Need info / book recommendations for "The world exists in your mind"

Reply to John Paterson

I think the most popular is Donald Hoffman's The case against reality.

It's on my 'to read list'.

I recommend these works which call 'mind-dependent reality' into question in different ways:

• Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, Immanuel Kant
• Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Ludwig Wittgenstein
• Ways of Worldmaking, Nelson Goodman

Quoting John Paterson

I don't know anything much about philosophy, but I'm interested in the concept of the world existing in your mind and would like to explore the idea. I don't mean solipsism, I just mean that your experience of the outside world is created in your mind/brain from the inputs of your senses.

Hi and welcome :smile:
For what it's worth, what instantly came to mind...was a book I bought and can't remember if I even started or finished. So much for that - but you can look it up !
It's 'The Kingdom of Infinite Space: A Fantastical Journey around Your Head' by Raymond Tallis.

Reply to John Paterson
Quoting Down The Rabbit Hole

I think the most popular is Donald Hoffman's The case against reality.

FWIW, here's my blog review of Hoffman's book, and its thesis of Model Dependent Realism.

Reality is not what you see :
http://bothandblog6.enformationism.info/page21.html

Model-dependent realism :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model-dependent_realism

Reply to John Paterson If you haven’t read it, you might enjoy Lisa Feldman Barrett’s ‘How Emotions are Made’.

Reply to Gnomon

Quoting Gnomon

FWIW, here's my blog review of Hoffman's book, and its thesis of Model Dependent Realism.

Reality is not what you see :
http://bothandblog6.enformationism.info/page21.html

Model-dependent realism :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model-dependent_realism

I didn't know Hoffman had discussed his ideas with THE Francis Crick? I'm not surprised he was a critic.

I take it Hoffman is a lot more radical than the rather tame view that reality and our perception of it are not one and the same?

Reply to John Paterson

Starmaking by Nelson Goodman
The World as Will and Representation by Schopenhauer
Why Materialism is Baloney by Bernardo Kastrup
Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality by Ralph Cudworth
Inborn Knowledge: The Mystery Within - Colin McGinn

There's likely more of this type of thing within the rationalist tradition, it's also an area of personal interest for me, but these days such views aren't as common.

Thanks so much for all the awesome suggestions! This is going to keep me busy for a while :grin:

Quoting Down The Rabbit Hole

didn't know Hoffman had discussed his ideas with THE Francis Crick? I'm not surprised he was a critic.

I take it Hoffman is a lot more radical than the rather tame view that reality and our perception of it are not one and the same?

Don Hoffman was a close associate of Francis Crick, and they worked together for years. But Hoffman was a lot younger, and began to diverge from Crick in his basic worldview. Crick was a fairly traditional reductive-materialist-classical scientist, and famously said "you are nothing but a pack of neurons". Yet, over time, Hoffman's views turned toward more holistic Eastern models of reality, in which "You" are more than your physical structure. He also was influenced by the contra-classical findings of Quantum Theory -- including the role of the observer in constructing models of reality. And I wouldn't be surprised, if Crick lived long enough to read Hoffman's latest books, that he would find his ideas "radical". Nevertheless, Hoffman remains respectful of his mentor's contributions to science.

Hoffman's "astonishing hypothesis" is just the opposite from Crick's. And he turned the old evolutionary arguments for reality (arbitrary & random reshuffling of matter) upside-down, by implying that even hard-nosed no-nonsense scientists are dealing with illusions of their own making. This does not necessarily mean that there is no ultimate true Reality, but merely that each of us is like the blind-men and the elephant story, in which each observer sees only a part of the whole. In that case, the role of science is to have a meeting of minds, and to merge our various "illusions" into a single useful approximation of Holistic Reality. :nerd:


The Astonishing Hypothesis is that “You,” your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. As Lewis Carroll’s Alice might have phrased it: “You’re nothing but a pack of neurons.” ___Francis Crick
https://todayinsci.com/C/Crick_Francis/CrickFrancis-Quotations.htm

The Evolutionary Argument Against Reality :
The cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman believes that evolution and quantum mechanics conspire to make objective reality an illusion.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-evolutionary-argument-against-reality-20160421/

BLIND MEN OBSERVING A WHOLE ELEPHANT'S PARTS

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant

Quoting John Paterson

I just wonder what the implications are of this and:
-how much of our world view is stuff we invent ourselves
- how much control we have over our world view

See my reply to Reply to Down The Rabbit Hole for an introduction to Don Hoffman's answer to your question.

Books:
Maurice Merleau-Ponty - "Phenomenology of Perception"
Wolfgang Kohler - "Gestalt Psychology"
Kurt Koffka - "Principles of Gestalt Psychology"

Lecture series from thegreatcourses.com:
Francis Colavita - "Sensation, Perception, and the Aging Process"
Steve Joordens - "Memory And The Human Lifespan"

I would recommend John R. Searle
“Seeing Things as They Are: A Theory of Perception”. This book will provide an alternative view that it is not all in the mind.

Enjoy.