All perception is archetypal
Q&A with Bernardo 4th Nov 2025
If everything is consciousness, what does it mean to distinguish experiences that arise from within versus perceptions modulated from the outside?
This can be one of the more confusing aspects of this philosophy. If everything is 'mind' and the physical world is 'in us' just like everything else - what does it mean to say there is a dashboard onto an "outer world?"
The first 90 minutes of this session Bernardo explains this with great care and nuance. Whist it is true that all experiences are internal states, it is possible to distinguish between types of internal states.
Many of our thoughts and feelings are generated internally. They may be influenced by things we have seen and heard, but I can have a daydream that has nothing to do with the lecture hall in which I'm having it.
In contrast, other experiences are directly and immediately modulated by an external world, what Bernardo calls 'Mind at Large'. These are the experiential contents of mind from which we are seemingly dissociated. Things we hear, see, smell and touch in our shared reality are what Bernardo labels the dashboard of perception.
I highly recommend reviewing a short section from this presentation, in which Bernardo uses slides to explain the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic experience. This link should take you to 17 minutes into the talk where this is explained directly:
Predictive processing was also very relevant to the discussion - how perception is modulated by both very primitive and sophisticated priors; beliefs and expectations about what we are likely to see.
If you want more background, this free TED talk is a great intro, and for a more in-depth discussion, suitable for anyone wanting to understand how meditation can modulate perception, I recommend this course:
We also discussed:
- how all perception is archetypal
- the dashboard may hint at the purpose of reality
- predictive processing
- the meaning of synchronicity
- the evolution of language
and many other themes you can find in the timestamps below.
I look forward to seeing you next week!
Amir
Timestamps
With thanks to Rita conde
00:00:05 - Bernardo’s cat revenge
00:01:47 - A gift to Bernardo
00:03:20 - This week’s topic: The Meaning and Modes of Perception
00:04:45 - Are there mores Dashboards beyond our Dashboard?
00:06:10 - Perceiving the World vs Being the World
00:11:16 - Why are colours not part of us as well?
00:15:00 - Perception as a Markov blanket
00:16:49 - Even in sensory deprivation, there is a sense of being
00:18:58 - Life without sensory perceptions
00:21:55 - Is Mind-at-Large meta-cognitive?
00:24:28 - Causal power in Mind-at-Large
00:26:04 - Intentionality
00:29:14 - Aren't all states endogenous?
00:32:10 - There is no blue outside whatsoever
00:35:10 - The Dashboard is at the boundary
00:38:27 - Clarifying the terminology: endo / exo
00:39:40 - Predictive Processing and Analytical Idealism
00:46:16 - IIT and internal causal structures
00:47:33 - Differences between Idealism and Physicalism
00:49:32 - Checkerboard illusion & Predictive Processing
00:51:06 - Truth is mostly irrelevant for evolution
00:53:25 - Inference is a biological necessity
01:02:30 - Your Brain Hallucinates Your Conscious Reality | Anil Seth | TED
01:03:49 - Body perceptions are also signals on the Dashboard
01:08:58 - The paradox: there seems to be a world outside, although it’s all one mind
01:15:15 - Geometry is different from seeing a triangle
01:17:17 - The role of attention in the “New Unconscious” movement in psychology
01:20:00 - Early stages of metaphysical enquiry: revision of fundamental distinctions
01:22:44 - What engenders these compelling illusions?
01:24:50 - Is perception driven by fitness, or purpose?
01:30:40 - Archetypes
01:31:41 - The Laws of Nature
01:34:00 - Is there intrinsic semantic content in Dashboard perceptions beyond mere function towards survival?
01:35:11 - Observing nature is a form of self-observation
01:35:50 - Is the correspondence between the contents of perception and the cues out there arbitrary?
01:39:00 - The evolution of languages in the direction of more abstraction and arbitrariness
01:42:15 - The evolution of perception is less arbitrary than the evolution of language
01:44:00 - Dante and “the love that moves the sun and the stars” (Paradiso, Canto XXXIII)
01:46:23 - Are morality, beauty and meta-cognition examples of archetypes?
01:51:40 - Bernardo’s Daimon as endogenous
01:58:07 - Ego inflation
01:59:30 - Recognising what in us is not us
02:02:00 - Varieties of perception
02:05:00 - What determines the circumference of our dissociation?
02:09:00 - Teleological drive behind the process of individuation?
02:12:40 - Frederico Faggin: the universal mind wants to know itself
02:13:00 - A paradox of physicalism: building a copy of ourselves
02:20:36 - Could synchronicity be meaningful?
02:30:50 - Everything is synchronistic
02:34:20 - Illusions betray a deeper truth
02:38:40 - Life is the ultimate teacher, the ultimate guru — when you pay attention to it
02:41:40 - Next week’s topics