From Truth as Correct Representation to Truth as Co-Creative Participation

A brief response to Donald Hoffman and Manish Singh's new paper on the "interface theory of perception"

Introduction

The nature of perception and its relation to reality has long been a subject of debate in philosophy, psychology, and evolutionary biology. Contemporary discussions often polarize around two positions: one posits that organisms, including humans, have evolved perceptual systems that function as mere survival interfaces—adaptive but not truthful representations of an objective world (eg, Donald Hoffman & Manish Singh, 2012; and most recently, Hoffman & Singh, 2024). The other maintains that organisms can directly perceive the world, with senses “tuned” to uncovering truth (eg, J. J. Gibson, 1979). While I’d side more with a Gibson-esque ecological realism, the dichotomy between subjective illusion and objective representation may oversimplify the complex interplay between organisms and their environments. I believe we need a more nuanced, participatory approach, where organisms and environments are understood to co-evolve in a dynamic relationship that transcends the traditional subject-object divide.

Organism-Environment Coevolution

Contrary to the view of organisms as passively shaped by environmental pressures, research in evolutionary biology and ecology suggests that organisms actively shape their environments—a process known as niche construction (Odling-Smee, Laland, & Feldman, 2003). Niche construction theory posits that organisms modify their own and each other’s habitats through their activities and choices, which in turn influence the selection pressures they face. For example, earthworms alter soil structure, affecting nutrient cycling and plant growth, which then impact the earthworms’ own survival prospects.

This active engagement implies a reciprocal relationship between organisms and environments. Organisms are not merely adapting to a pre-existing world but are co-creators of their ecological contexts. This perspective challenges the strict separation between subject (organism) and object (environment), suggesting instead that both are part of a dialectically entangled, co-evolving system. The issue, then, is less about whether perceptions are “true” or “false” of a mind-independent world. There is no such world, just as there is no such thing as a world-independent mind. The issue, instead, is about how the concept of truth, so essential in science and philosophy, might be reconstructed in a way that does not presuppose an inadequate conception of the subject/object dichotomy. There are alternative ontologies—such as process-relational ontology—that allow us to affirm the possibility of truthful experience without making reference to a supposedly mind-independent world.

The Concept of Umwelts and Pluralism

Jakob von Uexküll’s (1934) concept of the umwelt—the life-world unique to each organism—captures how different species perceive and engage with the world in unique ways based on their sensori-motor capacities. For instance, a tick perceives the world predominantly through heat and the scent of butyric acid, whereas humans rely more heavily on visual and auditory channels.

Hoffman and Singh’s interface theory of perception extends this idea by proposing that natural selection favors perceptions that are fitness-enhancing rather than veridical (Hoffman, Singh, & Prakash, 2015). According to this theory, organisms develop perceptual interfaces that simplify the complexity of the world to focus on features relevant for survival and reproduction.

Their view aligns with a kind of anti-realist scientific pluralism, which holds that “reality” (always in scare quotes) can be understood in multiple, equally valid ways depending on the conceptual or perceptual framework employed (Kellert, Longino, & Waters, 2006). As an account of scientific modeling, I affirm their approach. But as ontology, I find it wanting. Leaning on Whitehead’s process-relational ontology, I have argued we can go further than scientific pluralism to affirm a pluralistic realism, ie, a world where many worlds fit.

Overlapping Umwelts and Niche Construction

While each organism inhabits its own umwelt, these worlds are not isolated. Through niche construction, organisms influence the environments—and thus the umwelts—of other species (Odling-Smee et al., 2003). Beavers, for example, build dams that create wetlands, transforming the landscape and affecting the habitats and survival of numerous other organisms.

This interconnectedness suggests that umwelts are dynamic and relational rather than static and isolated. The activities of one species can alter the selective pressures and perceptual worlds of others, leading to co-evolutionary processes. Such interactions highlight the complexity of ecological systems, where the boundaries between organism and organism, and between organism and environment, subject and object, become increasingly blurred. Deleuze and Guattari (1987) famously captured this dynamic in their account of orchid-wasp symbiosis:

The orchid deterritorializes by forming an image, a tracing of a wasp; but the wasp reterritorializes on that image. The wasp is nevertheless deterritorialized, becoming a piece in the orchid’s reproductive apparatus. But it reterritorializes the orchid by transporting its pollen. Wasp and orchid, as heterogeneous elements, form a rhizome. It could be said that the orchid imitates the wasp, reproducing its image in a signifying fashion (mimesis, mimicry, lure, etc.). But this is true only on the level of the strata—a parallelism between two strata such that a plant organization on one imitates an animal organization on the other. At the same time, something else entirely is going on: not imitation at all but a capture of code, surplus value of code, an increase in valence, a veritable becoming, a becoming-wasp of the orchid and a becoming-orchid of the wasp. Each of these becomings brings about the deterritorialization of one term and the reterritorialization of the other; the two becomings interlink and form relays in a circulation of intensities pushing the deterritorialization ever further. There is neither imitation nor resemblance, only an exploding of two heterogeneous series on the line of flight composed by a common rhizome that can no longer be attributed to or subjugated by anything signifying. (p. 11)

The rhizomatic relation between orchid and wasp is not one of representation, but of co-creative resonance. D & G describe this co-evolutionary dynamic so as to capture how organisms become-with one another by way of a non-linear “circulation of intensities.” Neither remains fully itself; both organisms enter a shared zone of intensity, a new way of existing that displaces their individual identities.

Challenging the Subject-Object Dualism

The traditional dualism between subject and object assumes a clear distinction between the perceiver and the external world. However, if organisms actively construct and modify one another and their environments, this separation becomes problematic.

One way forward is to turn to the embodied phenomenology developed by Merleau-Ponty (1962). His work emphasizes that perception is an embodied, active engagement with the world rather than a passive reception of stimuli. The perceiver and the perceived are intertwined in a dynamic, co-creative dance.

We can also draw upon relational ontologies in philosophy and anthropology, which propose that entities are constituted through their relationships rather than existing as independent substances (Whitehead, 1929; Barad, 2007). In this view, both organisms and environments emerge from a network of intra-actions. The subject-object dualism dissolves into a participatory process where perception and reality dependently co-arise.

Reframing Truth in a Participatory Universe

If perception is understood as a participatory process, the classical correspondence theory of truth—which posits that statements are true if they accurately reflect an objective reality—becomes insufficient. Instead, truth can be reframed as a function of the intimacy of the relationship between organisms and their environments (including other organisms), emphasizing coherence, practical effectiveness, and resonance (James, 1907). This needn’t mean that no form of correspondence can be maintained, just that its nature must be reframed so as to avoid falling into the conceptual trap of imagining subjects exist independently of objects, or organisms independently of environments (see for eg, Whitehead’s theory of propositions, 1929).

Pragmatist philosophers like Dewey (1929) argue that knowledge arises from active problem-solving and adaptation within a context, not from mirroring a pre-existing reality. Similarly, in enactivist cognitive science, cognition is seen as emerging from the dynamic interaction between an organism and its environment (Varela, Thompson, & Rosch, 1991). Truth, then, is not a symbolic correspondence between an internal mental representation and an external mind-independent reality, but a lived, embodied process of engagement. In short, truth is a participatory event, not a static mirror reflection.

Mathematics as an Expression of the Human Umwelt

Hoffman and Singh rely on mathematical models, such as evolutionary game theory, to support their interface theory of perception. However, this raises the question of whether mathematics itself is immune to the critique that perceptions (and, presumably, conceptions) are shaped by evolutionary fitness rather than epistemological correctness. Cognitive scientists like Lakoff and Núñez (2000) argue that mathematical concepts are grounded in embodied human experiences. Arithmetic capacities stem from our experience of time and rhythm, interactions with apparently discrete objects, and the metaphor of accumulation, while geometry arises from our embodied sense of spatial orientation and the manipulation of objects.

From this perspective, the meaning of the symbols that constitute mathematics do not transcend our organismic condition or human umwelt. If our perceptual systems are tuned for fitness, and our mathematical reasoning is an extension of these systems, then our mathematical models may also be adaptive tools rather than mirrors of an objective reality.

The Limits of Mathematical Representation

While mathematics has been extraordinarily successful in modeling physical phenomena, its effectiveness may be a reflection of the fit between our cognitive constructs and the aspects of the world we are attuned to. The “unreasonable effectiveness” (Wigner, 1960) of mathematics could be seen as a result of co-evolution between human cognitive capacities and the environments we have shaped and been shaped by.

This does not necessarily undermine the utility of mathematics in science but suggests caution in assuming that mathematical models provide direct access to the ultimate nature of reality. They may instead offer useful approximations within the constraints of our perceptual and cognitive capacities, useful precisely because there is some degree of resonance between these capacities and the environing cosmic rhythms from out of which they have emerged.

So it is not that Hoffman and Singh are misguided in pursuing a mathematical backing for their theory, or in challenging claims to naive realism in scientific epistemology. But I remain unconvinced by their argument that our mathematical concepts somehow escape the corrosive skepticism they apply to our perceptual experience.

Conclusion: Embracing a Participatory Understanding of Truth

The participatory view of perception and truth invites us to move beyond the dichotomy of subject and object. Recognizing that organisms and environments co-create each other through dynamic intra-action challenges the notion of an independent, objective reality fully accessible through perception or mathematical modeling. But it also challenges the idea that organisms, including humans, experience the world only as a sort of virtual interface or useful hallucination.

I go more into what a participatory view of truth entails in my talk at a conference exploring the work of Iain McGilchrist (who also recently dialogued with Hoffman and articulated concerns basically identical to my own):

In Defense of Truth as Participation: A Process Philosophical Proposal

By acknowledging the limitations and situatedness of our perceptions and conceptual tools, we can adopt a more humble and open-ended approach to understanding the plurality of reality (or “creality,” as I refer to it in my book). Rather than construing truth in terms of correct mental representations, we can focus on fostering deeper connections with the world-process that we also play an active role in creating. Knowledge can then be understood as a matter of participation and not representation.

Works Cited

• Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Duke University Press.

• Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. (1987). A Thousand Plateaus. Continuum.

• Dewey, J. (1929). The Quest for Certainty: A Study of the Relation of Knowledge and Action. Minton, Balch & Company.

• Gibson, J. J. (1979). The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Houghton Mifflin.

• Hoffman, D. D., & Singh, M. (2012). Computational evolutionary perception. Perception, 41(9), 1073-1091.

• Hoffman, D. D., Singh, M., & Prakash, C. (2015). The interface theory of perception. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 22(6), 1480-1506.

• James, W. (1907). Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking. Longmans, Green, and Co.

• Kellert, S. H., Longino, H. E., & Waters, C. K. (Eds.). (2006). Scientific Pluralism. University of Minnesota Press.

• Lakoff, G., & Núñez, R. E. (2000). Where Mathematics Comes From: How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics into Being. Basic Books.

• Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962). Phenomenology of Perception (C. Smith, Trans.). Routledge & Kegan Paul.

• Odling-Smee, F. J., Laland, K. N., & Feldman, M. W. (2003). Niche Construction: The Neglected Process in Evolution. Princeton University Press.

• Uexküll, J. von. (1934). Streifzüge durch die Umwelten von Tieren und Menschen. Verlag von Julius Springer.

• Varela, F. J., Thompson, E., & Rosch, E. (1991). The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience. MIT Press.

• Whitehead, A. N. (1929). Process and Reality. The Free Press.

• Wigner, E. P. (1960). The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences. Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics, 13(1), 1-14.