(December 26, 2018 at 2:06 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote:(December 26, 2018 at 1:07 pm)polymath257 Wrote: Well, consider the fact that in order to survive, the senses have to give data that is at least somewhat reliable and that the brain has to process that data in such a way that the conclusions are correct, at least to the extent that they impact on differential survival.
What that means is that we can relay, at least to some extent, about our perceptions on ordinary, human, scales of distance and time and in those contexts where the information would be related to survival.
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.
