[FRIAM] A longer response to Dave's question

[Prof David West]

Eric,

If the altered states arose from the use of alcohol, opiates, and "recreational" use of hallucinogens, you are correct that the experiences are unreliable.

But if the altered state arose as a byproduct of "being in the zone" as experienced by athletes, for one example, the experience is totally reliable. The method of attaining the state of "in the zoneness" is unreliable.

If the altered state arose from diligent application of meditation, yoga, even introspection, the reliability is intermediate, as is the method for achieving the state.

I would argue that it is possible to "direct" or "contextualize" a hallucinogen induced altered state such that the experience is more reliable than typically acknowledged.

It is my belief, but as yet this is just a belief, that it is possible to develop a "discipline" a "method" by which we might "make sense" of the altered state experience(s) in a more or less direct manner. Not, just as insights or metaphors to be exploited in the realm of the "normal."

I am rereading James, as the last time I visited his ideas was thirty years ago.

davew


On Mon, Feb 24, 2020, at 4:32 PM, Eric Charles wrote:
> Come on guys.... 
> 
> We all consider most of what is experienced under altered states unreliable, EVEN when we associate great insight with those same experience. Yes, the apocryphal dream lead to the (now confirmed) belief that benzene is a ring, but NOT to the belief that benzene was made up of snakes. 
> 
> So we have a condition that generates insights that would not otherwise have been gotten (or, which would have taken much longer to get), but it also generates a lot of things that aren't insights. After all that generation has happened, we sort through the experiences by various methods and decide what to keep and what not to. 
> 
> "Are there conditions that more reliably generate insights?" is a straightforward question for experimental investigation. William James was super interested in that type of question, but the field didn't like his inquiries in that direction, so we still don't know much in the way of answers. 
> 
> "How do we, in practice, determine which experiences were insights? is an anthropological / sociological / qualitative-psychology question. The answer, in most domains, is that people decide what to believe mostly using heuristic judgments, often with maintenance of social congruence weighing heavily. I have no answers to offer specific to this context. "Abduction" should be discussed much more in this context, but hardly anyone has any idea what that is. 
> 
> "How SHOULD we determine which experiences were insightful?" is a philosophical question, of great interest to Peirce who, I think, is cool with any initial source of such beliefs. 
> 
> Peirce does have occasional mystic/transcendent leanings, especially later in life, but I have trouble deciphering those writings, so can't really help with illuminating them. He definitely thinks those leanings are compatible with everything else here is saying, but I can't see it.
> 
> On Mon, Feb 24, 2020, 5:27 AM Prof David West <profwest at fastmail.fm> wrote:
>> __
>> Nick,
>> 
>> Not dismissive,but definitely skeptical.
>> 
>> A metaphorical account of my problem.
>> 
>> Since the Age of Enlightenment, a host of people interested in knowledge, how we know, what we can know, what we can take as "fact," what might be deemed as "truth," etc. have developed philosophies and methods to answer these questions. Peirce is but one example.
>> 
>> Visualize that all of this thinking resulted in a really fine-grained sieve, through which we could pour our raw "stuff" and have it sort out the useful from the non. Upon close examination we note that the holes in the sieve consist, exclusively, of triangles and squares.
>> 
>> My "stuff" consists of spheres. None of my spheres can pass through the sieve, not because they are absent of, at least potentially, "knowledge" or "fact" or "truth:" but only because they are spherical and the sieve cannot deal with them.
>> 
>> Those responsible for creating the sieve and those who have made careers using the sieve to sift and sort "stuff" tend to hold the attitude that _Our Sieve _is the best sieve that human minds could possibly conceive and therefore anything not Sieve-able is irrelevant and of no possible value.
>> 
>> Peirce has produced a very fine sieve, but it is of no, (or very little), use to me. This was a disappointing discovery, for me, because, at least initially, I thought Peirce admitted a bit of the mystical into his philosophy.
>> 
>> ******
>> 
>> There have been sieve-makers who specialize in circles instead of triangles and squares. I have studied many of them, noting consistencies and differences. I also "know" where one "has got it right" and another "just misses the mark." But how do I "know" this?
>> 
>> Two years ago, I was driving overnight from Salt Lake City to Santa Fe to come to FRIAM. En route, just southeast of Moab, I stopped to have a conversation with Brigham Young. (A combination of pain, drugs, and Hatha Yoga made this possible.) The conversation concerned the reasons and mechanisms responsible for the evolution of very pro-female religions (Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Mormonism) to near absolute misogyny. I took notes and later went back to see if Brigham had actually said any of this while he was alive. He did. I had read all of that material decades ago. What was the mechanism that allowed/prompted the mental coalescence of that information into a cogent conversation in a dry wash, sitting naked, next to an imaginary campfire, with Brigham's "presence" in the shadows? Could it be replicated? Could I drop a bit of acid and use the same "method" to write an academic paper — or at least a good first draft of one?
>> 
>> In Buddhism there is no "self." So what is it that reincarnates? I "know" the answer. 
>> 
>> Right now I am trying to sort out an amalgam of process philosophy (Bergson, Whitehead), Hermeneutics (Heidegger), quantum interpretations, quantum consciousness, embodied mind and a couple of other threads; and from that mixture craft a "lens" through which I can examine all that I have read about Zen, alchemy, hermetic, Sufism, ... and all the other esoterica (and first hand experience) I have absorbed over the decades.
>> 
>> Open for suggestions.
>> 
>> 
>> [An aside: discounting Kekule's Ouroboros dream would be easier were it not for the fact that his notation and a host of other organic chemistry derived from dreams of atoms dancing, holding hands, and forming chains. Benzene was but one of many instances of his "dream induced chemistry."]
>> 
>> davew
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Sun, Feb 23, 2020, at 6:16 PM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:
>>> Dave,

>>> 

>>> You have indulged me as much as any other human on earth, and so it distresses me to hear you say that I would dismiss experiences in extremis out of hand. Let it be the case that Archimedes solved the king’s crown problem while lolling in a hot bath. Let it be the case that Kerkule solved the benzene problem while lolling in a hot bath. Let it be the case that Watson and Crick were lolling in a hot bath (oh those Brits!) when they discovered the double helix. I would say that, there was SOME grounds (however weak) to suspect that hot bathing led to scientific insight. In fact, it is one of the great advantages of Peirce’s position that weak inductions and abduction have the same *logical* status as strong ones and worthy always to be entertained. I DON’T believe, as I think many do, that extreme experiences have any special claim on wisdom. Dying declarations are attended to NOT because a dying person necessarily has great wisdom, but because we are unlikely to hear from that person again in the future. 

>>> 

>>> I suppose you might ague that the reason to go to extreme states is the same as the reason to go the Antarctic or the moon. There MIGHT be something interesting there, but until you have been there, you will never know, for sure, will you? The crunch comes when you are deciding on how much resources to devote to the exploration of extremes, given that those resources will be subtracted from those devoted to the stuff such known realities as climate change. If it’s a choice of exploring Mars or exploring climate change, you know where my vote would go.

>>> 

>>> But that has no bearing on whether I would encourage or discourage anyone to go with their individual curiosity. One of our number here is interested in exploring a variant of ESP. I say let’s go! 

>>> 

>>> 

>>> Nick

>>> 

>>> Nicholas Thompson

>>> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

>>> Clark University

>>> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com

>>> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

>>> 

>>> 

>>> 

>>> 

>>> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *Prof David West
>>> *Sent:* Sunday, February 23, 2020 4:15 AM
>>> *To:* friam at redfish.com
>>> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] A longer response to Dave's question
>>> 

>>> 

>>> Eric, Nick, et.al.,

>>> 

>>> "Well, [Dave] here's another nice mess you've gotten me into."

>>> 

>>> My issue/problem/quest — I have a body of "stuff" and I want to determine if there are ways to think about it in a "useful" manner.

>>> 

>>> The "stuff" appears pretty mundane: assertions, observations, conjectures, metaphors and models, even theory. The problem is provenance: directly or indirectly from, loosely defined, altered states of consciousness. Examples of indirect would be reports from enlightened mystics or dream experiences (ala Kekule or Jung). Direct would be psychedelics.

>>> 

>>> Nick might have me dismiss the entire corpus; stating it has the same value as the latest Marvel universe movie.

>>> 

>>> I disagree. But, by what means, what method, can "fact" even "truth" be discovered and shared. Peirce offers no real assistance. Nor does any other school of epistemology I have encountered.

>>> 

>>> Is there an approach to thinking about my "stuff" that would, at minimum, enable more consistent discovery of examples like Eric cites in #8 of his list. Would it not be useful to be able to quickly identify and focus on insights with the potential to "hold up pretty well."

>>> 

>>> Eric states there are reasons to believe (in #7) that altered states are less reliable, but I would argue, in some cases, the exact opposite. Especially with regard the ability to perceive stimuli of which perceive but never consciously "register" because our brain has filtered them out as being irrelevant. Mescaline can be an instrument as revealing as a microscope or a telescope and it would be worthwhile, I think, to learn how to make effective use of it.

>>> 

>>> The crux of my dilemma remains, I think there is gold in them thar hills, but don't have a means of mining and refining.

>>> 

>>> davew

>>> 

>>> 

>>> On Sat, Feb 22, 2020, at 10:41 PM, Eric Charles wrote:

>>>> If we are willing to go back and forth a bit between being philosophers and psychologists for a moment, there are far more interesting things to talk about regarding "altered states".... here are the some of the issues: 

>>>> 

>>>>  1. When someone claims to be responding to something, we should believe they are responding to *something*. 
>>>>  2. People generally suck at stating what they are responding to, even in highly mundane situations. 
>>>>  3. It is worth studying any types of experiences that lead fairly reliably to other certain future experiences, because in such situations one has a chance discover what it is people are *actually *responding to. 
>>>>  4. As we are complex dynamic systems, human development is affected by all sorts of things in non-obvious ways.
>>>>  5. There is no *a priori *reason to discount the insights one experiences under "altered states of consciousness", but also no *a priori* reason to give them special credence. 
>>>>  6. The degree to which a someone has a sense of certainty about something is not generally a reliable measure of how likely that thing is to hold up in the long run, unless many, many, many other assumptions are met.
>>>>  7. There is likely good reason to think that altered states of consciousness are less reliable in general than "regular" states.
>>>>  8. There are many examples that suggest certain insights-that-turn-out-to-hold-up-pretty-well, which were first experienced when under an altered state, were unlikely to have been experienced without that altered state. 
>>>> Is that the type of stuff we were are poking at?

>>>> 

>>>> 

>>>> -----------

>>>> Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.

>>>> Department of Justice - Personnel Psychologist

>>>> American University - Adjunct Instructor

>>>> 

>>>> 

>>>> 

>>>> 

>>>> On Sat, Feb 22, 2020 at 2:30 PM Frank Wimberly <wimberly3 at gmail.com> wrote:

>>>>> Agreed

>>>>> 

>>>>> ---

>>>>> Frank C. Wimberly, PhD

>>>>> 505 670-9918

>>>>> Santa Fe, NM

>>>>> 

>>>>> On Sat, Feb 22, 2020, 12:25 PM Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com> wrote:

>>>>>> Frank writes:

>>>>>> 

>>>>>> <It would constitute proof that Marcus exists if he were to admit that I was correct in our years-ago argument when I said that gender defines an equivalence relation on the set of people.>

>>>>>> 

>>>>>> Definitions. Notation. Argh, who cares. Where’s that neuralyzer, let me get rid of them.

>>>>>> (That should at least be evidence of continuity!)

>>>>>> 

>>>>>> Marcus

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>>> 

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>> 
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