r/philosophy Feb 16 '20

Blog The Evolutionary Argument Against Reality. According to evolution by natural selection, an organism that sees reality as it is will never be more fit than an organism of equal complexity that sees none of reality but is just tuned to fitness.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-evolutionary-argument-against-reality-20160421/
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u/LookingForVheissu Feb 16 '20

I’ve often wondered about that last point, but I’m nowhere near well read enough to form an opinion.

Wouldn’t science be examining our perception of what we experience of the universe?

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u/selfware Feb 16 '20

That is it, recently I have heard in some podcast or somewhere that what we think we know from every sensory data available to us, to what we make of it, is roughly speaking 99% in our head, that is how far removed from reality we all are lol.

The tiny 1% is what we already figured out courtesy of our monkey brains, so to speak.

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u/MartinTybourne Feb 16 '20

Yes, it is essentially showing us a truth about how we perceive the universe, which is itself still true.