Friam

A longer response to Dave's question

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Marcus G. Daniels

Re: A longer response to Dave's question

Nick writes:

< What, a priori, constitutes an "edge". How do we know where "edges" are? >

Edge in this context could mean entities that have low betweenness.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betweenness_centrality

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of [hidden email] <[hidden email]>
Sent: Sunday, February 23, 2020 5:37 PM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A longer response to Dave's question

Glen, I really want to punt this to Eric, but I have one question for you.

What, a priori, constitutes an "edge". How do we know where "edges" are?
To take an absurd example, imagine that we had a way of flying an airplane
above 1,000 mph and below 600 mph without ever passing through 740 mph. So,
somebody says, "We've never tried 740; let's try that!" Would that be an
edge? So, "edginess" is defined only by paucity of data? Or is there
something else to it?

N

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Sunday, February 23, 2020 4:56 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A longer response to Dave's question

You used the word 'credence'. So maybe what I'm gonna say is irrelevant. But
edge cases *do* present high value, low N, experimental opportunites. One
set that comes to mind are the twins, where one went to space and the other
didn't. The same could be said of rare *people* like the autistic, or those
with other conditions that aren't squarely within 1 sigma of the mean.

To suggest, which you didn't quite do,
[NST===>] But I did, so your comment is important to me, anyway.
that the rare is no *more* insightful than the common, would be a conflation
of different *types* of insight.
[NST===>] I am interested in the notion of types of insight and why the
scare-asterisks, or are they emphasis-asterisks. Can you say more?

In fact, I'd argue that a complete study of the edge cases is MORE important
than yet another study of the normal cases. Taking massive doses of LSD is
no different from flying your new plane at 6 G's. What you learn will
probably be more significant than hanging with the old men at the Denny's or
flying your 737 on typical flight plans (if you don't die, of course).

On February 22, 2020 1:41:55 PM PST, Eric Charles
<[hidden email]> wrote:
>   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.
--
glen

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Prof David West

Re: A longer response to Dave's question

In reply to this post by thompnickson2

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, [hidden email] 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
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Sunday, February 23, 2020 4:15 AM
To: [hidden email]
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:

When someone claims to be responding to something, we should believe they are responding to something.
People generally suck at stating what they are responding to, even in highly mundane situations.
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.
As we are complex dynamic systems, human development is affected by all sorts of things in non-obvious ways.
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.
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.
There is likely good reason to think that altered states of consciousness are less reliable in general than "regular" states.
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 <[hidden email]> wrote:
Agreed

---
Frank C. Wimberly, PhD
505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Sat, Feb 22, 2020, 12:25 PM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> 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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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
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Eric Charles-2

Re: A longer response to Dave's question

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 <[hidden email]> 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, [hidden email] 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
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Sunday, February 23, 2020 4:15 AM
To: [hidden email]
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:

When someone claims to be responding to something, we should believe they are responding to something.
People generally suck at stating what they are responding to, even in highly mundane situations.
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.
As we are complex dynamic systems, human development is affected by all sorts of things in non-obvious ways.
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.
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.
There is likely good reason to think that altered states of consciousness are less reliable in general than "regular" states.
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 <[hidden email]> wrote:
Agreed

---
Frank C. Wimberly, PhD
505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Sat, Feb 22, 2020, 12:25 PM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> 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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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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Prof David West

Re: A longer response to Dave's question

In reply to this post by Prof David West

an addendum to my last post

The human perceptual system is incredibly sensitive.

As mentioned before, the human eye can detect a single photon - but this is deceptive as it takes approximately nine photons arriving more or less at the same time for a sensor to actually trigger an electrical impulse to the brain. Even though the eye cannot detect infrared or ultra-violet, sensors embedded in the skin certainly can. All of the five standard senses are sensitive to a much greater degree than typically noticed. Then there are all the other "senses" like orientation and balance, kinesthetic, internal state awareness, even aesthetic senses like Christopher Alexander's KWAN.

The amount of information captured by that system is immense, and — apparently, from what I have learned about cognitive science — processed as an integrated whole albeit with focal activation with the brain.

Our brains (plus entire perceptual system) seem to have evolved for survival and survival is enhanced if we "ignore" much of the sensory inputs we receive so that we can better recognize the "exception cases." E.g. "pay attention to those 17 pixels of brown and gold with an edge in the center as it is likely a tiger. Ignore all the other surrounding pixels as irrelevant."

That which we deem "experience" is but a small subset of what is actually perceived/detected/sensed. The set of acknowledged permutations of inputs — the "things" we have experience of — are likewise a very limited subset of that which might exist, could be experienced.

It is possible to "extend" our perceptual awareness and "enlarge" the set of experiences. An oenophile, for example, is one who has trained taste and smell senses to become aware of "nose" and "bouquet," and "overtones of raspberry and chocolate."

Huxley's Doors of Perception is an account of how Mescaline allows an awareness of perceptions/sensations/experiences that are normally filtered out. He also speaks of the ability to utilize these experiences/sensations to "think with." For example relating a particular hue he sees on a flower in his garden to the use of colors in paintings by specific artists. Or, seeing the "meaning" behind the words expressed in specific poems.

In some manner, the proper administration of a psychedelic could be considered another form of "training" leading to increased sensitivity, awareness, and experience somewhat akin to learning how to appreciate wine.

This leads to the question: just how valuable is a method, a philosophy, of experience that excludes, what appears to me to be a very large "data set?"

davew

On Mon, Feb 24, 2020, at 11:27 AM, Prof David West 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, [hidden email] 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
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Sunday, February 23, 2020 4:15 AM
To: [hidden email]
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:

When someone claims to be responding to something, we should believe they are responding to something.
People generally suck at stating what they are responding to, even in highly mundane situations.
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.
As we are complex dynamic systems, human development is affected by all sorts of things in non-obvious ways.
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.
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.
There is likely good reason to think that altered states of consciousness are less reliable in general than "regular" states.
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 <[hidden email]> wrote:
Agreed

---
Frank C. Wimberly, PhD
505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Sat, Feb 22, 2020, 12:25 PM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> 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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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
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============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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Prof David West

Re: A longer response to Dave's question

In reply to this post by Eric Charles-2

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 <[hidden email]> 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, [hidden email] 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
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Sunday, February 23, 2020 4:15 AM
To: [hidden email]
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:

When someone claims to be responding to something, we should believe they are responding to something.
People generally suck at stating what they are responding to, even in highly mundane situations.
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.
As we are complex dynamic systems, human development is affected by all sorts of things in non-obvious ways.
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.
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.
There is likely good reason to think that altered states of consciousness are less reliable in general than "regular" states.
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 <[hidden email]> wrote:
Agreed

---
Frank C. Wimberly, PhD
505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Sat, Feb 22, 2020, 12:25 PM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> 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
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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thompnickson2

Re: A longer response to Dave's question

In reply to this post by Prof David West

David,

Well, Peirce begins with the premise that doubt is a painful state and that violation of expectations leads to doubt. Let say, for a moment, that you were wired up so that doubt is a joyful state. That would lead you across the map of experience by a very different route than I am led. Now even Peirce admits that a little bit of doubt can be diverting. He has an example of passing time between connections at a train station by entertaining doubts as to the best route to take from one city to another. So, the doubt-pleasure-doubt-pain thing seems to be a dimension, even in Peirce. Heck, even I enjoy a little bit of doubt in my life. But from my years-ago reading of Castenada and talking to people who enjoyed hallucinogens, I am pretty sure taking drugs would too much doubt for this old apollonian.

Now this would explain why Peirce is of so little use to you. The test for reality for Peirce is predictability. In my discussion, and perhaps Eric’s, we have been asking you to apply that test to your experiences. I E, if your experiences in extremis don’t lead to a capacity to predict better and experience less doubt, then to hell with them. But if you love doubt, then Peirce’s pragmaticism is of no use to you. Am I getting closer?

But there is another possibility. Konrad Lorenz, the ethologist who won a Nobel with Tinbergen and vonFrisch, loved to talk about the “Innate School Marm”. I think of her as sitting at the head of the room, with a box of tiny but potent candies on her desk. Every time a student does something “good”, she gives him or her one of these little candies. Now, the brain (OH GOD HERE I AM A BEHAVIORIST TALKING ABOUT THE BRAIN) seems to be wired up like the I.S.M. It has at its disposal a pot of pleasure from which it doles out little dollops as we go through our day. When we take drugs, it’s like the day when the bad boys in the class stole the box of candies, locked themselves in the storeroom, and consumed them all at once. You have overthrown the Innate School Marm.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

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

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Monday, February 24, 2020 3:27 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A longer response to Dave's question

Nick,

Not dismissive,but definitely skeptical.

A metaphorical account of my problem.

******

In Buddhism there is no "self." So what is it that reincarnates? I "know" the answer.

Open for suggestions.

davew

On Sun, Feb 23, 2020, at 6:16 PM, [hidden email] 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
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Sunday, February 23, 2020 4:15 AM
To: [hidden email]
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:

When someone claims to be responding to something, we should believe they are responding to something.
People generally suck at stating what they are responding to, even in highly mundane situations.
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.
As we are complex dynamic systems, human development is affected by all sorts of things in non-obvious ways.
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.
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.
There is likely good reason to think that altered states of consciousness are less reliable in general than "regular" states.
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 <[hidden email]> wrote:
Agreed

---
Frank C. Wimberly, PhD
505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Sat, Feb 22, 2020, 12:25 PM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> 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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gepr

Re: A longer response to Dave's question

In reply to this post by Prof David West

https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?cond=&term=psilocybin&cntry=&state=&city=&dist=

Eric is relying on ambiguity in the term "reliable" and the phrase "what is experienced under altered states" when he appeals to common sense with "Come on guys ...". If what one experiences after drinking alcohol were unreliable, it wouldn't be addictive. The experiences under alcohol, opiates, and recreational use of *some* hallucinogens are reliable almost by definition. But if you take a super-specific meaning of the term "reliable", then you can wiggle your way into Eric's not-so-common sense. Similarly, "what is experienced" comes in so many forms and layers, it's not only a common sense fallacy, it's also an over-generalization. Sure, even if you get in a bar fight 90% of the time you get drunk, with high reliability, the triggers for that fight probably exhibit high variation. So, really, some experiences are reliable and some are not. The task is to figure out which ones are and which one's are not.

Our whole discussion seems rife with such errors, probably because we're insisting on talking about things in general, with few particulars. I'd argue the above listed clinical trials are doing a good job of developing a method/discipline for altered states. And I'd encourage anyone hunting for such a method/discipline to participate in the effort. Even if you're as frightened as Nick by such, you can still consider donations. E.g. https://maps.org/

On 2/24/20 7:56 AM, Prof David West wrote:
> 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."

> 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.

--
☣ uǝlƃ

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uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

thompnickson2

Re: A longer response to Dave's question

Hi, Glen,

I don't think Eric is talking about the reliability of what happens when one get's drunk; I think he is talking about the applicability of lessons one might learn while being drunk to life when one is NOT drunk. I suppose one might ask why am I privileging sobriety? Isn't it also the case that the lessons I learn while NOT drunk have limited applicability to life while drunk? Why not focus on that?

I like the plainness of what Glen writes below:

Even if you're as frightened as Nick by such, you can still consider donations. E.g. https://maps.org/

Indeed, I am frightened by these drugs. Frightened for myself, frightened more for my grand children, etc. Yes I think it goes back to that Hegelian thing, Apollonians and Dionysians. Dionysians see life as a bunch of opportunities; Apollonians see life itself as the opportunity, and anything that threatens it as a hazard. The Dionysian nightmare is confinement; the Apollonian nightmare is of being lost and never getting back. Does this explain why so many of the Dionysians I know had strict religious backgrounds? They were members of a congregation, once. For me, FRIAM is my first.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

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

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of u?l? ?
Sent: Monday, February 24, 2020 12:30 PM
To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A longer response to Dave's question

https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?cond=&term=psilocybin&cntry=&state=&city=&dist=

Eric is relying on ambiguity in the term "reliable" and the phrase "what is experienced under altered states" when he appeals to common sense with "Come on guys ...". If what one experiences after drinking alcohol were unreliable, it wouldn't be addictive. The experiences under alcohol, opiates, and recreational use of *some* hallucinogens are reliable almost by definition. But if you take a super-specific meaning of the term "reliable", then you can wiggle your way into Eric's not-so-common sense. Similarly, "what is experienced" comes in so many forms and layers, it's not only a common sense fallacy, it's also an over-generalization. Sure, even if you get in a bar fight 90% of the time you get drunk, with high reliability, the triggers for that fight probably exhibit high variation. So, really, some experiences are reliable and some are not. The task is to figure out which ones are and which one's are not.

Our whole discussion seems rife with such errors, probably because we're insisting on talking about things in general, with few particulars. I'd argue the above listed clinical trials are doing a good job of developing a method/discipline for altered states. And I'd encourage anyone hunting for such a method/discipline to participate in the effort. Even if you're as frightened as Nick by such, you can still consider donations. E.g. https://maps.org/

On 2/24/20 7:56 AM, Prof David West wrote:

> 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."

> 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.

☣ uǝlƃ

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gepr

Re: A longer response to Dave's question

Those clinical trials *are* targeting lessons that can be learned/applied about/within sober life. Plus, it's naive to even disjointly separate sober life from drunken life ... any more than it would be to separate, say, Ca+-deficient life from Ca+ life. Alcohol (and opiates) is used by humans similarly to the way many animals use mind-altering substances. This sober-drunk dichotomy you're assuming is paper thin, if it exists at all.

It's almost as if you're saying that, for example, depressed people should just buck up, smile more, and behave like non-depressed people. This is why we have a "disease model of alcoholism" (with which I *disagree* but *support*) ... because for so long, what it seems like you're calling Apollonians argued that alcoholism is a *moral* failing. That disease model would not be necessary if we would simply abandon the false sober-drunk dichotomy. Maybe we extend it to those of us with cancer. If we just had the right attitude, maybe we wouldn't have gotten cancer? I don't know. It just seems that your argument is kinda weird.

On 2/24/20 11:58 AM, [hidden email] wrote:
> I don't think Eric is talking about the reliability of what happens when one get's drunk; I think he is talking about the applicability of lessons one might learn while being drunk to life when one is NOT drunk. I suppose one might ask why am I privileging sobriety? Isn't it also the case that the lessons I learn while NOT drunk have limited applicability to life while drunk? Why not focus on that?

--
☣ uǝlƃ

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uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

Steve Smith

Re: A longer response to Dave's question

In reply to this post by thompnickson2

On the Utility of Perception/Mood/Judgement/Inhibition-Altering conditions and Reality

It feels as if this subset of FriAM has begun to converge on a common discussion, albeit from different perspectives with different assumptions and different judgements. Let me add my own subroutine to the annealing schedule:

Re: Dave's communion with a faux Brigham Young in the desert in front of a virtual burning bush (erh... campfire). I think Dave will agree that the specific imagery of one of the most revered elders in the faith-tradition he was raised in is not coincidental for him to "consult" while on a mystical quest to untangle a Gordian knot central to his identity and place in the world. I think he would NOT expect anyone without that embedding to meet Brigham or Joseph. A good friend/colleague a few years my elder likes to make the deliberate mis-statement "too much LDS in the sixties" to describe people whose perceptions are not aligned with his own.

Among FriAMsters, there would be some here who would instead meet Peirce or Einstein or Newton or even Aquinas or Aristotle. Sarbajit or Mohammed would more likely meet a character from their own pantheons. Others might commune with Coyote or Raven or a Tree. And rather than a discussion, they might have a wrestling match or flying contest or illicit orgy to work on their Gordian Knot of choice.

Eric's point that the apocryphal Benzene-as-Ouroboros ultimately yielded insight about circularity/ringness/closedness, while the snake/dragon/worm aspect was discarded as "excess meaning" (to try to use Glen's terminology?). Dave's "vision in the desert mountains" might have lead to insights (loosening/re-arranging of his Gordian Knot regarding the ?pro-female? Ibrahamic religions) and maybe some insights about his own relationship to the Patriarchy in which he was raised, but he would probably NOT prescribe to any of us NOT from the LDS fold to jack up on pain/drugs/breathing and go to that particular arroyo/wash and expect to meet Brigham Young.

Dave's metaphor of a sieve with square and triangular holes and whether it passes spheres well if at all is a very loosely applicable one I suppose, if you assume a specific size or shapes that are not symmetric (geometric cross-sections rather than tetrahedra/cubes/spheres). Certainly more complex semi-permeable membranes which select for shape would be yet more apt.

I very strongly agree with his analysis that in our multi-scale adaptation to our environment and the threats/opportunities offered against our survival/procreation unction (deeper than, but presented as instincts?) has lead us to have some pretty specific filters. As multicellular, warm-blooded vertebrates with highly developed visual and linguistic neural mechanisms we are both *highly adaptable* and *somewhat specific* at the same time. We probably can't perceive/think very well in the milieu that the great cetaceans do (communication over vast distances, a mostly 3D volumetric domain with relatively "boring-to-them" surfaces, etc.) and vice-versa.

Given this, anything that helps us make excursions (excurde?) from the envelopes of perception we have co-created with our environments (built environments, infrastructures, etc.) has the potential for expanding our awareness and admitting qualitatively new insights into "the nature of reality" (assuming there IS such a thing as an objective reality outside of our individual/collective selves).

I personally use computer-mediated perception (including simulation models and visual-auditory-haptic synthetic sensoria) to try to achieve this expanded awareness/insight into real-world phenomena, but with a tacit goal of being able to "find my way back" and "lead someone else there", or better yet "kit others out to find their own way".

The early "mountain men" of US expansion were perhaps most effective if they *didn't* function well in polite society, or at least were tuned to perform much better *outside of* polite society. But if they didn't bother to come back TO society (recross the Mississippi to the bars/brothels for the dead of winter, profligately spending up their wealth of beaver-pelts or gold nuggets) or were unable to articulate *where* they had been (even through tall tales, but possibly through detailed journals/maps) and what they had seen, then they didn't provide much utility to the rest of us. Similarly opium eaters and other mystics who simply fall into their own navels and/or return from such journeys a raving lunatics (of any amplitude) don't (superficially?) offer us a lot. On the other hand, those of us who can *tolerate* what seem like wild ravings long enough hear the signal in the noise *might* learn something, just as the bar/brothel-keeps who humored/endured/embraced the trappers and lone-prospectors who wintered among them might very well have learned a LOT about the plains and the Rockies and the great basin and Sierras, etc. by listening well and sorting out the tall tales from the factual information, or perhaps more aptly, being able to reduce the colorful descriptions to more mundane ones... knowing when "thousands and thousands" means "hundreds" or when "streams glittering with gold" actually refer to iron pyrite deposits... etc.

Walter Jon Williams, a successful but not all that famous Science Fiction writer from ABQ (Belen?) wrote a novel in the 90's entitled "HardWired" which was set in the Albuqurque-Flatstaff strip city of the near future. His protaganist was some kind of hardboiled futuristic private detective, but the salient feature was that he had 3 "pumps" (one Red, one White, one Blue) wired into his body, not unlike an insulin pump or a morphine drip. They appeared to be fairly well-accepted future tech, with the unintended side effects of the Red/White/Blue pharmaceuticals being minimal or at least understood. As this character went through his daily routine of seeking out the bad guys or fighting the powers that be (I forget the nature of the antagonists), he would dose himself with "white" to raise his energy and perceptual acuity, or "red" to take the edge off of the last dose of "white" or to allow his body/mind to rest/relax/refresh or counteract his basal biochemistry of adrenals to remain "cool" in a harsh situation. He reserved "blue" for expanding his awareness/sensorium to seek subtle clues or better insight into a problem. It was the first time I had found perception/mood altering drug-use as anything but self-indulgent self-abuse. Of course, the framing in the story was that this was all highly technically defined and controlled and as I remember it the protaganist had a strong sense of his own limits of how far to expand his perception/performance envelope with these drugs. Reducing it to a tristimulus red/white/blue basis vector to convolve with the higher-dimensional biochemical/perceptual/mood space of an unmodified human was a new way of seeing "drug culture" for me. Being of the emerging cyberpunk genre, it nicely mixed the human-enhancement of hard tech with pharmacuetical-tech.

Another writer (recently deceased), Vonda McIntyre, wrote "Of Mist, Grass, and Sand" with a more biogenic version of this deliberate dosing, though more in the context of healing using three snakes and their venom which they would reformulate after "tasting" their patients... generating appropriate sedatives, anti-biotic/viral/toxins, or hallucinagens according to their "needs". Written in the late 60s, there was a strong overtone of the drug-culture and undercurrent of back-to-nature of the time.

Ramble,

- Steve

On 2/24/20 9:16 AM, [hidden email] wrote:

David,

Well, Peirce begins with the premise that doubt is a painful state and that violation of expectations leads to doubt. Let say, for a moment, that you were wired up so that doubt is a joyful state. That would lead you across the map of experience by a very different route than I am led. Now even Peirce admits that a little bit of doubt can be diverting. He has an example of passing time between connections at a train station by entertaining doubts as to the best route to take from one city to another. So, the doubt-pleasure-doubt-pain thing seems to be a dimension, even in Peirce. Heck, even I enjoy a little bit of doubt in my life. But from my years-ago reading of Castenada and talking to people who enjoyed hallucinogens, I am pretty sure taking drugs would too much doubt for this old apollonian.

Now this would explain why Peirce is of so little use to you. The test for reality for Peirce is predictability. In my discussion, and perhaps Eric’s, we have been asking you to apply that test to your experiences. I E, if your experiences in extremis don’t lead to a capacity to predict better and experience less doubt, then to hell with them. But if you love doubt, then Peirce’s pragmaticism is of no use to you. Am I getting closer?

But there is another possibility. Konrad Lorenz, the ethologist who won a Nobel with Tinbergen and vonFrisch, loved to talk about the “Innate School Marm”. I think of her as sitting at the head of the room, with a box of tiny but potent candies on her desk. Every time a student does something “good”, she gives him or her one of these little candies. Now, the brain (OH GOD HERE I AM A BEHAVIORIST TALKING ABOUT THE BRAIN) seems to be wired up like the I.S.M. It has at its disposal a pot of pleasure from which it doles out little dollops as we go through our day. When we take drugs, it’s like the day when the bad boys in the class stole the box of candies, locked themselves in the storeroom, and consumed them all at once.   You have overthrown the Innate School Marm.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

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

From: Friam [hidden email] On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Monday, February 24, 2020 3:27 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A longer response to Dave's question

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, [hidden email] 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

[hidden email]

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

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West

Sent: Sunday, February 23, 2020 4:15 AM

To: [hidden email]

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:

When someone claims to be responding to something, we should believe they are responding to something.

People generally suck at stating what they are responding to, even in highly mundane situations.

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.

As we are complex dynamic systems, human development is affected by all sorts of things in non-obvious ways.

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.

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.

There is likely good reason to think that altered states of consciousness are less reliable in general than "regular" states.

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 <[hidden email]> wrote:

Agreed

---

Frank C. Wimberly, PhD

505 670-9918

Santa Fe, NM

On Sat, Feb 22, 2020, 12:25 PM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> 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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Marcus G. Daniels

Re: A longer response to Dave's question

Steve writes:

< I personally use computer-mediated perception (including simulation models and visual-auditory-haptic synthetic sensoria) to try to achieve this expanded awareness/insight into real-world phenomena, but with a tacit goal of being able to "find my way back" and "lead someone else there", or better yet "kit others out to find their own way". >

I categorize things into four piles:

Things I understand
Things I’d like to understand
Things I don’t care about
Things I found I was wrong about in #3.

#1 has to get over the bar of Feynman’s “What I cannot create I do not understand.” And specifically, I mean write a computer program to do it. I often don’t have patience for or interest in semi-formal discussions, or even most mathematical academic communication because it often falls short of what it would take to make it computable, useful, and informative. For them it is performative and part of their professional social interaction. They have different interests and goals.

#4 is where chemical-induced experiences or dreams seem potentially useful. Something to escalate priority of #3 items to #2; a way to avoid my filtering criteria. Like a movie I would never watch unless some friends had it on.

Marcus

Prof David West

Re: A longer response to Dave's question

In reply to this post by thompnickson2

I am bewildered ...

Doubt as pain? Why?

Not sure I have ever experienced doubt. I have used the word, sure, but not to describe a state of being, not even a state of uncertainty. If I say "I doubt that," I am really asserting a judgement about "that" lacking veracity.

Also confused about "test for reality being predictability." Predictability is a test for illusion — the illusion that in a complex world that is, at best, statistically predictable, increasing belief in predictability is a retreat from reality not a confirmation of it. You might recall my rant against Truth of some time back? The core of my argument then is found in my assertions here.

For me, Reality, is am emergent property of a whole of "integrated" experience.

My problem with Peirce is akin to my (dis)regard for math - only the easiest problems are amenable to resolution using that approach.

Another metaphor occurred to me.

von Gennep describes "rites of passage" with three stages: separation (where your identity and all of which you are certain is stripped from you); liminal (a "magical in-between where all things are possible); and incorporation (you are led to adopt your new identity and world view).

An altered state, however induced, is, for me, a liminal state where all things cognitive (knowledgeable? experience-able?) are possible. Re-incorporation is under your own volition., but it would be nice to have a "loom" to facilitate the weaving together of a tapestry of integrated experience/knowledge.

davew

On Mon, Feb 24, 2020, at 5:16 PM, [hidden email] wrote:

David,

Well, Peirce begins with the premise that doubt is a painful state and that violation of expectations leads to doubt. Let say, for a moment, that you were wired up so that doubt is a joyful state. That would lead you across the map of experience by a very different route than I am led. Now even Peirce admits that a little bit of doubt can be diverting. He has an example of passing time between connections at a train station by entertaining doubts as to the best route to take from one city to another. So, the doubt-pleasure-doubt-pain thing seems to be a dimension, even in Peirce. Heck, even I enjoy a little bit of doubt in my life. But from my years-ago reading of Castenada and talking to people who enjoyed hallucinogens, I am pretty sure taking drugs would too much doubt for this old apollonian.

Now this would explain why Peirce is of so little use to you. The test for reality for Peirce is predictability. In my discussion, and perhaps Eric’s, we have been asking you to apply that test to your experiences. I E, if your experiences in extremis don’t lead to a capacity to predict better and experience less doubt, then to hell with them. But if you love doubt, then Peirce’s pragmaticism is of no use to you. Am I getting closer?

But there is another possibility. Konrad Lorenz, the ethologist who won a Nobel with Tinbergen and vonFrisch, loved to talk about the “Innate School Marm”. I think of her as sitting at the head of the room, with a box of tiny but potent candies on her desk. Every time a student does something “good”, she gives him or her one of these little candies. Now, the brain (OH GOD HERE I AM A BEHAVIORIST TALKING ABOUT THE BRAIN) seems to be wired up like the I.S.M. It has at its disposal a pot of pleasure from which it doles out little dollops as we go through our day. When we take drugs, it’s like the day when the bad boys in the class stole the box of candies, locked themselves in the storeroom, and consumed them all at once.   You have overthrown the Innate School Marm.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Monday, February 24, 2020 3:27 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A longer response to Dave's question

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, [hidden email] 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
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Sunday, February 23, 2020 4:15 AM
To: [hidden email]
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:

When someone claims to be responding to something, we should believe they are responding to something.
People generally suck at stating what they are responding to, even in highly mundane situations.
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.
As we are complex dynamic systems, human development is affected by all sorts of things in non-obvious ways.
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.
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.
There is likely good reason to think that altered states of consciousness are less reliable in general than "regular" states.
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 <[hidden email]> wrote:
Agreed

---
Frank C. Wimberly, PhD
505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Sat, Feb 22, 2020, 12:25 PM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> 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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Prof David West

Re: A longer response to Dave's question

In reply to this post by gepr

I will be attending this in April: https://icpr2020.net/

related to the clinical trials that glen linked to

davew

On Mon, Feb 24, 2020, at 8:29 PM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:

>
> https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?cond=&term=psilocybin&cntry=&state=&city=&dist=
>
> Eric is relying on ambiguity in the term "reliable" and the phrase
> "what is experienced under altered states" when he appeals to common
> sense with "Come on guys ...". If what one experiences after drinking
> alcohol were unreliable, it wouldn't be addictive. The experiences
> under alcohol, opiates, and recreational use of *some* hallucinogens
> are reliable almost by definition. But if you take a super-specific
> meaning of the term "reliable", then you can wiggle your way into
> Eric's not-so-common sense. Similarly, "what is experienced" comes in
> so many forms and layers, it's not only a common sense fallacy, it's
> also an over-generalization. Sure, even if you get in a bar fight 90%
> of the time you get drunk, with high reliability, the triggers for that
> fight probably exhibit high variation. So, really, some experiences are
> reliable and some are not. The task is to figure out which ones are and
> which one's are not.
>
> Our whole discussion seems rife with such errors, probably because
> we're insisting on talking about things in general, with few
> particulars. I'd argue the above listed clinical trials are doing a
> good job of developing a method/discipline for altered states. And I'd
> encourage anyone hunting for such a method/discipline to participate in
> the effort. Even if you're as frightened as Nick by such, you can still
> consider donations. E.g. https://maps.org/
>
> On 2/24/20 7:56 AM, Prof David West wrote:
> > 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."
>
>
> > 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.
>
> --
> ☣ uǝlƃ
>
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Prof David West

Re: A longer response to Dave's question

In reply to this post by Steve Smith

Steve,

Timothy Leary became a big fan of computer-mediated perception but the whole movement fell apart, because of technical limitations extant for computers at the time, but mostly from a lack of imagination - the "virtual realities" that people tried to create were too solidly grounded in "this reality."

davew

On Mon, Feb 24, 2020, at 9:39 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:

On the Utility of Perception/Mood/Judgement/Inhibition-Altering conditions and Reality
It feels as if this subset of FriAM has begun to converge on a common discussion, albeit from different perspectives with different assumptions and different judgements. Let me add my own subroutine to the annealing schedule:
Re: Dave's communion with a faux Brigham Young in the desert in front of a virtual burning bush (erh... campfire).    I think Dave will agree that the specific imagery of one of the most revered elders in the faith-tradition he was raised in is not coincidental for him to "consult" while on a mystical quest to untangle a Gordian knot central to his identity and place in the world.    I think he would NOT expect anyone without that embedding to meet Brigham or Joseph. A good friend/colleague a few years my elder likes to make the deliberate mis-statement "too much LDS in the sixties" to describe people whose perceptions are not aligned with his own.
Among FriAMsters, there would be some here who would instead meet Peirce or Einstein or Newton or even Aquinas or Aristotle.   Sarbajit or Mohammed would more likely meet a character from their own pantheons. Others might commune with Coyote or Raven or a Tree. And rather than a discussion, they might have a wrestling match or flying contest or illicit orgy to work on their Gordian Knot of choice.
Eric's point that the apocryphal Benzene-as-Ouroboros ultimately yielded insight about circularity/ringness/closedness, while the snake/dragon/worm aspect was discarded as "excess meaning" (to try to use Glen's terminology?).   Dave's "vision in the desert mountains" might have lead to insights (loosening/re-arranging of his Gordian Knot regarding the ?pro-female? Ibrahamic religions) and maybe some insights about his own relationship to the Patriarchy in which he was raised, but he would probably NOT prescribe to any of us NOT from the LDS fold to jack up on pain/drugs/breathing and go to that particular arroyo/wash and expect to meet Brigham Young.
Dave's metaphor of a sieve with square and triangular holes and whether it passes spheres well if at all is a very loosely applicable one I suppose, if you assume a specific size or shapes that are not symmetric (geometric cross-sections rather than tetrahedra/cubes/spheres).   Certainly more complex semi-permeable membranes which select for shape would be yet more apt.
I very strongly agree with his analysis that in our multi-scale adaptation to our environment and the threats/opportunities offered against our survival/procreation unction (deeper than, but presented as instincts?) has lead us to have some pretty specific filters.    As multicellular, warm-blooded vertebrates with highly developed visual and linguistic neural mechanisms we are both *highly adaptable* and *somewhat specific* at the same time.   We probably can't perceive/think very well in the milieu that the great cetaceans do (communication over vast distances, a mostly 3D volumetric domain with relatively "boring-to-them" surfaces, etc.) and vice-versa.
Given this, anything that helps us make excursions (excurde?) from the envelopes of perception we have co-created with our environments (built environments, infrastructures, etc.) has the potential for expanding our awareness and admitting qualitatively new insights into "the nature of reality" (assuming there IS such a thing as an objective reality outside of our individual/collective selves).
I personally use computer-mediated perception (including simulation models and visual-auditory-haptic synthetic sensoria) to try to achieve this expanded awareness/insight into real-world phenomena, but with a tacit goal of being able to "find my way back" and "lead someone else there", or better yet "kit others out to find their own way".
   The early "mountain men" of US expansion were perhaps most effective if they *didn't* function well in polite society, or at least were tuned to perform much better *outside of* polite society. But if they didn't bother to come back TO society (recross the Mississippi to the bars/brothels for the dead of winter, profligately spending up their wealth of beaver-pelts or gold nuggets) or were unable to articulate *where* they had been (even through tall tales, but possibly through detailed journals/maps) and what they had seen, then they didn't provide much utility to the rest of us. Similarly opium eaters and other mystics who simply fall into their own navels and/or return from such journeys a raving lunatics (of any amplitude) don't (superficially?) offer us a lot.   On the other hand, those of us who can *tolerate* what seem like wild ravings long enough hear the signal in the noise *might* learn something, just as the bar/brothel-keeps who humored/endured/embraced the trappers and lone-prospectors who wintered among them might very well have learned a LOT about the plains and the Rockies and the great basin and Sierras, etc. by listening well and sorting out the tall tales from the factual information, or perhaps more aptly, being able to reduce the colorful descriptions to more mundane ones...   knowing when "thousands and thousands" means "hundreds" or when "streams glittering with gold" actually refer to iron pyrite deposits... etc.
Walter Jon Williams, a successful but not all that famous Science Fiction writer from ABQ (Belen?) wrote a novel in the 90's entitled "HardWired" which was set in the Albuqurque-Flatstaff strip city of the near future. His protaganist was some kind of hardboiled futuristic private detective, but the salient feature was that he had 3 "pumps" (one Red, one White, one Blue) wired into his body, not unlike an insulin pump or a morphine drip.   They appeared to be fairly well-accepted future tech, with the unintended side effects of the Red/White/Blue pharmaceuticals being minimal or at least understood.   As this character went through his daily routine of seeking out the bad guys or fighting the powers that be (I forget the nature of the antagonists), he would dose himself with "white" to raise his energy and perceptual acuity, or "red" to take the edge off of the last dose of "white" or to allow his body/mind to rest/relax/refresh or counteract his basal biochemistry of adrenals to remain "cool" in a harsh situation. He reserved "blue" for expanding his awareness/sensorium to seek subtle clues or better insight into a problem.     It was the first time I had found perception/mood altering drug-use as anything but self-indulgent self-abuse. Of course, the framing in the story was that this was all highly technically defined and controlled and as I remember it the protaganist had a strong sense of his own limits of how far to expand his perception/performance envelope with these drugs.   Reducing it to a tristimulus red/white/blue basis vector to convolve with the higher-dimensional biochemical/perceptual/mood space of an unmodified human was a new way of seeing "drug culture" for me.   Being of the emerging cyberpunk genre, it nicely mixed the human-enhancement of hard tech with pharmacuetical-tech.
Another writer (recently deceased), Vonda McIntyre, wrote "Of Mist, Grass, and Sand" with a more biogenic version of this deliberate dosing, though more in the context of healing using three snakes and their venom which they would reformulate after "tasting" their patients... generating appropriate sedatives, anti-biotic/viral/toxins, or hallucinagens according to their "needs".   Written in the late 60s, there was a strong overtone of the drug-culture and undercurrent of back-to-nature of the time.
Ramble,
- Steve
On 2/24/20 9:16 AM, [hidden email] wrote:
David,

Well, Peirce begins with the premise that doubt is a painful state and that violation of expectations leads to doubt. Let say, for a moment, that you were wired up so that doubt is a joyful state. That would lead you across the map of experience by a very different route than I am led. Now even Peirce admits that a little bit of doubt can be diverting. He has an example of passing time between connections at a train station by entertaining doubts as to the best route to take from one city to another. So, the doubt-pleasure-doubt-pain thing seems to be a dimension, even in Peirce. Heck, even I enjoy a little bit of doubt in my life. But from my years-ago reading of Castenada and talking to people who enjoyed hallucinogens, I am pretty sure taking drugs would too much doubt for this old apollonian.

Now this would explain why Peirce is of so little use to you. The test for reality for Peirce is predictability. In my discussion, and perhaps Eric’s, we have been asking you to apply that test to your experiences. I E, if your experiences in extremis don’t lead to a capacity to predict better and experience less doubt, then to hell with them. But if you love doubt, then Peirce’s pragmaticism is of no use to you. Am I getting closer?

But there is another possibility. Konrad Lorenz, the ethologist who won a Nobel with Tinbergen and vonFrisch, loved to talk about the “Innate School Marm”. I think of her as sitting at the head of the room, with a box of tiny but potent candies on her desk. Every time a student does something “good”, she gives him or her one of these little candies. Now, the brain (OH GOD HERE I AM A BEHAVIORIST TALKING ABOUT THE BRAIN) seems to be wired up like the I.S.M. It has at its disposal a pot of pleasure from which it doles out little dollops as we go through our day. When we take drugs, it’s like the day when the bad boys in the class stole the box of candies, locked themselves in the storeroom, and consumed them all at once.   You have overthrown the Innate School Marm.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam [hidden email] On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Monday, February 24, 2020 3:27 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A longer response to Dave's question

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, [hidden email] 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
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Sunday, February 23, 2020 4:15 AM
To: [hidden email]
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:

When someone claims to be responding to something, we should believe they are responding to something.
People generally suck at stating what they are responding to, even in highly mundane situations.
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.
As we are complex dynamic systems, human development is affected by all sorts of things in non-obvious ways.
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.
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.
There is likely good reason to think that altered states of consciousness are less reliable in general than "regular" states.
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 <[hidden email]> wrote:
Agreed

---
Frank C. Wimberly, PhD
505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Sat, Feb 22, 2020, 12:25 PM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> 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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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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gepr

Re: A longer response to Dave's question

In reply to this post by Prof David West

That's fantastic! If you have time, would you mind posting some notes about it afterward?

On 2/25/20 1:00 AM, Prof David West wrote:
> I will be attending this in April: https://icpr2020.net/

--
☣ uǝlƃ

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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

Marcus G. Daniels

Re: A longer response to Dave's question

In reply to this post by Prof David West

Dave writes:

< My problem with Peirce is akin to my (dis)regard for math - only the easiest problems are amenable to resolution using that approach. >

Programs are math when they are written in functional programming languages, esp. those languages with metaprogramming facilities and dependent types and/or interactive theorem provers. Sure some interesting programs will end-up being recursive.

Marcus

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of Prof David West <[hidden email]>
Sent: Tuesday, February 25, 2020 1:54 AM
To: [hidden email] <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A longer response to Dave's question

I am bewildered ...

Doubt as pain? Why?

For me, Reality, is am emergent property of a whole of "integrated" experience.

My problem with Peirce is akin to my (dis)regard for math - only the easiest problems are amenable to resolution using that approach.

Another metaphor occurred to me.

davew

On Mon, Feb 24, 2020, at 5:16 PM, [hidden email] wrote:

David,

Well, Peirce begins with the premise that doubt is a painful state and that violation of expectations leads to doubt. Let say, for a moment, that you were wired up so that doubt is a joyful state. That would lead you across the map of experience by a very different route than I am led. Now even Peirce admits that a little bit of doubt can be diverting. He has an example of passing time between connections at a train station by entertaining doubts as to the best route to take from one city to another. So, the doubt-pleasure-doubt-pain thing seems to be a dimension, even in Peirce. Heck, even I enjoy a little bit of doubt in my life. But from my years-ago reading of Castenada and talking to people who enjoyed hallucinogens, I am pretty sure taking drugs would too much doubt for this old apollonian.

Now this would explain why Peirce is of so little use to you. The test for reality for Peirce is predictability. In my discussion, and perhaps Eric’s, we have been asking you to apply that test to your experiences. I E, if your experiences in extremis don’t lead to a capacity to predict better and experience less doubt, then to hell with them. But if you love doubt, then Peirce’s pragmaticism is of no use to you. Am I getting closer?

But there is another possibility. Konrad Lorenz, the ethologist who won a Nobel with Tinbergen and vonFrisch, loved to talk about the “Innate School Marm”. I think of her as sitting at the head of the room, with a box of tiny but potent candies on her desk. Every time a student does something “good”, she gives him or her one of these little candies. Now, the brain (OH GOD HERE I AM A BEHAVIORIST TALKING ABOUT THE BRAIN) seems to be wired up like the I.S.M. It has at its disposal a pot of pleasure from which it doles out little dollops as we go through our day. When we take drugs, it’s like the day when the bad boys in the class stole the box of candies, locked themselves in the storeroom, and consumed them all at once.   You have overthrown the Innate School Marm.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

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

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West

Sent: Monday, February 24, 2020 3:27 AM

To: [hidden email]

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A longer response to Dave's question

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, [hidden email] 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

[hidden email]

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

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West

Sent: Sunday, February 23, 2020 4:15 AM

To: [hidden email]

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:

When someone claims to be responding to something, we should believe they are responding to something.

People generally suck at stating what they are responding to, even in highly mundane situations.

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.

As we are complex dynamic systems, human development is affected by all sorts of things in non-obvious ways.

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.

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.

There is likely good reason to think that altered states of consciousness are less reliable in general than "regular" states.

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 <[hidden email]> wrote:

Agreed

---

Frank C. Wimberly, PhD

505 670-9918

Santa Fe, NM

On Sat, Feb 22, 2020, 12:25 PM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> 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

============================================================

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

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============================================================

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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

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Eric Charles-2

Re: A longer response to Dave's question

In reply to this post by thompnickson2

Yes, following Nick's comments and my prior email, there are multiple issues, and I don't think I'm playing fast and loos with them, though maybe we need some additional terms to differentiate things.

1) There is a legitimate question about how reliably certain experiences can be produced under various circumstances. For example, how does one reliably get the sense of floating through a connected world when on certain drugs, chanting in certain circumstances with a group of believers, running continuously for a certain length of time, meditating steadily on the meaning of certain "koans", etc.

2) When one is in those "altered states" how reliable are the full variety of experiences they encounter? If, during one of these experiences, I see you melt into a puddle on the ground, can I gain nourishment by drinking you through a straw? When I experience benzene as snakes, and I throw the benzene a mouse, does it eat the mouse? Is the benzene happier when on a heat rock?

3) When the "altered state" is over, how reliable are the insights people am left with. We readily accept (now) that benzene is a ring, but none of of think it is made up of snakes.... but both of those certainly were experienced (see point 2), but the experiencer-in-question only considered the ring part insightful, and that seems worth noting. "Insights" that sustain after the altered states are over sometimes seem to be serious advances, but other times seems to produce problems, ranging from mundane dumb ideas ("Hey man, we should, like, quit our jobs and start a band, that only plays bowling alleys") to small tragedies (such as an aquantance who killed himself after an acid trip in which he thought he saw God and God didn't like him) to large tragedies (wars fought and lost due to visions of various types). How do we get a sense of which post-altered-state insights will pan out, and which wont?

William James would be all about 1 and 2. Peirce all about 3. Though they would both have at least some interest in all three.

-----------

Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Department of Justice - Personnel Psychologist

American University - Adjunct Instructor

[hidden email]

On Mon, Feb 24, 2020 at 2:58 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi, Glen,

I don't think Eric is talking about the reliability of what happens when one get's drunk; I think he is talking about the applicability of lessons one might learn while being drunk to life when one is NOT drunk. I suppose one might ask why am I privileging sobriety? Isn't it also the case that the lessons I learn while NOT drunk have limited applicability to life while drunk? Why not focus on that?

I like the plainness of what Glen writes below:

Even if you're as frightened as Nick by such, you can still consider donations. E.g. https://maps.org/

Indeed, I am frightened by these drugs. Frightened for myself, frightened more for my grand children, etc. Yes I think it goes back to that Hegelian thing, Apollonians and Dionysians. Dionysians see life as a bunch of opportunities; Apollonians see life itself as the opportunity, and anything that threatens it as a hazard. The Dionysian nightmare is confinement; the Apollonian nightmare is of being lost and never getting back. Does this explain why so many of the Dionysians I know had strict religious backgrounds? They were members of a congregation, once. For me, FRIAM is my first.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of u?l? ?
Sent: Monday, February 24, 2020 12:30 PM
To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A longer response to Dave's question

https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?cond=&term=psilocybin&cntry=&state=&city=&dist=

Eric is relying on ambiguity in the term "reliable" and the phrase "what is experienced under altered states" when he appeals to common sense with "Come on guys ...". If what one experiences after drinking alcohol were unreliable, it wouldn't be addictive. The experiences under alcohol, opiates, and recreational use of *some* hallucinogens are reliable almost by definition. But if you take a super-specific meaning of the term "reliable", then you can wiggle your way into Eric's not-so-common sense. Similarly, "what is experienced" comes in so many forms and layers, it's not only a common sense fallacy, it's also an over-generalization. Sure, even if you get in a bar fight 90% of the time you get drunk, with high reliability, the triggers for that fight probably exhibit high variation. So, really, some experiences are reliable and some are not. The task is to figure out which ones are and which one's are not.

Our whole discussion seems rife with such errors, probably because we're insisting on talking about things in general, with few particulars. I'd argue the above listed clinical trials are doing a good job of developing a method/discipline for altered states. And I'd encourage anyone hunting for such a method/discipline to participate in the effort. Even if you're as frightened as Nick by such, you can still consider donations. E.g. https://maps.org/

On 2/24/20 7:56 AM, Prof David West wrote:
> 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."

> 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.

--
☣ uǝlƃ

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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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