Chapter
Fourteen
Reality and imagination
hypothesis that best minimises prediction error. This is why our mental worlds are
full of time-travel, imaginings, and dreams – as well as why we hallucinate (Clark,
2015).
So is the hallucinated tunnel ‘real’? In one sense, it is not real because there is no
physically detectable tunnel present, and other people in the vicinity would not
see any tunnel. In another sense, it is real because there is physically measurable
activity in the person’s brain. We might also say it is real because it has measur-
able later effects on the person’s behaviour. This is true whether you are seeing
an actual tunnel as a tunnel (vision), seeing a set of concentric circles as a tunnel
(illusion), or seeing nothing-in-particular as a tunnel (imagining or hallucinating).
Also, tunnels and other forms are common in hallucinatory experiences and to
that extent can be shared and publicly verified. But what sort of reality is this?
Should we think of any of these versions of the tunnel as ‘more real’ than any
other?
EXTRA-SENSORY PERCEPTION
Even if hallucinations on the strictest definition (not knowing you are hallucinat-
ing) are relatively rare, there is no doubt that hallucinations exist: their existence
is the experience. Other phenomena on the borders of the imagination make
stronger claims for the nature of their reality – for example, that what looks like
‘mere imagining’ may be a form of mental travel or communication at a distance.
And this takes us into the realm of parapsychology.
Levels of belief in the paranormal are high (Gallup and Newport, 1991; Blackmore,
1997), and if telepathy, precognition, or any other paranormal phenomenon did
occur, this would have truly extraordinary implications for how we understand
the universe, and perhaps for the science of consciousness in particular. Although
it is not entirely logical, psychic phenomena are popularly thought to be evidence
for the ‘power of consciousness’, due to ‘consciousness interactions’ or ‘conscious-
ness-related anomalies’. Proof of their existence is sought in the hope of over-
throwing materialist theories of mind and demonstrating that consciousness is
independent of time and space. American parapsychologist Dean Radin argues
in The Conscious Universe that ‘Understanding [paranormal] experiences requires
an expanded view of human consciousness’ (1997, p. 2). Cardiologist Pim van
Lommel (2013) claims that near-death experiences are evidence for ‘non-local
consciousness’ and even ‘endless consciousness’.
There probably are no paranormal phenomena (Blackmore, 1998; compare Bem,
2011 and Galak et al., 2012), and if not, the widespread beliefs and frequent
reports of psychic experiences must be explained some other way. Pinpointing
the position they occupy on the spectrum of reality and imagination is one way
of doing so.
Parapsychology was the brainchild of J. B. and Louisa Rhine, two biologists at Duke
University in North Carolina (Mauskopf and McVaugh, 1980). Like the British psy-
chical researchers before them, they had far-reaching ambitions. They wanted to
find evidence against a purely materialist view of human nature, and fight against
the powerful behaviourism of their time. They thought that their new science was
the way to demonstrate the independent agency of the mind, and even to solve
‘your conscious percept
is determined by the
overall hypothesis that
your brain has adopted
in order to minimise
prediction error’(Wilkinson, 2014, p. 148)‘A hallucination is a fact,
not an error; what is
erroneous is a judgment
based upon it’(Russell, 1914, p. 173)