The Case Against Reality - Dr. Hoffman

[jayjacobus]

I confess: I do no differentiate “real”, “actually real”, really real”, “physically real” and “empirically real”. I use them to assimilate the vernacular of this forum into my writing style.

But that is not very helpful, Common. If you are going to use some term in a conversation, unless you intend obfuscation, you are going to have to use terms in a way others will understand. You can use them any way you like so long as you make it clear to those you are using them to communicate with, what you precisely mean by those terms.

So, what do you mean by, "real?"

I mean not appearing imaginary.

[commonsense]

Although I am not diaphoretic, I am stressed over the possibility that my things won’t be there when I want them.

I'm sorry to hear that, but my commiseration is a bit limited, since I have a nagging doubt that you are being totally ingenuous.

It does sound rather tongue-in-cheek now that I reflect on my words, but there’s no reason to doubt that I am thinking what I am saying.

I am not sweaty, not suffering from a rapid heartbeat and not incurring high blood pressure in response to this stressor. I am stressed but not apprehensive.

But who will watch the camera for me? Who will assure me that the camera did not disappear and reappear?

You know whatever the camera records is its own evidence of its persistent existence, and you also know that there is no actual zombie.

Seriously, it is POSSIBLE that the camera evaporated in my absence and then reassembled with new digital images in it upon my return. And the POSSIBILITY of philosophical or metaphysical zombies populating my real world is not beyond imagination.

Of course, you don't have to accept any evidence and can continue to live in chronic doubt, if that's what you like. Is it what you like? (That would be a kind of psychological masochism, wouldn't it?)

Living in chronic doubt does not mean choosing or liking chronic doubt. It would be masochistic if it were volitional, I.e. if I chose to live in chronic doubt. However, the tiniest doubt is ever present just because it is not possible to absolutely know reality.

[commonsense]

I confess: I do no differentiate “real”, “actually real”, really real”, “physically real” and “empirically real”. I use them to assimilate the vernacular of this forum into my writing style.

But that is not very helpful, Common. If you are going to use some term in a conversation, unless you intend obfuscation, you are going to have to use terms in a way others will understand. You can use them any way you like so long as you make it clear to those you are using them to communicate with, what you precisely mean by those terms.

So, what do you mean by, "real?"

I don’t intend obfuscation. The terms are interchangeable to me until someone else makes a distinction. I was just using the language of other posters.

Of course, I should have asked those whom I emulated to explain the difference in terms before using them myself.

However, I am comfortable, no, accustomed, to dealing with fuzzy verbiage from others. And now I recognize that I can be fuzzy as well.

By “real” I mean something that is a thing-in-and-of-itself.

[RCSaunders]

So, what do you mean by, "real?"

I mean not appearing imaginary.

At first blush, I would agree to that, but there has to be a little more to it. I'm not sure, "appearing," imaginary means the same as imaginary, but if it does, then I would agree that if something imaginary is mistaken for something that existed independently of anyone's awareness or knowledge that would not be real. If someone said, "I talked to Zeus last night," as though Zeus were an actual being, that would not be real, but if someone said, "Zeus is a supposed being worshiped as a God by the ancient Greeks," Zeus would really be that supposed (though fictional) God. Though Zeus is an imaginary being, Zeus is an historical concept.

The distinction for me is, not real versus fictional, but material (ontological) versus the psychological (epistemological). The moon exists materially (ontologically), Luna (the moon goddess) only exists in someone's mind (epistemologically). They both really exist, but not in the same way. Does that make sense to you?

[henry quirk]

Get yourself a simple digital motion picture camera and let it keep track of your apple while your not looking at it.

You don't have to believe in the principles of chemistry and physics that convince those of us who understand how those sciences explain why physical things like apples persist irrespective of anyone's awareness or knowledge of them, (which must leave you in a constant sweat about everything you own, never knowing if the next time you look for your car, food, clothing, wife, or pet, it will be there or not), so a camera might help relieve some of that anxiety.

RC,

I like Common. He's just about my favorite Robot Overlord. He knows this and so won't be too offended when I say: he's fuckin' with you in a LARGE way. He'll cobble up an objection no matter which way you go. I suspect he's playin' the madman to illustrate a point (sumthin' about the impossibility of truly knowing). So, properly armed, and with your tongue in cheek, carry on, carry on...

Nail on head, HQ. I mebbe playing to illustrate a point like you say, but you probably also know that I am serious about the point, which is about the impossibility of truly knowing as you noted.

I do so miss the days of the robots!

Meh, you metal monsters are all alike: always pinin' for the glory days.

As for the impossibility of truly knowing: technically, you're right. It's impossible to know with complete certainty. Seems to me, though, the pursuit of complete certainty is the pursuit of madness. At the least such a pursuit is a kind of Zeno's paradox with a person always gettin' closer to complete certainty but never achievin' it. Reason, parsimony, experience get us damn close, I think, close enough to confidently say 'the apple on my table is real, it exists independently of me, and it is pretty much as I perceive it to be'.

[RCSaunders]

I am not sweaty, not suffering from a rapid heartbeat and not incurring high blood pressure in response to this stressor. I am stressed but not apprehensive.

I'm truly glad it's no worse.

But who will watch the camera for me? Who will assure me that the camera did not disappear and reappear?

You know whatever the camera records is its own evidence of its persistent existence, and you also know that there is no actual zombie.

Seriously, it is POSSIBLE that the camera evaporated in my absence and then reassembled with new digital images in it upon my return. And the POSSIBILITY of philosophical or metaphysical zombies populating my real world is not beyond imagination.

If you believe such things are possible, then you do. Just because you can imagine something does not make it possible, however. There is, after all, an actual existence, and whatever that is, it excludes anything else that can be imagined. If you have an evaporating camera that reassembles itself, it cannot also be one that does not evaporate and remains in tact.

Of course, you don't have to accept any evidence and can continue to live in chronic doubt, if that's what you like. Is it what you like? (That would be a kind of psychological masochism, wouldn't it?)

Living in chronic doubt does not mean choosing or liking chronic doubt. It would be masochistic if it were volitional, I.e. if I chose to live in chronic doubt. However, the tiniest doubt is ever present just because it is not possible to absolutely know reality.

What you think and believe is chosen, not forced on you. I suspect you really believe you have chosen doubt because you are convinced certain knowledge is not possible. I know it is a very common view today.

I'll not try to convince you otherwise, but I hope you do not mean by, "not possible to absolutely know reality," that one must be omniscient or infallible to have certain knowledge. I know literally thousands and thousands of things that are absolutely certain. I don't have to know everything to know anything and I don't have to never make a mistake to not be mistaken about most things, do I?

[RCSaunders]

As for the impossibility of truly knowing: technically, you're right. It's impossible to know with complete certainty.

You surprise me, Henry. Are you not certain that heavier than air human flight is possible, that many diseases are caused by microscopic organisms, that the circulation of the blood leaves and returns to the heart, that lased light, geo-stationary satelites, and wireless communication are possible. These are all things once doubted, but today are certain. Have a look at the periodic chart of chemical elements and tell me which attributes of which elements indicated on that chart are not certain? Of course we are not omniscient or infallible, but that does not mean we nothing with certainty, does it?

[bahman]

In his new book,
The Case Against Reality: Why Evolution Hid the Truth From Our Eyes,
the U.C. Irvine cognitive scientist Dr. Donald Hoffman challenges the leading scientific theories that claim that our senses report back objective reality.
How can it be possible that the world we see is not objective reality?
And how can our senses be useful if they are not communicating the truth?
Hoffman argues that while we should take our perceptions seriously, we should not take them literally.
https://www.skeptic.com/science-salon/d ... -our-eyes/

In Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dd6CQCbk2ro

In TED Talk:
https://www.ted.com/talks/donald_hoffma ... anguage=en

These are the points raised by Donald Hoffman.

• 1. What we perceived as reality out there are constructed by our brain via evolutionary drives. They are merely virtual interfaces to facilitate survival.
  
  2. Space and Time are human constructs via evolutionary drives.
  
  3. Physical objects do not exist if humans do not observed them, including the pre-existing objects like the moon, sun and the likes.

However Hoffman believe there is Objective Reality [reality-in-itself] out there but evolution has hidden its truth from us.
Seemingly evolution is not interested in the truth of objective reality.

Interestingly Hoffman points 1-3 above resonate with Kant's theories.
However, Kant went further, where he demonstrated even reality-in-itself do not exists as real. The idea of the thing-in-itself when reified is an illusion.

Views?

We are minds interacting through a substance called physical. Physical is not an illusion though. So I partially agree with Kant.

[henry quirk]

As for the impossibility of truly knowing: technically, you're right. It's impossible to know with complete certainty.

You surprise me, Henry. Are you not certain that heavier than air human flight is possible, that many diseases are caused by microscopic organisms, that the circulation of the blood leaves and returns to the heart, that lased light, geo-stationary satelites, and wireless communication are possible. These are all things once doubted, but today are certain. Have a look at the periodic chart of chemical elements and tell me which attributes of which elements indicated on that chart are not certain? Of course we are not omniscient or infallible, but that does not mean we nothing with certainty, does it?

I'm absolutely as certain (of those things and others) as I need to be.

I have no doubt, for example, my apple is real, exists independent of me, and is pretty much as I see it, smell it, taste it, feel it.

But, in deference to my Robot Overlord, I accept some minuscule possibility that I'm, for example, a disembodied brain, maintained in a jar in a Cleveland lab, bein' fed impressions of an apple through embedded copper wires. The possibility doesn't keep me up at night, though.

[Veritas Aequitas]

Then you're a madman, and I'm gonna stay waaaay the hell away from you.

See, folks? That's how a direct realist deals with loopy folks who say the apple ain't real, or is sumthin' other than what it is.

Dramatically bitin' into the apple as you walk away works too.

Re "I don’t believe anything exists" meant exists are really-real independently or a thing-in-itself.

Obviously things exist as empirically-real, i.e. an oncoming train on the track one is standing on is empirically real.
Thus one will have to jump off the track upon seeing the oncoming empirically-real train.

If you jump off the track upon seeing the oncoming train, that is circumstantial evidence that the train is real.

Nope, it is literally empirically-real, NOT absolutely and really-real [per Philosophical Realists' view].

If you see a snake-in-the-shade and run, is that 'snake' in the shade absolutely & really-real or was it an empirical-rope instead that was mistaken for a 'snake'. It is very common many a times, where rope-in-the-shade is mistaken for a "real snake" which stirred fright and triggered some to run.

As a pre-requisite, whatever is empirical-real need to be verified with proper-observation and tested.
Further if one want to know what that rope is really made of, further observations and testing is need to verify its finer reality.

Thus there is always a degree of reality to a thing, i.e. the deeper one dig into the thing, the greater degree of reality of that thing.
But all these degrees of reality are conditioned upon human actions in observing, testing and verifying that degree of reality.
As such, there is no such thing as 'reality' that is independent of the human condition.

[Veritas Aequitas]

No one can read Russell without at least admiring his writing, and I agree that many of his arguments are quite plausible. I cannot agree that, "a non-serious philosopher is one who use rhetoric," if you think that doesn't apply to Russell. His writing is full of interesting and entertaining rhetoric. Who else could reduce the entire debate between empiricists and idealists to, "no matter, never mind," or correctly explain that, "mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true." If you've you read his marvelous, A History of Western Philosophy, and his shorter works that popularized philosophy, you know his writing style (and rhetoric) is one major reason for his success.

I have no doubt that Russell was a, "serious," philosopher if that means he sincerely took his own work seriously. After all, that was his profession. I also think, early on, he actually made some real progress in philosophy, but somewhere in his early years began to entertain ideas without any sound logical foundation, possibly because of the influence of Hume (concepts are little pictures in one's head) and Liebnitz (the best of all possible worlds) and his own fantasies about windowless monads. Once he and Whitehead (Principia Mathemtica) and the other logical positivists, Ludwig Wittgenstein et. al. put their collective heads together and attempted to reduce reason to the manipulation of symbols (like Boolean algebra) they very nearly destroyed philosophy. [They were actually a little late, since Kant had already done that.]

I think you are absolutely right that to do philosophy right one must honestly examine everything, "deep and wide," as you put it, and apply rigorous reasoning to every question and be able to explain one's conclusions, "sequentially and systematically," again as you put it, which means allowing no baseless assumptions and no contradictions in any part of that reasoning.

Agree with you on the above.

I don't think serious philosophers like Russell et. al. had used rhetoric in their arguments because they are philosophically-intelligent enough to see their own rhetoric if they ever use any.

The problem is those serious philosophers that I contend with use the wrong/false first major premise, thus even if their argument/syllogism are solid, their conclusion is false because that falsehood followed all the way from the first major premise.

[henry quirk]

Mistaking a length of rope for a snake sez nuthin' about the reality of snakes, ropes, or apples, and, ignorance of aspects of Reality doesn't diminish 'realness'.

[Veritas Aequitas]

VA thinks that the only alternative to absolute mind-dependence is absolute mind-independence. One has to be pretty dense to not realize that that's a false dichotomy, and that both these extreme positions are wrong.

Straw-man!!
I don't believe in the absolute, i.e. the absolutely-absolute.
What is most realistic is mind-interdependent.

No, you believe in an absolute form of mind-dependence and call it interdependence. It's a destructive, some would say malignant position.

The correct view is of course neither mind-dependence nor mind-independence, but that the (real) human mind is continuous with the (real) world 'out there'. It's just that the world 'out there' can't be directly percieved in any way, shape or form (because we always experience the inside of our own head).

If the human mind is continuous with the world 'out there' - that is where the concept of 'interdependence' is applicable.

It is the same if you use the term "(real)" for whatever, they are interdependent with the human mind.

[Veritas Aequitas]

Mistaking a length of rope for a snake sez nuthin' about the reality of snakes, ropes, or apples, and, ignorance of aspects of Reality doesn't diminish 'realness'.

When one mistaken a length of rope for a real snake, says a lot that one had been duped as to what is real.
Thus the question to ask is, are you also duped when you see and hold on to the 'real solid rope'.

But what is the real rope is only reflecting a degree of that realness, which is a crude level of realness of the rope.
A higher reality of the rope would be what materials the rope are made of and how many strands and how they are constructed to form the rope. Surely this fact has a higher degree of realness than the realness of just being a rope.

So as you will note,
-there is a degree of 'realness' to the rope or anything,
-there is a range of degrees of realness
-such degree of realness is dependent on human investigation, observation and verification.

Therefore there is no absolutely-real-rope-by-itself without any relation to human human investigations, observations and verifications.

[Veritas Aequitas]

Nonetheless, Hoffman's idea is interesting where he brought in elements of evolution in the in-between processes.
I disagree with Hoffman's ultimate objective reality which in a way is related to Plato's ideas.
To me there is no ultimate objective reality all the way.

I think our take on Hoffman is not that different. I do not know what the phrase, "ultimate objective reality all the way," means, so cannot agree or disagree with that. Would you care to illucidate?

It is like there is no ultimate objective reality, period.
It is turtles-all-the-way down.

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down
  "Turtles all the way down" is an expression of the problem of infinite regress.
  The saying alludes to the mythological idea of a World Turtle that supports the earth on its back. It suggests that this turtle rests on the back of an even larger turtle, which itself is part of a column of increasingly large turtles that continues indefinitely (i.e., "turtles all the way down").