Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2024
Robert Prentner, Donald D Hoffman
5 citations
Consciousness science is at an impasse, and the physicalist worldview is blamed. Conscious agent theory (CAT) posits that consciousness is fundamental and exists outside spacetime, with agency and mathematical structure as core features. For CAT to become a robust scientific framework, it must integrate with the interface theory of perception (ITP), an evolutionary model of perception. ITP suggests that perception is an interface that hides reality, not a window onto it. The authors argue that we live inside a simulation instantiated in consciousness, not digitally, where the simulation is an interface representation of conscious agents' dynamics. This implies AI could be used in consciousness science by customizing this interface.
Psychonomic bulletin & review
December 1, 2015
Donald D Hoffman, Manish Singh, Chetan Prakash
The authors defend their proposal that natural selection favors nonveridical perceptions tuned to fitness, contrary to the textbook view that perception is normally veridical. They thank commentators who offered counterarguments and those who suggested ways to test and develop the idea, responding to each in alphabetical order. The exchange aims to advance scientific understanding of perception and its evolution.
Entropy (Basel, Switzerland)
January 9, 2023
Donald D Hoffman, Chetan Prakash, Robert Prentner
Conscious subjects and experiences are entities beyond spacetime, not within it. Their dynamics are described by Markov chains. Agents can combine into more complex agents, fuse into simpler agents, and qualia fuse to create new qualia. The possible dynamics of n agents form an n(n-1)-dimensional polytope with n^n vertices, the Markov polytope M_n. The total fusions of n agents and qualia form an (n-1)-dimensional simplex, the fusion simplex F_n. Projecting these dynamics onto spacetime yields scattering processes: a new map from Markov chains to decorated permutations encodes physical information for scattering amplitudes. Spacetime and scattering processes are a data structure coding for interactions of conscious agents; a particle in spacetime is a projection of the Markovian dynamics of a communicating class of conscious agents.
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
December 1, 2019
Steve Paulson, Donald D Hoffman, Suzanne O'Sullivan
A moderated discussion between cognitive scientist Donald D. Hoffman and neurologist Suzanne O'Sullivan challenges the common cognitive science assumption that perception constructs an accurate representation of reality. Hoffman argues that evolution may have shaped perception to guide adaptive behavior rather than to reveal objective truth, suggesting humans may not see reality as it actually is. O'Sullivan brings a neurological perspective, likely drawing on her work with dissociative seizures and synesthesia. The conversation explores implications for understanding consciousness, the mind-body problem, and the hard problem of consciousness, touching on interface theory and quantum physics as frameworks for rethinking the nature of perceptual experience.