Our Perception of Reality is a Hallucination, and the Brain Manages this through Prediction
10 min readJul 24, 2021
- Your brain must explain sensory input from the world and within your body to make them meaningful, and its primary tool for doing so is prediction.
- Some scientists argue that a brain is essentially a prediction machine and considers prediction its fundamental and primary mode of operation.
- is as a kind of controlled hallucination, in which the brain’s predictions are being reined in by sensory information from the world.
- The brain strives to maintain an optimal state for the body, referred to as homeostasis, which is defined as the tendency toward a relatively stable equilibrium between interdependent elements, primarily as maintained by physiological processes.
- Your brain’s most important job is to manage homeostasis through a process known as allostasis.
- The brain represents the consequence for allostasis as interoceptive sensation. Affect, or what I refer to as raw feelings is the conscious awareness of interoceptive sensation.
- The implications are that our feelings are not sensations, but in fact perceptions, and to put it in the words of Feldman Barret: Emotions are not in principle, distinct from cognitions and perceptions.
