Sensory Desktop
Our perceptions are neither true nor false. Instead, our perceptions of space and time and objects, the fragrance of a rose, the tartness of a lemon, are all a part of our "sensory desktop," which functions much like a computer desktop.
Graphical desktops for personal computers have existed for about three decades. Yet they are now such an integral part of daily life that we might easily overlook a useful concept that they embody. A graphical desktop is a guide to adaptive behavior. Computers are notoriously complex devices, more complex than most of us care to learn. The colors, shapes and locations of icons on a desktop shield us from the computer's complexity, and yet they allow us to harness its power by appropriately informing our behaviors, such as mouse movements and button clicks, that open, delete and otherwise manipulate files. In this way, a graphical desktop is a guide to adaptive behavior.
Graphical desktops make it easier to grasp the idea that guiding adaptive behavior is different than reporting truth. A red icon on a desktop does not report the true color of the file it represents. Indeed, a file has no color. Instead, the red color guides adaptive behavior, perhaps by signaling the relative importance or recent updating of the file. The graphical desktop guides useful behavior, and hides what is true but not useful. The complex truth about the computer's logic gates and magnetic fields is, for the purposes of most users, of no use.
Graphical desktops thus make it easier to grasp the nontrivial difference between utility and truth. Utility drives evolution by natural selection. Grasping the distinction between utility and truth is therefore critical to understanding a major force that shapes our bodies, minds and sensory experiences.
Consider, for instance, facial attractiveness. When we glance at a face we get an immediate feeling of its attractiveness, a feeling that usually falls somewhere between hot and not. That feeling can inspire poetry, evoke disgust, or launch a thousand ships. It certainly influences dating and mating. Research in evolutionary psychology suggests that this feeling of attractiveness is a guide to adaptive behavior. The behavior is mating, and the initial feeling of attractiveness towards a person is an adaptive guide because it correlates with the likelihood that mating with that person will lead to successful offspring.
Just as red does not report the true color of a file, so hotness does not report the true feeling of attractiveness of a face: Files have no intrinsic color, faces have no intrinsic feeling of attractiveness. The color of an icon is an artificial convention to represent aspects of the utility of a colorless file. The initial feeling of attractiveness is an artificial convention to represent mate utility.
The phenomenon of synesthesia can help to understand the conventional nature of our sensory experiences. In many cases of synesthesia, a stimulus that is normally experienced in one way, say as a sound, is also automatically experienced in another way, say as a color. Someone with sound-color synesthesia sees colors and simple shapes whenever they hear a sound. The same sound always occurs with the same colors and shapes. Someone with taste-touch synesthesia feels touch sensations in their hands every time they taste something with their mouth. The same taste always occurs with the same feeling of touch in their hands. The particular connections between sound and color that one sound-color synesthete experiences typically differ from the connections experienced by another such synesthete. In this sense, the connections are an arbitrary convention. Now imagine a sound-color synesthete who no longer has sound experiences to acoustic stimuli, and instead has only their synesthetic color experiences. Then this synesthete would only experience as colors what the rest of us experience as sounds. In principle they could get all the acoustic information the rest of us get, only in a color format rather than a sound format.
This leads to the concept of a sensory desktop. Our sensory experiences, such as vision, sound, taste and touch, can all be thought of as sensory desktops that have evolved to guide adaptive behavior, not to report objective truths. As a result, we should take our sensory experiences seriously. If something tastes putrid, we probably shouldn't eat it. If it sounds like a rattlesnake, we probably should avoid it. Our sensory experiences have been shaped by natural selection to guide such adaptive behaviors.
We must take our sensory experiences seriously, but not literally. This is one place where the concept of a sensory desktop is helpful. We take the icons on a graphical desktop seriously; we won't, for instance, carelessly drag an icon to the trash, for fear of losing a valuable file. But we don't take the colors, shapes or locations of the icons literally. They are not there to resemble the truth. They are there to facilitate useful behaviors.
Sensory desktops differ across species. A face that could launch a thousand ships probably has no attraction to a macaque monkey. The rotting carrion that tastes putrid to me might taste like a delicacy to a vulture. My taste experience guides behaviors appropriate for me: Eating rotten carrion could kill me. The vulture's taste experience guides behaviors appropriate to it: Carrion is its primary food source.
Much of evolution by natural selection can be understood as an arms race between competing sensory desktops. Mimicry and camouflage exploit limitations in the sensory desktops of predators and prey. A mutation that alters a sensory desktop to reduce such exploitation conveys a selective advantage. This cycle of exploiting and revising sensory desktops is a creative engine of evolution.
On a personal level, the concept of a sensory desktop can enhance our cognitive toolkit by refining our attitude towards our own perceptions. It is common to assume that the way I see the world is, at least in part, the way it really is. Because, for instance, I experience a world of space and time and objects, it is common to assume that these experiences are, or at least resemble, objective truths. The concept of a sensory desktop reframes all this. It loosens the grip of sensory experiences on the imagination. Space, time and objects might just be aspects of a sensory desktop that is specific to Homo sapiens. They might not be deep insights into objective truths, just convenient conventions that have evolved to allow us to survive in our niche. Our desktop is just a desktop.
