Recording: What perception veils and reveals
Dashboards, dials and what lies beyond. Q&A with Bernardo on 14th Oct 2025
Do you suspect perception isn't quite what it seems? Most people think that the sun and stars, the rivers and trees are what is 'out there.' Bernardo contends that this is impossible.
His dashboard metaphor is meant to emphasise that whilst you're receiving accurate information about the world, your experience is not a direct window onto the world.
But don't push the metaphor too far! The "dashboard" is simply the colours, sounds and sensations that represent our reality, not some separate artefact you lug around like a laptop. We are fully immersed in it, just like an iPad keyboard is not separate from its display.
We also discussed the differences between outer and inner perception, how our body is the sum of multiple interacting mental states, and the many places we could draw a boundary between self and other.
All life-forms must have dashboards, and Bernardo speculated on the experiences of bats and of bees, and dramatically different perceptions of time. Some organisms may have sense modalities we cannot imagine, whilst others may have less. Regardless, lacking sight, sound or touch would be no hindrance to a rich and full life. This lent insight into what it might be like to have no external perception whatsoever. Thinking that takes place without images, words, or any external reference.
What lies beyond?
Psychedelics give us good reason to think that a direct experience of Mind-at-Large is possible, despite its timeless nature. Precognition and remote viewing might be content slipping through, represented in the symbolic language of our dashboard.
Integrated Information Theory holds promise to map what is 'out there', but poetic imagination may capture the subtleties better than any scientific method. Dante’s insight into “the love that moves the sun and the other stars,” classical Islamic philosophy and Sufi mystics are top contenders.
This is just a taste of the many avenues we explored, and there were so many other great questions in this session that we are going to continue this theme on the 28th of Oct. You can review the questions and add your own comments on the event page here:
Amir Giles
Enjoy the recording, and I look forward to seeing you at the members' scheduling meetup next week!
Until then,
Amir
Time stamps
courtesy of Rita Conde
00:00:10 - Bernardo’s new vintage computers
00:02:18 - Bernardo’s favorite arcade games
00:03:45 - New members introduce themselves
00:04:27 - “Mind at Large” translation in Dutch
00:07:00 - What is agentic AI?
00:10:10 - AI replacing jobs and managing resources
00:12:55 - This week’s topic: the Dashboard metaphor
00:17:12 - Evolution is oriented toward survival, not truth
00:18:30 - Physical perceptions are Dashboard indications
00:22:15 - What is the airplane in the Dashboard metaphor?
00:26:10 - Do we need all five senses to develop perception?
00:30:00 - Christopher Reeve and Helen Keller as examples of a full life despite sensory or motor limitations
00:31:31 - The Dashboard and dissociative boundaries
00:34:27 - Bodily perceptions as part of the Dashboard
00:35:10 - We identify the “I” with our nervous system
00:36:00 - Our body is the sum of multiple interacting mental states
00:38:24 - We are like a bus full of people, and the ego is the bus driver
00:40:55 - Are hunger, cold, & pain also Dashboard representations?
00:42:37 - Some mental states are entirely endogenous
00:44:00 - Differences between perceptual and endogenous states
00:45:45 - Intentional content and qualia states
00:48:32 - Aphantasia – the inability to dream perceptual content
00:50:40 - How chess players visualize their next moves
00:51:51 - Self-triggered emotions and abstract thinking
00:52:42 - Bodily perceptions of a patient recovering from a stroke
00:55:37 - The Dashboard is the perception
00:57:00 - The Headless technique
00:58:38 - The Dashboard as an immersive interface
00:59:44 - The Dashboard in the absence of perception
01:02:30 - The case of someone born deaf who regains hearing
01:06:20 - DMT and the experience of absolute consciousness
01:07:17 - The Dashboard when we stop believing in dualism
01:09:09 - The Dashboard in other organisms
01:13:26 - Differences in time perception among different organisms
01:16:00 - What can happen in 300 milliseconds
01:17:10 - Do all dissociated alters have Dashboards?
01:18:45 - Recap on the Dashboard metaphor
01:19:19 - Psychedelic experiences outside the Dashboard
01:29:35 - Experiences that bypass the Dashboard
01:34:00 - Becoming porous (loosening the dissociative boundaries)
01:35:05 - Structures of Mind at Large
01:37:27 - Is Mind at Large dynamic or static?
01:39:24 - Mind at Large is outside time
01:41:00 - Eternity appears to us disguised as dynamisms
01:41:34 - How Integrated Information Theory maps the noumenal
01:44:40 - Poetic imagination may pick up these subtleties better than any scientific instrument
01:45:45 - Dante’s Paradiso: “The Love that moves the sun and the other stars” (L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle)
01:46:00 - Classical Islamic philosophy of the 7th, 8th, and 9th centuries and later Sufi metaphysics
01:47:50 - How intuition connects to the Dashboard
01:57:50 - Upcoming Essentia Foundation conference in Switzerland
01:58:00 - Next session’s topics and guests