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I'm not understanding the connection between your paragraphs here even after reading the first article. Even if you accept classic theory (e.g. hemispheric loc

I'm not understanding the connection between your paragraphs here even after reading the first article. Even if you accept classic theory (e.g. hemispheric localization and the homunculus) which most experts don't all this suggests is that the brain tries to make sense of the information it has and in sparse environments it fills in. How does this make our behavior "mostly lies, fabrications, hallucinations, faulty re-memorization, post hoc reasoning" as most humans don't have a severed corpus callosum. The discussion starts with: "In a healthy human brain, these divergent hemispheric tendencies complement each other and create a balanced and flexible reasoning system. Working in unison, the left and right hemispheres can create inferences that have explanatory power and both internal and external consistency."

famouswaffles 3y ago
He didn't say behavior. He said explanations of behaviour. Split brain experiments aside, this is pretty evident from other research. We can't recreate previous mental states, we just do a pretty good job (usually) of rationalizing decisions after the fact. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3196841/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3196841/
- haldujai 3y ago
  I'm reading this as our explanations for our own behavior as in why am I typing on this keyboard right now, in which case it's not evident at all. The existence of cognitive dissonance suggested in your citation is in no way analogous to "our own explanations about ourselves and our behaviour are mostly lies, fabrications, hallucinations, faulty re-memorization, post hoc reasoning" and in fact supports the opposite.
  - ly3xqhl8g9 3y ago
    One primary explanation of ourselves is that there is in fact a "self" there, we feel this "self" as being permanent, continuous through time, yet we are absolutely sure that is a lie: there are no continuous processes in the entire universe, energy itself is quantized. In the morning when we wake up, we are "booting" up the memories the brain finds and we believe that we have persisted through time, from yesterday to today, yet we are absolutely sure that is a lie: just look at an Alzheimer patient. We are feeling this self as if it's somewhere above the neck and we feel like this self is looking at the world and sees "out there", yet we are absolutely sure that is a lie: our senses are being overflown by inputs and the brain filters them, shapes a model of the world, and presents that model to the internal model of itself, which gets so immersed into model of the world that starts to believe the model is indeed the world, until the first bistable image [1] breaks the model down. [1] https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Amanda-Parker-14/publication/282917004/figure/fig2/AS:671528807051270@1537116352444/Examples-of-perceptual-bistability-involving-object-interpretations.png https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Amanda-Parker-14/public...
mcguire 3y ago
I think the point is that, in a non-healthy brain, the brain can create a balanced and flexible reasoning system that creates inferences that have explanatory power, but which may not match external reality. Oliver Sacks has a long bibliography of the weird things that can go on in brains. But the bottom line is that introspection is not necessarily reliable.

famouswaffles 3y ago

He didn't say behavior. He said explanations of behaviour. Split brain experiments aside, this is pretty evident from other research. We can't recreate previous mental states, we just do a pretty good job (usually) of rationalizing decisions after the fact. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3196841/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3196841/

haldujai 3y ago
I'm reading this as our explanations for our own behavior as in why am I typing on this keyboard right now, in which case it's not evident at all. The existence of cognitive dissonance suggested in your citation is in no way analogous to "our own explanations about ourselves and our behaviour are mostly lies, fabrications, hallucinations, faulty re-memorization, post hoc reasoning" and in fact supports the opposite.
- ly3xqhl8g9 3y ago
  One primary explanation of ourselves is that there is in fact a "self" there, we feel this "self" as being permanent, continuous through time, yet we are absolutely sure that is a lie: there are no continuous processes in the entire universe, energy itself is quantized. In the morning when we wake up, we are "booting" up the memories the brain finds and we believe that we have persisted through time, from yesterday to today, yet we are absolutely sure that is a lie: just look at an Alzheimer patient. We are feeling this self as if it's somewhere above the neck and we feel like this self is looking at the world and sees "out there", yet we are absolutely sure that is a lie: our senses are being overflown by inputs and the brain filters them, shapes a model of the world, and presents that model to the internal model of itself, which gets so immersed into model of the world that starts to believe the model is indeed the world, until the first bistable image [1] breaks the model down. [1] https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Amanda-Parker-14/publication/282917004/figure/fig2/AS:671528807051270@1537116352444/Examples-of-perceptual-bistability-involving-object-interpretations.png https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Amanda-Parker-14/public...

mcguire 3y ago

I think the point is that, in a non-healthy brain, the brain can create a balanced and flexible reasoning system that creates inferences that have explanatory power, but which may not match external reality. Oliver Sacks has a long bibliography of the weird things that can go on in brains. But the bottom line is that introspection is not necessarily reliable.