A preview of Cc's "Hoffman playing Basketball in zero-gravity" a critical review of his "Case Against Reality"

I've put together this 9 page preview of my "Hoffman playing basketball in zero-gravity" critique in order to send a hard copy to scientists and others who's work I've featured during this project, maybe even get a little feedback.  

I'm sharing because during the year I worked on this project my homework has evolved into a rich student resource, with copious links, references and insights for the young critical thinker writing a paper or report.  Especially those that want to dig into Donald Hoffman's Case Against Reality, for themselves, this is a goldmine. 

That's also why I'm taking the opportunity to post this online and send hard copies to some others.  You see, I'm trying to find out if this resonates with anyone out there in the world beyond my rural Colorado cabin.  If the following does resonates with you, I'd love to hear from you.  Serious feedback, critique, suggestions, networking is invited.  

Thank you for your time, 

Peter Miesler (aka Citizenschallenge)

citizenschallenge at gmail

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 A preview of Cc’s “Hoffman playing basketball in zerogravity”

a critical review of “The Case Against Reality”

(5.01)    With a summary, explaining why I've pursued this project. 

These days science is under multiple attacks, much of it built upon malicious, deliberately fabricated falsehoods concocted by ruthless special self-interests, with bottomless bank accounts and control of screaming social media machines.  

But some is self-inflicted because in these modern times ‘provocative' gets more adulation than simple learning and constructively building upon understood fundamentals and exercising critical thinking skills.

An excellent example of this malaise is Donald Hoffman’s “Case Against Reality, why evolution hid the truth from our eyes,” with its insistence that science needs meta-physical thinking to comprehend human consciousness.  The book’s content, suggested to me, plain old Abrahamic dualism wrapped up in scientific pretense.  This has gotten me to wondering about how much of modern thinking, such as Chalmers’ “Hard Problem” of consciousness is intractable simply because they are still trapped within a bubble of Abrahamic inspired dualistic mindset, with its unrealistic divisions, impossible expectations, along with its superlative self-centeredness.

My project, Hoffman Playing Basketball in Zero-gravity Review is intended to identify the book's red flags and to offer solid critique, backed by information and sources that will provide students with the facts they need to see through Hoffman’s smokescreen for themselves.

Food for thought you could say. I'm specifically targeting those curious students already concerned with American’s descent into delusional anti-science thinking, students who are hungry for ideas on how to constructively confront today’s rising tide of belligerent willful ignorance. 

Mark Solms demystifies Chalmers' "Hard Problem" of Consciousness.

Dr. Mark Solms deftly demystifies Chalmers’ “Hard Problem” of Consciousness

Chance favors a prepared mind - and after nearly a year of dealing with “The Case Against Reality,” which, for me, was a collection of maddeningly dreamy philosophizing*; disconnected from physical reality; and dismissive of the known facts and Evolution, which is central to my understanding of reality.  *(on the other hand)

Learning is about providing us with tools and concepts we can work with as building blocks towards further developing our overall conceptions.  But Hoffman’s FBT theorem and ITP inspired “conscious agents,” was like a bad practical joke, offering little but frustration, luftgeschäft, irrelevance - no place to go with it once it's done.

As if on cue, YouTube prompted me with a suggestion that I might like this newly released talk:  "The Source of Consciousness - with Dr. Mark Solms" posted March 4th and they weren’t kidding.  Dr. Solms provides a way back to the solid ground of physical reality and serious science.

Among the speaker’s achievements, beyond being skilled as both psychoanalyst, plus neuropsychologist!  Dr. Solms is the Director of neuropsychology in the Neuroscience Institute of the University of Cape Town, an honorary lecturer in neurosurgery at the Royal London Hospital School of Medicine, and a pioneer in the scientific field of neuropsychoanalysis, being credited as first to use that term, along with being the recipient of many honors and awards.  He’s also credited with discovering and described the forebrain mechanisms of dreaming.

After I finished that first lecture, I had to listen to another one, then another, and another, two days worth of binging on Dr. Solms ensued before I was sated,... for the time being.  

Solms is an enthralling speaker and his ideas resonate with my own life time of learning about natural sciences and this body I inhabit, I couldn’t get enough of him explaining his findings and their implications and I intend to read a couple of his books plus listen to some of those talks again.  Lots to absorb.  

All that inspired me to put together this collection of lectures given by Dr. Mark Solms PhD, I'll be following up with another post highlighting a few of his many scientific papers.  

It makes a perfect transition between Hoffman's philosophizing and my own upcoming philosophizing.  Whereas I can only offer reasoning behind the perspective I believe in, Solms provides us with scientific physical evidence and clear cut justifications that are harmonious with my perspective and trust in science.

Solms deftly demystifies Chalmers’ “Hard Problem” of Consciousness, thus taking the air out of the wavy gravy meta-physical approaches to consciousness that removes it from fundamental evolutionary processes and physical reality as we know it.  It’s no wonder Hoffman never mentions Solms name, nor the promise of neuropsychoanalysis.

Among the points that resonated with my own understanding, 

Diary, “Get over it dude, why u so obsessed with Hoffman’s Case Against Reality?”

I'm happy to report that after an unexpected extension, my critical review of Donald Hoffman's "Case Against Reality" is complete.  I thought to do more by way of summary, but not getting any inspiration, so I'm done.  Perhaps in a year, providence willing, it'll be fun to revisit and see if I can write an interesting summary.  In the meantime, this will have to do.

HOFFMAN'S "CASE AGAINST REALITY," 

PLAYING BASKETBALL IN ZERO-GRAVITY, A REVIEW

Hoffman Playing Basketball in Zero-gravity Review is intended to offer solid information, food for thought, and hopeful inspiration for students concerned with American’s descent into delusional thinking.  It is set up to be easily skimmed, contains copious references to expert sources and reporting, along with a few promising gems.  

I've been challenged with the question: "Why am I so "obsessed" with Hoffman’s Case Against Reality?"

It’s a fair enough question.  Why have I spent a half year thinking about it, then nearly another half year and thousands of words dissecting Donald Hoffman’s book, The Case Against Reality, why evolution hid the truth from our eyes? 

I’ll tell you why,  

* It started with Donald Hoffman boasting that he’s doing serious solid science that is relevant to our daily lives.  When all he’s doing is sophisticated mathematical games, computer modeling, philosophizing, wrapped in just-so storytelling.  But, none of it deserves being called serious science! 

* Getting further into the book, I found my Down to Earth sensibilities and my respect for physical sciences increasingly offended by this man’s glib disregard for natural facts as scientists have refined them.

* His dismissal of physical sciences and the physicalist paradigm were as laughable, as they were irritatingly disingenuous.  

* His notion that the perceiver composes the perceived, is childish.  

After all, doesn’t light need to reflect off an object before we can perceive it?  The perceiver composes an impression of the perceived.  How does Hoffman justify such gross distortions of physical fact?

* His constant reliance on computer analogies to answer questions - is reminiscent of an evangelical’s dependence on their own Bible to make their case, such debate tactics are not acceptable for a scientist.

* His constant conflation of Objective Reality and Physical Reality, needs a spotlight.  

“Objective” being a product of our minds doing their best to keep subjective human biases out of their observation and learning process.  

Thus, science’s dependence on process and measurements; physical evidence and repeatability; facts at hand driving understanding; a community of experts always looking over each other’s shoulders; constructively learning from mistakes; demand for honesty at all levels of communication; and so on.

* His tendency to imply that Evolution has agency reveals a limited appreciation for actual “wet” evolution unfolding one day at a time, over the course of deep time.  

* In fact, turns out the only thing Hoffman knows about Evolution, is Evolutionary Game Theory.  (He's never studied actual Evolution.)  Realizing that, made Hoffman’s simplistic sweeping pronouncements regarding Evolution that much more galling.

* Then, his quantum level rhetorical fancy dancing that disingenuously conflates conclusions from atom smasher experiments with our macroscopic day to day reality, was like listening to nails being scrapped across a chalkboard.  

* He joined the chorus of talking head$, proclaiming “Space-time and Reality (as we know it) is Doomed,” a mere figment of our imagination.  Why?  Basically because their latest and greatest math breaks down, leaving them with no other conclusion.

* Then to fill in this contrived void, Donald’s imaginative storytelling comes to the rescue with Hoffmanian Conscious Agents that zip around interpreting reality for us, because the reality we think we are seeing, isn’t really there, says Professor Hoffman.  He assures us that he has the math to “prove” it.

Matthew Schlesinger, is hungry for more (HSP) interface theory of perception.

We've come to the last paper mentioned in the list of learned responses Professor Hoffman shared with me via his “Probing the interface theory of perception: Reply to commentaries, (HSP).  

The interface theory of perception leaves me hungry for more: Commentary on Hoffman, Singh, and Prakash, “The interface theory of perception”

Matthew Schlesinger, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review

volume 22, pages 1548–1550(2015), September 18, 2015

https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758%2Fs13423-014-0776-1
(full article1400 words)

Abstract

…  Is the theory convincing? I would have to say “almost”; although it certainly has many elements working in its favor, ultimately, I also found that some important questions were ignored or left unanswered,  … 

Hoffman, Singh, and Prakash (2014) have ventured into dangerous waters by articulating the idea that perceptual experience is not (necessarily) veridical. They provide support for their provocative claim in a variety of ways (some more convincing than others), …

Overall, I found the argument to be a superb opening shot in what may grow to become a rather contentious debate. …

We got phylogeny and ontogeny!

What a delight to discover that the interface theory of perception not only includes the evolutionary timescale, but also makes room for the developmental timescale. … 

At the very least, this feature means that there is a potential continuity across the two timescales, opening the door to a discussion of multitimescale interactions, including exotic subjects such as heterochrony and the Baldwin effect.

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“opening the door to a discussion of multi-time-scale interactions”  Say what?

I’ve written Professor Schlesinger a couple emails asking if he could explain the concept, and it’s place, in lay terms, but haven’t received a reply, so I’m left guessing.

I don’t recall anything in Hoffman’s book Case Against Reality referring to  ‘multi-time-scale perceptual interactions.’   When I look up the term, there’s all sorts of interesting stuff, such as “entangled time in flocking: multi-time-scale interactions,” among others.  But nothing related to multigenerational perception or Evolution.  

Genetic coding and interactions with changing environments comes to mind, but viewed through the lens of “perceptual interactions over multi-time-scales” seems a non sequitur.  Is it a fancy way of saying the mental processing of varying levels of memory and forethought capabilities?  Could be, but then, why not simply say so?  Who knows?

The thing I do know is that when claims and lofty rhetoric overwhelms my senses and leaves my head spinning, with nothing to build upon.  I pull back to what I do understand and that always takes me back to knowledge attained through Earth sciences and biology.  

The breath and depth of the current scientific understanding within a simple pragmatic physicalist* paradigm is awesome (*before all the over-wrought handwringing takes over).  Heck, it even invites mystical experiences far superior to what can be achieved sitting in a monastic cell.  

Get out into dark skies, sit on the edge of Earth, gazing at a crescent moon, with the sun over the horizon and some planets in view, imagining their orbits, looking beyond into the milky way, thinking about the Voyagers and other manmade spacecraft and all we've learned about those worlds.  The deeper your understanding becomes, the more vivid your mind's eye.

Achieving a momentarily visceral awareness of those objects in time and space, now that get's about as mystical as a human could hope for.  Or the other direction, inward voyages, into your own body that are possible given today's medical understanding and imaging capability.  All it takes is doing your homework and sincere curiosity.

If we're going to spend all day within our mindscapes, why not spend energy on those sorts of constructive down to Earth pursuits?  Thoughts and ideas that can lead to constructive outcomes. At least that's what I'll be arguing for in future installments.

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The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life, by David Quammen

Science writer David Quammen explains how recent discoveries in molecular biology can change our understanding of evolution and life’s history, with powerful implications for human health and even our own human nature. … 

The pioneering work of Carl Woese.   (Goodreads)

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A New View of Evolution That Can’t Be Represented by a Tree

By Erika Check Hayden, New York Times Book Review, August 13, 2018

… Quammen’s sprawling history of evolutionary genetics ranges widely in its answer to that question. He synthesizes a large quantity of disparate material, circling repeatedly back to one scientist in particular: Carl Woese, whose work both fleshed out Darwin’s tree and laid the foundations for its uprooting. …

Jacob Feldman, Bayesian inference and “truth”: a comment on Hoffman, Singh, and Prakash.

   

Jacob Feldman:  “On that narrow question, it seems to me that Hoffman et al.’s position cannot be disputed: evolution favors fitness, not truth, beauty, or anything else except insofar as it is correlated with fitness. 

This is literally tautological in the context of Darwinian evolution, as it is essentially a restatement of what is meant by “fitness”—that which is favored by adaptive pressure. …”

Jacob Feldman,  Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science at Rutgers, focuses on Hoffman's “truth,” and it sure seems like he's agreeing with my layperson assessment that Hoffman's "truth" in ITP is a deception.  I encourage you to see if you agree with my assessment of Feldman's short paper “Bayesian inference and “truth”: a comment on Hoffman, Singh, and Prakash,” the original comes in at 1800 words, and here I’ve trimmed it to 500 words worth of highlights that I hope encourage you to read Professor Heldman's entire paper.

Bayesian inference and “truth”: a comment on Hoffman, Singh, and Prakash

• Jacob Feldman,  Psychonomic Bulletin & Review

volume 22, pages 1523–1525 (2015),  September 18, 2015

Abstract

Hoffman, Singh, and Prakash (in press) argue that veridicality is neither required nor achieved by the visual system, and propose a new framework in which the literal truth of perceptual inferences plays no role. In this brief comment, I concur with and advocate their basic position, though I go on to argue that Bayesian inference already embodies a similar epistemological stance.

That “vision usually provides us with a veridical representation of the world” is a cliche so hoary that we vision scientists hardly stop to think about whether it is actually true. 

Hoffman et al. (in press) ask us to consider it a bit more carefully. Could such a truism actually be wrong?

It’s worse than wrong—it’s meaningless.

… Certainly, as Hoffman et al. would agree, the visual system does an exemplary job at resolving the ambiguity. But does it do so by giving us something true, or simply something useful? Or is this a distinction without a difference?

Shimon Edelman, Varieties of perceptual truth, possible evolutionary roots.

At one point in my critique I mentioned that Hoffman’s “veridicality” arguments were a smoke screen.   

Shimon Edelman promises to lend learned support to my position, but the paper is behind a paywall, and I’m focused on catching up with Hoffman’s list, so I’ll simply give it a mention and move along.  

I’m sure, if a student where interested enough to send him an email and request one, that Professor Edelman would be happy to send you a free reprint.  At least in my experience scientists have been helpful with responses and surprisingly generous with sharing theirs papers that are behind a paywall.  (Let him know Cc sent you.)

Varieties of perceptual truth and their possible evolutionary roots

• Shimon Edelman 

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review

volume 22, pages 1519–1522(2015).  October 11, 2014

Abstract

Hoffman, Singh, and Prakash (2014) observe that perception evolves to serve as an interface between the perceiver and the world and proceed to reason that percepts need not, or even cannot, resemble their objects. 

I accept their premise, but argue that there are interesting ways in which perception can be truthful, with regard not to “objects” but to relations, 

and that evolutionary pressure is expected to favor rather than rule out such veridicality.

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Index

Cc’s Students’ Study Guide for The Case Against Reality. 

  

  

I intend to be a witness for a fact based DeepTime, 

Evolutionary perspective on our “human mind” -“physical reality” interface.

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Donald Hoffman Playing Basketball in Zero-Gravity, a critical review of, The Case Against Reality:  Why Evolution Hid The Truth From Our Eyes, by Donald Hoffman, ©2019, W.W.Norton Company

(1.01)  The Prelude, Prof Donald Hoffman Playing Basketball In Zero-Gravity

(1.02)  Chapter 10a, Community: The Network of Conscious Agents (1/3)

(1.03)  Chapter 10b, Community: The Network of Conscious Agents (2/3)

(1.04)  Chapter 10c, Cmty: Network of Hoffmanian Conscious Agents (3/3)

(1.05)  Chapter 1, Mystery: The Scalpel That Split Consciousness

(1.06)  Chapter 2, Beauty: Siren of the Gene

(1.07)  Chapter 3, Reality: Capers of the Unseen Sun

(1.08)  Chapter 4, Sensory: Fitness beats Truth

(1.09)  Chapter 5, Illusory: The Bluff of the Desktop

(1.10)  Chapter 6, Gravity: Spacetime is Doomed

(1.11)  Chapter 7, Virtuality: Inflating a Holoworld

(1.12)  Chapter 8, Polychromy: Mutations of an Interface

(1.13)  Chapter 9, Scrutiny: You Get What You Need, in Both Life and Business

(1.14)  Appendix,  Precisely: The Right to Be (Foolish)

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Hoffman/Prakash’s Objects of Consciousness, Objections and Replies

Frontiers in Psychology - June 17, 2014

(2.01)  4/4_Hoffman, Objects of Consciousness,  (conclusion)

(2.02)  1/4_Hoffman, Objects of Consciousness, questions + replies (1-12)

(2.03)  2/4_Hoffman, Objects of Consciousness, questions + replies (13-17)

(2.04)  3/4_Hoffman, Objects of Consciousness, questions + replies (18-21)

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(3.01)  Diary - But, wait!  There's more.  Ten Learned Responses:

“Probing the interface theory of perception: Reply to commentaries, Donald D. Hoffman, Manish Singh & Chetan Prakash" 

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. volume 22, pages1551–1576(2015)

Abstract

We propose that selection favors nonveridical perceptions that are tuned to fitness. Current textbooks assert, to the contrary, that perception is useful because, in the normal case, it is veridical. Intuition, both lay and expert, clearly sides with the textbooks. We thus expected that some commentators would reject our proposal and provide counterarguments that could stimulate a productive debate. ...

(3.02)  Barton Anderson - Where does fitness fit in theories of perception? 

doi:10.3758/s13423-014-0748-5

(3.03)  Jonathan Cohen - Perceptual representation, veridicality, and the interface theory of perception. 

doi:10.3758/s13423-014-0782-3

(3.04)  Shimon Edelman - Varieties of perceptual truth and their possible evolutionary roots. 

doi:10.3758/s13423-014-0741-z

(3.05)  Jacob Feldman - Bayesian inference and “truth”: a comment on Hoffman, Singh, and Prakash. 

doi:10.3758/s13423-014-0795-y

(3.06)  Chris Fields -Reverse engineering the world: a commentary on Hoffman, Singh, and Prakash, 

“The interface theory of perception”. 

doi:10.3758/s13423-014-0742-y

(3.07)  Jan Koenderink - Esse est Percipi & Verum est Factum. 

doi:10.3758/s13423-014-0754-7

(3.08)  Rainer Mausfeld - Notions such as “truth” or “correspondence to the objective world” play no role in explanatory accounts of perception. 

doi:10.3758/s13423-014-0763-6

(3.09)  Brian P. McLaughlin and E. J. Green - Are icons sense data? 

doi:10.3758/s13423-014-0780-5

(3.10)  Zygmunt Pizlo - Philosophizing cannot substitute for experimentation: comment on Hoffman, Singh & Prakash. 

doi:10.3758/s13423-014-0760-9

(3.11)  Matthew Schlesinger - Interface theory of perception leaves me hungry for more. 

doi:10.3758/s13423-014-0776-

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Student Resources - Background info:

(4.01)  Rainer Mausfeld: ‘Truth’ has no role in explanatory accounts of perception.
(4.02)  Paul Mealing: considers Hoffman's "Objects of Consciousness.”
(4.03)  The Case For Reality: Because Apparently Someone Needs to Make One
(4.04)  Sabine Hossenfelder in Defense of Scientific Realism and Physical Reality
(4.05)  "Emergence" - A Handy Summary and Resources
(4.06)  Physical Origins of Mind - Dr. Siegel, Allen Institute Brain Science, Tononi, Koch.
(4.07)  Can you trust Frontiers in Psychology research papers?  Students' Resource
(4.08)  Critical Thinking Skills - In Defense of Reality - A Student Resource
(4.09)  Philo+Sophia - Love of Wisdom - A Student Resource

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(5.01)    Summary, 

explaining why I pursued this project.

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Dr. Mark Solms deftly demystifies Chalmers’ “Hard Problem” of Consciousness, while incidentally highlighting why Hoffman’s “Conscious Agents” are luftgeschäft. 

(6.01)  Dr. Mark Solms demystifies Chalmers' "Hard Problem" of Consciousness.

(6.02)  The Other Side of Dr. Mark Solms, farmer, vintner, humanitarian.

(6.03)  Students’ Resource: A representative cross-section of Dr. Mark Solms' scientific publications.

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My homemade philosophical underpinning . . . 

 

(7.01)  An Alternative Philosophical Perspective - “Earth Centrism”     
(7.02)  Appreciating the Physical Reality ~ Human Mindscape divide          
(7.03)  Being an element in Earth’s Pageant of Evolution

(7.04)  It’s not a “Body-Mind Problem,”  it’s an “Ego-God Problem.”

Feel free to copy and share

WhatsUpWithThatWatts.blogspot.com

Email: citizenschallenge  gmail  com

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