Is reality real? These neuroscientists don’t think so | Big Think

Summary

This enlightening video by Big Think dives into the intriguing question: Is reality as we perceive it truly real? The discussion involves neuroscientists who argue that our senses shape a version of reality that is not the objective truth. They explore how sensory perceptions like colors, tastes, and sounds are constructs of our mind, not intrinsic properties of the external world. By comparing these perceptions to scientific concepts, such as color mixing and quantum mechanics, the speakers illustrate the limitations of human perception. The video highlights the importance of questioning our perceptions and embracing multiple perspectives to navigate the world better, while acknowledging the practical applications of objective truths in science and technology.

Highlights

• Our senses provide a version of reality that’s useful for survival, but not necessarily accurate. 🔎
• Colors, odors, and more are sensations our brain fabricates, not objective truths. 🎨
• Perception is a reduction of reality’s information; it simplifies rather than captures all details. 📉
• Science distinguishes between subjective human experience and objective reality. 🧬
• Holding multiple perspectives can help navigate reality more effectively than any single viewpoint. 🌐

Key Takeaways

• Our perception is not an accurate reflection of reality; it's a constructed version unique to each individual. 🔍
• Colors, tastes, and smells are experiences created by our minds, not actual properties of objects. 🌈
• Understanding the limitations of our senses can lead to a broader, more inclusive view of reality. 🧠
• Science relies on objective truth, yet acknowledges the limits of human perception. 🚀
• A transperspective view, integrating multiple viewpoints, can offer a more complete understanding of reality. 🔄

Overview

The exploration of whether reality is indeed real, as discussed by Big Think, underscores the complexities of human perception. A group of neuroscientists suggest that while there is external reality, our sensory experiences do not provide an accurate depiction of it. They argue that phenomena like colors and odors are not features of the world itself but constructs created by our minds.

These discussions venture into how our perception is limited by biological constraints and even compare these ideas to established scientific knowledge. By addressing how sound and color are perceived differently, the speakers explain that our senses conflate and simplify the world around us. The role of our mind in fabricating certain sensory experiences highlights how limited our perception of reality truly is.

While subjectivity reigns in our personal experiences, science still holds a place for objective truth, demonstrated through technological advancements and scientific achievements. Nonetheless, a richer understanding of the world comes from acknowledging the multiplicity of perspectives, encouraging an integrated and comprehensive approach to interpreting reality.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction to the Perception of Reality The chapter explores the concept of external reality and our perception of it. It suggests that while there is an external world, our perception of it is distorted by our senses, which combine various aspects of the world. This implies that we never perceive the world as it truly is. Rather than questioning the reality of the world, the focus is on whether we perceive it accurately, given these limitations.
• 00:30 - 01:00: The Illusion of Accurate Perception The chapter explores the concept of perception, highlighting the paradox that what we see is not always what is visible to the eyes. It illustrates this through the example of encountering offensive graffiti, where understanding the language and context affects emotional reactions significantly.
• 01:00 - 01:30: The Fabrication of Sensory Experiences In 'The Fabrication of Sensory Experiences,' the chapter explores the concept that our sensory experiences are not merely passive receptions of the world but are actively constructed by our senses. It emphasizes that what we perceive, such as tastes, odors, and colors, are not inherent properties of the external reality but are created by our own sensory systems. This highlights the idea that much more is perceived than what is directly presented to our nervous system, suggesting a complex interaction between the external stimuli and our sensory processing.
• 01:30 - 02:00: Objective Reality and Sensory Fabrications The chapter explores the concept of objective reality in contrast to sensory fabrications. It explains that objective reality refers to things that would continue to exist even without any creatures to perceive them, as most physicists would agree upon. Sensory fabrications such as colors, odors, and tastes do not fit into this category of objective reality. Instead, they are considered as real experiences, similar to how one might consider a headache as a real experience. The distinction between objective reality and personal sensory experiences is discussed to help understand the nature of reality as perceived through human senses.
• 02:00 - 02:30: Realities Beyond Space-Time The chapter titled "Realities Beyond Space-Time" explores the concept that our perception of reality, including space-time, is subjective. It suggests that what we perceive as reality is not objectively real but is rather fabricated by our senses. This challenges the assumption that our senses relay the truth, highlighting that elements like tastes, odors, colors, and even space-time are constructs of our perception rather than factual reality.
• 02:30 - 03:00: Limitations of Human Sensory Perception This chapter delves into the limitations of human sensory perception, focusing on how the brain interprets and constructs the physical world. It suggests that sensory data received by the brain is essentially meaningless until it is processed and given context by our neural systems. An everyday example used is color perception, which helps illustrate how our understanding of light influences what we perceive visually.
• 03:00 - 03:30: Comparing Perception of Color and Sound This chapter explores the limitations of human perception, particularly focusing on color and sound. It explains that human color perception is constrained by quantum mechanics principles, while discussing how sound perception allows us to distinguish individual tones even when they are played together, such as in a musical chord composed of a C and a G note.
• 03:30 - 04:00: Evolutionary Shaping of Perception The chapter explores how perception is shaped by evolution, focusing on the differences in how humans perceive sound and color.
• 04:00 - 04:30: Perspectives and Reality The chapter discusses how humans perceive reality not as it is, but as it is useful for survival. It explains that we don't represent information accurately; rather, our perceptions are shaped by what is beneficial for our survival, like instinctively avoiding a snake upon seeing it. This idea is grounded in the concept of evolution by natural selection, which forms our perceptions to aid in survival rather than for accurate representation of reality.
• 04:30 - 05:00: Understanding Transperspectival Reality The chapter titled 'Understanding Transperspectival Reality' discusses the concept of perception and reality. It highlights that while we must take our perceptions seriously, it does not mean that they fully represent the truth of what is perceived. Perception is subjective and offers a limited view of reality, reducing the actual information inherent in the object or situation being perceived. This chapter explores the idea that perspectives are inherently limited by their nature, illustrating how different viewpoints (east, west, top, north side) provide varying, incomplete understandings of the same object.
• 05:00 - 05:30: Scientific Method and Objective Truth The chapter titled 'Scientific Method and Objective Truth' explores the concept of reality being 'transperspectival,' meaning that it cannot be fully captured from any single perspective. Instead, it is necessary to consider multiple viewpoints, each offering a fragment of the whole reality. The chapter emphasizes that different methods, whether microscopic, telescopic, or others, provide varying pieces of information, but none can provide a complete picture. This discussion highlights the importance of synthesizing multiple perspectives to better understand complex situations, acknowledging that each perspective may include both useful signals and some level of distortion.
• 05:30 - 06:00: The Role of Science in Demonstrating Truth The chapter discusses the importance of viewing a situation from multiple perspectives to understand the partial truths each may hold. By doing so, one can piece together these perspectives into a cohesive whole that transcends any single viewpoint. This ability to hold relationships between different perspectives is considered crucial for making informed choices and effectively navigating through reality.
• 06:00 - 06:30: Theories as Teachers and the Case of Einstein The chapter explores how we come to claim truths and evaluate their validity, introducing the scientific method as a systematic approach. It outlines the process from observation, posing questions, formulating hypotheses, to devising methods for testing them. This method is applied broadly but starts with basic inquiry and exemplifies the case of Einstein's scientific approach.
• 06:30 - 07:00: Understanding Different Aspects of Reality This chapter discusses the concept of objective truth, particularly in the realm of science. It highlights how the belief in objective truth leads to tangible achievements in technology and engineering, such as the successful creation of airplanes, space exploration, and medical advancements like antibiotics and vaccines. The effectiveness of these scientific endeavors serves as evidence supporting the value of adhering to objective truth.

Is reality real? These neuroscientists don’t think so | Big Think Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 Is there external reality? Of course there's an external reality. The world exists. It's just that we don't see it as it is. We can never see it as it is. In fact it's even useful to not see it as it is. And the reason is because we have no direct access to that physical world other than through our senses. And because our senses conflate multiple aspects of that world, we can never know whether our perceptions are in any way accurate. It's not so much do we see the world in the way that it really is, but do we actually even see it accurately?
• 00:30 - 01:00 And the answer is no, we don't. However paradoxical it sounds, if we think of what is visible as just what projects to the eyes, we see much more than is visible. Let me give you an example. I walk into a room and there's graffiti on the wall and imagine it's graffiti that I find really offensive. I look at it, I flush, my heart starts to race, I'm outraged, I'm taken aback. Of course, if I didn't know the language in which it was written, I could have had exactly
• 01:00 - 01:30 the same retinal events and the same events in my early visual system, without any corresponding reaction. Much more shows up for us than just what projects into our nervous system. Our senses are also making up the tastes, odors and colors that we experience. They're not properties of an objective reality.
• 01:30 - 02:00 They're actually properties of our senses that they're fabricating. By objective reality I mean, what most physicists would mean, and that is that something is objective real if it would continue to exist, even if there were no creatures to perceive it. Colors, odors, tastes and so on are not real in that sense of objective reality. They are real in a different sense. They're real experiences. Your headache is a real experience,
• 02:00 - 02:30 even though it could not exist without you perceiving it. So it exists in a different way than the objective reality that physicists talk about. We always assume that our senses are telling us the truth. So it was quite a stunning shock to me when I realized that it's not just tastes odors and colors, that are the fabrications of our senses and are not objectively real. Space-time itself, and everything within space-time.
• 02:30 - 03:00 Objects, electrons, corks, the sun, the moon, their shapes, their masses, their velocities, all of these physical properties are also constructions. Sometimes it's really difficult for people to understand that the data that your brain is receiving is meaningless because when they open their eyes, they look around, they say, "Well, I see everything. What do you mean it's meaningless?" A really simple example is color. Scientific knowledge of what light is shows us
• 03:00 - 03:30 that our natural perception leaves a lot on the table. The human perception of color is limited really by the principles of quantum mechanics. It's interesting to compare the human perception of color, to the perception of sound. When you have two pure tones together, like a C and a G a simple chord, that's a fifth. If you hear that, you can hear the separate tones, even though they're played together and you hear a chord,
• 03:30 - 04:00 you can also sense the separate tones. Whereas with colors, if you have two different colors, say spectral green and spectral red and mix them. What you see is not a chord where you can see the distinct identities preserved, but rather an intermediate color. In fact, you'll see something that looks like yellow. It's as if in music, when you play to the C and a G together,
• 04:00 - 04:30 instead of hearing a chord, you just heard the note E the intermediate note. So at this most basic level, we don't represent even the information we're getting in any accurate way. And the reason is because it was useful to see it this way. So what are you seeing the utility of the data not the data. Evolution by natural selection has shaped us with perceptions that are designed to keep us alive. So if I see a snake, don't pick it up.
• 04:30 - 05:00 If I see a cliff, don't jump off. If I see a train don't step in front of it, we have to take our perceptions seriously, but that does not entitle us to take them literally. Perception itself. A perspective on something defined by perception is inherently a reduction of the information of the thing. My perspective of it is gonna be a lot less total information than the actual thing is. I can look at the object from the east side or the west side or the top or the north side
• 05:00 - 05:30 or the inside, microscopically, telescopically, they'll all give me different information. None will give me the entirety of the information about the situation. So there is no all encompassing perspective that gives me all of the information about almost any situation. What this means is that reality itself is transperspectival. It can't be captured in any perspective. So multiple perspectives have to be taken. All of which will have some part of the reality, some signal. There may also be distortion.
• 05:30 - 06:00 I may be looking at the thing through a fish eye lens or through a colored lens that creates some distortion. Why does this matter? The ability to take multiple perspectives, to see the partial truth in them, and then to be able to seam them together into something that isn't a perspective it's a transperspective capacity to hold the relationships between many perspectives in a way that can inform our choice-making is fundamental to navigating reality well.
• 06:00 - 06:30 How is it that we make claims of truth? And how would we begin to know if what we think is true is actually true. This is the beginning of the scientific method. Let us begin with observation, pose a question, figure out what the hypothesis would be that would answer a particular question, and then figure out how we would begin to address the hypothesis. That is a scientific approach to questions that could be addressed any number of ways. There is a kind of whispering campaign
• 06:30 - 07:00 against the value of objective truth. Science's belief in objective truth works. Engineering technology based upon the science of objective truth, achieves results. It manages to build planes that get off the ground. It manages to send people to the moon and explore Mars with robotic vehicles on comets. Science works, science produces antibiotics, vaccines that work. So anybody who chooses to say, "Oh,
• 07:00 - 07:30 there's no such thing as objective truth. It's all subjective, it's all socially constructed." Tell that to a doctor, tell that to a space scientist, manifestly science works, and the view that there is no such thing as objective truth doesn't. When you write down the theory, the theory then becomes your teacher. It becomes smarter than you in a way. When Einstein wrote down the equations of general relativity, he did not know that they entailed the existence of black holes.
• 07:30 - 08:00 In that sense, the equations were smarter than Einstein. Einstein didn't believe in black holes for decades. The equations were very clear that they could exist. Einstein said no. Turned out Einstein was wrong and the equations were right. So it's very interesting. We do these theories because we can learn from them. When you try to address the nature of things, you may find that asking different questions requires different ways of processing the underlying reality.
• 08:00 - 08:30 For instance, in understanding the human mind to understand that physically requires one kind of processing. And there's every reason to think that we already have fundamental physical laws that are adequate to that kind of treatment. But to understand how a person works, how thought processes, moods, and so forth, add up to a personality and a human actor will require quite different ways of understanding and quite different ways of processing
• 08:30 - 09:00 the underlying information structure.