Beyond Zero and One (Andrew Smart) / quote 95 of 171
Waking perception is dreamlike
“The nature and phenomenology of hallucinations can be explained more fruitfully within a framework that accepts that, similarly to hallucinations and dream imagery, normal conscious awareness of the world during wakefulness is a fundamentally subjective and dreamlike experience. Philosophical idealism predicts that normal perception, hallucinations, and dream imagery are principally manifestations of the same physiological process. Hallucinations and dream imagery differ from normal wakeful conscious experience only with regard to the extent to which they are constrained by sensory information from the external physical world. Hallucinations are similar to dreaming in that a lack of sensory constraints on the physiological mechanisms of conscious experience makes these forms of conscious experience maladaptive for interaction with the physical world.”49 —Ralf-Peter Behrendt