Raúl
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Consciousness as Hallucination - 2007/06/29 12:00
As per discussed elsewhere (http://www.conscious-robots.com/en/forums-./consciousness-theories/philosophical-zombies-p-zombie/
view-6.html). Conscious-Robots user Plato Demosthenes has suggested opening a new thread on the idea of considering consciousness as a kind of hallucination.
I think it was in the first chapters of the book Consciousness Explained (Dennett, 1991) where I first heard about this idea. Basically, some authors argue that the brain is a machine designed to generate hallucinations or illusions. Perception is not only driven by bottom-up flow, that is, exclusively by senses. On the contrary, there is a strong top-down component that is driven by expectations (and is in charge of verifying hypotheses). Obviously, bottom-up and top-down flows have to be combined and gracefully integrated. The synthesis of consciousness could be the combination of these two major processes: hypothesis generation and hypothesis confirmation.
Post edited by: Raúl, at: 2007/06/29 12:01
Raúl Arrabales Moreno. conscious-robots.com/raul |