“Human beings are organizations of – do not let us use the philosophically tendentious word ‘matter’, but rather the neutral and philosophically non-committal term translated from the German Weltstoff – the universal ‘world stuff’. But our organization has two aspects a material aspect when looked at objectively from the outside, and a mental aspect when experienced subjectively from the inside. We are simultaneously and indissolubly both matter and mind.” – Julian Huxley
I used the quote from Julian Huxley in a post years ago. I’ve had good reason to think about it recently on encountering the ideas of Donald Hoffman. Hoffman is a professor of cognitive science at the University of California and has spent years studying perception and the brain. He appears to have done a lot of work particularly in the area of visual perception. Hoffman’s main conclusion after these years of research and study is exactly the opposite of what we might expect. Instead of “brain activity creates consciousness”, the usual and safe scientific view, Hoffman’s radical view, that he calls conscious realism, is that. “consciousness creates brain activity, and indeed creates all objects and properties of the physical world.”
Wow!
We might expect this coming from a mystic, or maybe an insane person, but not from a scientist. An interview with Hoffman in Quanta Magazine excited a firestorm of comments, mostly dismissive, with some threatening to cancel their subscriptions. Let’s take a look.
