Our penchant to misread our perceptions, as philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein pointed out to his fellow philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe, stems in part from an uncritical attitude toward our perceptions, toward what we mean by "it looks as if. Anscombe says of Wittgenstein that, "He once greeted me with the question: 'Why do people say that it was natural to think that the sun went round the earth rather than that the earth turned on its axis?' I replied. 'I suppose, because it looked as if the sun went round the earth! "Well, he asked, what would it have looked like if it had looked as if the earth turned on its axis?' The question brought it out that I had hitherto given no relevant meaning to 'it looks as if in 'it looks as if the sun goes around the earth. "Wittgenstein's point is germane any time we wish to claim that reality matches or mismatches our perceptions. There is, as we shall see, a way to give precise meaning to this claim using the tools of evolutionary game theory: we can prove that if our perceptions were shaped by natural selection then they almost surely evolved to hide reality. They just report fitness.
— The Case Against Realiy, p19 — Banno
Untrue. Hoffman says objects and spacetime are part of the headset, which implies that evolution is, too. There's no contradiction.Tallis' argument is clear. Hoffman claims on the one hand that "There are no such things as objects as they are usually understood as discrete items localized in space and time". But such objects are the very basis of the theory of evolution, and of science more generally. Hoffman thereby undermines the basis of his own theory.
Hoffman uses objective reality to deny objective reality. — Banno
Because evolution is in the headset, it explains what happens in the headset.If evolution is only a part of the "headset", how is it that it can explain that we are evolved conscious agents? — Banno
Normally, in cases of clarity, that might seem be true. But when uncertainty is inherent, a compromise between competing opinions becomes necessary*1.That's why we call them "paradoxes"*2 (contrary opinion). If your opinion is different from mine, I could assume that you are wrong. But some differences of opinion eventually turn-out to be truish : a blend of yours & mine. And, since Psychology & Neuroscience are not yet "hard" sciences, Hoffman's "illusion" may be one of those cases. Besides, the Interface Theory is just an analogy, subject to various interpretations.A side note, on your suggesting that we accept paradoxes. Accepting a paradox is tantamount to accepting anything. — Banno
Because evolution is in the headset, it explains what happens in the headset.
But if it is in the headset, it's not happening in the world.
So homo erectus never really fucked another homo erectus - that's all just stuff in the headset; and so there was never an opportunity for evolution to occur - it was all just headset stuff.
— Art48
In which case conscious agents are just the trees and rocks an Homo Erectus of which we already talk, and his theory amounts to little more than a mathematical definition of something he - dubiously - claims is the same as consciousness.But "conscious agents" is Hoffman term's for what lies beneath the headset. — Art48
All you’ve said here most recently, makes no mention of that which I take particular exception, that being where in the system this “judgement”, where that which “decides for me”, resides. You’ve maintained its residence to be in intuition, subsequently broadened its residence to sensibility in general. Hence, my objection that whatever you think this “judgement” is, sufficient for it to “decide for me”, being necessarily a conscious activity insofar as unconscious or subconscious decision making is inconceivable in accordance with the human intellectual system, the business of both this ambiguous form of “judgement”, and proper judgement itself, do not belong to sensibility, said objection expressed as “tantamount to proposing that sensibility thinks”. — Mww
Imagination is the thing I found in the analysis of your term in your context. I analyzed “judgement” and rejected it as philosophically ambiguous. Of course I would be unfamiliar with “judgement”, given the established abstract conceptual system to which judgement necessarily belongs. To use it, or any of its derivatives, no matter how disguised, other than as that system demands, is to destroy it altogether. — Mww
Nahhhh, you don’t. You’re presupposing I have no idea what you’re talking about. I say that because at the end of our first set of comments here, pg 6, there’s a question for you left unaddressed, which would have given a different perspective entirely for what was initially a general agreement between us.
With that unanswered question, combined with my mentioning something about a form of judgement related to intuition and you changing that into a form of “judgement” contained in intuition…..we’ve digressed into irreconcilable differences.
All else is superfluous. — Mww
We can also question just how significant the difference is between taking something 'seriously' as opposed to 'literally' — green flag
Boring, maybe, but also pretty decisive. — Banno
So the snake is... and here I'm trying to work out what it is Hoffman would say... some sort of community of interweaving conscious agents. — Banno
'Quantum mechanics says that classical objects — including brains — don’t exist'.(Hoffman) — green flag
And yet, if the snake bites, you die. So "The snakebite is poisonous" is true even if the snake is not real? How's that? — Banno
For that matter - is the Interface Theory of Perception falsifiable, in Popper's sense. — Wayfarer
For that matter - is the Interface Theory of Perception falsifiable, in Popper's sense. It's hard to see how any empirical facts could be used to falsify a theory about the nature of empirical cognition. — Wayfarer
I recon one could give a decent defence of scientific realism as an outcome of instrumentalism; where realism is just holding that sentences about electrons are either true or false. Might think on that a bit. — Banno
He can only reach a much less impressive conclusion, one that will not appeal to the boys quite so much. — Banno
He's playing on the word "real". — Banno
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