(I’ve encountered this seriously only once in my life, shortly after my stroke, and successfully doubting it was… challenging.)
Please elaborate! It sounds interesting and it would be useful to hear how you were able to identify such a situation and successfully doubt your senses.
I’m not prepared to tell that story in its entirety here, though I appreciate your interest.
The short form is that I suffered significant brain damage and was intermittently delerious for the better part of a week, in the course of which I experienced both sensory hallucinations and a variety of cognitive failures.
The most striking of these had a fairly standard “call to prophecy” narrative, with the usual overtones of Great Significance and Presence and etc.
Doubting it mostly just boiled down to asking the question “Is it more likely that my experiences are isomorphic to external events, or that they aren’t?” The answer to that question wasn’t particularly ambiguous, under the circumstances.
The hard part was honestly asking that question, and being willing to focus on it carefully enough to arrive at an answer when my brain was running on square wheels, and being willing to accept the answer when it required rejecting some emotionally potent experiences.
Please elaborate! It sounds interesting and it would be useful to hear how you were able to identify such a situation and successfully doubt your senses.
I’m not prepared to tell that story in its entirety here, though I appreciate your interest.
The short form is that I suffered significant brain damage and was intermittently delerious for the better part of a week, in the course of which I experienced both sensory hallucinations and a variety of cognitive failures.
The most striking of these had a fairly standard “call to prophecy” narrative, with the usual overtones of Great Significance and Presence and etc.
Doubting it mostly just boiled down to asking the question “Is it more likely that my experiences are isomorphic to external events, or that they aren’t?” The answer to that question wasn’t particularly ambiguous, under the circumstances.
The hard part was honestly asking that question, and being willing to focus on it carefully enough to arrive at an answer when my brain was running on square wheels, and being willing to accept the answer when it required rejecting some emotionally potent experiences.