Hello Philosophy Society!
Whatsapp Chat: Pythagoras, Monads and Hoffman.
Reggie: I assume the conversation was probably around mathematics and how the monad, as 'one', was the source of everything. For completeness, in his Monadology, Leibniz describes a world made up of monads -- fundamental constituents of reality that were infinitesimally small, but did not have physical form. These monads were essentially like tiny souls without bodies, and made up everything in the universe.
“I don't really eliminate the body, but reduce it to what it is. For I show that corporeal mass, which is thought to have something over and above simple substances, is not a substance, but a phenomenon resulting from simple substances, which alone have unity and absolute reality.”
This brought to mind Donald Hoffman, a cognitive scientist who, with a team of mathematicians, developed the interface theory of perception, based on the mathematics of evolutionary game theory (EGT).
Basically, this idea is that evolution is based on fitness payoffs: our sense perceptions evolved based on what allowed us to survive and thrive. Seems rather logical, right? The fascinating thing is that, when EGT is applied, the team is able to demonstrate that the probability that our sense perceptions correlate with objective reality is zero. That is, we interact with reality through an interface -- our sense perceptions -- but those perceptions need not resemble reality at all.
This interface theory is analogous to looking at a desktop. A file icon on the screen may be just the result of pixels on a screen based on functioning hardware; however, the data represented by that file is meaningful in that it contains work that I've done. To Hoffman, his theory dovetails nicely with the notion that spacetime is not fundamental to the universe, which is exemplified through its incompatibility with quantum field theory.
As such (and this is the point), he is currently working on a theory of reality that starts with conscious experiences. Hoffman believes that, similar to Leibniz' monads, conscious experiences are the fundamental starting point for a theory of everything, as opposed to the physical world.
Videos:
Donald Hoffman: Do we see reality as it is? | TED Talk
#178 — The Reality Illusion - Making Sense with Sam Harris | Podcast on Spotify
Donald Hoffman: Reality is an Illusion - How Evolution Hid the Truth | Lex Fridman Podcast #293
Sathvik: So your saying what we sense is not what it is? It being whatever we’re interacting with
Reggie: Sort of. Basically, we are interacting with an objective reality through our senses. However, the perceptions that we form -- colours, shapes, sounds -- is really just an interpretation/ interface. Kinda like, we are interacting with hardware (mouse, keyboard, hard drive, wires, etc) through software. Basically, our perceptions are basically a data structure that allows us to make sense of objective reality
What's interesting about Hoffman's approach though, unlike others, is that he leverages the math behind EGT to prove it out.
Video:
Fitness beats truth in the evolution of perception
Discussion 1: Feeling Good Overview
We began this week's discussion with an introduction to the book Feeling Good by David Burns. We will begin to work through content on the educational program for the Philosophy Society. We looked at the independent study conducted on people who read the book in four weeks that showed improvement without any other interventions that lasted up to three years. We also went through the table of contents.
In the emotions course for the philosophy society, after one has mastered the cognitive behavioural method shown by Burns, we look at the methodology given by Daniel Goleman in his work on Emotional Intelligence.
The current curriculum is:
1) Feeling Good by David Burns
2) The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Steven Covey
3) The Power of Critical Thinking by Vaughn and McDonald
4) The Relaxation Response by Herbert Benson
5) Getting to YES! By Roger Fisher and William Ury
6) Beyond Reason by Roger Fisher and Daniel Shapiro
There are more books for the program and will be released in the future.
Discussion 2: Philosophy as a Way of Life
The university's focus within philosophy is based on conceptual analysis of texts but there is much more to the love of wisdom than text. The way of life or a way of being is not something that can be captured in a book in the way that cultural and social groups emulate ways of being. Buddhism is very close to a group that has a text philosophy but also a practice of being.
Positive psychology has taken an empirical stance on eudaimonia or the good life. It is here and other areas of psychology, like treatment plans for mental illness shown by clinical psychology, that we can compose an empirically based ‘way of being’ in the form of a social group.
As far as we know, there seems to be no evidence that a group of philosophers existed who practiced a way of being together as a group. The way of being would have been the wise way of livin based on reasoning and the principles and conceptual analyses gained from the history of philosophy. If this group has not existed in the past, now is the time. Let the Philosophy Society be that group which can emulate wisdom in all of its forms in a coherent, predictable, simple, falsifiable way with great scope.
© Achilles Atlas Justice and achillesjustice.com, 2018-22. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Achilles Atlas Justice and achillesjustice.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.