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Psychedelics alter metaphysical beliefs

nature.com

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Re: Psychedelics alter metaphysical beliefs

#141

Post by TchoBeer »

leadingthenet wrote: post #137
r00fus wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine how powerful it would be to be able to alter the setting so bad trips depict hell and good trips depict heaven. Almost like they could be utilized in a way to provide a religious fervor for your adherents.

Isn't there some evidence to suggest earlier, pre-Christian European religions did sometimes make use of psychedelic substances in group rituals?

Even more fun, there's some evidence that one of the ingredients in the frankincense that was burned in the Jewish temple (at least the second temple anyway) was Marijuana

Re: Psychedelics alter metaphysical beliefs

#142

Post by TchoBeer »

malermeister wrote: post #87
jklinger410 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've got it backwards. Reality does not change due to hallucination, only my perception of it. I've tripped many times and none of what I saw was real, and everything I saw when I wasn't tripping was real. It's good as therapy, and reveals a lot about perception and thoughts, but nothing else.

> I've tripped many times and none of what I saw was real, and everything I saw when I wasn't tripping was real. How would you possibly verify this claim? What is reality if not your perception of it? Does objective reality exist? How do you know anything is objectively real and not a product of some brain process? All of those are long-standing philosophical questions. Here's [1] a quick intro on the problem space I…

>How do you know anything is objectively real and not a product of some brain process?

If that's true, then I know that brain processes are real.

Re: Psychedelics alter metaphysical beliefs

#143

Post by bopbeepboop »

tasty_freeze wrote: post #65

At the risk of being "that guy", it has to be said that this kind of study is unreliable. Posting a bunch of messages to r/drugs and r/psychedelics to come take their survey is going to suffer from all sorts of statistical biases. It is still better than the lowest for the study, the sample size of one: "Well this is what I experienced". Yet here I go. I have always been a materialist, and I've also never done drugs…

My problem with your “experiment” is that you only validated your own biases — you didn’t reject the alternative explanation.

> Anyway, I came away from those experiments even more of a materialist than I was before. If a hundred micrograms or a few milligrams of small molecule can so disrupt one's mind, if it can profoundly change your perceptions, if it can induce a feeling of being in a divine presence, it confirmed to me that the brain is all just chemistry.

Do you also believe radios are a local phenomenon because when I twist the knob, the music changes?

That’s your entire argument.

Re: Psychedelics alter metaphysical beliefs

#144

Post by staticman2 »

fsh wrote: post #100
malermeister wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've tripped many times and none of what I saw was real, and everything I saw when I wasn't tripping was real. How would you possibly verify this claim? What is reality if not your perception of it? Does objective reality exist? How do you know anything is objectively real and not a product of some brain process? All of those are long-standing philosophical questions. Here's [1] a quick intro on the problem space I…

Ancient Greek philosophers could not measure anything, so this idea was at least somewhat plausible. Modern philosophers have no such excuse. We can simply measure the temperature of the water buckets and accept that our hands are very poor thermometers. Leaving aside the very difficult issue of the measurement problem in quantum mechanics, the last 200 or so years of science have clearly demonstrated that objective…

Ancient greek's could surely measure some things, how else did they build those buildings?

You've declared we can measure everything important so reality is objective, but quantum physics suggests the things we can't measure may be astronomically large. The physicists who subscribe to the many world's theory believe there's a near infinite assortment of humans we cannot percieve or effectively measure, for example, and our own experience of self is inaccurate as we don't percieve ourselves to be branching in time.

I don't think measurements solve the problem of the uncertainty of reality.

Re: Psychedelics alter metaphysical beliefs

#145

Post by TchoBeer »

GoblinSlayer wrote: post #133
toomanydoubts wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no truth claims. The point is that under the influence of psychedelics, you realize you can't know the truth. I understand you're looking at it from a scientific point of view, but the discussion is not scientific. Consciousness is probably the hardest body of knowledge to integrate with science. Nobody knows where consciousness comes from. Nobody knows how to measure it. I can tell you: "I'm conscious and aw…

>I can tell you: "I'm conscious and aware", but there's no way I can prove to you I'm not a philosophical zombie(someone that acts like it's conscious, but isn't). You can't prove that to yourself either, because a zombie has the same thoughts as you. You can't differentiate even subjectively whether you're a zombie or not.

If you have thoughts, you can't doubt whether or not you have thoughts. In order to do so you need to doubt yourself, which is a thought.

Re: Psychedelics alter metaphysical beliefs

#146

Post by jklinger410 »

dTal wrote: post #123
jklinger410 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a silly conversation. We have cameras and all sorts of equipment that tracks a constant reality. Who gives a shit if people perceive it with varying levels of accuracy? What does it matter that introducing substances to the brain can reduce your ability to perceive it? There is evidence of reality, and childish mind games and semantic debates that it might not. I drop you off in the Gobi desert with no w…

You would do well to steel man this line of thought. "Reality" can mean the physical patterns of atoms and electromagnetic radiation, which nobody suggests psychedelics change (although it's worth noting that you cannot completely eliminate subjectivity from your measurements even here, thanks to quantum physics). However we don't perceive atoms and radiation directly - we filter our senses through countless layers o…

Let me source OP to clarify where my statements are coming from.

> What if the actual reality is what you experience during a trip, and what we consider reality is some kind of trip due to the lack of a molecule that allows you to fully experience reality?

So, keeping our conversation on-topic, sober reality is a place of scientific validation. The leaves on a tree are not breathing, they are simply blowing in the wind. We know this because photosynthesis does not require movement.

The edges of your door may be fuzzy on a molecular level, but they are not expanding and contracting every few seconds, we know this because wooden doors do not have those transitive properties.

Acid, and therefore a hallucination, is altering your ability to perceive reality. It is not "unlocking" any form of reality that you cannot normally perceive. It might be fun to think about a ton of "what-ifs" but it is not as metaphysical as it is made out to be.

The one profound aspect of tripping is to identify that your perception can be altered. This has a litany of positive mental affects that should be studied and prescribed.

Re: Psychedelics alter metaphysical beliefs

#147

Post by TchoBeer »

User23 wrote: post #78
tasty_freeze wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Materialists always lose me when they start trying to explain things like how exactly inanimate matter started thinking. Define "thinking." Is an ecoli deciding to move towards or away from a chemical signal "thinking?" > I've never seen any recourse other than handwaving of the highest order. How much have you read from people researching consciousness, vs reading half-baked layman ideas about materialism on web f…

> Define "thinking." Is an ecoli deciding to move towards or away from a chemical signal "thinking?" Define "defining". Is a definition the thing that is being defined? > How much have you read from people researching consciousness, vs reading half-baked layman ideas about materialism on web forums? Will I not learn anything from dialog with you because it's on a web forum? > Do you find "souls" to require less handw…

>Do you find "materialism" to require less handwaving than dualism?

The upside to materialism is that the gap in our knowledge, namely why networks of neurons cause consciousness, is something we can acknowledge we don't know and try to understand. Resorting to an explaination relying on objects we can't observse seems... inelegant.

Re: Psychedelics alter metaphysical beliefs

#148

Post by jklinger410 »

vekker wrote: post #125
jklinger410 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a silly conversation. We have cameras and all sorts of equipment that tracks a constant reality. Who gives a shit if people perceive it with varying levels of accuracy? What does it matter that introducing substances to the brain can reduce your ability to perceive it? There is evidence of reality, and childish mind games and semantic debates that it might not. I drop you off in the Gobi desert with no w…

I think it's not a silly conversation at all. It hints to something that is so fundamental about existence. You seem stuck in circular reasoning. The point is that when in an altered state, your conventional, "sober" model of reality breaks down and no longer applies. I think people "break through" when they realize their model of reality was constructed according to what they perceived through their available sense…

> The point is that when in an altered state, your conventional, "sober" model of reality breaks down and no longer applies.

Your sober model of reality 100% still applies. You are simply mis-perceiving what is happening in reality.

The reality your mind is attempting to model is the only one that exists. Inducing chemicals that hinder your ability to perceive it does not indicate that it is a simulation.

It is not a self-referential consistency because it is being tracked by many people, many forms of study, many computers and machines, and is repeatable. Chemically induced states of hallucination are none of the above.

I will leave the undoing of reality to string theorists and super-computers.

Re: Psychedelics alter metaphysical beliefs

#149

Post by dzolob »

tasty_freeze wrote: post #65

At the risk of being "that guy", it has to be said that this kind of study is unreliable. Posting a bunch of messages to r/drugs and r/psychedelics to come take their survey is going to suffer from all sorts of statistical biases. It is still better than the lowest for the study, the sample size of one: "Well this is what I experienced". Yet here I go. I have always been a materialist, and I've also never done drugs…

I believe your experiments have confirmation bias.

Instead of doing your own controlled experiments, you should try doing ayahuasca, peyote or shrooms in their natural setting, with local people leading the way.

I bet you’ll have a completely different experience.

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