I get that, and I guess I try to extrapolate from the image-based examples to other senses and congnition in general. The image replications give me the idea that there is some generative extrapolation based on actual sensory input a seed going on, like the brain circuitry that goes and re-imagines the input consciously going haywire and growing and extrapolating into overdriven, bizarre directions.

I recently read "A Brief History of Intelligence" by Bennet which spends quite a bit of time dwelling on "generative" simulation mechanisms in brain function and their role in cognition from prediction to mentalizing, and I think I can get a rough sense of how this would all click together.

It makes sense why creative/artistic people may be drawn to this and could consider it a heightened form or a letting loose of their normal processes, etc.

But to me it's still not that attractive. I can never shake the idea that it's a bit like driving a system past specifications and assigning meaning to malfunctions, and essentially lying to yourself. I get it's not black and white, and obviously philosophy is rife with arguments and takes on what is true experience and cognition, but given the risks and downsides I'd rather not.

I'm very fine with other people occupying different points on the spectrum.

>generative extrapolation based on actual sensory input a seed going on

>brain circuitry that goes and re-imagines the input consciously going haywire and growing and extrapolating into overdriven, bizarre directions.

>assigning meaning to malfunctions, and essentially lying to yourself

The problem is that your description fully applies to "normal", non-chemically-altered cognition. Miscognitions propagate. The spec only goes as far as anatomically modern, i.e. cavefolk, where the error correction mechanism there is "get eaten by wild animals, having failed to reproduce".

We don't have sabertooth tigers any more, we have a planetary-scale material culture developed over millenia. It provides for our safety; it records and propagates imprints of what we think, say, and do; it makes meaningful actions out of human utterances and movements, by providing them with interpretations (shared collective cognitions).

It's a safe and rich environment, one where people get to live safe lives in the grasp of utter, insane delusion, we just can't agree on which ones exactly are the deluded ones. We consider that one is responsible primarily for one's own actions, so let's start with the self, shall we.

What is one to do, if one wants to say the words "I am not lying to myself" in the sense of an actual falsifiable statement, and not just as a form of "I'm significant... said the dust speck"?

I mean, how do you even know? Couldn't you just lie to yourself about that one, too, and carry on none the wiser?

You know how you can look at your eye with your eye, by means of routing photons through space in a clever way, with some help from that best friend of the psychonaut - the bathroom mirror?

Turns out you can also look at your mind with your mind, by routing concept-patterns though time in a clever way, by means of chemicals which alter the activation thresholds and signal propagation times throughout your body.

And what this gives you is a basis for comparison. Otherwise, you simply don't know. You're taking your introspection on faith, and that's massively irresponsible towards everyone else. Ask me how I know.

Ever heard of "The Doors of Perception" by Aldous Huxley?