There are very good evolutionary reasons why phenomenological reality is constructed by the brain as a model of the world that it adaptive but not necessarily true (apart from the fact that we wouldn't be able to experience a world that isn't built by the brain, as neural information is the only thing we experience, never the world directly)... please see this review for a reasonably good account of this...

https://www.dropbox.com/...f%20Visual%20Reality.pdf

Perception is not construction.
Any camera can demonstrate that.

A camera is not the same as a human being. Several experiments show that what we consider as perception is actually shaped by our expectations, prejudices, etc. Experiments also show we fill in the blanks (why dont you see the blind spots in your visual perception even though they are there in your retina?), we also often have mistaken interpretations of the stimulus (for example check any optical illusion). not to mention our recollection is contaminated by things that happened afterwards. There is no doubt in my mind that our perception is NOT an accurate representation of reality... Its just good enough to guarantee our survival for the most part, but not without mistakes.

Also:



And are you claiming you can understand consciousness with a total explanation of it`s peculiarities?

That does not however imply that reality is a construct of the brain.



No, and I am saying nobody can to my knowledge, which undermines the entire DMT paper in terms of the claims of DMT acting upon consciousness.

Maybe your confusing reality-tunnels or neural models with some kind of solopsism...It's widely agreed that our brain builds a "model" of the world, which re-presents it. We don't experience it directly (even if some states are closer to raw perception than others)...

Indeed it doesn`t, but it does show at least that our perception of that reality might be skewed, which is an important fact to notice with practical consequences.




By that same logic, we can never speculate on or hypothesize or experiment on anything we don`t already know about...

As long as the difference between facts and speculation is clear, I don`t see any problem. The reader can decide for himself if he agrees with the conclusions or not, but I don`t see how that undermines the publication itself.

I think this is exactly what he is doing...



Well, actually, perception in humans IS construction. As endlessness has pointed out, there is no comparison between the brain and a camera. Such a comparison is a result of a common misunderstanding of how perception works. A camera receives light and uses this directly to generate an image (e.g. by exposure of a photoactive film). The brain is in the dark - it never sees ANY light whatsoever, only neural signals from the retina. Once this data reaches the visual cortex, the neural data must be used to construct a visual representation of the world - but this will ALWAYS be a construction of the brain, which has no access to the external world-in-itself.



Are you suggesting that DMT doesn't act on consciousness? This is a bizarre position to adopt. So, just because we don't fully understand consciousness, we must hold out and make no attempts to understand how certain drugs clearly affect consciousness, even though such an understanding may help to eventually explain consciousness itself? Where do we go from here?

With the greatest of respect Albert, may I suggest you might learn a lot more by taking an enquiring approach and asking questions about areas you don't understand or have a different understanding about. Your approach appears to be to assume your position is correct and try to undermine mine... I'm not sure why you seem so insistent on refuting and undermining my ideas, rather than discussing, clarifying and offering something constructive to them...

I disagree with your use of the term construction in relation to sense.

I have made no claim that dmt does or does not act upon conciousness, nor made any attempt to educate you further.

I am not trying to undermine your speculation, just share my own take on it and that i do not agree. I agree it is up for the reader to draw their own conclusions, as a reader i did so. I have no questions about your paper, only for the peers that reviewed it.

Well then you are pushing against the entire neuroscientific community for no good reason that I can see. This aspect of perception is not one debated in neuroscience - it is regarded as a necessary consequence of the way perception is known to work - I can't explain it any other way. We'll have to leave that there.



That is fine, although it's not clear to me why you would want to question the reviewers...

I do not want to question them, I have questions for them.

The idea that there is a strict consensus in neuroscience is simply not true. Even for saying the brain constructs the world. There is diversity in neuroscience, not a strict consensus.

Can you please cite publications or neuroscientists that do not think the brain creates/modulates the world as we experience it?

What would be the alternative, that we experience Reality fully? Or... That there is no reality or brain in the first place ? I`m not sure what your point is.

True there is not a consensus on all, not even most, issues. However, with regards to the construction of the world, this is not even in debate - it follows directly from the known structure and function of the cortex (i.e. functional segregation, meaning there is no single supraordinate region of the brain that can directly perceive the world). Functional regions, each with a specific role in representing the world, are separate. This means that they must represent different features of the world (movement, colour, line orientation, spatial frequency, figure-background separation, etc) in DIFFERENT PARTS OF THE CORTEX. This means the perception of the world must then be constructed from these fragmented features. This is known as the binding problem (how are the different features of the world bound together when processed separately). Construction is the only option. I can't say it any clearer. The brain has no means of perceiving the world directly - it can only construct a model of the world using a very small amount of extrinsic data from the world that it receives as patterns of action potentials. The best model the brain constructs is the one that is most adaptive for survival - the brain has no need (nor any ability) to perceive a "true" picture of the world, but can only construct a model that is most adaptive.

Assuming your questions relate to the paper, I'm pretty sure that the reviewers would direct you back to the author of the paper, as that person would be best situated to answer them. The are not experts on everything in the paper. Their role was to review the paper and ensure it met certain academic standards. If you intend to question their judgement in this regard, then I would probably avoid making contact...

To be clear, when we talk about the brain constructing the world, we aren't saying that the brain constructs the external world-in-itself (the noumenal world, which the brain has no access to), but merely that the world that appears to consciousness (the phenomenal world, the only world we have access to) must be constructed by the brain... if you disagree with this, please offer us the alternative...

I simply find that the terminology is inconsistent with many working theories pertaining to perception and object recognition. Consider a radio signal, it is processed to form audio/sounds from data, but that audio is not created by the radio if you consider the definition of the word create.

if you consider the paper as indicating that we can have access to another dimension or aspect of reality, by analogy of changing the receptivity or tuning, of the brain itself, we ignore the antenna and sense and conflate cortical processing with sensory perception, which it is part of but not identical to.

Create is not modulate. I have no issue with the latter term. Create means to bring into existence, however the processing of sensory stimuli into perception does not fit this definition while it does meet the definition of modulation.


How can you have peer review, or be certain it meets an academic standard if those who review your paper are not qualified to review the claims of the topics?

I have direct questions about the paper but you are far too defensive/offensive to address them. I doubt that you have an interest in discussion, given your tone and candor and so would love to find someone who can discuss the paper more objectively. I had mistakenly assumed that the reviewers would be familiar enough with the subjects to do so. My bad.

Gilbert Ryle would lose his shit reading this article ..

.. the contentious point goes back to a dispute which has its origin in Greek times, between idealism and materialism. The article tries to make a case based on two ontological propositions which, if followed to their ends, reach an irreconcilable impasse. the claims are:

1) that the brain has emerged through evolutionary processes which do not require minds in order to function (i.e privileging material processes)

2) that reality as we experience is reducible to our ideas and perceptions


.. the basic point is that it's logically inconsistent to assume both are true. Either the world created minds, or minds create what we call the world. You can't say both.




There IS debate. I'm not personally attacking you, but you seem to misunderstand 'functional segregation'. Fodor's theory of modularity is one of the origins of the idea you're referring to, one of the more successful theories which emerged in the early 80s, often referred to as a 'phrenology of the brain' .. No one is saying that a single element of the cognitive architecture can exert unilateral control over a body. The contentious point arises because neuroplasticity shows that regionally specific areas of the brain are in many cases secondary to the always idiosyncratic weight of connections between different areas.





.. this implies only that parallel processes from different parts of the brain must be integrated, not constructed.




this ^


.. the one question I would put to you is: what's the link between regional specificity and construction? how does one imply the other?

"Create is not modulate. I have no issue with the latter term. Create means to bring into existence, however the processing of sensory stimuli into perception does not fit this definition while it does meet the definition of modulation."

I think you are getting WAY too caught up on terms here...Create...Modulate...whatever. It does both. We bring in information, modulate it, mold it based on our previous experiences/expectations/conditioning, and even add in things that aren't there (as many studies show), all serving to effectively "create" or build onto our continuously unfolding subjective inner-reality bubbles.

"I have direct questions about the paper but you are far too defensive/offensive to address them. I doubt that you have an interest in discussion, given your tone and candor and so would love to find someone who can discuss the paper more objectively. "

Its times like these when we could really use that facepalm smiley...

I felt that way myself.

The paper and the author start from a position of X is true and thus any discussion about if it is true is tainted by the assumption it is, or conversely that it is not.

The paper ends up being written from a point of view of justifying the supposition that DMT allows contact or perception of another dimension, instead of exploring that as a possibility it just assumes that is true and works backwards to say it is.

If you ask if it is true, then instead of a discussion you get defense.

I dispute that I am making these assumptions or that they're inconsistent - I do believe that the brain emerged through evolutionary processes, but I am agnostic on whether mind is necessary, as I'm not convinced by an epiphenomenalist explanation of mind/consciousness. So I am privileging material processes in terms of evolution (perhaps), but I wouldn't rule out a panpsychist/transmission theory of consciousness, in that only when brains become complex enough does consciousness become concentrated enough or become able to interact with the brain (this isn't far from Koch's position).

With regards to the second point, I am merely stating that anything that can be perceieved must have an informational representation in the brain. This can be argued but it is well supported by the evidence. None of these points are incompatible.



This is correct - my point (poorly explained) was that the brain constructs a unified model of reality that cannot be seen as a direct perception of true reality. To be honest, I think we might be stumbling into an argument over semantics here, because I'm no longer quite sure exactly what we're disagreeing over..

They are perfectly qualified to review the claims of the paper, but the author would be in a better position to answer them...



I have answered all your questions as best I can. I believe it was you who said the paper was "glib" and "untenable" - perhaps think about the use of those words when describing someone's work and it might explain why I appear defensive...

THIS^^^

Arguing semantics only serves to raise hackles...let's all stay amenable.