If our capacity to impose order onto experience becomes overbearing, it may narrow cognition
In general, the kind of precooked or conventionalized thinking produced by predictive coding usually serves us well. But only up to a point. We pay a price for the achievement of order and ego in the adult human mind. While suppressing uncertainty in the brain serves to promote realism, foresight, careful reflection and an ability to recognize and overcome wishful and paranoid fantasies, at the same time this achievement tends to constrain cognition and exert a limiting or narrowing influence on consciousness, which may lead us too far into a low-entropy state. At it’s extreme, it may lead us into Idolatry.
References
- Pollan, Micheal. (2018). How to Change Your Mind Chapter 5. The Neuroscience of Your Brain on Psychedelics (Location 4249). New York, NY: Penguin Random House.
Metadata
Type:🔴 Tags: Biology / Neuroscience / Psychology / Neuropsychology Status:⛅️