From Peirce’s semiotic point of view, all ‘thinking is necessarily a sort of dialogue’ between ‘the momentary self’ and a future self (recall Chapter 2). More recently, neuroscientific studies suggest that the very experience of selfhood may be grounded in a dialogue within the brain. According to Rodolfo Llinás, ‘it is the dialogue between the thalamus and the cortex that generates subjectivity in humans and in higher vertebrates’ (Llinás 2001, 131). The temporal unity of this dialogue binds what could be seen as separate events into a single presence, placing the ‘representation of specific sensory images into the context of ongoing activities’ (Llinás 2001, 127).
The thalamocortical system is a close to isochronic sphere that synchronously relates the sensory-referred properties of the external world to internally generated motivations and memories. This temporally coherent event that binds, in the time domain, the fractured components of external and internal reality into a single construct is what we call the ‘self.’
— Llinás (2001, 126, emphasis in original)
Another possibility is a dialogue between the two hemispheres of the brain. The left hemisphere, being specialized for language, plays the lead in this dialogue insofar as it is verbal, but the right hemisphere contributes a reality check.
The brain’s overall executive plan runs as follows. The left hemisphere is the primary controlling hemisphere. It enlists the aid of the right hemisphere for various tasks. The right hemisphere contains a large, topographic representation system, including episodic memories and current real-time representations of the body and its surrounding space. A primary task of the right hemisphere is also to simulate other minds. However, these representations are also used for other purposes: finding one’s way about, storing important information in memory, and assessing the plausibility of certain events.
— Hirstein (2005, 169)
This would suggest that the right hemisphere plays the critical role as a check on the confabulatory creativity of the left. Hirstein (170) also quotes Deglin and Kinsbourne: ‘the right hemisphere seems incapable of the willing suspension of disbelief’ – which is necessary for engagement with an imaginative story.