Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Debunking interface theory: why Hoffman’s skepticism (really) is self-defeating

  • Original Research
  • Published:
Synthese Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman and others have recently advanced an evolutionary debunking argument aimed at our perceptual beliefs in ordinary objects, based on the Interface Theory of Perception. In contrast with most recent criticisms of Interface Theory, which have targeted its characterizations of perception and veridicality, I raise a broad dialectical problem for Hoffman’s debunking argument. I show that the argument is self-defeating, and that responding to this problem by appealing to Universal Darwinism leads to a fatal dilemma for the view.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1

Adapted from Hoffman (2015, p. 1486)

Fig. 2

Adapted from Hoffman (2015, p. 1486)

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. See Hoffman (2009) for the original, non-technical presentation of ITP as it applies to perceptual categories. See Hoffman et al. (2015) for a full statement of the view and a summary of the original interface games. See also Prakash et al. (2020) for the most recent game theoretical results, and Hoffman (2019) for the most recent comprehensive statement of the view and its implications, presented for the general reader.

  2. For an overview of object debunking arguments as well as some useful formulations and analysis, see Korman (2014, 2019a, 2019b). Examples of such arguments being used in the service of object skepticism include Merricks (2001, pp. 72–76), Benovsky (2015, §2), and Brenner (2018, pp. 661–662).

  3. The objection that Hoffman is mistaken about the role of perception, conflating perception with action is advanced by Hummel (2015). For an argument that Hoffman does not consider how perception functions with a sufficiently complex and realistic set of perceptual inputs, see Martínez (2019).

  4. For an argument that Hoffman’s characterization of veridicality is too strict in a way that advantages his own arguments, see Hummel (2015) and Chalmers (2022). For a defense of the view that Hoffman’s own models of non-veridical perception actually smuggle in some kind of veridicality, see Cohen (2015).

  5. Williamson (2007, pp. 220–223) raises general worries for the evolutionary debunking of perception. Bagwell (2021) develops a self-defeat objection aimed at eliminativists running object debunking arguments.

  6. See Hoffman (2009, §1.2) and Hoffman et al. (2015, pp. 1480–1481) for characterizations of the conventional view.

  7. In addition to male Western Australian jewel beetles (see below), Hoffman lists “dragonflies that mistake gravestones for water, gull chicks that prefer red disks on cardboard to their real mothers, frogs that die of starvation when surrounded by mounds of unmoving edible flies, and birds that prefer brightly speckled rocks or the eggs of cowbirds to their own eggs” (Hoffman et al. 2015, p. 1490).

  8. See Gwynne and Rentz (1983), Hawkeswood (2005), and Robertson et al. (2013) for more information on Julodimorpha bakewelli and other animals that have fallen into evolutionary traps involving evolved perceptual limits.

  9. David Marr, in his theory of vision, seems to suggest a kind of distinction between human perceptions, which really represent features of the external world and more primitive perceptual mechanisms in, e.g., frogs and flies (1982, p. 340). However, it may be that these creatures veridically represent things (like “a surface I can land on” or “a black speck I can eat”) but simply have very few representational types, and nothing to match our general representations of 3-dimensional space or 4-dimensional spacetime.

  10. Perhaps male jewel beetles just represent shiny, dimpled, brown things as something-to-be-mated-with, rather than as attractive female jewel beetles. See Cohen (2015, pp. 1514–1515) for more objections to Hoffman’s assumptions about perceptual representation.

  11. See Barnard and Sibly (1981) on resource gaining strategies of producer-vs.-scrounger, Harper and Pfennig (2007) on perceptual strategies involving Batesian mimicry, and Axelrod and Hamilton (1981) on strategies relating to altruistic behavior.

  12. This is a generalization from Hoffman’s experimental results, not to be confused with the more specific “’Fitness Beats Truth’ (FBT) Theorem,” from Prakash et al. (2020, p. 17). See also footnote 14.

  13. See Hoffman et al. (2015, pp. 1486–1490) and Prakash et al. (2020, pp. 8–9).

  14. The results of this latter series of games are captured in a technical ‘Fitness Beats Truth’ (FBT) Theorem, which is not to be confused with the Fitness Beats Truth thesis in this paper. The following is the technical ‘Fitness Beats Truth’ (FBT) Theorem: “Over all possible fitness functions and a priori measures, the probability that the Fitness-only perceptual strategy strictly dominates the Truth strategy is at least (X − 3)∕(X − 1), where X is the size of the perceptual space. As this size increases, this probability becomes arbitrarily close to 1: in the limit, Fitness-only will generically strictly dominate Truth, so driving the latter to extinction” (Prakash et al., 2020, p. 17).

  15. These experiments are based on algorithms introduced by M. Mitchell (1998).

  16. See Hoffman et al. (2015, pp. 1487–1488) for a summary of the experimental setup and results of Mark (2013) and see Prakash et al. (2020) for resource competition games between more sophisticated, Bayesian perceptual strategies. See Prakash et al. (2020, pp. 8–9) for the appeal to Gaussian fitness payoff functions.

  17. “[T]he argument is that evolution by natural selection, one of the best-confirmed theories of contemporary science, applies not just to bodily traits but also to perceptual and cognitive traits” (Hoffman et al., 2015, p. 1490).

  18. For accessible background on human evolution as it relates to the anatomy and ecology of early humans see Potts and Sloan (2010) and Condemi and Savatier (2019).

  19. See footnote 3 for more on this kind of objection to ITP.

  20. For instance, Hoffman replies to the objection appealing to human brain size by noting that in recent evolution our brains have been shrinking rapidly (Hoffman, 2019, pp. 64–65).

  21. For a positive, realist constructivist view of perception, see Gładziejewski (forthcoming).

  22. See Hoffman (2019, pp. 17–21).

  23. See Hoffman (2019, pp. 123–124).

  24. See footnote 5.

  25. See Dawkins (1976, Chap. 11) for an introduction to memes as replicators, and Dawkins (1983) for a preliminary statement of Universal Darwinism. For a detailed characterization of Universal Darwinism as an algorithmic process, see Dennett (1995, pp. 48–60), and see Dennett (1995, pp. 335–369) for a detailed account of cultural evolution as a Darwinian process operating on memes.

  26. See Prakash et al. (2020, p. 17). See footnote 14 for a full statement of the theorem.

  27. Hoffman’s own position is not entirely clear. For instance, when scientists like Richard Dawkins and philosophers like Daniel Dennett draw inferences from evolutionary biology to Universal Darwinism, they seem to be doing so on the assumption that the former is an instance of the latter—and Hoffman is eager to enlist their support in justifying such a move (2019, p. 57). See Dawkins (1983) and Dennett (1995) for these more conventional characterizations of the relation between evolutionary biology and Universal Darwinism. Moreover, Hoffman sometimes invokes empirical evidence from evolutionary biology as if the latter is an instance of Universal Darwinism (2015, p. 1489). In other places Hoffman explicitly states that the claims made by our empirical scientific theories are false. See, e.g., Hoffman (2019, p. 65) and Hoffman et al. (2015, p. 1501).

  28. However, Hoffman also seems to contradict (2) at key points. Recall that he leaves open the possibility that we can reason from the contents of our interfaces to those of the actual world (2019, p. 124) and that he takes the findings of ITP to contribute to empirical research in visual psychology (2009, §1.8). Moreover, he explicitly states that ITP makes testable predictions, at least in principle, about whether or not there are physical objects when no one’s looking (Ibid., Chap. 6). I shall take him to mean that these are in-principle possible inferences and empirical predictions, but ones that are exceedingly remote. Anything stronger would undercut ITP’s radical conclusions.

  29. It is possible that we could have learned Universal Darwinism from a false scientific theory. When, as a child, one reads a story about fictional bears counting apples and learns that 2 + 2 = 4, one learns a truth even though the story is literally false. Perhaps Universal Darwinism is a priori justified, and evolutionary biology is just a set of experiences that enable us to learn it. This is Kant’s qualification that we can learn a priori truths through enabling empirical experiences. See Kant (1787 [1965, 43(B3)]).

  30. I want to thank an anonymous reviewer for bringing this possibility to my attention.

  31. Indeed, Hoffman presses the point that we ultimately should not believe our conscious processes arise from neural activity at all (see Hoffman, 2019, Chap. 3).

  32. See footnote 25 above.

  33. See Hoffman (2019, Chap. 10) for his idealist picture of a network of mathematically defined conscious agents and see Hoffman (2019, Appendix) for a mathematical definition of a conscious agent.

  34. See Van Gulick (2022, §5.4) for a list of dualists so-motivated and their physicalist opponents, as well as context for the larger debate.

  35. For a contrasting positive, realist theory that also takes perception as indirect evidence of the real world, see Gładziejewski (forthcoming).

  36. I want to thank an anonymous reviewer for pointing out the importance of some of these connections.

References

  • Axelrod, R., & Hamilton, W. D. (1981). The evolution of cooperation. Science, 211, 1390–96.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bagwell, J. N. (2021). Eliminativism and evolutionary debunking. Ergo, 8(17), 496–522. https://doi.org/10.3998/ergo.1154

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Barnard, C. J., & Sibly, R. M. (1981). Producers and scroungers: A general model and its application to captive flocks of house sparrows. Animal Behaviour, 29(2), 543–550.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Benovsky, J. (2015). From experience to metaphysics: On experience-based intuitions and their role in metaphysics. Noûs, 49(4), 684–97.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brenner, A. (2018). Science and the special composition question. Synthese, 195, 657–678.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chalmers, D. J. (2022). Reality+. W. W. Norton and Co.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cohen, J. (2015). Perceptual representation, veridicality, and the interface theory of perception. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 22(6), 1512–1518.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Colyvan, M. (1999). Contrastive empiricism and indispensability. Erkenntnis, 51, 323–332.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Condemi, S., & Savatier, F. (2019). A pocket history of human evolution: How we became sapiens. The Experiment.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dawkins, R. (1976). The selfish gene. Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dawkins, R. (1983). Universal Darwinism. In D. S. Bendall (Ed.), Evolution from molecules to man (pp. 403–425). Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dennett, D. (1995). Darwin’s dangerous idea: Evolution and the meanings of life. Simon and Shuster.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gładziejewski, P. (forthcoming). Un-debunking ordinary objects with the help of predictive processing. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. https://doi.org/10.1086/715105

  • Harper, G. R., & Pfennig, D. W. (2007). Mimicry on the edge: Why do mimics vary in resemblance to their model in different parts of their geographical range? Proceedings of the Royal Society B., 274(1621), 1955–1961.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hawkeswood, T. J. (2005). Review of the biology and host-plants of the Australian jewel beetle Julodimorpha bakewelli (White, 1859) (Coleoptera: Buprestidae). Calodema, 3, 3–5.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hoffman, D. D. (2009). The interface theory of perception: Natural selection drives true perception to swift extinction. In S. Dickinson, M. Tarr, A. Leonardis, & B. Schiele (Eds.), Object categorization: Computer and human vision perspectives (pp. 148–265). Cambridge University Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Hoffman, D. D. (2019). The case against reality: Why evolution hid the truth from our eyes. W. W. Norton and Co.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hoffman, D. D., Singh, M., & Prakash, C. (2015). The interface theory of perception. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 22, 1480–1506.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hummel, J. E. (2015). Is interface theory a special case of Q-morphs or full-blown solipsism? Psychonomic Bulletin and Review (invited commentary). http://www.psychonomic.org/news/297868/Is-Interface-Theory-a-Special-Case-of-Q-morphs-or-Full-blown-Solipsism.htm.

  • Kant, I. (1787 [1965]). Critique of pure reason (N. K. Smith, Trans.). St. Martin’s Press.

  • Korman, D. Z. (2014). Debunking perceptual beliefs about ordinary objects. Philosophers’ Imprint, 14(13), 1–21.

    Google Scholar 

  • Korman, D. Z. (2019). Debunking arguments. Philosophy Compass, 14, e12638. https://doi.org/10.1111/phc3.12638

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Korman, D. Z. (2019). Debunking arguments in metaethics and metaphysics. In A. Goldman & B. McLaughlin (Eds.), Metaphysics and cognitive science (pp. 1–34). Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mark, J. T. (2013). Evolutionary pressures on perception: When does natural selection favor truth? Ph.D. Dissertation, University of California, Irvine.

  • Marr, D. (1982). Vision. Freeman Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Martínez, M. (2019). Usefulness drives representations to truth: A family of counterexamples to hoffman’s interface theory of perception. Grazer Philosophische Studien, 96(3), 319–341. https://doi.org/10.1163/18756735-09603004

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Merricks, T. (2001). Objects and persons. Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Mitchell, M. (1998). An introduction to genetic algorithms. Bradford Books/MIT Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Potts, R., & Sloan, C. (2010). What does it mean to be human? National Geographic.

    Google Scholar 

  • Prakash, C., Stephens, K. D., Hoffman, D. D., & Singh, M. (2020). Fitness beats truth in the evolution of perception. Acta Biotheoretica. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10441-020-09400-0

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Robertson, B. A., Rehage, J. S., & Sih, A. (2013). Ecological novelty and the emergence of evolutionary traps. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 28(9), 552–560.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Van Gulick, R. (2022). Consciousness. In E. N. Zalta & U. Nodelman (Eds.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (Winter 2022 ed.). https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2022/entries/consciousness/

  • Gwynne, D. T., & Rentz, D. C. F. (1983). Beetles on the bottle: Male buprestids mistake stubbies for females (Coleoptera). Australian Journal of Entomology, 22, 79–80. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1440-6055.1983.tb01846.x

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Williamson, T. (2007). The philosophy of philosophy. Blackwell.

    Book  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

My deepest thanks to Dan Korman, Kevin Falvey, Thomas Barrett, Christopher Britton, Jason Hanschmann, David King, Alex LeBrun, Tom Costigan, Daniel Story, Celine Geday, Sangsu Kim, Rick Lamb, and Seán Pierce for helpful discussions and comments over many revisions. I am also grateful for the very valuable feedback and suggestions from several anonymous reviewers.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Northern Virginia Community College, University of California Santa Barbara, 5000 Dawes Ave, Alexandria, VA, 22311, USA

    Jeffrey N. Bagwell

Authors
  1. Jeffrey N. Bagwell
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jeffrey N. Bagwell.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

The authors declared that they have no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Bagwell, J.N. Debunking interface theory: why Hoffman’s skepticism (really) is self-defeating. Synthese 201, 25 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-022-04021-1

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-022-04021-1

Keywords

Search

Navigation