Ordinary waking consciousness is more firm because it involves of a continual process of reality testing
If the brain’s perceptual systems actively and pre-consciously interpret and edit their input, how is normal waking consciousness any different from other, seemingly less faithful productions of our imagination—such as dreams or psychotic delusions or psychedelic trips? In fact, all these states of consciousness are “imagined”: they’re mental constructs that weave together some news of the world with priors of various kinds. But in the case of normal waking consciousness, the handshake between the data of our senses and our preconceptions is especially firm. That’s because novelty is handled by the right hemisphere, and is transferred to the left hemisphere as it becomes familiar, and the left hemisphere prioritizes things that it already knows and expects. This subjects us to a continual process of reality testing, as when you reach out to confirm the existence of the object in your visual field or, upon waking from a nightmare, consult your memory to see if you really did show up to teach a class without any clothes on. Unlike these other states of consciousness, ordinary waking consciousness has been optimized by natural selection to best facilitate our everyday survival.
Indeed, that feeling of transparency we associate with ordinary consciousness may owe more to familiarity and habit than it does to verisimilitude. Because perception is not absolute, all of our ideas are somewhat conjectural and inferential. If it were possible to temporarily experience another person’s mental state, it would probably feel more like a psychedelic state than a ‘normal’ state, because of its massive disparity with whatever mental state is habitual with you. Another trippy thought experiment is to try to imagine the world as it appears to a creature with an entirely different sensory apparatus and way of life. You quickly realize there is no single reality out there waiting to be faithfully and comprehensively transcribed.
References
- Pollan, Micheal. (2018). How to Change Your Mind Chapter 5. The Neuroscience of Your Brain on Psychedelics (Location 4122). New York, NY: Penguin Random House.
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Type:🔴 Tags: Biology / Neuroscience / Cognitive Science / Psychology Status:☀️