comments

  1. Anna VaughnMarch 6, 2017 at 7:15 AM

    This is awesome! By the way, this reasoning is quite similar to the rationale given by both Descartes and Locke that the chief function of the senses is to be a practical guide to aid us in survival.

    ReplyDelete

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