Useful Fictions: Evolution, Perception, What We Render, and the Ethics of Seeing Less - The Deeper Thinking Podcast

Useful Fictions: Evolution, Perception, What We Render, and the Ethics of Seeing Less

The Deeper Thinking Podcast

For those drawn to perceptual humility, philosophical depth, and the subtle ethics of not-knowing.

What if evolution didn’t favor truth? What if it favored usefulness—and what we see is more like a desktop interface than a window onto the real? This episode explores how evolutionary pressures shaped perception not to reveal reality, but to keep us alive. Drawing on cognitive science, philosophy of mind, and evolutionary theory, we examine the quiet proposition that the world as we see it may be a helpful fiction.

This is not an argument for despair, but for care. With nods to thinkers like Donald Hoffman, Immanuel Kant, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, we explore how perception becomes relational, how attention becomes ethical, and how uncertainty can deepen—rather than diminish—meaning.

To see less isn’t to fail. It may be the condition for intimacy, for listening, and for the kind of care that begins where certainty ends.

Reflections

This episode asks what kind of seeing leads to reverence. What if meaning doesn’t come from clarity, but from the way we hold what cannot be resolved?

• Certainty closes. Humility opens.
• The world doesn’t need to be seen completely to be honored completely.
• We don’t need clearer eyes—we need gentler ones.
• Seeing differently can be an act of responsibility.
• Not all illusions are errors. Some are gifts from nature to keep us alive.
• The shimmer at the edge of perception is not a flaw—it’s an invitation.
• Knowledge may begin in rupture—but it matures in relation.

Why Listen?

• Explore how evolution shaped perception as an adaptive interface
• Reflect on why seeing less might deepen—not distort—meaning
• Learn how attention, not certainty, underpins ethical vision
• Engage with Hoffman, Kant, and Merleau-Ponty on truth, perception, and relation

Listen On:

• YouTube
• Spotify
• Apple Podcasts

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Bibliography

• Hoffman, Donald D. The Case Against Reality. W. W. Norton, 2019.
• Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. Paul Guyer & Allen Wood. Cambridge: CUP, 1998.
• Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. Trans. Donald Landes. Routledge, 2012.

Bibliography Relevance

• Donald Hoffman: Provides the foundational theory of perception-as-interface.
• Immanuel Kant: Frames perception as structured by mind, not by the world itself.
• Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Grounds the relationa