> On 2 Sep 2019, at 10:56, Philip Thrift <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > Reality is constructed by the brain, and no two brains are exactly alike > > By Anil K. Seth (@anilkseth) | Scientific American September 2019 Issue > > https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-neuroscience-of-reality/ > > > ... > > The central idea here is that perception is a process of active > interpretation geared toward adaptive interaction with the world through the > body rather than a recreation of the world within the mind. The contents of > our perceptual worlds are controlled hallucinations, brain-based best guesses > about the ultimately unknowable causes of sensory signals. And for most of > us, most of the time, these controlled hallucinations are experienced as > real. As Canadian rapper and science communicator Baba Brinkman suggested to > me, when we agree about our hallucinations, maybe that is what we call > reality. > > But we do not always agree, and we do not always experience things as real. > People with dissociative psychiatric conditions such as derealization or > depersonalization syndrome report that their perceptual worlds, even their > own selves, lack a sense of reality. Some varieties of hallucination, various > psychedelic hallucinations among them, combine a sense of unreality with > perceptual vividness, as does lucid dreaming. People with synesthesia > consistently have additional sensory experiences, such as perceiving colors > when viewing black letters, which they recognize as not real. Even with > normal perception, if you look directly at the sun you will experience the > subsequent retinal afterimage as not being real. There are many such ways in > which we experience our perceptions as not fully real. > > > What this means to me is that the property of realness that attends most of > our perceptions should not be taken for granted. It is another aspect of the > way our brain settles on its Bayesian best guesses about its sensory causes. > One might therefore ask what purpose it serves. Perhaps the answer is that a > perceptual best guess that includes the property of being real is usually > more fit for purpose—that is, better able to guide behavior—than one that > does not. We will behave more appropriately with respect to a coffee cup, an > approaching bus or our partner’s mental state when we experience it as really > existing. > > But there is a trade-off. As illustrated by the dress illusion, when we > experience things as being real, we are less able to appreciate that our > perceptual worlds may differ from those of others. (The leading explanation > for the differing perceptions of the garment holds that people who spend most > of their waking hours in daylight see it as white and gold; night owls, who > are mainly exposed to artificial light, see it as blue and black.) And even > if these differences start out small, they can become entrenched and > reinforced as we proceed to harvest information differently, selecting > sensory data that are best aligned with our individual emerging models of the > world, and then updating our perceptual models based on these biased data. We > are all familiar with this process from the echo chambers of social media and > the newspapers we choose to read. I am suggesting that the same principles > apply also at a deeper level, underneath our sociopolitical beliefs, right > down to the fabric of our perceptual realities. They may even apply to our > perception of being a self—the experience of being me or of being you—because > the experience of being a self is itself a perception. > > This is why understanding the constructive, creative mechanisms of perception > has an unexpected social relevance. Perhaps once we can better appreciate the > diversity of experienced realities scattered among the billions of perceiving > brains on this planet, we will find new platforms on which to build a shared > understanding and a better future—whether between sides in a civil war, > followers of different political parties, or two people sharing a house and > faced with washing the dishes. > > > > > @philipthrift > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/b630fbbd-25bf-4140-aec0-986fdeaa8964%40googlegroups.com > > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/b630fbbd-25bf-4140-aec0-986fdeaa8964%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>.
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