The World in Your Head: A Gestalt View of the Mechanism of Conscious Experience

by Steven M. Lehar

The World In Your A Gestalt View of the Mechanism of Conscious Experience represents a bold assault on one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in the nature of consciousness and the human mind.

Rather than examining the brain and nervous system to see what they tell us about the mind, this book begins with an examination of conscious experience to see what it can tell us about the brain.

Through this analysis, the first and most obvious observation is that consciousness appears as a volumetric spatial void, containing colored objects and surfaces. This reveals that the representation in the brain takes the form of an explicit volumetric spatial model of external reality. Therefore, the world we see around us is not the real world itself, but merely a miniature virtual-reality replica of that world in an internal representation. In fact, the phenomena of dreams and hallucinations clearly demonstrate the capacity of the brain to construct complete virtual worlds even in the absence of sensory input. Perception is somewhat like a guided hallucination, based on sensory stimulation.

This insight allows us to examine the world of visual experience not as scientists exploring the external world, but as perceptual scientists examining a rich and complex internal representation. This unique approach to investigating mental function has implications in a wide variety of related fields, including the nature of language and abstract thought, and motor control and behavior. It also has implications to the world of music, art, and dance, showing how the patterns of regularity and periodicity in space and time--apparent in those aesthetic domains--reflect the periodic basis set of the underlying harmonic resonance representation in the brain.

Genres: Philosophy, Psychology, Neuroscience

Hardcover

First published January 1, 2002

Reviews

[Paul Adkin · Rating 2 out of 5]

The World in your Head... Is an analysis of the the mechanism of human perception. Taking a holistic, Gestalt perspective it looks at what happens in the brain and nervous system that allows us to perceive reality around us in the brain - hence the title. The space we see before us when we open our eyes is actually an inward experience created by the complicated mechanism of our mind. A mechanism which Gestalt theory tries to unravel by examining cultural mechanisms like music, mathematics, art and engineering. The World in Your Head is a search for the operating principles behind all perceptual processing.
Unfortunately, the book is very technical, and was quite torturous at times for this reader who is interested in the area without being a specialist. For me, very much of the book was not absorbed either because it was too specialised for me too grasp, or that the point of many examples were not clearly expressed.
For someone with a specialist's interest in cognition however, or a practical interest in Artificial Intelligence, the book will undoubtedly be far more satisfying.
But despite its difficulties, the challenging ideas in the book maintained a desire to understand that was strong enough to keep me reading, and some reward was had from persisting. Interesting was the chapter on harmonic resonance theory - that neural perceptivo is created or influenced by a neural synctium of electrical oscilations in the spinal cord or the visual cortex, or that the brain itself is a resonator. Lehar says that, "until we begin to pick up music with our microelectrodes, we must be tuned to the wrong channel in the brain."
Also interesting is Lehar's Gestalt analysis of language and meaning, of prosody and metaphor, and the nature of mental imagery; or Gestalt theory applied to understanding human movement and our motor control through wave patterns. I found the Gestalt association between facial expression and body posture very pertinent to my own work and my experiments in the theatrical laboratory have made similar associations.
In fact the most interesting elements in the book tend to be towards the end where it discusses aesthetics and the biological elements in culture.

[Pandit · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not your average Cog-sci book. Gestalt is often mentioned in psychology, but rarely given it's due. It wasn't just a few optical illusions, but a deeply revolutionary theory, where things progress according to the mores of the wholes, rather than the parts. That is, we cannot build up a working model of the psyche/world by breaking it down into small pieces, as science is wont to do.
Lehar takes the Gestalt approach and applies it as it was originally meant - as a radical acknowledgement of how things are presented to consciousness after a spontaneous 'organisation'. In doing so he comes up with some practical models.
It is probably a good idea to google about and find his visual illustrations first, as they really explain a lot.

[Jade Aslain · Rating 5 out of 5]

I only wish this book were more widely read in philosophy of mind, cognitive psychology, neuroscience, etc. It seems to me Lehar has found the explanation of conscious experience. I know! I know! That's a bold claim, but it would be easier to back up if more reasearch followed up... I think what is going on in the embodied mind trend may just as well corroborate the claim.

[Felix Delong · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bit long bit repetitive, the point is made and the beaten to death. But the point is amazing, the gestalt approach is sorely missing and once you start seeing the world as "inside your skull" your entire worldview will dramatically change. Overall highly recommended, but just skip some parts.