Expanding the inner senses

• • Expanding the inner senses might only be possible by temporarily reducing the relative weight of higher faculties.

We have consciousness of only one thing at a time. One of the greatest abilities of our brain is being able to do things automatically, "in the dark", without us noticing it. For instance I'm thinking about the unconscious processes in my brain and, at the same time, my hands and fingers search for the keyboard keys that leave these traces of words. I am now consciously aware of the letters I need to type, nor, really, of the words I am going to say next. I just do it, without knowing very well how I do it. This is great, because, if I had to be aware of every muscle, of every movement of my body, I would be nearly paralyzed. But the price we pay for this is that we slowly loose access to those actions we do mostly automatically. For instance we become clumsy in movements that are not part of the routines of daily life, like, for me, dancing. And something similar happens with the inner senses that allow us to "see" the abstract world which is the basis of thought.

Beside the obvious expansion into better sight, hearing, etc (listening in other frequencies and orders of magnitude), there is another more subtle sense in which senses may be expanded. Oliver Sacks in his book "Musicophilia" describes autism as an impairment of the left lobe of the brain which, in some cases, lead to a development of the right hemisphere of the brain, more connected with perception and "concrete" abilities. When this occurs individuals are able to "see" things that normally would be invisible to them. Consider the case of Daniel Tammet and other savants. They are able to see "numbers" and make very complex calculations based on these visions, they are able to access large quantities of information, among other feats. So we know that it is possible to construct brains that are much better than the current version that we use. But we can also speculate that improving some cognitive abilities of the brain may impair others (just like normal abstract brains do not use more of their concrete capabilities). This is just like saying that although we might move faster on cars we get fattier, less healthy bodies.

The large use of technology, replacing brain functions, although it may provide expanded abilities, will also likely impair other, more "primitive" abilities. Judging from our current experience, however, it seem that these primitive abilities are in fact not superseded but complementary to the more recent abilities and that, relying on the more recent abilities only (like reasoning instead of instinct) may in fact lead to a lesser life.

So it is expected that these beings sometimes "swith off" or reduce the activity of some parts of their brains in order to enhance the other parts. Such beings, having much more control of their brains, might experiment with reducing the activity of some parts of their brains in order to discover new capabilities (like savant capabilities, abilities that would allow us to experience the world in a more diversified way).