Neurophilosophy: the relationship between perception, interpretation and facts. The end of the objective world.

Neurophilosophy: the relationship between perception, interpretation and facts. The end of the objective world.

The goal of the essay is to prove that Nietzsche’s subjective philosophy is totally aligned with neurobiology understanding of perceptions.

How come?Nietzsche 1886 “Will to Power” essay presents one of the most controversial affirmations in philosophy: “There are no facts, only interpretations”.

What does this mean? It means that there are no real facts per se. Instead facts are subjective interpretations of what occurs in the world. This disruptive perspective of reality destroys the believe that the world could exist without a mind that perceives it.

And, at this point, is exactly where neurobiology comes to support what was written in 1886 by this German philosopher.

Perception is defined as a conscious appreciation of a stimulus.

At the same time, we understand a stimulus as any change that can occur inside or outside of our bodies.

In order to move forward with the goal of this essay, let´s focus in those inputs we receive from the world.

We are continuously exposed to external stimulus that affects our lives in several ways. But the main discovery here, is that those stimuli do not exist by their own and, what is more important, they do no exist without a mind that creates them.

And here is the key. Our brain receives an external stimulus. That stimulus is processed by the neocortex through the thalamus what, in a consciously way, provides an existence and a sense to that stimulus transforming its external data to perception.

In easy words, a stimulus is nothing if there is no cerebral neocortex action that creates a perception trough an interpretation.

So, one of the biggest challenges for perception is interpretation. And it is a challenge basically because we are naturally, imperfect perceivers. There are plenty examples of misinterpretations such as optical or auditory illusions that can illustrate our vulnerability while interpreting. And these are only physiological examples.

Emotionally speaking, we face every day and almost in every single relationship our flaw in terms of interpretations.

Perception is determined by interpretation. And interpretation depends on a huge variety of variables that interacts in our brain and in our body constantly. And at the same time, these uncountable variables are affected by the context, by the outside.

And again, the outside can be also defined as a universe of interpretations.

And interpretations are highly composed by expectations, which can also be understood as other interpretations as well.

Even thought, the above can sound as a tongue twister, the important conclusion that can be made is that everything that exists in the world doesn´t exists if it is not perceived by a brain.

And that brain makes decisions through the neocortex based on these interpretations every time. The issue here is, that this process hides our imperfection as interpreters and makes us believe that we stand on a solid, firm and reliable basis which is totally wrong.

Nietzsche and neurobiology teach us that we should be careful or, at least, conscious in regard to what we believe and in what we based our decisions and action since none of them are accurate.

In other words: in 1886 Nietzsche acknowledged that there is no “real world” and no “Truth” outside us. Nowadays, neurobiology is teaching us the same but from a scientific standpoint and it is challenging us to live with uncertainty and constantly change as the basis of our existence.

Sol Abello.

Essay written for the University of Chicago. February 2019.