(Oct 9, 2017 05:49 AM)C C Wrote: https://www.bigquestionsonline.com/2017/09/06/perception-controlled-hallucination/

EXCERPT: Is human perception a controlled hallucination? That was the claim advanced in a pair of talks at the Human Mind Conference in Cambridge, England in June, one by Anil Seth, a neuroscientist at the University of Sussex, the other by Andy Clark, a philosopher at the University of Edinburgh. They were not advancing the radical thesis, made by some overeager neuro-philosophers, that all experience is an illusion. Rather, Seth and Clark made the case that there is no bright dividing line between hallucination and ordinary perception.

Our common view is that, in normal perception, the mind neutrally receives information from the eyes, ears, and other sensory organs, whereas in a hallucination, the mind injects its own ideas into the perceptual process. In a hallucination, what we expect or believe becomes what we literally see. What Seth and Clark aim to show is that this model of hallucination — in which the mind uses its existing beliefs to tinker with our senses — actually describes how perception normally works. Are they right?

MORE: https://www.bigquestionsonline.com/2017/09/06/perception-controlled-hallucination/