Philosophical musings on Quanta & Qualia; Materialism & Spiritualism; Science & Religion; Pragmatism & Idealism, etc.
Model versus Reality
Post 105.December 15, 2019 continued . . .
Interface : Window to Reality
Fitness Score beats True Facts
In a dialogue with neuroscientist Francis Crick, Hoffman agreed that what we see “is a symbolic interpretation of the world, and that in fact we have no direct knowledge of objects in the world.” But that paradoxical scientific conclusion is in conflict with common sense. So the philosophical problem is “how to distinguish between the thing-in-itself. . ., which is essentially unknowable, and the ‘idea-of-the-thing’, which is what our brains construct”. Yet Crick’s “Astonishing Hypo-thesis” concluded that those ideas, including the idea of the Self, are nothing more than the mechanical operations of neurons. Hence, the ideas and the things can be described by the same physical vocabulary. Which Hoffman found to be implausible, so he noted that, like most humans, Crick was a Metaphysical Realist5 : “we believe that experience accurately depicts the thing-in-itself”. By contrast, Hoffman, “despite the consensus of experts, . . . doubted that natural selection favors perceptions that describe reality”. And I happen to agree that Perception is not perfect, but accurate enough for our physical Pragmatic needs. Yet any discrepancies become a problem only when we try to define “Reality” for Theoretical purposes.
Hoffman was impressed by cognitive scientist Steven Pinker’s more practical assessment of perception, when he “explained why natural selection may not favor veridical perceptions.” From that perspective, Pinker made his own astonishing assertion : “Our minds evolved by natural selection to solve problems that were life-and-death matters to our ancestors, not to commune with correctness.” Hoffman himself argues for Model Dependent Realism6 (MDR), concluding that “it is pointless to ask whether a model is real, only whether it agrees with observation.” For example, what difference would it make to a cave-man whether the moon still exists when he can’t see it? For all practical purposes, that’s not a life-or-death matter. It’s only a concern for philosophers who want to know the absolute truth. That’s why ancient thinkers, such as Plato, proposed that ultimate truth was hidden behind a veil of super-ficial appearances (imperfect copies of Forms) in an unreal supernatural realm (ideality), which is literally meta-physical (extra-sensory). Model Dependent Realists think ideal truth doesn’t matter, but Occultists are obsessed with penetrating the veil, and theoretical Philosophers simply want to know how to distinguish Real from Ideal, Objective from Subjective, and how to get closer to truth.
MDR is a work-around for scientists, who assume that things exist even when no one is observing, but must admit that they have no means to prove that belief. “After all, what observ-ation could possibly tell us what happens when no one observes . . . This half-baked proposal can’t be tested by an experiment, so it’s metaphysics, not science.” Yet Hoffman thought it could be validated by a thought experiment. So he developed a Fitness-Beats-Truth (FBT) theorem for modeling on a computer, and now claims that it has been “proved” in simulations. Hence, “the FBT theorem says that natural selection does not shape us to perceive the structure of that reality. It shapes us to perceive fitness points, and how to get them.” So it’s the abstract score that counts, not the physical substance of reality. However, he explains, “there is an objective reality. But that reality is utterly unlike our perceptions of objects in space and time.”
Post 105 continued . . . click Next
5. Metaphysical Realism : “Metaphysical realism is the view that most of the objects that populate the world exist independently of our thought and have their natures independently of how, if at all, we conceive of them. It is committed, in my opinion, to a robust form of essentialism.” https://journals.openedition.org/philosophiascientiae/222
6. Model Dependent Realism : “claims that it is meaning-less to talk about the "true reality" of a model as we can never be absolutely certain of anything. The only meaning-ful thing is the usefulness of the model.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model-dependent_realism
The Case Against Reality
Why Evolution Hid the Truth From Our Eyes Donald Hoffman
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