Perception as a Controlled Hallucination

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Philosophy Now
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Perception as a Controlled Hallucination

Post by Philosophy Now »

Raymond Tallis argues against calling everyday experience a ‘hallucination’.

https://philosophynow.org/issues/149/Perception_as_a_Controlled_Hallucination
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iambiguous
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Re: Perception as a Controlled Hallucination

Post by iambiguous »

Here's the thing [mine]:

We have no way of determining -- definitively, unequivocally -- if our everyday experiences are not part of some sim world or dream world or Matrix world.

We have no way of knowing if our everyday experiences are not entirely subsumed in a wholly determined universe where there is only one possible reality.

Why?

Because we have no way of grasping the existence of existence itself. And how can we encompass any particular part of it -- the "human condition" here on planet Earth -- without grasping how it fits into the staggering vastness of "all there is".

Here Raymond Tallis is no less an infinitesimally tiny speck of existence than you and I are.

Instead, I suggest that, in the interim, it's best to divide the world up between the either/or interactions -- things able to be encompassed as true objectively for all of us -- and the is/ought interactions -- things able to be encompassed only in subjective, existential "personal opinions".

Not sure what that means?

Okay, note a context in which human beings interact. For example, Mary had an abortion today and John protested it outside the Planned Parenthood clinic. What can be communicated here as true objectively for both Mary and John and all the rest of us...and what cannot?

Leaving aside the sim world, dream world, Matrix world possibilities.

Or things like solipsism.
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iambiguous
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Re: Perception as a Controlled Hallucination

Post by iambiguous »

Raymond Tallis wrote: There are many reasons for acknowledging the brain as a necessary condition for citizenship of the community of minds. Brain damage results in loss or impairment of consciousness and of aspects of personhood, and there are rough correlations between the sites of damage and the mental deficits that result. What’s more, localized stimulation of the cerebral cortex in waking subjects may result in the production of a range of experiences, from simple tingles to the evocation of detailed memories. There are, however, also many reasons for not concluding from this that what goes on in the brain is sufficient for consciousness and personhood, or that brain activity is identical with the contents of the conscious mind. Most obviously, neural discharges are nothing like, for example, the experience of the colour yellow, of knowing that Paris is the capital of France, or experiencing nostalgia or regret. More fundamentally, physical events such as nerve impulses in the brain are radically different from anything that has the ‘intentionality’ or ‘aboutness’ that is the mark of the mental. Events in the visual cortex do not seem to have the capacity to point upstream to the events that have caused them, and to transform those events into the basis of the experience of an object encountered by a conscious subject, such as the experience of seeing a flower. The gap between neural activity and consciousness is even wider where intentional consciousness is shared or joined with that of the consciousness of others so that a community of conscious minds – the world of our daily life – is created and maintained. It is consequently difficult to identify anything that happens in the darkness inside my skull with my being a citizen of many worlds. There are also other characteristics of persons and their minds that cannot be revealed by even the most careful inspection of neural activity; for example, experiential unities, such as those in a visual field, where many elements are brought together and yet are kept distinct, so that we can simultaneously see both individual objects and the landscape of which they are a part. And then there is memory. The explicit presence of the past (which also informs an envisaged future) has no place in the physical world. A brain at time t is confined to time t. By contrast, a person at time t reaches back into time t-1 and forward into time t+1 – to many-layered realms of the no-longer and the not-yet, which are necessary for our present moments to have explicit meaning and significance.
Here of course most of us are at a loss to react to such speculations with any degree of sophistication. Why? Because we are not neuroscientists ourselves. We have neither the education nor the experiential background to understand how the brain/mind/"I" really does function here.

And, to the best of my knowledge, there is not now a consensus that has been reached among the brain scientists that does explain the "I" inside our heads.

I do know that in my dreams I see many, many truly extraordinary things only to wake up in the morning and discover "I" saw none of it at all. It was a reality entirely of my brains making.

How to explain that? And how to explain how the things the waking brain sees are "somehow" different? Maybe a God, the God has a role to play here?
Last edited by iambiguous on Tue Apr 26, 2022 8:09 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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iambiguous
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Re: Perception as a Controlled Hallucination

Post by iambiguous »

Raymond Tallis wrote: Information, Information, Information!

A good deal of ingenuity is therefore needed to leap over the yawning gap between persons and their neural wetware. One strategy can be summarized as brainifying the person by personifying the brain, which brings me back to Seth’s Being You. According to Seth, notwithstanding that they are tenseless material objects, brains are ‘prediction engines’: they reach into the future with guesses, hypotheses, inferences, and so on. Personifying the brain in this sort of way is of course commonplace in neuroscience, and in physicalist philosophy, which identifies consciousness with neural activity and persons with their brains. The term that is put to most use in this context – indeed it is worked to death – is ‘information’. The brain, we are told, is an information processing device. This seems obvious to those who a) think of the brain as a computer, and b) believe that stand-alone computers process information.
Again, let's bring this out into the world around us.

Let's make predictions about how we think the war in Ukraine will end up. Your brain, my brain, the brains of others. All with the information that "here and now" we have garnered from various news sources. So, which information is the most accurate? And how does the information that we have in our heads compare to the information that those like Putin and Zelenskyy and Biden have in their heads?

Is there the optimal information that anyone might have access to in order to make the best prediction?

Then this part: what information would be needed in order to assess whether Putin is acting rationally or irrationally...morally or immorally?

How does Seth come to think about information of this sort?
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iambiguous
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Re: Perception as a Controlled Hallucination

Post by iambiguous »

Raymond Tallis wrote: Calling what happens in a physical object such as a brain ‘information processing’ is hardly controversial if it is accepted that information is everywhere.
On the other hand, for each of us as individuals, there is the particular information that we come upon based on any number of factors: when and where we are born, the stuff crammed into our heads as children, the uniquely personal experiences we have resulting in our coming into contact with this or that book, this or that magazine article, this or that philosopher, this or that film, this or that museum or art exhibit, this or that song, this or that public or private education.

Having a brain capable of absorbing information from everywhere doesn't mean that eventually it isn't filtered through any number of existential sieves. After all, that's why we squabble over whose information is most relevant when confronting all of the many, many moral and political and spiritual value judgments that come into conflict.
Raymond Tallis wrote: Indeed, if information does not require conscious subjects who are informed, or who inform others, there is no limit to where information can be found. David Chalmers raised fewer eyebrows than he should have done when he asserted that “wherever there is causal interaction, there is information… One can find information states in a rock – when it expands and contracts, for example – or even in different aspects of an electron” (The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory, 1996, p.297).
Yeah, but you know where I go with this. Factual, objective information taken to all of the squabbles over who is best informed about abortion or vaccinations or the war in Ukraine. True perceptions or "hallucinations" there.
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bahman
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Re: Perception as a Controlled Hallucination

Post by bahman »

iambiguous wrote: Tue Apr 26, 2022 7:28 pm Here's the thing [mine]:

We have no way of determining -- definitively, unequivocally -- if our everyday experiences are not part of some sim world or dream world or Matrix world.

We have no way of knowing if our everyday experiences are not entirely subsumed in a wholly determined universe where there is only one possible reality.

Why?

Because we have no way of grasping the existence of existence itself. And how can we encompass any particular part of it -- the "human condition" here on planet Earth -- without grasping how it fits into the staggering vastness of "all there is".

Here Raymond Tallis is no less an infinitesimally tiny speck of existence than you and I are.

Instead, I suggest that, in the interim, it's best to divide the world up between the either/or interactions -- things able to be encompassed as true objectively for all of us -- and the is/ought interactions -- things able to be encompassed only in subjective, existential "personal opinions".

Not sure what that means?

Okay, note a context in which human beings interact. For example, Mary had an abortion today and John protested it outside the Planned Parenthood clinic. What can be communicated here as true objectively for both Mary and John and all the rest of us...and what cannot?

Leaving aside the sim world, dream world, Matrix world possibilities.

Or things like solipsism.
Of course, materialism cannot offer any argument against sim world, dream world, matrix, or solipsism.
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bahman
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Re: Perception as a Controlled Hallucination

Post by bahman »

iambiguous wrote: Tue Apr 26, 2022 7:44 pm
Raymond Tallis wrote: There are many reasons for acknowledging the brain as a necessary condition for citizenship of the community of minds. Brain damage results in loss or impairment of consciousness and of aspects of personhood, and there are rough correlations between the sites of damage and the mental deficits that result. What’s more, localized stimulation of the cerebral cortex in waking subjects may result in the production of a range of experiences, from simple tingles to the evocation of detailed memories. There are, however, also many reasons for not concluding from this that what goes on in the brain is sufficient for consciousness and personhood, or that brain activity is identical with the contents of the conscious mind. Most obviously, neural discharges are nothing like, for example, the experience of the colour yellow, of knowing that Paris is the capital of France, or experiencing nostalgia or regret. More fundamentally, physical events such as nerve impulses in the brain are radically different from anything that has the ‘intentionality’ or ‘aboutness’ that is the mark of the mental. Events in the visual cortex do not seem to have the capacity to point upstream to the events that have caused them, and to transform those events into the basis of the experience of an object encountered by a conscious subject, such as the experience of seeing a flower. The gap between neural activity and consciousness is even wider where intentional consciousness is shared or joined with that of the consciousness of others so that a community of conscious minds – the world of our daily life – is created and maintained. It is consequently difficult to identify anything that happens in the darkness inside my skull with my being a citizen of many worlds. There are also other characteristics of persons and their minds that cannot be revealed by even the most careful inspection of neural activity; for example, experiential unities, such as those in a visual field, where many elements are brought together and yet are kept distinct, so that we can simultaneously see both individual objects and the landscape of which they are a part. And then there is memory. The explicit presence of the past (which also informs an envisaged future) has no place in the physical world. A brain at time t is confined to time t. By contrast, a person at time t reaches back into time t-1 and forward into time t+1 – to many-layered realms of the no-longer and the not-yet, which are necessary for our present moments to have explicit meaning and significance.
Here of course most of us are at a loss to react to such speculations with any degree of sophistication. Why? Because we are not neuroscientists ourselves. We have neither the education nor the experiential background to understand how the brain/mind/"I" really does function here.

And, to the best of my knowledge, there is not now a consensus that has been reached among the brain scientists that does explain the "I" inside our heads.

I do know that in my dreams I see many, many truly extraordinary things only to wake up in the morning and discover "I" saw none of it at all. It was a reality entirely of my brains making.

How to explain that? And how to explain how the things the waking brain sees are "somehow" different? Maybe a God, the God has a role to play here?
There are at least two conscious minds that exist since the mind is needed to keep things in motion. Why two? There are motion that is due to your conscious mind and the rest could be due to another/other mind/minds.
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Re: Perception as a Controlled Hallucination

Post by Iwannaplato »

If one actually reads the article, instead of seeing the title and being reminded of other philosophical issues, the writer is not arguing against brain in a vat scenarios.

One thing he is doing, for example, is demonstrating the problems of using research about brains, which relies on observations, to show that perception (period!) is a hallucination. Such a conclusion, if based on, well, perception, would be the fruit of a poison tree.

Iambiguous focuses (amongst other not on topic issues, for example moral realism in a later post) in his first post on the dilemma of is the whole thing a simulation or brain in a vat. This is certainly a related issue, but it is not what the article is tackling. It is pointing out an argument that undermines itself, but which, in specific cases, like the one the author mentions, doesn't seem to notice this. Hey, these are the FACTS about brains, and soon we will know more, and this shows that experiencing/perception is mere hallucination. Whoops, that argument has a problem. It can't be a mere hallucination, to those scientists, or to that author arguing it is a hallucination, if they are confidently asserting what we KNOW about perception and brains.

One can certainly lament our inability to know if this is a brain in a vat situation but that's really off-topic, however related.
One can certainly lament (or celebrate) moral relativism, but the article is focused on something else.
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Re: Perception as a Controlled Hallucination

Post by iambiguous »

bahman wrote: Wed Apr 27, 2022 9:11 pm
iambiguous wrote: Tue Apr 26, 2022 7:28 pm Here's the thing [mine]:

We have no way of determining -- definitively, unequivocally -- if our everyday experiences are not part of some sim world or dream world or Matrix world.

We have no way of knowing if our everyday experiences are not entirely subsumed in a wholly determined universe where there is only one possible reality.

Why?

Because we have no way of grasping the existence of existence itself. And how can we encompass any particular part of it -- the "human condition" here on planet Earth -- without grasping how it fits into the staggering vastness of "all there is".

Here Raymond Tallis is no less an infinitesimally tiny speck of existence than you and I are.

Instead, I suggest that, in the interim, it's best to divide the world up between the either/or interactions -- things able to be encompassed as true objectively for all of us -- and the is/ought interactions -- things able to be encompassed only in subjective, existential "personal opinions".

Not sure what that means?

Okay, note a context in which human beings interact. For example, Mary had an abortion today and John protested it outside the Planned Parenthood clinic. What can be communicated here as true objectively for both Mary and John and all the rest of us...and what cannot?

Leaving aside the sim world, dream world, Matrix world possibilities.

Or things like solipsism.
Of course, materialism cannot offer any argument against sim world, dream world, matrix, or solipsism.
Of course, the trickiest thing for materialists still revolves around explaining how lifeless matter "somehow" evolved into living matter evolved into brains evolved into minds able to "think up" sim worlds, dream worlds, matrix realities, and/or solipsism.

In other words, taking Rummy's Rule...

There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know.

...applied to existence itself back about as far as it can go.

Maybe even to God Himself?
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iambiguous
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Re: Perception as a Controlled Hallucination

Post by iambiguous »

Iwannaplato wrote: Thu Apr 28, 2022 6:54 am If one actually reads the article, instead of seeing the title and being reminded of other philosophical issues, the writer is not arguing against brain in a vat scenarios.

One thing he is doing, for example, is demonstrating the problems of using research about brains, which relies on observations, to show that perception (period!) is a hallucination. Such a conclusion, if based on, well, perception, would be the fruit of a poison tree.

Iambiguous focuses (amongst other not on topic issues, for example moral realism in a later post) in his first post on the dilemma of is the whole thing a simulation or brain in a vat. This is certainly a related issue, but it is not what the article is tackling. It is pointing out an argument that undermines itself, but which, in specific cases, like the one the author mentions, doesn't seem to notice this. Hey, these are the FACTS about brains, and soon we will know more, and this shows that experiencing/perception is mere hallucination. Whoops, that argument has a problem. It can't be a mere hallucination, to those scientists, or to that author arguing it is a hallucination, if they are confidently asserting what we KNOW about perception and brains.

One can certainly lament our inability to know if this is a brain in a vat situation but that's really off-topic, however related.
One can certainly lament (or celebrate) moral relativism, but the article is focused on something else.
Yes, I'm the first to admit that "technically" I may not be grasping his point. While I majored in philosophy in college many moons ago, my own "technical skills" here are in some important respects wanting to say the least.

All I can do then is to bump into those who, in terms of the basic tools of philosophy as a discipline, are not in the least wanting.

How can they take what they know logically/epistemologically to subjects that I am most interested in philosophically:

1] "I" in the context of "all there is".
2] "I" given the assumptions of hard determinism
3] "I" in the is/ought world...the world of conflicting moral and political value judgments: "I" as the embodiment of dasein
3] "I" in either a God world or in a No God World

Given particular sets of circumstances.
Impenitent
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Re: Perception as a Controlled Hallucination

Post by Impenitent »

control is an illusion...

-Imp
CHNOPS
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Re: Perception as a Controlled Hallucination

Post by CHNOPS »

Impenitent wrote: Thu Apr 28, 2022 11:49 pm control is an illusion...

-Imp
So, there is not an hallucination, just perception.
popeye1945
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Re: Perception as a Controlled Hallucination

Post by popeye1945 »

Perception of apparent/everyday reality is how ultimate reality effects a biological consciousness, experience as knowledge is always true to the subject biology, change the biology and you change perception and thus judgment. Perception is relative only to the biological subject experiencing it. To a conscious subject, experience is truth, to the group it is agreement. An agreement is a collective biological agreement of a given experience.
Veritas Aequitas
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Re: Perception as a Controlled Hallucination

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

I have opened many threads on this topic;
Here is one
posting.php?mode=edit&f=5&p=543706

Anil Seth: Is Reality a Controlled Hallucination?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXcH26M7PQM

Another,
Your brain hallucinates your conscious reality
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=25316

We Are All Hallucinating All The Time
"In a sense, we are all hallucinating all the time," Dr. Ramachandran said. "What we call normal vision is our selecting the hallucination that best fits reality."
https://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/14/scie ... begin.html#:~

The above is based on the concept of continuum;
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=34706

i.e.
if the hallucination of a schizophrenic is say 90/100% then normal perception is 10/100% hallucination with dreams and others [drugs, etc.] in between.
Gary Childress
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Re: Perception as a Controlled Hallucination

Post by Gary Childress »

Due to whatever factors (considered schizo features) I've had delusions and hallucinations while awake and it's much like living in a sort of semi-dream state while the rest of the body is not sleeping. The difference between perception and hallucination is this. If something is inaccurate or doesn't help us survive/thrive in the environment external to us, then it's a hallucination or delusion. If it's accurate or helps us, then it's perception. Simple enough in some respects. Species and individuals that have delusions die off relatively quickly (because we live in a dangerous world, one filled with strife and predators). Species that don't, don't. Granted, there is also innovation by humans that help us change the world to suit our delusions to some extent. And there is just dumb luck sometimes too.
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