Our Brains Help Construct the World We Experience

A reflection on perception, Donald Hoffman’s interface theory, quantum physics and the Hindu idea of maya.

When we open our eyes, the world seems to arrive exactly as it is.

A face. A tree. A familiar room. Someone smiling—or someone we think is judging us.

We rarely pause to ask how much of that experience comes from the world, and how much our brain contributes.

That question fascinates me because it brings scientific research into conversation with an ancient spiritual enquiry:

Are we seeing reality clearly, or experiencing it through the limits of our senses, memories and expectations?

The Brain’s Best Guess

Neuroscientist Anil Seth describes perception using the provocative phrase “controlled hallucination”.

In this account, the brain combines incoming sensory signals with predictions about their causes. Those predictions are continually checked and corrected by information from the world.

“Controlled” matters. Ordinary perception is constrained by sensory evidence. The phrase does not mean that everything around us is imaginary; it means that experiencing the world involves active interpretation. www.anilseth.com

Research gives this idea experimental substance. A study published in PLOS Biology found that expecting a particular visual stimulus could evoke stimulus-specific activity in the deep layers of the primary visual cortex even when the expected stimulus was omitted.

The brain was responding to what it anticipated, despite that stimulus not appearing. This supports a role for expectations in sensory processing, though it does not establish that expectations alone create everything we experience. journals.plos.org

The world supplies information. Our brains help turn that information into experience.

Donald Hoffman: Is Reality Like a Computer Desktop?

Cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman takes the question further.

In his book, The Case Against Reality: Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes, he argues that perception evolved primarily to help us survive and reproduce, rather than to reveal reality’s underlying structure. www.socsci.uci.edu

His interface theory of perception offers a memorable analogy: the desktop of a computer.

A file appears as a coloured icon. That icon helps us open, move or delete the file, but its appearance tells us little about the electronic processes making those actions possible.

An interface can be useful without resembling what lies beneath it.

Hoffman proposes that our perceptions work similarly: objects are like icons, and space and time form the desktop through which we interact with a deeper reality. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

The suggestion is striking:

What we experience may guide us effectively without showing us reality as it fundamentally is.

Hoffman and his collaborators support their argument with mathematical models of evolution in which strategies tuned to fitness can outperform strategies tuned to accurately representing the world. However, results within those models do not by themselves demonstrate that human perception conceals reality in precisely the way his theory proposes. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

There is also an important difference between Hoffman’s proposal and Seth’s account. Explaining how the brain constructs an experience does not automatically establish what the underlying world ultimately consists of.

For me, Hoffman’s analogy opens a fascinating question:

Could our familiar world be an interface with reality, rather than a complete picture of it?

When Interpretation Feels Like Fact

Imagine seeing someone in the distance and thinking you recognise a friend. As they approach, you realise they are a stranger.

The person was there. Your first interpretation was mistaken.

Something similar can happen in relationships. Someone does not reply, and we interpret the silence as rejection. A neutral expression becomes disapproval. A disagreement feels like a personal attack.

These are everyday analogies, rather than direct conclusions from the visual experiment or Hoffman’s evolutionary models. But they raise a useful question:

How often do I react to an interpretation before checking what actually happened?

Our feelings deserve attention. Our explanations of them still deserve examination.

What Quantum Physics Adds

Neuroscience asks how we experience the world. Quantum physics investigates how matter and energy behave.

They address different questions, but both can challenge our everyday assumptions.

Quantum experiments reveal behaviour that cannot be adequately pictured using familiar objects alone. Light and matter display wave-like and particle-like properties, with what we observe depending on the experimental arrangement. scienceexchange.caltech.edu

Entanglement presents another challenge.

The experiments recognised by the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics established violations of Bell inequalities. Under the assumptions involved in these tests, the observed correlations cannot be explained by local hidden-variable theories.

Put simply, a picture in which particles carry pre-existing instructions and respond only to local conditions cannot reproduce all those results. arxiv.org

These discoveries tell us that nature behaves in ways our ordinary intuition struggles to grasp.

They do not establish that the universe is imaginary, that consciousness creates it, or that Hoffman’s interface theory is correct.

Does Looking Create Reality?

The word “observer” can make quantum physics sound as though a conscious person must be watching.

But measurement involves physical interaction with a measuring device or the environment. A human mind does not need to witness every event for that interaction to occur. scienceexchange.caltech.edu

Questions about how to interpret quantum measurement remain debated. That uncertainty leaves room for enquiry, but it does not establish any particular spiritual explanation.

Quantum physics gives us reasons to question familiar pictures of reality. Saying that it has proved maya, cosmic consciousness or manifestation goes beyond what these experiments demonstrate.

Maya: What Lies Beneath the Appearance?

Hindu traditions offer several understandings of maya.

In Advaita Vedanta, a familiar illustration is a rope mistaken for a snake in dim light. The fear is experienced, even though the snake is absent. Recognition changes our understanding of what was there all along.

The analogy expresses a deeper teaching about ignorance and ultimate reality. Comparing it with perceptual science can be illuminating, but the resemblance does not prove the teaching’s metaphysical claims. www.advaita.org.uk

For me, Hoffman’s theory comes close to one way we might begin to understand maya: something appears before us, yet its appearance may not reveal what underlies it.

We experience colours, shapes and seemingly separate objects. But how much does that experience tell us about what ultimately exists?

His desktop analogy makes the question easier to imagine. We see the icon and interact with it, while the processes that make it possible remain hidden. Similarly, the idea of maya invites us to question whether we mistake appearances for the whole of reality.

This is a philosophical parallel. Hoffman’s theory and Advaita arise from different foundations, and neither establishes the other as true.

Kashmir Shaivism offers a distinctive perspective. In Swami Lakshmanjoo’s explanation, the world is a real manifestation of divine consciousness. Maya concerns the limitation through which that reality is experienced, rather than the world being simply non-existent. www.lakshmanjooacademy.org

These traditions should not be compressed into the single claim that “nothing exists”.

What interests me is their invitation to examine whether our ordinary understanding is complete.

Where Science and Spirituality Meet and Differ

A scientist asks what can be measured, tested and reproduced.

A spiritual enquiry may ask who experiences the world, what we identify with, and whether awareness has a deeper nature.

The influence of expectations on sensory processing can be studied experimentally. Hoffman’s theory proposes a more radical account of the relationship between perception and reality. Hindu traditions explore consciousness, ignorance and liberation through their own philosophical frameworks.

A resemblance between ideas is an invitation to enquiry, not proof that they are identical.

For me, keeping that distinction clear makes the conversation more interesting.

We can appreciate a spiritual insight without presenting it as a scientific discovery. We can admire a scientific discovery without asking it to settle every question about existence.

My Reflection

Perhaps the most useful consequence of all this is greater humility.

I can be confident about what I experienced and still be mistaken about what it meant.

Before assuming hostility, I can ask a question. Before defending a belief, I can examine it. Before declaring that I understand reality, I can remember how much remains unresolved.

Hoffman’s desktop analogy makes me wonder whether I sometimes mistake the image presented to me for the whole story.

That applies beyond perception. A person’s expression, a brief message or a moment of silence may become an entire narrative in my mind—long before I understand their circumstances.

Whatever we believe about maya, another person’s suffering still calls for compassion. Questions about the ultimate nature of reality do not remove our responsibility to care for one another.

Science helps us investigate how perception works. Hindu spirituality offers ways to question the identity and assumptions through which we live.

I do not need them to give identical answers to find value in both.

Perhaps clearer seeing begins when we stop treating our first interpretation as the final truth.

-Ash

Sources and Further Reading

The connections drawn between scientific findings and spiritual teachings are philosophical reflections; they are not claims that science has verified those teachings.

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