Reaility: It is what it is.

Do We See Reality? By Donald Hoffman
(New Scientist, Vol 243, Number 3241, pp. 34-17)

Of course not. As Hoffman is at pains to point out, we see an image constructed by our brains. But in his discussion, I think he mistakes image for object.

“Reality is virtual” reads a subhead. No, it’s not. Reality is what it is. Our image of it is virtual. More precisely, our experience of reality is virtual. And what exactly is this virtual image? It’s patterns abstracted from the flood of data we take in with our senses.

Abstraction begins with the senses, which filter the data. We sense a very narrow band of electromagnetic radiation as light. We sense an even narrower band as heat. We sense a small fraction of the compounds that impinge on our noses and tongues. We sense our bodily movements with varying degrees of precision. And so on. More tellingly, we do not consciously perceive most of the sensory data transmitted to our brains. Hoffmman is right: our images of the world were and are constructed to foster survival. But that doesn’t mean the images are false. They are merely differently incomplete, and abbreviated. They consist as much of tokens as of representations, maybe more. They are simplified versions.

In attempts to understand “what reality really is” (what an odd collocation of words!), we use the methods of science. And here, something strange happens. We take our built-in facilty of abstracting patterns from the data as a method of arriving at “deeper truths.” Physicists claim that the most abstract patterns, the ones describable only in mathematics, are more true than any others. It’s obvious, I think, that what we perceive of the world is a highly edited, multi-level collection of not too carefully constructed represenations of reality. The notion that the most highly abstracted ones are the most true is, to my mind, exceedingly strange.

The fact is that abstraction occurs at many levels. It begins with sensation, which becomes perception, which becomes data. Data are organised into information. We combine information into knowledge, and knowledge affords insight. Insight permits understanding, which enables theory. Abstract the patterns of theory, and you may gain wisdom.

That chain of abstraction levels is what make our grasp of reality human. It’s what has enabled us to alter and exploit the environment to suit ourselves. That none of us achieve more than a modest level of wisdom may be our undoing: it’s difficult to accept that we must deny ourselves so many of our achievements if we wish our species to survive.