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At high doses of psilocybin you experience the loss of ego. It's a weird feeling, where "you" are not there anymore. There is no "I". So it's definitely possib

At high doses of psilocybin you experience the loss of ego. It's a weird feeling, where "you" are not there anymore. There is no "I". So it's definitely possible to be conscious but feel like "you" or whatever the idea you have of a self just isn't there anymore.

jadbox 3y ago
Beyond the ego, what is this conscious stuff providing awareness qualia? It seems we must assert one of these options: a) consciousness is an emergent system of matter (materialism). b) matter contains elements of consciousness (panpsychism). c) matter/energy is consciousness with varying levels of complexity (monism).
- antonvs 3y ago
  Your option (c) is idealistic monism specifically, since physical monism corresponds to materialism. And then there's: d) matter, energy, and consciousness all arise from or are different aspects of some single "substance" (neutral monism) e) consciousness and matter are "radically different kinds of things" (dualism) f) the question is unanswerable and/or incomprehensible to us (mysterianism)
  - jadbox 3y ago
    Thank you for that catch, yes, idealistic monism. Oh, I should have added E for as I already mentioned monism. D & F are also interesting positions. Neutral-monism sounds like an hegelian dialectic [the gap]: Many neutral monists hold that the terms “physical” and “mental” apply only to groups of neutral entities, not individual ones, "The stuff of which the world of our experience is composed is, in my belief, neither mind nor matter, but something more primitive than either. Both mind and matter seem to be composite, and the stuff of which they are compounded lies in a sense between the two, in a sense above them both, like a common ancestor". (Russell 1921: 10–11)
- tsimionescu 3y ago
  Is c really a workable hypothesis? It doesn't seem it could account for most of what we observe, at least not if we don't start believing in new sun gods or something like that. Ultimately, if the world has a constant shape that looks the same to most people, it resembles what we call matter more than what we call consciousness.

jadbox 3y ago

Beyond the ego, what is this conscious stuff providing awareness qualia? It seems we must assert one of these options: a) consciousness is an emergent system of matter (materialism). b) matter contains elements of consciousness (panpsychism). c) matter/energy is consciousness with varying levels of complexity (monism).

antonvs 3y ago
Your option (c) is idealistic monism specifically, since physical monism corresponds to materialism. And then there's: d) matter, energy, and consciousness all arise from or are different aspects of some single "substance" (neutral monism) e) consciousness and matter are "radically different kinds of things" (dualism) f) the question is unanswerable and/or incomprehensible to us (mysterianism)
- jadbox 3y ago
  Thank you for that catch, yes, idealistic monism. Oh, I should have added E for as I already mentioned monism. D & F are also interesting positions. Neutral-monism sounds like an hegelian dialectic [the gap]: Many neutral monists hold that the terms “physical” and “mental” apply only to groups of neutral entities, not individual ones, "The stuff of which the world of our experience is composed is, in my belief, neither mind nor matter, but something more primitive than either. Both mind and matter seem to be composite, and the stuff of which they are compounded lies in a sense between the two, in a sense above them both, like a common ancestor". (Russell 1921: 10–11)
tsimionescu 3y ago
Is c really a workable hypothesis? It doesn't seem it could account for most of what we observe, at least not if we don't start believing in new sun gods or something like that. Ultimately, if the world has a constant shape that looks the same to most people, it resembles what we call matter more than what we call consciousness.