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Psychedelics alter metaphysical beliefs

nature.com

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Re: Psychedelics alter metaphysical beliefs

#31

Post by bobthechef »

toomanydoubts wrote: post #26
cipheredStones wrote: post #11

Despite having had the relevant experience, I've always found it hard to understand why this happens. You know you're taking a drug that reliably induces feelings of "oceanic connectedness". Why should you change your worldview as a result? All kinds of things can change the way you feel temporarily, but most of them don't leave you thinking that you got insight into the way things really are. Maybe it's that psyched…

I believe it's because it shows you that reality is not actually real. It's just a product of your senses. During a psychedelic trip, one might wonder "if I had been like this all my life, I would consider this to be reality, not what I'm used too". It fundamentally shows you that what you consider reality might be very, very, very wrong. So how can I trust my own senses and perceptions if they can be so powerfully m…

How is the self-defeating skepticism lost on you? What reality? What molecules?

The only explanation that doesn't lead to absurdity is that drugs corrupt your perception. They interfere with and frustrate the healthy and proper operation of the brain and in doing so distort perception.

Re: Psychedelics alter metaphysical beliefs

#32

Post by inter_netuser »

toomanydoubts wrote: post #8
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #2

I used to be a pretty frequent psychedelic user. These results sound right to me. I would've considered panpsychism to be totally absurd before I discovered LSD, for instance. Now it's my daily driver.

I've had the same experience. Can't shake the idea that `consciousness == god` and we are all tiny manifestations of this "essence", after some psychedelic trips. My rational mind always goes back to atheism when sober, but the idea is always there in the back of my mind.

http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html

https://youtu.be/wU0PYcCsL6o

Re: Psychedelics alter metaphysical beliefs

#33

Post by inter_netuser »

tayo42 wrote: post #9
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #2

I used to be a pretty frequent psychedelic user. These results sound right to me. I would've considered panpsychism to be totally absurd before I discovered LSD, for instance. Now it's my daily driver.

I think panpsychism just needs to be explained well and probably most people would be onboard with the idea or at least comfortable accepting it. I thought it was a little wild at first but after reading "Galileo's Error" by Phillip Goff it seems ok. Panspychism it self covers so many theories too. In my personal experience psychedelic use seemed to almost solidify materialism for me. The idea that reality, your self…

how does it reinforce/solidity materialism for you?

Re: Psychedelics alter metaphysical beliefs

#34

Post by bobthechef »

cipheredStones wrote: post #11

Despite having had the relevant experience, I've always found it hard to understand why this happens. You know you're taking a drug that reliably induces feelings of "oceanic connectedness". Why should you change your worldview as a result? All kinds of things can change the way you feel temporarily, but most of them don't leave you thinking that you got insight into the way things really are. Maybe it's that psyched…

Or it produces such severe distortions that it leads people to bizarre conclusions.

Re: Psychedelics alter metaphysical beliefs

#35

Post by ggpsv »

toomanydoubts wrote: post #26
cipheredStones wrote: post #11

Despite having had the relevant experience, I've always found it hard to understand why this happens. You know you're taking a drug that reliably induces feelings of "oceanic connectedness". Why should you change your worldview as a result? All kinds of things can change the way you feel temporarily, but most of them don't leave you thinking that you got insight into the way things really are. Maybe it's that psyched…

I believe it's because it shows you that reality is not actually real. It's just a product of your senses. During a psychedelic trip, one might wonder "if I had been like this all my life, I would consider this to be reality, not what I'm used too". It fundamentally shows you that what you consider reality might be very, very, very wrong. So how can I trust my own senses and perceptions if they can be so powerfully m…

> What if the actual reality is what you experience during a trip

Aldous Huxley touched on this idea of the brain acting as a valve or filter, wherein psychedelics loosen it and let through the stream of consciousness that you're alluding to.

Re: Psychedelics alter metaphysical beliefs

#37

Post by monktastic1 »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #22
User23 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That materialism is much less popular than I expected. I wonder how much is due to selection bias The overwhelming majority of human beings both now and historically are dualists, so this isn't surprising to me at all. Materialists always lose me when they start trying to explain things like how exactly inanimate matter started thinking. I've never seen any recourse other than handwaving of the highest order. Usual…

There is no "mechanism for how [ ... ] emergence occurs". Emergence is the mechanism. This is even more true of qualia, which are definitionally subjective, and thus do not exist as phenomena in the world. We could talk a bit about the mechanism behind the process where aggregating sufficient water molecules creates a liquid. But we can't talk at all about how that same process could ever be responsible for the exper…

The argument breaks down for me here:

> because the experience of wet is wholly subjective.

I can't distinguish this from "wetness is a quale." In which case the analogy water : wetness :: brain : qualia reduces to water : qualia :: brain : qualia.

Also:

> the experience of having experiences

The fact that we sometimes slip up and use recursive language like this is a suggestive sign to me. We intuit that experience is somehow "already present," or fundamental, as idealism claims. If idealism is true, then you _are_ consciousness, and already know it at some level.

Re: Psychedelics alter metaphysical beliefs

#38

Post by sethaurus »

toomanydoubts wrote: post #8
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #2

I used to be a pretty frequent psychedelic user. These results sound right to me. I would've considered panpsychism to be totally absurd before I discovered LSD, for instance. Now it's my daily driver.

I've had the same experience. Can't shake the idea that `consciousness == god` and we are all tiny manifestations of this "essence", after some psychedelic trips. My rational mind always goes back to atheism when sober, but the idea is always there in the back of my mind.

Perhaps this is self-delusion on my part, but I've had no trouble integrating materialism/atheism with what you're describing — that kind of psychedelic panpsychism. They don't feel like competing claims.

Re: Psychedelics alter metaphysical beliefs

#39

Post by mandmandam »

swayvil wrote: post #25

Beliefs are derived from experiences (ideally...more or less...) Psychedelics deliver strange experiences. Thus psychedelics affect your beliefs, make them strange or whatever. Seems perfectly reasonable.

It's quite a bit more than that.

Loss of ego and a sense of interconnectedness are some of the main effects from mushrooms and MDMA... Meditation does the same.

There's a lot of evidence, if you look around, that us WEIRD people (Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic) are rather estranged from the base state of humanity (which psychonauts and meditators explore).

There's a lot of evidence, if you care to accept it, that psychedelics can dramatically help us to better realign with ourselves, and even with fundamental reality.

In short, these strange experiences can actually reduce our own strangeness, while increasing our well-being, in quite specific and important ways.

Re: Psychedelics alter metaphysical beliefs

#40

Post by badtuple »

bobthechef wrote: post #31
toomanydoubts wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe it's because it shows you that reality is not actually real. It's just a product of your senses. During a psychedelic trip, one might wonder "if I had been like this all my life, I would consider this to be reality, not what I'm used too". It fundamentally shows you that what you consider reality might be very, very, very wrong. So how can I trust my own senses and perceptions if they can be so powerfully m…

How is the self-defeating skepticism lost on you? What reality? What molecules? The only explanation that doesn't lead to absurdity is that drugs corrupt your perception. They interfere with and frustrate the healthy and proper operation of the brain and in doing so distort perception.

I guess one question I'd have is why you think your brain is "operating properly". It's definitely perceiving and constructing a narrative out of those perceptions, but that happens differently for every brain and it really doesn't seem like there's a perfect version of it that's "correct".

If you're willing to accept that you can't really rank or judge modes of mental experience quantitatively on some kind of non-relative scale (which would require access to a "reality" outside yourself), then it shouldn't be too much of a leap to say messing with how it functions within tolerable bounds could be more of an optimization (or equal but just different) to your experience.

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