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Hallucinating a Research Project

I am very much intrigued by the “falsehoods” that our eyes and brains team up to tell us. What I want to investigate is the times when we know what we see is not real (or know most of the time) and then try to articulate (both in words and images) what we did/didn’t see after (sometimes during) the fact.   Sounds silly, but I want to look at hallucinations and how we relate to them. I am curious about the things (drugs, meditation, sleep deprivation) that we consciously do to induce a state where we know that what we see is not “true” in the sense that others can confirm for us (which oddly enough is fairly similar to how things are normally, we just don’t know it).   I have yet to understand of what benefit this investigation will be to the wider world… but I will. Oh I will.

Submitted by Morgan R. on Wed, 2007-01-24 20:37.
Morgan R.'s blog

Hallucinate This!
David Blakesley's picture
Submitted by David Blakesley on Tue, 2007-01-30 10:52.

"How often is a bush suppos'd a bear!" (That's from a A Midsummer Night's Dream.

"Visions" (in the religious sense) may have an important part of your research also.

A couple of sources for you:

William A. Covino, in Magic, Rhetoric, and Literacy, has some very interesting things to say about "phantasms," which have a very important role in what he calls magic-rhetoric.

Carl Sagan, in The Demon-Haunted World, raises the issue of religious visions and what they may be. He focuses specifically on the Virgin Mary phenomenon.

Onward!

D.B.


Covino turned me onto
Morgan R.'s picture
Submitted by Morgan R. on Tue, 2007-01-30 11:01.

Covino turned me onto Agrippa and all the crazy work he did with magic and language in the 1500s.  The Carl Sagan book looks interesting.  Its a huge topic... I'll need to narrow it to something soon...Mad Morgan Rackem (aka Morgan Reitmeyer)