This category is for discussion of experiences of perceptions that “aren’t there”, and how to model them.
The PCT model says we are perceiving a copy of the reference signal. Some imagined perceptions ‘fill in’ missing but well-known and expected aspects of perceptual input. Active imagining is involved in planning processes and problem solving. In all these, we are aware of the system producing the reference, or from the point of view of that system. In hallucination, we are not aware of a system producing the reference. Imagining is usually limited in sensory detail and hallucination is more realistically rich in sensory detail.