This just came out in the latest PsyPress UK issue... related to my earlier paper in JSE but a bit less technical and with new ideas... any questions, please ask....

Very nice...very interesting.

THANK YOU!!

Excellent !!

Thanks for sharing! Good read!

Interesting paper laughingcat, thanks for sharing. I thoroughly enjoyed reading your well articulated responses in the thread discussing your paper published in JSE. The time and effort you've dedicated to the discourse is appreciated.

Thanks Glad you found the article interesting! I enjoyed the, occasionally heated, discussion over my last paper also... I'll admit to being a little surprised by how vitriolic some of the criticisms were, but that's all part of the fun... it's only a game after all

Great, looking forward to reading this. I always eagerly await your next post, Andrew!

And it would be nice to see another YouTube upload from you before the year is out.

Cheers

Hi Andrew

I have some comments. I actually found myself reading one of the papers you refer to. Natural Selection and Veridical Perceptions (2010. Mark, Marion and Hoffman).

The results of the paper are not really surprising. In any game theoretical study the outcome for a particular strategy is sensitive to the specific distribution of costs and benefits afforded in the set up. Here, 'naive realism' is bestowed with a particular cost and of course in some situations is vulnerable because of it.

Any criticism will focus on whether the costs and benefits have been distributed to strategies reasonably, and I don't think they have been in this study. They place a cost on 'naive realist' strategies based on the claim that seeing more data takes more time and energy. Looking at the game they set up, I think they really mean it takes energy and time to accurately assess the value of a resource. But I think that reveals a misconception about how natural selection really works. Different strategies are randomly distributed within populations and those strategies which happen to quickly and accurately latch on to specific features of high value resources are promoted through the generations.

In a world with poisonous yellow insects and nutritious yellow berries, the birds that love yellow but find insects disgusting are favored. They don't calculate that yellow berries are not poisonous but yellow insects are. No time or effort is expended working all that out. It is just a randomly bestowed perceptual quirk. They are just the descendents of birds which perceive yellow insects to be 'yuck' and yellow berries to be 'yum'. In the evolutionary game this quirk outperforms the strategy which sees all yellow things as 'yum' and the strategy which sees all yellow things as 'yuck'. It is a more detailed assessment of the resource in a sense, but there is no actual assessment going on. Just quirky perception.

I think its fairly obvious that Hoffman and co unfairly weight the dice against 'seeing truth'. Consequently, I don't see much substance yet to your claim that veridical perception is unlikely.

Best regards...

I understand your criticisms and your insight into the Hoffman paper is appreciated. I don't think I was definitively stating that veridical perceptions are unlikely, simply that we shouldn't dismiss all non-adaptive perceptions as being distortions of "reality" and that the brain has no interest in veridicality per se. As I try to make clear, the consensus model is a functional model of the world, because it is adaptive. To be honest, it doesn't make any difference whether or not it is veridical (which is hard to define without access to the noumenon) and the brain has no interest in veridicality, only in which perceptions are adaptive. They might be veridical, they might not. To be honest, I don't think we can ever know and it really doesn't matter. The point is, the brain is capable of producing an astonishing variety of models of "reality', some of them similar to the consensus world, many of them completely unrelated (as in DMT), and we should to open to the possibility that we might learn from these models and that some of them might be just as "real" as the consensus model, despite being non-adaptive in the normal sense of the term...

Hi laughingcat



It doesn't follow from the fact that the brain is interested in fitness that it has no interest in truth. Fitness is truth tracking. The brain is particularly keen to perceive reality as as accurately as possible. There is ongoing competition between species to deceive and not be deceived that drives perception towards accuracy.



I don't think its right to say that we do not have access to the world in itself. I think thats a philosophical mistake. the correct way to think of perception is:

the world in itself ---> the seeing of the world in itself.

not:

the world in itself ---> a neurological model of the world in itself ---> an awareness of the model.

There is no intermediary model and no subsequent step of perceiving the model such that the model alienates phenomena from noumena. All that neural activity typically regarded as model construction is in fact the actual process of seeing. Consequently we are in direct contact with reality.

This is a position that not everyone would agree with and is the issue that Hofmann try and deal with - I maintain that accuracy and fitness are not the same and feel that it is an assumption you are making to equate them. It might make intuitive sense that accuracy is better than inaccuracy, but selection is based on fitness and if an inaccurate perception renders an organism more fit then this will be selected for - the brain doesn't care about accuracy per se. You might disagree with this, but, to be honest, it's not the main thrust of my essay. I was merely trying to raise the question as to whether we can be confident that consensus reality is the "truest" model. You think so, I'm not so sure. My paper is really about the range of "realities" that the brain can model - how you interpret these is up to you. Personally, I see consensus reality as an adaptive one, a functional one - whether it's veridical is open to discussion.



The neural activity you call seeing is identical during dreaming and yet in this state we have no direct contact with reality (or do you think we do?). Extrinsic sensory data can only modulate ongoing intrinsic activity. As Tononi makes clear, consciousness is a waking dream selected by extrinsic data, but not created by it. I would say perception is more like this:

the world in itself(under certain conditions) ---> phenomenal model of the world (which, of course, we must be aware of for it to be a phenomenal model)

We are in direct contact with a reality, but it is only a phenomenal reality. I maintain that we can say nothing about the world-in-itself or whether our phenomenal reality is veridical. If you disagree, please describe an experiment to test this. You clearly adhere to a direct realist position, but not everyone does (including myself)... that's what makes things interesting I guess!

Hi Andrew

thanks for the reply and thanks again for two fascinating papers. If I come across as contrarian it is just because I am an extremely disagreeable person. God knows why they let me out of the introductory area.



I don't equate them, I say they are intimately linked. There is serious experimental data backing up this 'assumption' of mine. Classic examples of natural selection in action, like the rise and fall of peppered moth populations in industrial Britain, provide ample illustration of the principle. You could say that the view that perception is under pressure to be accurate as well as efficient is the standard view in Behavioral Ecology.




Yes. And so I say that when we are dreaming we are seeing things that are not actually there. Im not saying I should win the nobel prize or anything but there is a certain intuitive elegance to that, isn't there?

your view isn't very clear. On the one hand you depict it as:

the world in itself ---> phenomenal model of the world

but then you say:

"We are in direct contact with a reality, but it is only a phenomenal reality."

which now sounds to me more like this:

--->phenomenon<---

or

phenomenon ----> direct contact with phenomenon.

which is a bit odd.

Anyway, reality seems to serve no function in your theory of perception. It doesn't seem to be there.
Ofcourse on a theory like that dreaming is indistinguishable from being awake or form hallucinating; because all are just made of 'free floating' collections of percepts causally anchored to nothing.



Hey, this is all philosophy to me. I admit I can't think of a valid experiment. What really puzzles me is why someone who thinks we can't say anything about whether observations are true would be interested in empirical data anyway...I could have hallucinated all those observations confirming the 2nd law of thermodynamics right?



Yes, and thats exactly why there are problems in the world. People obstinately refuse to accept what I say.

I'm a realist too. I'm not as keen on hand-waving, theoretical articles without tangible evidence; experimental data to support the theories. Philosophy is all fun and good, but not particularly useful aside from coffee banter and chin stroking. Interesting, nonetheless.

That'll be why God invented chemistry. To help realists give chin stroking a rest.

That's what I meant!

But, no, I'm not an adherent to any particular philosophical position, because once you do that you lose the ability to be wrong.... and that's fatal.... I like to play with ideas and they aren't always consistent, nor do they need to be...

There definitely seems to be something out there shaping our minds and the way we see the world, but the shattering obliteration of that world by DMT and its replacement by a world that I cannot accept as hallucination drives me to think that there's far more to reality than direct realism would have us believe...

Question - do you see things after smoking DMT that aren't there? Or are you directly contacting a reality by seeing it? Does your direct realism extend to other dimensions??? Because it's the undeniable reality of the DMT world that shakes all of my ontological foundations - without it, I'd probably be a happy, fat naive realist saving up for a new dishwasher and dreaming of a Ferrari.....

That was an interesting read thanks! How would you suppose the 'connectivity moulding' occurs? Could it occur through the activation of the dopaminergic system? By the brain rewarding itself after successful survival strategies and thalamocortical states that make us live another day? ...Could be widely off track here I dont claim to be any sort of expert.

Also, how could this apply to the newborns brain? Would you say the newborns experience is one of everchanging 'psychedelic soup' while it selects and deselects thalomocortical states? Could we be re-accessing these states under powerful psychedelics and thus catalysing feelings of familiarity?

It may or may not be relevant but its interesting how there is a very very small percentage of people who develop (or are diagnosed with , (2 separate issues Im sure) with a schizophrenic 'dis-ease' in early childhood. Does this say anything about the development of thalomocortical states as we age?
At the other end of the scale is that there is a small percentage develop psychotic illness over the age of 35 (or something like that). In my amateur opinion psychotic illness and psychedelic states are 2 sides of the same multi-dimensional coin.

You're exactly on the right lines - if you read Edelman's Universe of Consciousness or the paper I've attached it should give you more idea. But, yes, the dopaminergic and serotonergic systems are what Edelman called "value systems" and are important in measuring the success of a particular modelling strategy - they apply the selective pressure. But, it's synaptic plasticity that ultimately creates the changes in connectivity...



This is a really interesting area - Laughlin proposed that the brain contains neurognostic structures, which are inheritable and explain why newborns are born capable of modelling the world and recognising objects. It might also explain archetypal structures in consciousness that seem to be passed from generation to generation. I kind of think that DMT might be reactivating such structures that were perhaps formed in our early prehistory and have been "dormant" or even perhaps evolving autonomously, hence their advanced intelligent nature. It's amazing to think that perhaps elements of our collective unconscious have been evolving and progressing without our knowledge, and yet somehow within our collective neural connectivity - as if these beings have hijacked our nervous system. Remember Terence Mckenna recalling the mushroom said to him, "I require the nervous system of a mammal - do you happen to have one handy?" (or something like that).... maybe something along those lines...



I think you are right. The strucutre of your world depends on the development of your neural connectivity (what I call your reality topology). When it progresses abnormally (or should I say 'differently'?), then the world you see is different to that which others see - does this mean you see the world "incorrectly"? I'm not so sure....

It is interesting indeed and makes me think of an ancient symbiosis that we may have drifted apart from there are so many receptors that we have that can fit numerous neurotransmitters that are present in many plants..

How would the evolution of this state relate to the evolution of different anatomies? For example the digestive system or heart?



No neither am I, re-arranged and not in sync with the majority but not incorrect imo there is noone who can place judgement on what is correct and what isnt in terms of the different combinations of neural activity as surely we all have our world view affected very slightly differently to one another through the different levels and activity of the various neurotransmitters among other things. Seems evolution has chosen serotonin and melatonin as good neurotransmitters for survival purposes. Interesting to see the research on glutamate receptors being involved with the serotonin system too. I think there is also much to find out about ACh .

Its an intriguing idea that could be relevant and have applications in a wide range of fields, is the technique of visualisation that some athletes undertake in training based on the roots of this idea? Generating a neural pattern that is asscociated with desired results?

Thanks for the papers they look fascinating.

I agree, it feels like we've left something behind that we're trying to rediscover...



Not something I've considered - your turn




Exactly, this is the point I was trying to make in the paper - we might have lots to learn about different ways of seeing the world and no particular model ought to be dismissed because it doesn't fit the consensus....

of course you are adhering to a philosophical position : anti-realism.



The ability to be wrong is lost when no observations could contradict your hypothesis. Your anti-realist position fits the bill very nicely.



So, its not that you can't be wrong, its that you don't care if your wrong?! What about coherence? Do your theories and those you draw from need to be coherent individually? What about together?



I tested this actually. I asked my mates: Was there really a swirling tunnel of incandescently colored and intricately connected metal bricks? Did strange archetypal entities really leap inside of me and dance me like a puppeteer? No, they told me, I just fell back against the bedside and gasped with widely dilated pupils.



It doesn't follow from the fact that we see reality directly that whenever we see something we are always seeing some kind of reality.


It extends to four: up-down, left-right, forward-back, before-after. Beyond those, I don't actually know what you mean by 'dimension'. For me a dimension is a co-ordinate system that identifies indexical properties about me, like "here" and "now". For me a 'dimension' is not the kind of thing from which the aliens could transmit radio DMT. Questions like these seem to me to make a kind of category error.



ouch! Im hurt by your insulting tone!

Thats such an impoverished view of realism, my friend. But I'll let it pass because I think you're confusing realism for materialism, and then scientific materialism for economic materialism. Anyway, I guess there are two types of people. Those who found Life on Earth profound and those who found Star Trek profound.