“Our brains are the measure of all things”

How our metaphysical understanding is biologically limited by our brains.

We humans have biological limitations that influence how we acquire, process and create knowledge. The physicist David Deutsch aptly summarized why we humans have these biological limitations: “Most of what happens is too fast or too slow, too big or too small, or too remote, or hidden by opaque barriers, or operates on principles too different from anything that influenced our evolution.”^[1] If only we had different glasses, we could see the world for what it really is, as in arguing for example that our eyes can’t for example see into the infra-red spectrum of light. What Deutsch is saying is that it does not only depend on our faulty senses such as our eyes. The statement of Deutsch goes way beyond that, our life spans are just too short. Perhaps even the entire history of mankind is too short to even notice certain changes, let alone adapt to them on evolutionary standards. We have to start with the premises that we, and specifically our brains, evolved in a very parochial context…