Our brains exist in a state of “controlled hallucination” - MIT Technology Review
( August 25, 2021; MIT Technology Review )
Prediction has come into vogue in academic circles in recent years. Seth and the philosopher Andy Clark, a colleague at Sussex, refer to predictions made by the brain as “controlled hallucinations.” The idea is that the brain is always constructing models of the world to explain and predict incoming information; it updates these models when prediction and the experience we get from our sensory inputs diverge.
“Chairs aren’t red,” Seth writes, “just as they aren’t ugly or old-fashioned or avant-garde … When I look at a red chair, the redness I experience depends both on properties of the chair and on properties of my brain. It corresponds to the content of a set of perceptual predictions about the ways in which a specific kind of surface reflects light.”
This article reviews ideas on mind from three books:
- Being You, by Anil Seth
- Coming to Our Senses, by Susan Barry
- What Makes Us Smart, by Samuel Gershman
The "controlled hallucination" idea comes from Seth, who goes on to argue that "reality" is when we all agree on our mentally constructed hallucinations. Barry's book describes her observations of subjects who described their experiences with navigating the world after gaining the ability to see or hear as adults. One of Barry's conclusions is that, "since the world and everything in it is constantly changing, it’s surprising that we can recognize anything at all." (which reminds me of Godell quote, "The more I think about language, the more it amazes me that people ever understand each other at all.") Gershman suggests that two biases drive the brain's functioning, "inductive bias" - or a preference for certain hypotheses - and "approximation bias", which is the desire to implement mental shortcuts.
The article also refers to a concept that has fascinated me for a couple of decades, the so-called "hard problem of consciousness":
This concept was popularized by David Chalmers.
Read the rest from MIT Technology Review: Our brains exist in a state of “controlled hallucination”
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Using the word "hallucinate" is a bit misleading. Hallucinate means perceiving things that are objectively not there. Words have meanings.
However, the article and video discussions are very interesting stuff. The preliminary studies seem to imply that "consciousness" are a series of states, not a "continuous thing". And that there are many kinds/types of consciousness. The authors have done a good job of explaining complex neuroscience that everyone can understand.
I agree that "hallucination" seems to be overstating it. Other descriptions that they use are 'best guesses' and 'predictions'. I like those better.
To play Devil's Advocate from the example of the blue dress, though, I guess Seth would respond that even when we "get it right", it's just because our predictions and best guesses happened to match reality fairly well, but we're still perceiving a mental model, and not just whatever is actually there.
I think this quote from the article explains the perspective well,
What if Seth's understanding of the brain's function is also a hullucination? I think we are in a infinte loop.
Ha. lol! So now we're back to Descartes and, "Cogito, ergo sum" ; -)
In the article, it describes Seth's ideas further, suggesting that the brain uses a mix of sensory data and prediction to generate our perceptions. It's that predictive input that he refers to as the hallucination. It also notes that if the prediction is sufficiently different from reality, then it engages in some sort of course correction. So the word "hallucination" is just shorthand for describing a more complicated idea.
Our brains are actually a lot more complex. The eyes and the brain do not always show the truth. They show us what they think is true. This hallucination occurs only when there is a radical change in the functioning of the brain.
This hallucination is caused by the process of perceiving real-like sensations in the brain. Due to which some things seem to be very clear and permanent reality but it has no real basis.
I agree wiyh you. We all are jn a hallucination. And may be we are servant of this conscious unwillingly. This hallucination is made by us.
Our mind is indirectly in a hallucination stage. There are many experiment by how we can prove it. But this type of hallucination is out of our control.
Everything we can remember, hallucination is a part of our imagination, it comes from the deep if our mind and its hard to control mind games.
When we are looking or listing something with deep attention, then we may be controlled . This process is totally depends on our mentality.
He is trying to say us the expansion of hallucination and trying to prove that we are always in hallucination.
Our brain is a mysterious thing, it can make hallucination by our thinking or over anything. What we love, we fear anything can imagine as a true that is the hallucination and its exist to our brain.