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https://www.quantamagazine.org/20160421-the-evolutionary-argument-against-reality/
Fascinating read, and I wondered what the wisdom of the crowd was on how closely they thought this notion fit with the principles of Buddhism, most notably the idea of reality being an illusion, and the liberation of ourselves from the chains of perception?
Buddhism does not state 'perception' ('sanna') is a chain. In fact, without perception, enlightenment (perceiving the true nature of things, including perception itself) cannot occur.
Instead, Buddhism lists the following chains (fetters):
belief in a self (Pali: sakkāya-diṭṭhi)
doubt or uncertainty, especially about the teachings (vicikicchā)
wrong use of morals and rituals (sīlabbata-parāmāsa)
sensual desire (kāmacchando)
ill will (vyāpādo or byāpādo)
lust for material jhana, lust for material things (rūparāgo)
lust for immaterial jhana, lust for immaterial things, such as status, fame, etc (arūparāgo)
conceit (māna)
restlessness (uddhacca)
ignorance (avijjā)
Fetter (Buddhism) adapted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
As for the perception of the 'illusion of perceptions', if this was actually seen clearly, desires & attachments would end because, in reality, the mind only desires & attaches with concrete (solid) self-belief to concrete (solid) objects .
It is one thing for a cognitive scientist to create concrete ideas & theories about the illusion of perception, which may not end the desires & attachments of the scientist. It is another thing to actually see the illusion of perception meditatively, which will certainly end desires & attachments.
Now suppose that in the last month of the hot season a mirage were shimmering and a man with good eyesight were to see it, observe it & appropriately examine it. To him — seeing it, observing it & appropriately examining it — it would appear empty, void, without substance: for what substance would there be in a mirage?
In the same way, a monk sees, observes & appropriately examines any perception that is past, future or present; internal or external; blatant or subtle; common or sublime; far or near. To him — seeing it, observing it & appropriately examining it — it would appear empty, void, without substance: for what substance would there be in perception?
Phena Sutta
I don't think it fits well.
The article claims there's an "independent reality"; and that evolution has shaped how we perceive reality (it's not specific, but if I'm to fill in the gaps and play devil's advocate, an example might be that we've evolved to see sex and violence as good?).
The article is full of words which aren't well-defined (e.g. "independent reality"). It evokes quantum mysticism again, which I'm averse to. It implies that "first-person conscious experience" is inescapable, perhaps the only possible view (which is naive and maybe contradicted by Buddhism).
It makes statements like ...
Its perceptions will be tuned to fitness, but not to truth.
... without defining what "truth" is, thence argues that perceptions are "illusion".
In a statement like ...
I can pull the W out of the model and stick a conscious agent in its place and get a circuit of conscious agents. In fact, you can have whole networks of arbitrary complexity.
... I think he's introspecting: he's thinking about the "I" and has reached "a thicket of views". He might be explicitly trying to discard "fitness" from his view: he thinks that viewing things as "fit or not fit" (e.g. for evolutionary survival) prevents us from seeing what "true" (which he hasn't defined, and which he argues we can't perceive without bias).
In contrast to that, if you read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (or the Pali suttas) it categorizes things as good and not-good ... "things" including feelings, and views, and intentions.
So one of the differences between Buddhism and this article, IMO, is that Buddhism discusses what's good and not-good ... which this article doesn't, at all. Instead this article tries to discuss what's true and not-true, what's real and not-real (but the article doesn't succeed, and/or isn't useful).
Also I think that if Buddhism talks about "illusion" (and I'm not sure that it does), that illusion doesn't consist of failure to perceive reality, instead it's failure to assign the proper value to perception: e.g. the illusion is perceiving something that's unpleasant as pleasant, perceive something that's impermanent as everlasting, perceive something that's not-self as self, etc. I'm really not sure what Buddhism says about "illusion": but it might be a more accurate or a more common translation to say that Buddhism talks about "ignorance", and that "ignorance" is a cause of "wrong view" (as opposed to "right view").
