(December 26, 2018 at 2:16 pm)polymath257 Wrote:(December 26, 2018 at 2:06 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote: It's likely true that our behaviors need to reliably produce survival, but it's not necessarily true that the truths that our minds refer to actually be true, only that believing them to be true leads to successful, pro-survival behaviors. It's entirely possible that we do all the right things, but for all the wrong reasons. So long as we do the right things, how would we go about determining that the reasons we did them were the right reasons? There doesn't appear to be a way out of this quandary.
But in order to do the right things, the interpretation has to have *some* correlation with reality. of course we don't see the entire picture: we don't see radio waves, for example, nor infrared. But what we do see does correspond to at least part of what is 'out there'. If it did not, it would seem quite unlikely that we would be able to do the 'right thing' even for survival.
If it can work in some possible world, then it can work in the actual world. It can work that way in some given possible world, therefore it can work that way in our world. Probability or likelihood is just an intuition that you project onto the brute possibility. The true situation is that you have know way of knowing what the likelihood of this being the case is. You assert that it is unlikely, likely simply because you find the argument that successful behavior necessarily requires correct interpretations of reality, but that argument is flawed, because it isn't necessary that it do so, and so your estimate of the likelihood of the converse is also flawed, and for that reason.