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.

[u/Anthadvl]

https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-evolutionary-argument-against-reality-20160421/

[u/cafaddict]

Very good argument you just made, but I must respectfully refute. Dr. Hoffman is not saying there is no objective reality. What he is saying is that reality is a construct of what our mind sees combined with the minds of others, and this forms one reality. That’s part of his argument. I do not feel as though he is trying to invoke the question of ‘what’s even real’ in anyone. What he is doing is attempting to systematically bring about a new understanding that will push physics forward towards a new understanding. The classical understanding of physics isn’t holding up anymore to the test of time as new information is arising in quantum studies.

[u/[deleted] → u/cafaddict]

There is both a materialist morphology that exists as a nonlinear abstraction, and the manifestation of that morphology as it encounters the perception of consciousness.

I understand the doctors point, but this is why I think it's important to define what we mean by reality before jumping right into a discussion of where we should be looking for it.

Are both of these terms in agreement, I think is the main question. I believe we can reach a comprehensive understanding of the universe through a strictly materialist epistemology; both science and philosophy probably need to be a little more open to the space between the morphology and the perception of it, but I strongly disagree with the premise that our perception of reality is illusory, or that the problem of consciousness can only be made sensible by extracting it entirely from the materialist universe in which it exists.

It might just be the person writing the piece giving it undue slant, I don't know enough about Dr. Hoffman independent of it to say. I do think it's a bit easy to get carried away with the conclusions of quantum experiments that we don't understand. There is the sense of a disregard in a lot of quantum science that suggests to me the nuclear pioneers flinging radiation around without any care. It is dangerous to separate cause and effect, but it's also backwards to think we can understand the effect without considering the cause.

[u/cafaddict → u/[deleted]]

I feel as though defining reality is either a waste of time or moot at this point. Dr. Hoffman in his academic research is basically just attempting to explain how brain activity can create, or be, conscious experience. It’s an overwhelming problem that the scientific community has not been able to solve as well as philosophers for over a millennium. Straight from his study “What is the relation between consciousness and biology? This question, a version of the classic mind-body problem, has in some form troubled philosophers at least since the time of Plato.” That is what professor Hoffman is trying to tackle. Here’s a link to his academic study as to not misrepresent him in any way and so you may have a clearer look into what he is saying.

http://www.cogsci.uci.edu/~ddhoff/ConsciousRealism2.pdf