Phenomena
131
All living organisms are engaged in a struggle for existence. To survive, they
must find optimal ways of using the resources available in their environment
to obtain nourishment and keep themselves safe. They learn by trying every
path open to them: Along some paths they make progress, while along other
paths they are turned back because they run into obstacles. Gradually, natural
forces oblige them to distinguish what’s possible from what’s not.
Organisms struggle to wrest from their environment the resources they need.
At first, all courses of action seem to be worth a try. But in some attempts they
find themselves blocked by natural barriers, while in other attempts they succeed. It is through the medium of these hurdles—these natural constraints—
that organisms gradually get to learn the structure of their environments. Most
of this is not learned by individual animals but by the species in the course
of evolution. The impediments which the natural world imposes on their efforts progressively shapes their understanding of the world. The constraints of
nature act to mold their model of reality.
This is a fascinating insight, because it reveals that the physical world does
not need to have specific features for us to discern, or any features at all.
Instead, what sculpts the way we perceive things and educates us are the forces
with which nature opposes us. It is our mind that creates features, and attributes
them to objects. The external world does not need to possess features, only
restraints. This insight underlies the latest theories of animal perception.
According to current research in neuroscience, the perceptual mechanism of
animals functions by using a stick and not a carrot. It has been found that the
animal brain is continuously forming hypotheses of what will be encountered
in the next glance. The hypothesis, or prediction, is then confronted with an
incoming signal from the eyes, which it either matches or not. If not, then
a corrected hypothesis is composed on the fly and the cycle is repeated. If
the prediction matches the incoming signal, the animal experiences the visual
scene it has just predicted. What the animal experiences is, of course, a creation
in its world-model. The same is true for the other senses. 5
The most essential element of this process is that only a mismatch needs to be
registered, for only a mismatch is relevant for correcting a hypothesis. Again,
this reveals that only the restraints of nature are effective in perceiving and learning: The world’s negative side is what is useful. The external world does not need
to have definite features for us to recognize, because the constraints that it
enforces do the same job.
The neuroscientist Andy Clark, who has written a book on the subject,
has called attention to a remarkable consequence of this process: Since it is
the observer’s brain that generates the image which is predicted—while the
external information is used only to correct errors in it—it turns out that it’s
131
All living organisms are engaged in a struggle for existence. To survive, they
must find optimal ways of using the resources available in their environment
to obtain nourishment and keep themselves safe. They learn by trying every
path open to them: Along some paths they make progress, while along other
paths they are turned back because they run into obstacles. Gradually, natural
forces oblige them to distinguish what’s possible from what’s not.
Organisms struggle to wrest from their environment the resources they need.
At first, all courses of action seem to be worth a try. But in some attempts they
find themselves blocked by natural barriers, while in other attempts they succeed. It is through the medium of these hurdles—these natural constraints—
that organisms gradually get to learn the structure of their environments. Most
of this is not learned by individual animals but by the species in the course
of evolution. The impediments which the natural world imposes on their efforts progressively shapes their understanding of the world. The constraints of
nature act to mold their model of reality.
This is a fascinating insight, because it reveals that the physical world does
not need to have specific features for us to discern, or any features at all.
Instead, what sculpts the way we perceive things and educates us are the forces
with which nature opposes us. It is our mind that creates features, and attributes
them to objects. The external world does not need to possess features, only
restraints. This insight underlies the latest theories of animal perception.
According to current research in neuroscience, the perceptual mechanism of
animals functions by using a stick and not a carrot. It has been found that the
animal brain is continuously forming hypotheses of what will be encountered
in the next glance. The hypothesis, or prediction, is then confronted with an
incoming signal from the eyes, which it either matches or not. If not, then
a corrected hypothesis is composed on the fly and the cycle is repeated. If
the prediction matches the incoming signal, the animal experiences the visual
scene it has just predicted. What the animal experiences is, of course, a creation
in its world-model. The same is true for the other senses. 5
The most essential element of this process is that only a mismatch needs to be
registered, for only a mismatch is relevant for correcting a hypothesis. Again,
this reveals that only the restraints of nature are effective in perceiving and learning: The world’s negative side is what is useful. The external world does not need
to have definite features for us to recognize, because the constraints that it
enforces do the same job.
The neuroscientist Andy Clark, who has written a book on the subject,
has called attention to a remarkable consequence of this process: Since it is
the observer’s brain that generates the image which is predicted—while the
external information is used only to correct errors in it—it turns out that it’s