It seems like there is a language template activity in my mind, where the activity and template are a bit independent of the nouns. This is one way I make mistakes: when I am going to the sink to do something and pick up the wrong utensil. I think I am almost always within some narrative framework.
It is pretty easy for the nouns to slip out of place in the narrative structure and be substituted for by other things. I observe this to be happening when I begin to dream: the wrong noun gets into the story, but the story continues as I dream.
I recently noticed something that might be responsible for noun substitution, that I want to call cognitive momentum. This is the idea that what you are thinking is a whole surging mass of different separate thoughts, with some more central than some others; and then some another mental mechanism (behaving like an external applied force) causes the whole mass to change direction. What can happen as you go to sleep, is that some constituent of the mass slip out, and continue in the direction they were going, while others respond to the external force and change of direction.
The act of dreaming begins when you switch to the residual mass - perhaps with the existing narrative structure, but now with the wrong ideas elevated to central position, creating impossible combinations.
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