From: Guru George (gurugeorge@sugarland.idiscover.co.uk)
Date: Fri Apr 18 1997 - 17:54:18 MDT
On Mon, 14 Apr 1997 23:10:34 +0000
Mark Grant <mark@unicorn.com> wrote:
[fine stuff snipped]
>It's not directly relevant, but the most interesting brain book I've read
>in the last year was Dennett's "Consciousness Explained". I disagree with
>a number of things that he says (mostly in the first couple of chapters),
>but his model of brain function explains a lot of my weird experiences.
>
[snip]
Don't you think the discussion of Cartesian doubt, combinatorial
explosion, hallucinations, dreams and stuff in the intro rings*extremely
* true? About how the brain seems to throw out possible meanings, and
will try and interpret even a bit of noise to carry *some* sort of signal,
and how that's the likely explanation of dreams and hallucinations?
It particularly rings true for me if I ever get any hallucinations
nowadays:- I feel I can catch the mechanicalness of it in action now,
it's just me throwing out possible identifications of things, visual,
linguistic, aural, mental, associational meanings, significances:-
"I thought I saw a banker's clerk descending from a bus, I looked again
and saw it was a hippopotamus." (a Crowley skit)
or
"Did he just say what I thought he said? " (at a party, say)
for example.
And *none* of it is *necessarily* to be taken seriously just because it
*feels* seriously like it's the real meaning of the situation at the
time, and your critical faculty happens to be relaxed.
On the other hand, none of it is necessarily *not* to be taken seriously,
and must be judged also when sober (as apparently the Vikings would do -
judge everything twice, once drunk, once sober); and may indeed be judged
true, and may in fact be true.
Guru George
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