Anil Seth is a cognitive neuroscientist who thinks and writes about consciousness. He is known for describing perception as a form of controlled hallucination.
The third and most important ingredient in the controlled hallucination view is the claim that perceptual experience – in this case the subjective experience of ‘seeing a coffee cup’ – is determined by the content of the (top-down) predictions, and not by the (bottom-up) sensory signals. We never experience sensory signals themselves, we only ever experience interpretations of them.
– Anil Seth (2021) Being You: A New Science of Consciousness. London: Faber & Faber (Loc 1391)
What I like about this idea is how strongly it contradicts the phenomenal experience of sensing the body in motion. This is particularly intriguing in a movement practice (or indeed any activity) that is not goal-oriented. There is no ‘best outcome’ here, or some other measure of success – just sensing, moving (or not) and being in a wide-open field of awareness.
The question then might be, why interpret these sensory signals in this way and not that? I doubt this is a question that is answerable.
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