Monday 9th October - 07:20 PM BST
The Solo Talk: The fantasy of reality
The new science of consciousness and perception
Consciousness remains one of the greatest mysteries of our era. A growing contingent of leading researchers argue that the material reality we perceive is a hallucination, and yet others claim that conciousness is merely an illusion.
Join us as world-leading cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman discusses his cutting-edge reseach about conciousness, perception, and its astonishing implications for the ultimate nature of reality.
Big ideas in your inbox.
Updates from the world's greatest minds - plus offers and discounts.
Donald Hoffman
Anti-reality theorist
Donald Hoffman is an American cognitive psychologist working at the University of California, Irvine. He is making waves with a new theory suggesting that, instead of presenting reality as it "really is", our perception is like a desktop interface enabling us to use reality effectively.
Hoffman's book, The Case Against Reality, fleshes out the notion that we do not perceive reality objectively, and argues for a mathematical, rather than spatio-temporal, model of reality.
"One of the deepest and most original thinkers of his generation” – Steven Pinker