Join us as we complete the first constellation of our “What Is Reality?” symposium series with cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman in dialogue with John Vervaeke about consciousness and the nature of the real, now available on YouTube.
For centuries, science has treated space and time as the fundamental stage on which reality unfolds. Hoffman asks a stranger question: what if they aren’t fundamental at all? What if perception works like the icons on a computer screen, useful and necessary for navigating the world, but no more the true nature of things than a little blue folder is the file it represents? What we see may not be false. It may simply not be the whole story.
From there, the questions get stranger still. What is an observer? Can consciousness be explained by the physical world we perceive, or have we put the cart before the horse? Hoffman’s proposals point toward consciousness as fundamental, and toward the possibility that our separate selves are expressions of something far larger. Vervaeke brings his own angle: through what he calls relevance realization, we carve a small, workable world out of a reality that is infinitely complex. Whether or not Hoffman is right, this is a conversation that invites us to stand inside the question, rather than rush to close it.
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