Having been roped into doing big time-consuming favors for someone I would rather not (but is important to someone important to me) I was unable to present my response to @write4u (#339697) in a timelier fashion than I would have wished. Me culpa.
I was already aware of the material you quoted from Seth and the full transcript it was extracted from. I was also aware of other material from Seth on this subject. But thanks for providing background material anyway.
Much of the organization of sensory data into rapidly comprehensible forms takes place before entering the complex nest of feedback systems that constitute consciousness. For example, organization of visual input into forms that allow rapid analysis into useful concepts at the conscious level has already taken place beginning as early as the visual sensory receptors such as the retina and more takes place in the optic nerve before reaching the brain proper. Categories of organization already performed and presented to the neuronic platform of consciousness include color separation (typically red/green/blue in humans) figure/ground separation, similarity, proximity, continuity and closure.
Similar organizational processes take place in other cranial nerves that provide input to the brain that involve hearing, smell/taste, skin/flesh sense, internal organ (visceral) sense. Although the details differ, similar organizational mechanisms exist in the nervous systems of more primitive animal types even when what corresponds to the cerebrum is of near negligible complexity and capability. Bottom line is that the bulk of the interpretation of sensory input has already taken before consciousness comes into play. Since the interpretation of sensory input is something important to survival, it should be no surprise that its existence arises earlier in evolutionary terms than a complex cerebrum that can support consciousness.
Clinical hallucination is the conscious awareness of entities for which there is no actual sense data, that is, an invention of consciousness. This differs from dreaming in that dreaming is associated with an unconscious state and typically does not generate an ongoing memory of the dreamed perceptions as being real. Dreaming is considered normal and not an aberration. Clinical hallucination is considered abnormal, that is, at least potentially detrimental to survival by impairing the usefulness of actual nerve derived sensory input.
The term controlled hallucination is improper in two senses. The term relates normal perception, that resulting from sensory input, with a term that properly applied refers only to perceptions not based on sensory input. And the term implies that clinical hallucinations are controlled by the hallucinator. The fact that the hallucinator is unable to distinguish hallucinations from sensory based perceptions is why hallucinations are a problem. One might imagine a person to be, shall we say less than fully clothed, but the normal person does not believe this is really the case and take action on it.
Although I do not believe Seth uses the label ‘clinical’ at any point, that label having been introduced by yourself, the fact that Seth’s use of the term ‘hallucination’ in opposition to its technical meaning is perhaps significant. Although a neuroscientist, Seth does in fact use a technical term not only incorrectly but in a way that strongly suggests that he is either unaware of or ignoring the complex network of central nervous system processes involved in how we perceive reality. Neither bodes well for the scientific value of his thesis.
