Thursday, November 27, 2008

The dimensionality of the CBS - part 2

In this post, I had indicated that the common binding space (CBS) is 3-dimensional and that this holds true of a mosquito as much as a human.

When someone/something becomes conscious (including a newborn mite), its CBS unfurls. And it doesn't really go through a phase where it is first one-dimensional, followed by two dimensional. While a man might feel drowsy at the time of waking up, there is no sense of a flattened or restricted CBS. The alarm that woke him up seems to come from the correct direction, and from the moment he opens his eyes, he is aware of the 3-D space that extends out in its entirety.

As I had suggested in this post, every conscious entity is associated with an instance of the CBS. Given the vast discrepancy in sizes between the brain of a human and that of a mite, how is this possible? What is the smallest structure that would create a new instance of the CBS? (In other words, what is the smallest structure that is needed to create consciousness?) This is a question that would have a profound impact for both philosophy and theology.

But is the CBS always 3-dimensional? Can there be drug-induced effects that can actually add extra dimensions to it? I have maintained that it isn't the case. But when I was going through a Wikipedia article on LSD, this is what I found:

"Users commonly report that the inanimate world appears to animate in an unexplained way; for instance, objects that are static in three dimensions can seem to be moving relative to one or more additional spatial dimensions" and

"Higher doses often cause intense and fundamental distortions of sensory perception such as synaesthesia, the experience of additional spatial or temporal dimensions.."

Agreed that Wikipedia is never the final authority, and the entries also keep morphing constantly. But I was curious to find out more about these "extra" spatial and temporal dimensions. If these are indeed possible, that would be a counter argument to my earlier suggestion of the CBS being always 3-dimensional.

I googled many articles on LSD (including the one that was cited by the first statement), but never really came up with any that actually backed these two claims. I get the feeling that those who think they experienced additional dimensions (whether spatial or temporal) really are confusing them with something more mundane. For example, a 3-D picture of a box on a sheet of paper is still 2-D. In a similar manner, I think what some people think are additional dimensions are simply heightened perceptions which nevertheless occur in the same 3-dimensional Cartesian theater. I also think that what some people might refer to as being extra dimensional do it in a purely metaphorical sense.

I think I will continue to stick to my earlier claim about the CBS being always 3-dimensional.