I’m puzzled that you believe this about hallucinations—that it’s possible for the brain to devote enough processing power to create a “strong” hallucination in the Dennettian sense—but upthread, you seemed to be saying that dreams did not require such processing power.
It is perfectly consistent to both believe that (some people) can have fully realistic mental imagery, and that (most people’s) dreams tend to exhibit sub-realistic mental imagery.
I have one friend who claims to have eidetic mental imagery, and I have no reason to doubt her. Thomas Metzinger discusses in Being No-One the notion of whether the brain can generate fully realistic imagery, and holds that it usually cannot, but notes the existence of eidetic imaginers as an exception to the rule.
Thanks for the cite: sadly, on clicking through, I get a menacing error message in a terrifying language, so evidently you can’t share it that way?
You are quite right that it’s consistent. It’s just that it surprised my model, which was saying “if realistic mental imagery is going to happen anywhere, surely it’s going to be dreams, that seems obviously the time-of-least-contention-for-visual-workspace.”
I’m beginning to wonder whether any useful phenomenology at all survives the Typical Mind Fallacy. Right now, if somebody turned up claiming that their inner monologue was made of butterscotch and unaccountably lapsed into Klingon from three to five PM on weekdays, I’d be all “cool story bro”.
and unaccountably lapsed into Klingon from three to five PM on weekdays
Hmmm. Well, I don’t speak Klingon, but I am bilingual (English/Afrikaans); my inner monologue runs in English all the time in general but, after reading this, I decided to try running it in Afrikaans for a bit. Just to see what happens. Now, my Afrikaans is substantially poorer than my English (largely, I suspect, due to lack of practice).
My inner monologue switches languages very quickly on command; however, there are some other interesting differences that happen. First of all, my inner monologue is rather drastically slowed down. I have a definite sense of having to wait for my brain to look up the right word to describe the concept I mean; that is, there is a definite sense that I know what I am thinking before I wrap it in the monologue. (This is absent when my internal monologue is in the default English; possibly because my English monologue is fast enough that I don’t notice the delay). I think that that delay is the first time that I’ve noticed anticipatory thinking in my own head without the monologue.
There’s also grammatical differences between the two languages; an English sentence translated to Afrikaans will come out with a different word order (most of the time). This has its effect on my internal monologue as well; there’s a definite sense of the meanings being delivered to my language centres (or at least to the word-looking-up part thereof) in the order that would be correct for an English sentence, and the language centre having to hold certain meanings in a temporary holding space (or something) until I get to the right part of the sentence.
I also notice that my brain slips easily back into the English monologue; that’s no doubt due mainly to force of habit, and did not come as a surprise.
Thanks for the cite: sadly, on clicking through, I get a menacing error message in a terrifying language, so evidently you can’t share it that way?
That’s odd, it works on three different browsers and two different machines for me. I guess there’s some geographical restriction. Here’s a PDF instead then, I was citing what’s page 45 by the book’s page numbering and page 60 by the PDF’s.
Curiously, the first time I clicked the Google Books link, I got the “Yksi sormus hallitsemaan niitä kaikkia...” message (not an exact transcription), but the second time, it let me in.
It is perfectly consistent to both believe that (some people) can have fully realistic mental imagery, and that (most people’s) dreams tend to exhibit sub-realistic mental imagery.
I have one friend who claims to have eidetic mental imagery, and I have no reason to doubt her. Thomas Metzinger discusses in Being No-One the notion of whether the brain can generate fully realistic imagery, and holds that it usually cannot, but notes the existence of eidetic imaginers as an exception to the rule.
Thanks for the cite: sadly, on clicking through, I get a menacing error message in a terrifying language, so evidently you can’t share it that way? You are quite right that it’s consistent. It’s just that it surprised my model, which was saying “if realistic mental imagery is going to happen anywhere, surely it’s going to be dreams, that seems obviously the time-of-least-contention-for-visual-workspace.”
I’m beginning to wonder whether any useful phenomenology at all survives the Typical Mind Fallacy. Right now, if somebody turned up claiming that their inner monologue was made of butterscotch and unaccountably lapsed into Klingon from three to five PM on weekdays, I’d be all “cool story bro”.
Hmmm. Well, I don’t speak Klingon, but I am bilingual (English/Afrikaans); my inner monologue runs in English all the time in general but, after reading this, I decided to try running it in Afrikaans for a bit. Just to see what happens. Now, my Afrikaans is substantially poorer than my English (largely, I suspect, due to lack of practice).
My inner monologue switches languages very quickly on command; however, there are some other interesting differences that happen. First of all, my inner monologue is rather drastically slowed down. I have a definite sense of having to wait for my brain to look up the right word to describe the concept I mean; that is, there is a definite sense that I know what I am thinking before I wrap it in the monologue. (This is absent when my internal monologue is in the default English; possibly because my English monologue is fast enough that I don’t notice the delay). I think that that delay is the first time that I’ve noticed anticipatory thinking in my own head without the monologue.
There’s also grammatical differences between the two languages; an English sentence translated to Afrikaans will come out with a different word order (most of the time). This has its effect on my internal monologue as well; there’s a definite sense of the meanings being delivered to my language centres (or at least to the word-looking-up part thereof) in the order that would be correct for an English sentence, and the language centre having to hold certain meanings in a temporary holding space (or something) until I get to the right part of the sentence.
I also notice that my brain slips easily back into the English monologue; that’s no doubt due mainly to force of habit, and did not come as a surprise.
That’s odd, it works on three different browsers and two different machines for me. I guess there’s some geographical restriction. Here’s a PDF instead then, I was citing what’s page 45 by the book’s page numbering and page 60 by the PDF’s.
Curiously, the first time I clicked the Google Books link, I got the “Yksi sormus hallitsemaan niitä kaikkia...” message (not an exact transcription), but the second time, it let me in.