The Problem

Abstract

Although understanding neural functions has progressed at a remarkable pace in recent decades, a fundamental question remains: How does the nervous system relate the objective world to the subjective domain of perception? Everyday experience implies that the neural connections on which we and other animals depend link physical parameters in the environment with useful responses. But that interpretation won't work: biological sensory systems cannot measure the physical world. Whereas something is linking sensory inputs to useful responses, it is not the physical world that instruments measure. How, then, have we animals met this challenge, and what is it that we end up perceiving? The purpose of this chapter is to suggest how nervous systems have evolved to deal with the inability to convey the objective properties of the real world.