<p><br></p><p><strong>A perception of having seen, heard, touched, tasted or smelled something that wasn't actually there.</strong></p>

What is Hallucination?

<p><br></p><p>Importantly, However, hallucinating is <strong>not</strong> perception. </p><p><strong><em>Perception requires information and by definition, hallucinating is what happens when you have an experience that isn't cause by information.</em></strong></p>

Is Hallucination a Perception?

<p>Two classes of Use for that information:</p><p><strong>Law-baseduseofinformation</strong>.</p><p>-<em>Support Both action selection and action control.</em></p><p><strong><em>Convention-baseduse</em>of information.</strong></p><p>-<em>Support only action selection.</em></p><p><br></p>

Get Your Information Story Right

<p><br></p><p>Hallucinating cannot, by definition, entails the law-based/Convention-based use of information, because <strong>"there is nothing real to create that information".</strong></p><p><em>this means...that regardless of how realistic these are, </em><strong>people will not be able to couple their actions to the dynamics of the hallucination</strong>.</p>

How Realistic these are?

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An (Draft) Ecological Approach to Hallucinating

<p><span>Sabrina and I are planning our next papers, and in typical style she's been thinking about how to tackle a hard problem - this time, hallucinations. These are one of those go-to topics for representational people, because hallucinations by definition are not based in the detection of perceptual information. They are a kind of perceptual experience, however, and so seem to be a good candidate for identifying how perceptual experience is constructed internally. </span> </p>

<p><span>We've never let a little thing like a topic being hard stop us before, so it looks like this is next on our list. The goal is to lay out an ecological analysis and see where we end up. We are going to build on the work we did in the <a href="https://cognitioninaction.files.wordpress.com/2019/10/7.-golonka-wilson-ecological-representations.pdf">Ecological Representations </a>paper, in which we considered how to understand (at least some) neural activity as the selection of consequent neural actions (pg 243 and on). This is the first of a few papers we have in mind where we apply our ecological analyses as worked examples to interesting topics (<a href="http://psychsciencenotes.blogspot.com/2020/11/verbal-instruction-in-sports-coaching.html">verbal instruction in coaching </a>is on my mind too, as are <a href="http://psychsciencenotes.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Perceptual%20Life%20of%20Cells">cells making blood vessels </a>). </span> </p>

<p><span>In this post, I'm going to do my usual thinking-out-loud about my notes from our first chat; all conclusions are works in progress! </span><span>At this point, I am just assembling the resources our ecological approach provides us, and lining them up in their proper places so we can use them rigorously. </span> </p>

<b>People hallucinate, and we study hallucinating </b>

<b>The law-based use of information can support both action selection and action control </b>

<b>The convention-based use of information can only support action selection </b>

<ul><li><span>Is there individual variation in inner speech quality, and does this track with individual variation in auditory hallucinating? What about imagery variation and visual hallucinating? </span> </li><li><span>Is hallucinating precipitated by anything? Is it instead abnormal attention directed to default mode style neural activity? </span> </li><li><span>How does hallucinating vary across the various 'modalities'? What can and can't you do with respect to various kinds of hallucinations? At what point does the ambiguity that is a hallucination get revealed by it's relationship to the rest of the perceptual array? </span> </li><li><span>What about developmental/age differences? Cross-cultural differences? Given the fact it has to all be based in learned, convention based neural activity, there must be intriguing differences. </span> </li> </ul>

<ol><li><div><img src="//resources.blogblog.com/img/blank.gif"> </div><div><div><cite>Anonymous </cite><span> </span><span><a href="http://psychsciencenotes.blogspot.com/2020/11/an-draft-ecological-approach-to.html?showComment=1607634446277&m=1#c7564543492642508110">10 December 2020 at 21:07 </a> </span> </div><p>One interesting fact is that schizophrenics born complete deaf - who cannot ever had heard sound - still hallucinate words through various non-audible means. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2632268/ </p><span><a>Reply </a><span><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/delete-comment.g?blogID=9192597712746432631&postID=7564543492642508110">Delete </a> </span> </span> </div><div><div><span><span> </span><span><a>Replies </a> </span> </span><ol><div> </div><div><a>Reply </a> </div> </ol> </div> </div><div> </div> </li><li><div><img src="//resources.blogblog.com/img/blank.gif"> </div><div><div><cite>Anonymous </cite><span> </span><span><a href="http://psychsciencenotes.blogspot.com/2020/11/an-draft-ecological-approach-to.html?showComment=1612230413911&m=1#c5723197725701007439">2 February 2021 at 01:46 </a> </span> </div><p>The role of subvocalisation in auditory hallucinations may be of interest<br><br>https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1987-18863-001 </p><span><a>Reply </a><span><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/delete-comment.g?blogID=9192597712746432631&postID=5723197725701007439">Delete </a> </span> </span> </div><div><div><span><span> </span><span><a>Replies </a> </span> </span><ol><div> </div><div><a>Reply </a> </div> </ol> </div> </div><div> </div> </li><li><div><img src="//www.blogger.com/img/blogger_logo_round_35.png"> </div><div><div><cite><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/profile/07074984373019438708">Bjorn </a> </cite><span> </span><span><a href="http://psychsciencenotes.blogspot.com/2020/11/an-draft-ecological-approach-to.html?showComment=1614013981034&m=1#c6816321554784906316">22 February 2021 at 17:13 </a> </span> </div><p>Clinically, I've seen patients who hallucinate persons signing at them on multiple occasions. I'd suspect that there are clear boundaries around the content of hallucinations that are both culturally and lived-experience bound, such that the frameworks by which an individual normally understands information are in play when "perceiving" hallucinations. Anecdotally, zeitgeist-y fears (computer chips, robots, mass surveillance) are built into rationalizing perception, and so sense-making processes probably do a lot of leg work. </p><span><a>Reply </a><span><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/delete-comment.g?blogID=9192597712746432631&postID=6816321554784906316">Delete </a> </span> </span> </div><div><div><span><span> </span><span><a>Replies </a> </span> </span><ol><div> </div><div><a>Reply </a> </div> </ol> </div> </div><div> </div> </li> </ol>

Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists: An (Draft) Ecological Approach to Hallucinating

What is Hallucination?

Is Hallucination a Perception?

Get Your Information Story Right

How Realistic these are?

Azhar Alam's ideas are part of this journey:

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