Homo Homini Lupus

La frase "Homo homini lupus", el hombre es un lobo para el hombre, suele ser atribuida a Hobbes, y se entiende vulgarmente como una caracterización sumaria de su antropología o teoría política. Craso error, pues Hobbes la utiliza para describir el primitivo o teórico estado de naturaleza de la humanidad, un estado realmente pre-humano de la cultura, el estado de la humanidad antropoide o salvaje tal como la imaginaba Hobbes, frente al estado de cultura propiamente humana en el que vivimos, en el que, precisamente, el hombre no es un lobo para el hombre, pues hay instituciones (incluso entre los a veces llamados "salvajes") que ligan a los hombres entre sí, estructuras y relaciones sociales, normas, leyes y reyes. 

Sí podríamos decir en todo caso que para Hobbes los reyes son lobos para otros reyes, o las naciones lobos para otras naciones, pues no hay (por simplificar, al margen de alianzas inestables, etc.) instituciones ni leyes comunes que rijan a reyes y naciones. No se había inventado la ONU por el siglo XVII, y mal inventada está ahora, así que seguimos más o menos en lo mismo.

Sea como sea, Hobbes ni siquiera es el autor de la frase Homo homini lupus, pues debió leerla en la Anatomía de la Melancolía de Robert Burton. Aquí está el pasaje en cuestión, y la nota en que aparece la famosa frase, en el primer capítulo en el que habla Burton de las desgracias que aquejan a la humanidad—la primera de ellas, la humanidad misma:

To descend to some more particulars, how many creatures are at deadly feud with men! lions, wolves, bears, etc., some with hoofs, horns, tusks, teeth, nails. How many noxious serpents and venomous creatures, ready to offend us with stings, breath, sight, or quite kill us! How many pernicious fishes, plants, gums, fuits, seeds, flowers, etc., could I reckon up on a sudden, some grievous malady, if not death itself! Some make mention of a thousand several poisons: but these are but trifles in respect. The greatest enemy to man is man, who by the devil's instigation is still ready to do mischief, hid own executioner, a wolf, a devil to himself and others (1). We are all brethren in Christ, or at least should be, members of one body, servants of one Lord, and yet no fiend can so torment, insult over, tyrannize, vex, as one man doth another. Let me not fall therefore (saith David, when wars, plague, famine were offered) into the hans of men, merciless and wicked men:

Vix sunt homines hoc nomine digni,

Quamque lupi saevae plus feritatis habent. (2)

[Though men in shape, they scarce deserve the name; 

Their savagery doth put the wolves to shame] 

We can most part foresee these epidemical diseases, and likely avoid them. Dearths, tempests, plagues, our astrologers foretell us; earthquakes, inundations, ruins of houses, consuming fires, come by little and little, or make some noise beforehand; but the knaveries, impostures, injuries, and villainies of men no art can avoid. We can keep our professed enemies from our cities by gates, walls, and towers, defend ourselves from thieves and robbers by watchfulness and weapons; but this malice of men, and their pernicious endeavours, no caution can divert, no vigilancy foresee, we have so many secret plots and devices to mischief one another.

 

(1) Homo homini lupus, homo homini daemon.

(2) Ovid., Trist. lib. 5, elg. 8.

 

(Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, "The First Partition - The First Section, Member, Subsection - Man's Excellency, Fall, Miseries, Infirmities; The causes of them, Everyman, 1.134-5, notes: 466).

El Prusés y el Estado de las Autonomías según Hobbes

—oOo—

Of the Kingdome of Darknesse

 

Faith Comes By Hearing

Thomas Hobbes expounds the difference between knowing and believing in matters of religion, in Part III of Leviathan. This is one of those passages in which his theological acumen and his satirical spirit seem to converge inextricably....

 

 Faith Comes by Hearing

It is manifest therefore, that Christian men doe not know, but only beleeve the Scripture to be the Word of God; and that the means of making them beleeve which God is pleased to afford men orinarily, is according to the way of Nature, that is to say, from their Teachers. It is the Doctrine of St. Paul concerning Christian Faith in generall, (Rom. 10. 17.) Faith cometh by Hearing, that is, by Hearing our lawfull Pastors. He saith also (ver. 14, 15. of the same Chapter) How shall they beleeve in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a Preacher? and how shall they Preach, except they be sent? Whereby it is evident, that the ordinary cause of beleeving that the Scriptures are the Word of God, is the same with the cause of the beleeving of all other Articles of our Faith, namely, the Hearing of those that are by the Law allowed and appointed to Teach us, as our Parents in thir Houses, and our Pastors in the Churches: Which also is made more manifest by experience. For what other cause can there bee assigned, why in Christian Common-wealths all men either beleeve, or at least professse the Scripture to bee the Word of God, and in other Common-wealths scarce any; but that in a Christian Common-wealth they are taught it from their infancy; and in other places they are taught otherwise.

Just to be clear about the theology of Leviathan, there is an interesting conundrum or paradox or logical corner that Hobbes chooses to inhabit. It is not always the case that all good Christian subjects "believe", in spite of this indoctrination, since sound doctrine also teaches "that Faith is the gift of God, and hee giveth it to whom he will." BUT whereas a King is not to pry into the subjects's souls as to what they believe or not, Hobbes does insist on the right of the State to exact public verbal acquiescence, and to silence skeptics or atheists or heretics at the discretion of the Sovereign. That is, good public religiosity consists not so much in actually believing the doctrine, but in simulating belief or not contradicting it with inconvenient assertions to the contrary effect.

Which is all things considered a nicely paradoxical rounding off or bootstrapping of the Christian materialist theology of the Leviathan—a regular Q.E.D. of the theological argument expounded here, and an self-explicatory and perhaps slightly cynical assertion of the book's explicit and deliberate Anglican orthodoxy.

Hobbes y los okupas

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Trinity Personated

 

Thomas Hobbes's materialist explication of the doctrine of the Trinity in Leviathan (Part III, "Of a Christian Common-Wealth"), on the basis of his dramatistic notion of personation as central to all aspects of human reality and social life. 

Of the Trinity

Here wee have the Person of God born now the third time. For as Moses, and the High Priests, were Gods Representative in the Old Testament; and our Saviour himselfe as Man, during his abode on earth: So the Holy Ghost, that is to say, the Apostles, and their successors, in the Office of Preaching, and Teaching, that had received tha Holy Spirit, have Represented him ever since. But a Person, (as I have shewn before, chapt. [16].) is he that is Represented, as often as hee is Represented; and therefore God, who has been Represented (that is, Personated) thrice, may properly enough be said to be three Persons; through neither the word Person, nor Trinity be ascribed to him in the Bible. St. John indeed (I Epist. 5.7.) saith, There be three that bear witnesse in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit; and these Three are One: But this disagreeth not, but accordeth fitly with three Persons in the proper signification of Persons; which is, that which is Represented by another. For so God the Father, as Represented by Moses, is one Person; and as Represented by his Sonne, another Person; and as Represented by the Apostles, and by the Doctors that taught by authority from them derived, is a third Person; and yet every Person here, is the Person of one and the same God. But a man may here ask, what it was whereof these three bare witnesse. St. John therefore tells us (verse 11.) that they bear witnesse, that God hath given us eternall life in his Son. Again, if it should bee asked, wherein that testimony appeareth, the Answer is easie;  for he hath testified the same by the miracles he wrought, first by Moses; secondly by his Son himself; and lastly by his Apostles, that had received the Holy Spirit; all which in their times Represented the Person of God; and either prophecyed, or preached Jesus Christ. And as for the Apostles, it was the Character of the Apostleship, in the twelve first and great Apostles, to bear Witnesse of his Resurrection; as appeareth exprssely (Acts I. ver. 21, 22.) where St. Peter, when a new Apostle was to be chosen in the place of Judas Iscariot, useth these words, Of these men which have companied with us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out amongst us, beginning at the Baptisme of John, unto that same day that hee was taken up from us, must one bee ordained to be a Witnesse with us of his Resurrection: which words interpret the bearing of Witnesse, mentioned by St. John. There is in the same place mentioned another Trinity of Witnesses in Earth. For (ver. 8.) he saith, there are three that bear Witnesse in Earth, the Spirit, and the Water, and the Bloud; and these three agree in one: that is to say, the graces of Gods Spirit, and the two Sacraments, Baptisme, and the Lords Supper, which all agree in one Testimony, to assure the consciences of beleevers, of eternall life; of which Testimony he saith (verse 10.) He that beleeveth on the Son of man hath the Witnesse in himselfe. In this Trinity on Earth the Unity is not of the thing; for the Spirit, the Water, and the Bloud, are not the same substance, though they give the same testimony: But in the Trinity of Heaven, the Persons are the persons of one an the same God, though Represented in three different times and occasions. To conclude, the doctrine of the Trinity, as far as can be gathered directly from the Scripture, is in substance this: that God who is alwaies One and the same, was the Person Represented by Moses; the Person Represented by his Son Incarnate; and the Person Represented by the Apostles. As Represented by the Apostles, the Holy Spirit by which they spake, is God; As Represented by his Son (that was God and Man), the Son is that God; As represented by Moses, and the High Priests, the Father, that is to say, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is that God: From whence we may gather the reason why those names Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the signification of the Godhead, are never used in the Old Tesament: For they are Persons, that is, they have their names from Representing; which could not be, till divers men had Represented Gods Person in ruling, or in directing under him. 

Thus we see how the Power Ecclesiasticall was left by our Saviour to the Apostles; and how they were (to the end they might the better exercise that Power,) endued with the Holy Spirit, which is therefore called sometime in the New Testament Paracletus which signifieth an Assister, or one called to for helpe, though it bee commonly translated a Comforter. Let us now consider the Power it selfe, what it was, and over whom.

 

Hobbes's generalized notion of Person and Personation as a building block of human reality and a tool for social-dramatistic analysis is further commented here:

"How to Make Artificial Persons: Hobbes's Dramatistic Theory of Interaction and of Political Representation." In García Landa, Vanity Fea 10 Oct. 2015.*

         http://vanityfea.blogspot.com.es/2015/10/hobbess-dramatistic-theory-of.html

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Doctrina de Hobbes sobre los indultos del Prusés

Del capítulo del Leviatán sobre delitos y castigos. Sobre si el rey debería haber concedido los célebres indultos a los golpistas del Prusés. Con vistas a aquello de "lo volveremos a hacer":

Examples of Impunity, Extenuate

The same Fact, if it have been constantly punished in other men, is a greater Crime, than if there have been many precedent Examples of impunity. For those Examples, are so many hopes of Impunity, given by the Soveraign himselfe: And because he which furnishes a man with such a hope, and presumption of mercy, as encourageth him to offend, hath his part in the offence; he cannot reasonably charge the offender with the whole.

—oOo—

El Prusés y el Estado de las Autonomías según Hobbes

A Hobbes no le gustan mucho las asambleas regionales—y menos si se ponen a legislar fuera de la ley y de sus competencias. Esto nos aconseja sobre casos como la patología catalanista y autonomista (Leviathan, Part II, "Of Common-Wealth"):

Bodies Politique for Government of a Province, Colony, or Town

The variety of Bodies Politique, is almost infinite: for they are not onely distinguished by the severall affaires, for which they are constituted, wherein there is an unspeakable diversitie; but also by the times, places, and numbers, subject to many limitations. And as to their affaires, some are ordained for Government; As first, the Government of a Province may be committed to an Assembly of men, wherein all resolutions shall depend on the Votes of the major part; and then this Assembly is a Body Politique, and their power limited by Commission. This word Province signifies a charge, or care of businesse, which he whose businesse it is, committeth to another man, to be administred for, and under him; and therefore when in one Commonwealth there be divers Countries, that have their Lawes distinct one from another, or are farre distant in place, the Administration of the Government being committed to divers persons, those Countries where the Sovereign is not resident, but governs by Commission, are called Provinces. But of the government of a Province, by an Assembly residing in the Province it selfe, there be few examples. The Romans who had the Soveraignty of many Provinces; yet governed them alwaies by Presidents, and Praetors; and not by Assemblies, as they governed the City of Rome, and Territories adjacent. In like manner, when there were Colonies sent from England, to Plant Virginia, and Sommer-Illands; though the government of them here, were committed to Assemblies in London, yet did those Assemblies never commmit the Government under them to any Assembly there; but did to Each Plantation send one Governour; For though every man, where he can be present by Nature, desires to participate of government; yet where they cannot be present, they are by Nature also enclined, to commit the Government of their common interest rather to a Monarchicall, then a Popular form of Government: which is also evident in those men that have great private estates; who when they are unwilling to take the paines of administring the businesse that belongs to them, chooose rather to trust one Servant, than an Assembly either of their friends or servants. But howsoever it be in fact, yet we may suppose the Government of a Province, or Colony committed to an Assembly: and when it is, that which in this place I have to say, is this; that whatsoever debt is by that Assembly contracted; or whatsoever unlawfull Act is decreed, is the Act onely of those that assented, and not of any that dissented, or were absent, for the reasons before alledged. Also that an Assembly residing out of the bounds of that Colony whereof they have the government, cannot execute any power over the persons, or goods of any of the Colonie, to seize on them for debt, or other duty, in any place without the Colony it selfe, as having no Jurisdiction, nor Authoritie elsewhere, but are left to the remedie, which the Law of the place alloweth them. And though the Assembly have right, to impose a Mulct upon any of their members, that shall break the Lawes they make; yet out of the Colonie it selfe, they have no right to execute the same. And that which is said here, of the Rights of an Assembly, for the government of a Province, or a Colony, is appliable also to an Assembly for the Government of a Town, an University, or a College, or a Church, or for any other Government over the persons of men.

And generally, in all Bodies Politique, if any particular member conceive himself Injured by the Body it self, the Cognisance of his cause belongeth to the Soveraign, and those the Soveraign hath ordained for Judges in such causes, or shall ordaine for that particular cause; and not to the Body it self. For the whole Body is in this case his fellow subjject, which in a Soveraign Assembly, is otherwise: for there, if the Soveraign be not Judge, though in his own cause, there can be no Judge at all.

 

—oOo—

Hobbes y los okupas

Un pasaje de Hobbes sobre la jurisprudencia de la okupación, a cuenta de una cuestión más general de hermenéutica jurídica. El apartado del Leviatán ("Of Common-Wealth") titulado "The Difference between the Letter and the Sentence of the Law": 

In written Lawes, men use to make a difference between the Letter, and the Sentence of the Law: And when by the Letter, is meant whatsoever can be gathered from the bare words, 'tis well distinguished. For the significations of almost all words, are either in themselves, or in the metaphoricall use of them, ambiguous; and may be drawn in argument, to make many senses; but there is onely one sense of the Law. But if by the Letter, be meant the literall sense, then the Letter, and the Sentence of intention of the Law, is all one. For the literall sense is that, which the Legislator intended, should by the letter of the Law be signified. Now the Intention of the Legislator is alwayes supposed to be Equity: For it were a great contumely for a Judge to think otherwise of the Soveraigne. He ought therefore, if the word of the Law doe not fully authorise a reasonable Sentence, to supply it with the Law of Nature; or if the case be difficult, to respit Judgement till he have received more ample authority. For Example, a written Law ordaineth, that he which is thrust out of his house by force, shall be restored by force, in which case there is no speciall Law ordained. It is evident, that this case is contained in the same Law. For else there is no remedy for him at all; which is to be supposed against the Intention of the legislator. Again, the word of the Law, commandeth to judge according to the Evidence: A man is accused falsely of a fact, which the Judge saw himself done by another; and not by him that is accused. In this case neither shall the Letter of the Law be followed to the condemnation of the Innocent, nor shall the Judge give Sentence against the eidence of the Witnesses; because the Letter of the Law is to the contrary; but procure of the Soveraign that another be made Judge, and himsefe Witnesse. So that the incommodity that follows the bare words of a written Law, may lead him to the intention of the Law, whreby to interpret the same the better; though no Incommodity can warrant a Sentence against the Law. For every Judge of Right, and Wrong, is not Judge of what is Commodious, or Incommodious to the Common-wealth.

—oOo—

Thomas Hobbes | Fernando Vallespín

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CONTRACTUALISMO (HOBBES, LOCKE Y ROUSSEAU)

John Locke's Political Philosophy

From Locke to Hobbes. After giving an overview of Thomas Hobbes, Professor Charles Anderson goes on to discuss the thought of John Locke. This is from a course on Political, Economic and Social Thought given at the University of Wisconsin.

Estar en Estado

Esta sonrisa se la dedica Hobbes a quienes pensaron que el Leviathan se refería a la monarquía absoluta del siglo XVII (ese corona-virus que le dio a Europa), y no al Estado en general.

Dicen que no se puede estar "un poco" embarazada, que es o que sí, o que no. Permítanme disentir. Es embarazoso reconocerlo, pero se puede estar un poco en estado. Y si en el Estado estamos siempre, entiéndanme también cuando digo que nos vemos aquejados de un caso leve (espero que sea leve) de Leviatán.

The Most Famous Book Cover in All History

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The Virtual World We Inhabit

Richard Dawkins explains why we all move in a perceptual world which is not "the" world, but a virtual reality model of the same, a mental model which we take for the real thing itself. 

This may seem far-fetched to the naive assumptions (and perceptions) of many people, yet it is self-evident from the moment we realize that although we may partly share our mental maps and models of the objective world, the section of the world I perceive and attend to is different from yours, a different location, a different point of view, etc. etc. Fairly obvious, actually. 

Listen to Dawkins:

You and I, we humans, we mammals, we animals, inhabit a virtual world, constructed from elements that are, at successively higher levels, useful for representing the real world. Of course, we feel as if we are firmly placed in the real world—which is exactly as it should be if our constrained virtual reality software is any good. It is very good, and the only time we notice it at all is on the rare occasions when it gets something wrong. When this happens we experience an illusion or a hallucination, like the hollow mask illusion we talked about earlier.

The British psychologist Richard Gregory has paid special attention to visual illusions as a means of studying how the brain works. In his book Eye and Brain (fifth edition 1998), he regards seeing as an active process in which the brain sets up hypotheses about what is going on out there, then tests those hypotheses about what is going on out there, then tests those hypotheses against the data coming in from the sense organs. One of the most familiar of all visual illusions is the Necker cube. This is a simple line drawing of a hollow cube, like a cube made of steel rods.

The drawing is a two-dimensional pattern of ink on paper. Yet a normal human sees it as a cube. The brain has made a three-dimensional model based upon the two-dimensional pattern of ink on paper. yet a normal human sees it as a cube. The brain has made a three-dimensional model based upon the two-dimensional pattern on the paper. This is, indeed, the kind of thing the brain does almost every time you look at a picture. The flat pattern of ink on paper is equally compatible with two alternative three-dimensional brain models. Stare at the drawing for some seconds and you will see it flip. The facet that had previously seemed nearest to you will now appear farthest. Carry on looking, and it will flip back to the original cube. The brian could have been designed to stick, arbitrarily, to one of the two cube models, say the first of the two that it hit upon, even though the other model would have been equally compatible with the information from the retinas. But in fact the brain takes the other option of running each model, or hypothesis, alternately for a few seconds at a time. Hence the apparent cube alternates, which gives the game away. Our brain constructs a three-dimensional model. It is virtual reality in the head. (...) The model in the brain (...) is constructed. But (...) it is, like the surgeon's computer model of the inside of her patient, not entirely invented: it is constrained by information fed in from the outside world.  (275-77)

One might compare the brain to a Popperian scientist, projecting hypotheses onto the world, as a working model of the same, and correcting those hypotheses only when reality fails to replicate the experiment. If the perceptual/conceptual model is thus falsified, a new perceptual pattern or "hypothesis" is generated to see if it delivers in terms of workable action.

This "top-down" model of perception corrects the naive "bottom-up" account of the same, which gives a more passive role to the mind. On this account, the mind would simply receive the input from the senses, and would construct its mental model of the world as the result of a one-way process, world-to-mind. Using the scientific analogy, this would be a Baconian model of experience: from the collection of data, through induction and generalization, to the building of laws which account for the world (the mental models). Our Popperian account of the mind makes for a much more dynamic role of the mind: it is top-down to a large extent (although of course it is a dynamic two-way model, both top-down and bottom-up in a continuous feedback cycle). The mind is not merely receiving the input of "reality", it is also constructing and projecting that reality around the mental subject, so that minds are reality-generation machines, and the more elaborate the mind, the more mental and more virtual the reality it inhabits. The mind generates its own space for interaction with the world and with other minds, to the extent that both physical reality and (especially) social reality are the result of self-fulfilling expectations. 

Expectations that we call institutions, frames, places (as socially defined), encounters, situations, discourses and disciplines.

For another take on this issue, I refer the reader to these two articles:

- "Goffman: La realidad como expectativa autocumplida y el teatro de la interioridad" — On the nature of social reality as a system of self-fulfilling expectations as theorized by Erving Goffman in his Frame Theory.

- "Constitución reflexiva de la percepción". By way of Hegel, a reflection on the construction of visual space as a mental intervention on reality, with our eyes (in a way) acting as a kind of Super-8 film projectors in a dark room, a bit like those 17th-c. prints which show Anatomical Men projecting light beams from their eyes, beams which illuminate the objects and allow them to be seen. (This is of course an image or analogy the better to visualize my point).

But it brings me nicely to the my last observation about our Virtual Reality in the Mind, having to do with the discovery of this artifact. Of course we would have to go back through a number of shades of awareness in a number of idealistic philosophers, from Plato's cavern to Descartes' evil genius. Nevertheless my example of choice comes from a celebrated materialist, Thomas Hobbes. We are of course at that point of reasoning about the world where matter becomes mind becomes matter, and thus Hobbes gives us (in his account of perception in Leviathan) a memorable definition of how exactly the world we perceive is a mental construct—minds being nothing but machines for the construction of such constructs, including, at a further ratchet of virtuality, their past and their future states, that is, time itself as a moving image of reality. (1)

CHAPTER I. OF SENSE

Concerning the Thoughts of man, I will consider them first Singly, and afterwards in Trayne, or dependance upon one another. Singly, they are every one a Representation or Apparence, of some quality, or other Accident of a body without us; which is commonly called an Object. Which Object worketh on the Eyes, Eares, and other parts of mans body; and by diversity of working, produceth diversity of Apparences.
The Originall of them all, is that which we call Sense; (For there is no conception in a mans mind, which hath not at first, totally, or by parts, been begotten upon the organs of Sense.) The rest are derived from that originall.
To know the naturall cause of Sense, is not very necessary to the business now in hand; and I have els-where written of the same at large. Nevertheless, to fill each part of my present method, I will briefly deliver the same in this place.
The cause of Sense, is the Externall Body, or Object, which presseth the organ proper to each Sense, either immediatly, as in the Tast and Touch; or mediately, as in Seeing, Hearing, and Smelling: which pressure, by the mediation of Nerves, and other strings, and membranes of the body, continued inwards to the Brain, and Heart, causeth there a resistance, or counter-pressure, or endeavour of the heart, to deliver it self: which endeavour because Outward, seemeth to be some matter without. And this Seeming, or Fancy, is that which men call sense; and consisteth, as to the Eye, in a Light, or Colour Figured; To the Eare, in a Sound; To the Nostrill, in an Odour; To the Tongue and Palat, in a Savour; and to the rest of the body, in Heat, Cold, Hardnesse, Softnesse, and such other qualities, as we discern by Feeling. All which qualities called Sensible, are in the object that causeth them, but so many several motions of the matter, by which it presseth our organs diversly. Neither in us that are pressed, are they anything els, but divers motions; (for motion, produceth nothing but motion.) But their apparence to us is Fancy, the same waking, that dreaming. And as pressing, rubbing, or striking the Eye, makes us fancy a light; and pressing the Eare, produceth a dinne; so do the bodies also we see, or hear, produce the same by their strong, though unobserved action, For if those Colours, and Sounds, were in the Bodies, or Objects that cause them, they could not bee severed from them, as by glasses, and in Ecchoes by reflection, wee see they are; where we know the thing we see, is in one place; the apparence, in another. And though at some certain distance, the reall, and very object seem invested with the fancy it begets in us; Yet still the object is one thing, the image or fancy is another. So that Sense in all cases, is nothing els but originall fancy, caused (as I have said) by the pressure, that is, by the motion, of externall things upon our Eyes, Eares, and other organs thereunto ordained. 

Perhaps augmented reality, a kind of Google Glass vision, is a better analogue for Hobbes's account of perception. The mind, subject to perceptual stimuli, constructs a fanciful or imaginary version of the world, so that the real and very object seem[s] invested with the fancy it begets in us. Objects may well be in the world, but objects of perception are mental constructs: there is no visual appearance of the object without an eye and a brain, there is no sound whatsoever in a waterfall without the ear and the brain. Berkeley would extract some further consequences of the empiricist account of perception, and would brazenly define objects and the world in which they are placed as the products of the mind's activity, synthesizing the input from the senses and generating something which is not in the senses nor in any understandable sense in the "world without minds". Which is not of course what we usually mean by "the world": it is not the least of paradoxes that this non-mental "raw" world is only conceivable, when we come to examine it, as the result of an elaborate scientific abstraction from the much more intuitive world we inhabit, the virtual world constructed by our mind and our senses.

__________


(1) For more on the cognitive construction of time, see my paper on "La cartografía narrativa en la articulación del mundo humano: El papel de los esquemas y los textos narrativos."

"Lo mismo despiertos, que soñando": 

Hobbes sobre la virtualidad de lo real

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Our Internal Virtual Reality

In Unweaving the Rainbow, Richard Dawkins provides a good scientific explanation of the old philosophical insight (Hobbes's, Berkeley's, Hume's, etc.) that what we usually take to be "reality" is actually a mental construct (at the interface between idealism and materialism), a running simulacrum of reality constructed and played to itself by the brain. (Compare also Bergson's cinematographic theory of the mind). 

This is Dawkins's account of the internal virtual reality that we mistake for the real as such:

Everything that we know about the world outside our skulls comes to us via nerve cells whose impulses chatter like machine guns. What passes along a nerve cell is a voleying of 'spikes', impuses whose voltage is fixed (or at least irrelevant) but whose rate of arriving varies meaningfully. Now let's think about coding principles. how would you translate information from the outside world, say, the sound of an oboe or the temperature of a bath, into a pulse code? A first thought is a simple rate code: the hotter the bath, the faster the machine gun should fire. The brain, in other words, would have a thermometer calibrated in pulse rates. Actually, this is not a good code because it is uneconomical with pulses. By exploiting redundancy, it is possible to devise codes that convey the same information at a cost of fewer pulses. Temperatures in the world mostly stay the same for long periods at a time. To signal 'It is hot, it is hot, it is still hot...' by a continuously high rate of machine-gun pulses is wasteful; it is better to say, 'It has suddenly become hot' (now you can assume that it will stay the same until futher notice).

And, satisfyingly, this is what nerve cells mostly do, not just for signalling temperature but for signalling almost everything about the world.Most nerve cells are biased to signal changes in the world. If a trumpet plays a long sustained note, a typical nerve cell telling the brain about it would show the following pattern of impulses. Before the trumpet starts, low firing rate; immediately after the trumpet starts, high firing rate, as the trumpet carries on sustaining its note, the firing rate dies away to an infrequent mutter; at the moment when the trumpet stops, high firing rate, dying away to a resting mutter again. Or there might be one class of nerve cells that fire only at the onset of sounds and a different class of cells that fire only when sounds go off. Similar exploitation of redundancy — screening out the sameness in the wold —goes on in cells that tell the brain about changes in light, changes in temperature, changes in pressure. Everything about the world is signalled as change, and this is a major economy.

But you and I don't seem to hear the trumpet die away. To us the trumpet seems to carry on at the same volume and then to stop abruptly. Yes, of course. That's what you'd expect because the coding system is ingenious. It doesn't throw away information, it only throws away redundancy. The brain is told only about chantes, and it is then in a position to reconstruct the rest. Barlow [Horace Barlow, "The Coding of Sensory Messages", 1965] doesn't put it like this, but we could say that the brain constructs a virtual sound, using the messages supplied by the nerves coming from the ears. The reconstructed virtual sound is complete and unabridged, even though the messages themselves are economically stripped down to information about changes. The system works because the state of the world at a given time is usually not greatly different from the preceding second. Only if the world changed capriciously, randomly and frequently, would it be economical for sense organs to signal continuously the state of the world. As it is, sense organs are set up to signal, economically, the discontinuities in the world; and the brain, assuming correctly that the world doesn't change capriciously and at random, uses the information to construct an internal virtual reality in which the continuity is restored.

(Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow, 260-61)

Now compare this account with that of another contemporary neurologist like Gazzaniga. Michael Gazzaniga's description of the brain's "interpreter", a kind of internal narrator figure which constructs a running narrative of our surrounding world. Gazzaniga's account of the "interpreter" is to be found in The Mind's Past.  In another paper ("La autointeracción, la realimentación cerebral y la realidad como expectativa autocumplida") I point out the parallels between Gazzaniga's account of the brain's fuctioning and a phenomenological-materialist theory of consciousness, that of Herbert George Mead.

As to Berkeley, the substance of his argument is already to be found in his Theory of Vision— it is the mind that constructs objects in the world as mental interfaces for sensory perception, combining the information from diverse senses.

And pushing back further, the essentials of this "theory of reality as virtual reality", stemming from a complex conception of the relationship between perception and reality, is to be found in Hobbes's materialist philosophy (which results, as noted above, in a kind of "idealistic" or "subjectivized" materialism, actually a full-fledged theory of reality as virtual reality). I comment further on Hobbes's theory of virtual reality, or his "phenomenology" avant la lettre if one prefers, in this paper:

"'Lo mismo despiertos, que soñando': Hobbes sobre la virtualidad de lo real"

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The Most Famous Book Cover in all History

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Hobbes and the Person of the State | Professor Quentin Skinner

THOMAS HOBBES (1588-1679) : Philosophe défiguré – Une vie, une œuvre [1985]

In Our Time: Thomas Hobbes

A History of Philosophy | 30 Thomas Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes and the State of Nature

He gets it all (or nearly all) wrong. Hobbes is not proposing the way political order "should be". He DESCRIBES the way political order works, actually works. Leviathan is not a proposal for the improvement of society: it is an analysis of the actual workings of society and power, not a blueprint for a better society.

Will Durant---The Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes