Donald hoffman consciousness raising
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Objects of consciousness
Abstract
Current models of visual perception typically assume that human vision estimates true properties of physical objects, properties that exist even if unperceived. However, recent studies of perceptual evolution, using evolutionary games and genetic algorithms, reveal that natural selection often drives true perceptions to extinction when they compete with perceptions tuned to fitness rather than truth: Perception guides adaptive behavior; it does not estimate a preexisting physical truth. Moreover, shifting from evolutionary biology to quantum physics, there is reason to disbelieve in preexisting physical truths: Certain interpretations of quantum theory deny that dynamical properties of physical objects have definite values when unobserved. In some of these interpretations the observer is fundamental, and wave functions are compendia of subjective probabilities, not preexisting elements of physical reality. These two considerations, from evolutiona
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Source: Photo by Giu Vicente on Unsplash
A full interview with Donald Hoffman follows this book review
Does the moon still exist when you’re not looking at it? In a provocative new book titled The Case Against Reality: Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes, psychologist Donald Hoffman suggests that the answer is no. Evolution, the argument goes, may have shaped our perceptions to create an interface analogous to a computer desktop interface. Trains, snakes, and even the moon may be mere icons that guide our behavior, much like the icons on your computer desktop. That doesn’t mean that they don’t företräda something real out there—just as dragging a blue email icon to your trash really does delete an email file in your computer, stepping in front of a train really does kill you. But, Hoffman argues, just as the email en samling dokument eller en elektronisk lagring av data in your computer is not actually a blue pixelated rectangle, the actual threat posed bygd the train is not actually a large, elongated object occupyin
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4.4 Combination and Introspection
In this section, I will dig deeper into Hoffman and his collaborator's conceptual framework describing their proposed network of conscious agents. Hoffman and Prakash formalise their Conscious Realism theory by first defining a 'conscious agent' as consisting of three processes: perception, decision and action [Hoffman and Prakash 2014: 6]. (See their diagram reproduced here on the right.) It may seem that what Hoffman and Prakash mean by a 'conscious agent' here is a complete higher-order entity with consciousness, such as a dolphin or a human being. They write of how a 'conscious agent' 'chooses what actions to take based on the conscious experiences it has' and how it 'interacts with the world in light of the decision it has taken' [2014: 6]. Furthermore, in answering readers' qualms, they ascribe 'free will' to all conscious agents and goal-directed behaviour to some [2014: 14–15].
In spite of the teleological/intentionalist language the