The Case Against Reality: Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes

Despite centuries of unrelenting scientific progress, the problem of consciousness remains unsolved. How subjective experience can arise from the electrochemical irritation of nervous tissue remains one of the deepest mysteries of the universe.But according to Donald Hoffman, we have yet to solve the problem of consciousness—not because we lack data or the intellectual capacity—but because our conception of reality is entirely wrong. Once we come to grips with the true nature of reality, the problem of consciousness can be solved.The first thing to note is that, while this book may entirely transform the way you see reality, the ideas are not new. Hoffman’s “Interface Theory of Perception” is in many ways a re-statement—supported by research in cognitive science—of Imannuel Kant’s transcendental idealism (Hoffman does give appropriate credit to Kant). In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant claimed to have achieved a “Copernican revolution” in thought by inverting the traditional relationship between subject and object.According to Kant, objects in the world (things-in-themselves) provide the sense data that the mind uses to construct its perceptions and ideas of those objects in pre-configured ways. However, the ideas of the objects are not the objects themselves, and since we can only experience the world through our perceptions and ideas, we can never get outside of our own minds to discover the true nature of those objects. Our minds are not passive observers of an external reality but are actively involved in the construction of our own reality.Hoffman is essentially claiming that the latest research in cognitive science and perception—and even in quantum physics—vindicates Kant. Hoffman, of course, provides details from cognitive science that Kant could not have had access to, but the larger point remains the same—that what we perceive is a construction of the mind and that objective reality, which must exist for the mind to perceive anything at all, is fundamentally different from what we directly perceive. Hoffman introduces the evolutionary concept of “Fitness Beats Truth” to show that evolution almost certainly sculpted our minds for fitness, not to accurately represent reality, thus creating the mismatch between “things-in-themselves” and our perceptions of them.Hoffman uses the analogy of a computer desktop. Our computer files may be represented by icons that occupy space and take certain shapes and colors, but the files themselves do not sit in the middle of our screens or have any shape or color. The files are, at bottom, bits of information and electrical currents in our computer’s memory; the icons allow us to work with the files in an intuitive way but do not represent the underlying reality of the file.In the same way, consciousness is a three-dimensional virtual desktop that allows us to interact with the world in useful ways but does not accurately represent the underlying reality, whatever that reality is. Hoffman uses convincing examples throughout the book to demonstrate that things like color are not inherent in objects themselves but are active constructions by the mind in response to certain wavelengths of light. In an interesting case study, Hoffman shows us that if the area of the brain that processes colors is damaged, color can disappear entirely from conscious awareness.The implications of this—if Hoffman (and Kant) is right—are huge. It means that all natural science is essentially reduced to psychology. A deeper understanding of the material world—including both macro-level objects (including brains and neurons) and quantum particles—are simply icons and pixels in the interface of our consciousness. They tell us nothing about objective reality, only about our interface.Here’s another way to think about it: an expert Minecraft player that is very good at manipulating and controlling the Minecraft world remains entirely ignorant of the underlying computer code and hardware running the game. Likewise, scientists may have expert knowledge of our virtual interface of the world, but, like the Minecraft player, they have no access to the underlying reality that makes the world of conscious perception possible. This inversion of subject and object also explains why quantum experiments are so dependent and influenced by observation—quantum particles are not the deepest components of objective reality, they are the pixels of our conscious interface that the mind creates.Kant would agree with all of this, but Hoffman wants to go further than Kant. Kant would see the Interface Theory of Perception as defining the limits of human understanding, in that we simply can’t transcend the limits of perception to see the ultimate cause of our perceptions. Stated in another way, the fundamental nature of reality is about as discoverable as a new color you’ve never seen.But Hoffman, for some reason, refuses to accept this. He thinks that the ultimate nature of reality can be discovered scientifically and that it is essentially composed of conscious agents. According to Hoffman, we have yet to solve the mystery of consciousness—not because we’re awaiting new scientific discoveries or have reached the limit of human understanding—but because our entire conception of reality is wrong. Once we understand that the world is composed of conscious agents that ultimately create spacetime and all the objects contained within it, we can finally solve the hard problem of consciousness.I’ll admit that I found this argument to be less persuasive. I think that Hoffman has discovered, like Kant, the boundaries and limits of human understanding. We can investigate the world scientifically as its presented to us, but we have no conceivable way to transcend the limits of our own virtual conscious interface. The things-in-themselves, the objective reality that must exist to provide sense data to our minds, cannot be investigated directly because whatever data we acquire will always be filtered through perceptual systems that we can’t control or transcend. It’s like being born blind and trying to understand what it’s like to see color.Some readers may be persuaded by Hoffman’s argument, but I don’t see a way around this. If perception is created by the mind based on an objective reality that is different, then we simply have no way to access this objective reality. It’s what Wittgenstein meant when he said that what can be said can be said clearly, and “whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” We can speak about our conscious interface (science and human behavior and experience), but when we attempt to transcend the interface the result is always nonsense. As Kant said long ago, this is precisely the point where we’ve reached the limit of human understanding. Hoffman thinks otherwise; who is ultimately right the reader is left to decide.

At the beginning, I was enthusiastic about this book because Mr. Hoffman speculates (and I also subscribe to) ... that there is a hierarchy of consciousness in which multiple consciousnesses form another unitary consciousness, each level influencing those above and below it. But this book ultimately undermines rationality (as is generally the case in a decaying civilization). It is a modified solipsistic argument ... (the view that the self is the only reality) ... with the following "twist". >>> >>> There "IS" an objective reality according to Hoffman ... but ... we can never know it ... because our methods of perception do not allow us to see it >IN PRINCIPLE< , i.e. objective reality is permanently without "knowable" (read perceptible) constructs. We may only have an objective reality without actual objects. <<< While it is true that we can never "see" into the quantum mechanical domain, it can nevertheless (in theory) be "objectified by conceptualization", i.e. outside of perception. That is, we use our perceptions and reason upon them to induce/deduce that objective reality, by means of reduction to simplest terms ... there being only a finite number of possibilities. Thus, after a few more centuries of inquiry, we can corral the answer by tightening the noose till there is no room left for anything but the truth ... thereby obtaining it by dint of perseverance. The bulk of the book is about how our perception is undercut by optical illusions and other perceptual oddities like split brain, synesthesia and the like. These are to overtake common perceptions by quality rather than quantity, i.e. the 1% overturns the other 99%. The author seems to promote that mankind should take up the mantle of "unknowable objectivity" as a working hypothesis, rejecting space and time as only imperfect perceptual guidelines, rather than the "real stuff" of the universe. I guess we can reach Dirac's cold requirement to "generate the fine structure constant" through ... perceptual evolution?? We may eventually discern 0.00729735253... by contemplating and making calculations upon some as yet unknown optical illusion? Hmmm ... I'm not feeling it quite yet. Facts that should be known to all who inquire :1) Logic cannot operate on itself to the end of explaining itself, i.e. we get the most fundamental principles at the top of the hierarchy by guessing them. Hence, the de facto undermining of rationality by citing this inability ... only undermines the author's credibility in the minds of those rooted in ostensibly "knowable objective reality".2) The percepts formed in "mind" are smaller than the real world by orders of magnitude. If what you see in your mind's eye as a percept or memory is one KILO-byte, then what it represents in the real world is 1 GIGA-byte. A memory or percept is a crappy little thing that maps to the real world (the "live" feed) at the important points so we can recognize things the next time we see them. An extremely realistic dream, if it could be projected as a movie, would be judged by all to be crap (not even of cartoon quality). It's merely useful ... accurate only in its main features.3) What we perceive is made up of objective and subjective "stuff".Color, smell, taste, touch, hearing, etc. are all clearly subjective as stated by Galileo centuries ago. We don't know what anyone else is seeing for certain, only that there can be no quantifiable contradiction. In contrast, space, time and geometry are fundamentally objective, i.e. they generate quantities and are therefore subject to contradiction if varying from person to person. Here, the author would cite the 1% subjectivity of measure as undermining the 99% objective aspect. Having seen Mr. Hoffman on several internet videos, he seems to be genuinely convinced that his position is a sound one. My opinion is that he is digging over what will become a large Floridian sinkhole with just a few more shovelfuls. Generally, consciousness is not a good place to dig for truth, exactly because of all that subjectivity to which he rightly alludes. Inquiry into consciousness is something like string theory ... forever promising, never delivering, finally going "bust". The true nature of consciousness will probably come to be known EXACTLY when the true nature of objective reality also becomes known. I'm holding my breath. ;o) I gave him three stars for taking the time to make an intellectual presentation for mass consumption, and for making me look up some new words in the dictionary. Otherwise, it was fairly tedious reading and I confess to skipping when the repetition of optical illusions got too thick. Lots of filler material here ... last quarter of book consists of numbered notes and references.

Detailed exploration and linked well....

Seriously changed my understanding of the world and its possibilities

I am not sure I like the ideas in this book, but I think those speculations are interresting and plausible.

Other reviewers have noted that Kant in many ways developed similar notions to Hoffman in that what we perceive is not what reality actually is.Hoffman adds insights from a more contemporary perspective that takes into account, for example, of recent scientific discoveries.I particularly like his analogy of how our perceptions work to that of desktop icons on our PCs.What bothers me most about the book is that there is a huge gap in his argument.Everything goes along fairly smoothly until he tries to explain why evolution does not lead to an accurate grasp of reality. He says that scientists and mathematicians have calculated that the probability of this occurring is effectively zero. He even throws in a formula (that was completely incomprehensible to me).To make such a statement and asking us to believe these scientists without demonstrating the proof in a more convincing way leaves me completely skeptical. Why should I believe him or them?This gap in the argument taints the rest of the book. This is similar to the way a gap in the middle of a mathematical proof should lead us to doubt the conclusion the proof comes to.

The Case Against Reality by Donald Hoffman failed to meet my expectations. I expected to find more detail on his concept of conscious agents after hearing him on Youtube. I read the initial chapters on perception with interest but when it came to the final chapter where I hoped to find the detail I sought, I found instead more of a plea for science to seriously investigate consciousness as the fundamental reality. This was interspersed with confusing statements that required knowledge not found in the book and a tendency to repeat ideas more than once as if to make the chapter longer. I felt that the last chapter could have been turned into a book itself that would further explain and expand its contents. In general, I’d say if you’re interested in conscious realism (author's term), it’s better to listen to the author on Youtube than buy this book.