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Not only that, but the fact that consuming a chemical can make your consciousness feel so different always felt to me like pretty good evidence that consciousne

Not only that, but the fact that consuming a chemical can make your consciousness feel so different always felt to me like pretty good evidence that consciousness is material. I do think there are rational realizations that rational people can come to under the influence of psychedelics, that they might not otherwise, though.

kritiko 5y ago
Why do you believe in rational people?
- guythedudebro 5y ago
  I thought it was a useful label to describe a set of people who would make an effort not to settle for supernatural explanations
  - weq 5y ago
    We only use a minute amount of our brain. Supernatural is a state of dystopia set out by the Religious zealots to rationalise their inability to understand anything not fed to them by their sacred books.
monktastic1 5y ago
I'm not sure I see why. Dreams tend to be unstable, but if a dream were particularly stable, and a certain behavior in the dream reliably triggered a certain insight (say, a dream sign that triggered lucidity), would that be evidence that consciousness was produced by the "material" in the dream? In the same way, if this is a dream of sorts, the fact that certain dream behaviors can trigger certain changes in experience is also internally consistent. Of course, this "dream" has much greater stability to it, but the basic idea holds.
- guythedudebro 5y ago
  If you can develop a robust system of testable explanations for the material reality of your dream world that hold consistently true where/when this is all happening then maybe your question would be useful. There is complex physiology going on producing a consciousness (so it seems to me) that can be altered when that physiology is altered. We can see at least some of this physiology. Suggesting all that physiology in our world is actually happening in the dream world of some other being doesn't seem very interesting as it still leaves us here in the same material (as we can measure it) reality that science is... still pretty damn good at describing. So why even bring it up? If there's evidence that points us that way, cool, otherwise, Occam's razor seems better.
TimTheTinker 5y ago
Why can't consciousness be from both the material and the immaterial? If a chemical alters perception, that just shows that consciousness is strongly affected by the material, but other non-contradictory hypotheses aren't thus disproven.
- guythedudebro 5y ago
  Sure, it could be. I never said otherwise. However, I am unsure what good evidence for a corresponding immaterial part might look like.
  - TimTheTinker 5y ago
    If you're looking for physical evidence, perhaps brain signals that don't have a material origin? But that would be very difficult to establish. I think a better approach is philosophical, by considering the nature of thought and the spoken word.
weq 5y ago
Rational rediscovered the power of psychedelics that aboriginal cultures all over the world have been using since the dawn of time to bring clarity to nature, ones place in it, and the universe. https://maps.org/2004/08/08/nobel-prize-genius-crick-was-high-on-lsd-when-he-discovered-dna/ https://maps.org/2004/08/08/nobel-prize-genius-crick-was-hig... Simple put, psychedelics are used throughout the animal kingdom by all species for this same type of enlightnement. Arguments can be made that mushrooms brought about human evolution by waking us up to our own conciseness. We are the first generation of people to be tainted by the War On Drugs. And we will be the last to have forgotten it. https://www.inverse.com/article/34186-stoned-ape-hypothesis https://www.inverse.com/article/34186-stoned-ape-hypothesis https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/dolphins-seem-to-use-toxic-pufferfish-to-get-high-180948219/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/dolphins-seem-to-u... Unfortunately, our generation has grown up being fed properganda about how Drugs are bad and religious is the saviour and the only pure way to live. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesar%27s_Messiah https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesar%27s_Messiah One just needs to look at MDMAs effectiveness on treating PSTD with Gods version of treatment that covers up the trauma with religion instead of unwinding it from the mind. https://adf.org.au/insights/mdma-ptsd/ https://adf.org.au/insights/mdma-ptsd/ Source from gods chrous themselves where they claim MDMA and ecstasy arn't the same thing now because science is showing its "positive uses" - even though every "Just Say No" ad i saw as a child insisted they were both going to fry my brain into an egg. These substances will not produce profound effects when taken recreationally - no healer from any aboriginal culture will claim that. They are to be taken with intent, with specific settings under specific conditions in a variety of doses for you to gain a better understand of oneself.
- guythedudebro 5y ago
  > These substances will not produce profound effects when taken recreationally This claim, at the very least, is false.

kritiko 5y ago

Why do you believe in rational people?

guythedudebro 5y ago
I thought it was a useful label to describe a set of people who would make an effort not to settle for supernatural explanations
- weq 5y ago
  We only use a minute amount of our brain. Supernatural is a state of dystopia set out by the Religious zealots to rationalise their inability to understand anything not fed to them by their sacred books.

monktastic1 5y ago

I'm not sure I see why. Dreams tend to be unstable, but if a dream were particularly stable, and a certain behavior in the dream reliably triggered a certain insight (say, a dream sign that triggered lucidity), would that be evidence that consciousness was produced by the "material" in the dream? In the same way, if this is a dream of sorts, the fact that certain dream behaviors can trigger certain changes in experience is also internally consistent. Of course, this "dream" has much greater stability to it, but the basic idea holds.

guythedudebro 5y ago
If you can develop a robust system of testable explanations for the material reality of your dream world that hold consistently true where/when this is all happening then maybe your question would be useful. There is complex physiology going on producing a consciousness (so it seems to me) that can be altered when that physiology is altered. We can see at least some of this physiology. Suggesting all that physiology in our world is actually happening in the dream world of some other being doesn't seem very interesting as it still leaves us here in the same material (as we can measure it) reality that science is... still pretty damn good at describing. So why even bring it up? If there's evidence that points us that way, cool, otherwise, Occam's razor seems better.

TimTheTinker 5y ago

Why can't consciousness be from both the material and the immaterial? If a chemical alters perception, that just shows that consciousness is strongly affected by the material, but other non-contradictory hypotheses aren't thus disproven.

guythedudebro 5y ago
Sure, it could be. I never said otherwise. However, I am unsure what good evidence for a corresponding immaterial part might look like.
- TimTheTinker 5y ago
  If you're looking for physical evidence, perhaps brain signals that don't have a material origin? But that would be very difficult to establish. I think a better approach is philosophical, by considering the nature of thought and the spoken word.

weq 5y ago

Rational rediscovered the power of psychedelics that aboriginal cultures all over the world have been using since the dawn of time to bring clarity to nature, ones place in it, and the universe. https://maps.org/2004/08/08/nobel-prize-genius-crick-was-high-on-lsd-when-he-discovered-dna/ https://maps.org/2004/08/08/nobel-prize-genius-crick-was-hig... Simple put, psychedelics are used throughout the animal kingdom by all species for this same type of enlightnement. Arguments can be made that mushrooms brought about human evolution by waking us up to our own conciseness. We are the first generation of people to be tainted by the War On Drugs. And we will be the last to have forgotten it. https://www.inverse.com/article/34186-stoned-ape-hypothesis https://www.inverse.com/article/34186-stoned-ape-hypothesis https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/dolphins-seem-to-use-toxic-pufferfish-to-get-high-180948219/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/dolphins-seem-to-u... Unfortunately, our generation has grown up being fed properganda about how Drugs are bad and religious is the saviour and the only pure way to live. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesar%27s_Messiah https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesar%27s_Messiah One just needs to look at MDMAs effectiveness on treating PSTD with Gods version of treatment that covers up the trauma with religion instead of unwinding it from the mind. https://adf.org.au/insights/mdma-ptsd/ https://adf.org.au/insights/mdma-ptsd/ Source from gods chrous themselves where they claim MDMA and ecstasy arn't the same thing now because science is showing its "positive uses" - even though every "Just Say No" ad i saw as a child insisted they were both going to fry my brain into an egg. These substances will not produce profound effects when taken recreationally - no healer from any aboriginal culture will claim that. They are to be taken with intent, with specific settings under specific conditions in a variety of doses for you to gain a better understand of oneself.

guythedudebro 5y ago
> These substances will not produce profound effects when taken recreationally This claim, at the very least, is false.