#118 - Meet The MIT Philosopher Proving Aphantasics Have Unconscious Imagery

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Matthias Michel is an MIT philosopher and co-founder of the MIT
Consciousness Club who has developed one of the most provocative
theories of consciousness in recent years: Perceptual Reality
Monitoring. He argues your brain runs a constant reality check on
every signal it receives — deciding what's real and what's noise
— and that this mechanism IS consciousness.


Expect to learn how your brain tells the difference between
perception, memory, imagination and noise, why conscious vision
lags 400 milliseconds behind reality, why every fast action
you've ever taken was driven entirely unconsciously, why fish
probably have no conscious visual experience at all, how
aphantasics may have mental imagery they can't consciously
access, why conscious mental imagery might actually be a bug in
the system, what blindsight patient GY's experience reveals about
unconscious vision, and much more


…


Timestamps:


0:00 Matthias Michel — What Is Perceptual Reality Monitoring?


2:58 How does the brain tell reality from imagination?


5:30 Snake fear in Malaysia: when prediction systems misfire


6:22 Blood vessel shadows and the stuff your brain erases


7:50 Motion-induced blindness: your brain deleting real objects


9:50 Is schizophrenia a broken reality monitor?


11:02 Where does reality monitoring happen in the brain?


12:53 Can you be conscious without a frontal cortex?


15:49 Mark Solms and brainstem consciousness


18:15 What does it mean to see without conscious vision?


18:40 "Tell me what it's like to see behind your head" —
blindsight patient GY


20:48 Do fish have conscious vision?


22:05 Why conscious vision is 350-400ms too slow for action


24:07 Two visual systems: one conscious, one not


25:30 The hollow face illusion fools your eyes but not your hand


26:21 Binocular rivalry: your eyes know things you don't


29:24 Sensory horizons: why water limits conscious vision


33:17 Could coral reef fish or octopuses be the exception?


37:31 Are fish complete zombies? (60% confidence)


39:18 Should we still protect fish even if they're unconscious?


42:47 Aphantasia through the lens of reality monitoring


46:00 Why conscious imagery might be a "bug"


48:06 Blank access: using imagery without experiencing it


50:17 What is an unconscious visual representation?


55:54 The strongest counterevidence to unconscious imagery


58:50 Pupil dilation and Joel Pearson's results


1:01:18 How do we falsify unconscious imagery?


1:04:30 The PRM explanation for aphantasia: threshold differences


1:07:50 The future of consciousness and aphantasia research


1:10:29 Vividness is multidimensional — lessons from Russell
Hurlburt


1:13:35 Brain imaging limitations and the next breakthrough


...





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GS Episodes Mentioned


Mark Solms — https://youtu.be/nMWaQ1U6dcc


Adam Zeman — https://youtu.be/SgA2up6-Bok


Russell Hurlburt (R1) — https://youtu.be/j0gKl-g3DNg


Russell Hurlburt (R2) — https://youtu.be/TfSuvAJB3JU


Merlin Monzel — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g21AqnSV1X4


Joel Pearson — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_I_7HrWYMQ0


Alfredo Spagna - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8SBHefDnEk