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progenitors
credence.
Evolution has shaped our perceptions with symbols,
hoodwink
preposterous.
I can’t help it. Natural selection has shaped me that way.
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.
pen...
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r...
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perceptions are an interface specific to our species, not a reconstruction of reality.
umwelt,
It’s helpful to distinguish two different senses of real: existing, and existing even when unperceived.
If, however, I assert that I have a real headache, I claim only that my headache exists, not that it would exist even if unperceived. A headache that I don’t perceive is no headache at all. I wouldn’t mind that kind of “headache,” of course. But if you tell me that my migraine is not real because it doesn’t exist unperceived, I’m liable to become quite cross with you, and for good reason.
neurons are not part of objective reality. They are, however, real subjective experiences—
reify
A shadow vaguely resembles the object that casts it—
facile
riposte
icons inform me of fitness, not truth,
If icons are never true, are perceptions always illusions?
The textbook account of illusions goes like this: “veridical perception of the environment often requires heuristic processes based on assumptions that are usually, but not always, true. When they are true, all is well, and we see more or less what is actually there. When these assumptions are false, however, we perceive a situation that differs systematically from reality: that is, an illusion.”9
Evolution shapes our perceptions to guide adaptive behavior, not to see truth.
militate
do pigs, rabbits, and billions of flies suffer a taste illusion? Or are they right that feces truly are delicious? If so, is our disgusting experience a taste illusion?
To declare that humans are the standard is parochial.
logic? Doesn’t the theorem assume math and logic, and then prove there’s almost no chance that our perceptions of math and logic are true? If so, isn’t it a proof that there are no reliable proofs—a reductio ad absurdum of the whole approach?
preclude
fitness payoffs are distinct from objective reality and can, for a given element of reality, vary wildly from creature to creature and time to time.
To track fitness is simply not, in general, to track truth.
Players of Minecraft grow ever more adept at dealing with its worlds. But they do so by mastering an interface, not by growing ever closer to the truth.
neophyte,
Scientific theories, couched in the language of objects in spacetime, are theories still bound to the interface. They can’t properly describe reality any more than a theory couched in the language of pixels and icons can properly describe a computer.
“I know that the icons on my desktop are not the true reality. But if I pull out my trusty magnifying glass and look really closely at the desktop, I see tiny pixels. And those tiny pixels, not the big icons, are the true nature of reality.” Well, not really. Those pixels are still on the desktop, still in the interface. They may not be visible without a magnifying glass, but they’re part of the interface nonetheless.
Similarly, atoms and subatomic particles are not visible without special equipment, but they’re still in space and time, and so they are still in the interface.
even though we can, with the help of technology, observe all these new things, we are no closer to seeing reality as it is.
We are just exploring more of our interface, more of what happens within the confines of space and time.
our perceptions constitute an interface, specific to our species. It hides reality and helps us raise kids.
The objects I see are my icons. The objects you see are your icons.
spacetime does not exist unperceived.
Your spacetime is your desktop. Spacetimes vary from observer to observer, and some properties of spacetime need not always agree across observers. Reality, whatever it might be, escapes the confines of spacetime.
My quantum state describes, as Chris Fuchs puts it, “‘The consequences (for me) of my actions upon the physical system!’
My perceptions of spacetime and objects are an interface, shaped by natural selection not to reveal reality but to guide my actions in ways that enhance my fitness. My fitness.
Natural selection shapes perceptions in a personal fashion, to tell me the consequences for me of my actions upon the world.
There is a world that exists even if I don’t look: solipsism is false. But my perceptions, like observations in quantum theory, don’t disclose that world. They counsel me—im...
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Quantum theory explains that measurements reveal no objective truths, just consequences for agents of their actions.
“Sense perceptions or sensations are themselves only more or less accurate symbolic representations of external reality formed through the interaction between that external reality and organs of sense.
“What we call ‘reality,’ consists of an elaborate papier-mâché construction of imagination and theory filled in between a few iron posts of observation.”
We don’t, according to Wheeler, passively observe a preexisting objective reality, we actively participate in constructing reality by our acts of observation.
Quantum weirdness is not confined to the subatomic realm.
