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Do Entheogens Generate Any Novel Philosophical Questions?

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Chadaev

Chadaev

All the usual disclaimers.
I've been wondering whether the DMT etc realms give rise to any philosophical questions which are genuinely new.

At first sight everything is novel in this zone. Modern western culture as judged by its official institutions knows virtually nothing about it. Yet, when you try to sort through the various philosophical issues that arise in response to these incredible experiences, it is less clear that they present genuinely novel questions of an ontological, metaphysical, epistemological, ethical, etc kind.

What are the entities? Well, there is a long debate about the reality of spirits...

Are the tryptamine worlds infinite? Well, there is a long history of thinking about infinity...

Might reality be a simulation? Itself a venerable issue - think of Descartes' demon...

I'm asking myself this basic question (about novel questions) because I'm trying to gain a clearer sense of what exactly the plants can offer philosophy.

Any thoughts?
 
Perhaps they don't generate novel questions because let's not forget as well that these plants have been in human hands for a long time, so the questions they have been raising, have been raised, some of them since time immemorial.

I'm going to really think harder throughout the day to see if I can remember any novel philosophical questions, but I think the magic of these entheogens is that we have these time-old philosophical questions which many may be aware of superficially since they permeate global culture (and perhaps universal culture), however for most people, these concepts remain perpetually abstract. Many would rather not even contemplate such matters because they are too abstract, and one simply can have great difficulty in wrapping one's mind around it, even minimally. Entheogens can have the tendency to plunge you straight into the heart of these core philosophical questions so that the user experiences such concepts as infinity, disembodied entities, God, etc...via direct, vivid experience so that some of these concepts leap from being abstract and virtually devoid of personal meaning to being practically tangible in some cases. It has a novel way of putting us in touch with the most important issues and dilemmas and questions that have concerned our species for tens of thousands of years, if not more.

(woot post #3000!)
 
I don't know if psychedelics are creating any new questions on the grand scale of all of humanity, but I feel pretty sure they can open an individual to new questions and outlooks which they might not have been consciously aware of.
 
I think you are right, Global, about the entheogens and their propensity to make metaphysical issues searingly present. Denis McKenna recalls that Terence called DMT a "metaphysical pill", and I think for many people that is definitely the case. It is such a gift!

So I agree also with spinCycle on this - though I'd put it a bit differently. After all an individual could encounter a question on DMT which had not previously been raised, and in this sense it would be one with significance "on the grand scale of all humanity", although humanity as such would take a long time to hear of it.

One of the questions that arises in this context is "What makes a question philosophical?"

Another concerns how we would recognise a question as genuinely "new" - rather than as a new edition of an established question.

(I suppose a background assumption is also that philosophy is a human practice revolving around a limited set of "eternal questions". I guess this assumption is open to challenge.)

Global said:
Perhaps they don't generate novel questions because let's not forget as well that these plants have been in human hands for a long time, so the questions they have been raising, have been raised, some of them since time immemorial.
Click to expand...

Despite the very plausible case for the use of entheogens in the Eleusinian Mysteries, and perhaps in other ancient Greek rites, I'm not sure that there are any ancient philosophical texts which give clear evidence of wrestling with the tryptamine experience. Does anyone here know otherwise?

A case could be made for Heraclitus, perhaps. Or for Parmenides' magnificent proem, but Parmenides is preoccupied by the message about Being qua unity which he receives, not with the realm of goddesses and chariots itself.

So we have the likelihood that the entheogens have been seeding philosophical thought for a very long time, but what we don't appear to have is philosophical reflection on the entheogens and their realms themselves.

So this then would be a possible novel question: "What is reality such that it can include the tryptamine experience?"

Would that count as a genuinely novel and fruitful philosophical question? And if so, when in the history of thought was it first asked?
 
To piggy-back on what Chadaef pointed out, the question "do psychedelics pose any novel philosophical questions?" is perhaps a philosophical question that I doubt would exist if psychedelics did not exist.

Otherwise, I would say that psychedelics do allow us to form novel questions in highly abstract personal languages. The problem is that this abstract personal language usually does not translate into words and, when it does, the questions that made sense in psychedelic mindspace suddenly seem incoherent, irrelevant, or trivial. So the question the question we should be asking is "are there questions that a sober mind cannot comprehend?". I would say that this is the case.

I also would say that, while psychedelics have not left me with many philosophically novel questions, they have given me many novel answers and channels of understanding that I never would have had access to otherwise. My general impression is that psychedelics have more to offer scientific areas, where the scientific and philosophical topics have yet to fully merge.
 
I think more than anything, they aid a person on their own journey of discovery. Humans have loved throughout the ages. Love is a common thing to all, it's not new, but it's no less meaningful for the individual.

For me, the psychedelics have greatly increased my sense of awareness, both in the general world and in myself.
 
Chadaev said:
So this then would be a possible novel question: "What is reality such that it can include the tryptamine experience?"
Click to expand...

That's a very good question. It actually sounds like an application of Kant's inquiry into the possibility of experience in general to a very special kind of experience in particular.

My own offering is: "Are psychoactives cognitive technology?" I don't just mean in the sense of "they're useful for thinking," but in the sense that a human brain under the influence of a psychedelic might be thought to produce an artifactual, not a natural, mental state. Another rough way to ask this question would be: "Do drugs prove that matter can directly affect consciousness on a deep level?"
 
I wonder about this.

I think that in a personal way it might be the case for specific experience that they engender unique questions in relation to self and sense of other. Likewise I view them as ontologically evocative, different belief systems or different people tend to be confirmed equally by the same agents through similar modes of action. In this sense novelty arises in an individual way, ergo novel philosophical questions might be seen as arising, but perhaps not in any overtly novel sense in terms of philosophy in general.
 
Ripheus23 said:
Chadaev said:
So this then would be a possible novel question: "What is reality such that it can include the tryptamine experience?"
Click to expand...

That's a very good question. It actually sounds like an application of Kant's inquiry into the possibility of experience in general to a very special kind of experience in particular.

My own offering is: "Are psychoactives cognitive technology?" I don't just mean in the sense of "they're useful for thinking," but in the sense that a human brain under the influence of a psychedelic might be thought to produce an artifactual, not a natural, mental state. Another rough way to ask this question would be: "Do drugs prove that matter can directly affect consciousness on a deep level?"
Click to expand...

Even if matter can affect consciousness on a deep level, it doesn't necessarily affirm the idea that it's your brain that's responsible for generating the experience (or the content of the experience). In the famous TV analogy where the TV represents your consciousness, one would be incorrect to assume that the TV is generating the content/program on the television. It is merely receiving the signal non-locally. As with fMRI scans of the brain, if one were to scan and analyze the electrical activity of the various circuits and modules in the television, one would find clear correlations between the audio and video being created along with the electrical activity in the hardware. Now if one were to slash, or damage one of the circuits for example (or modify it in any number of ways), one would expect to see distortions and abnormalities in the television...and yet one would still be incorrect to assume that just because the physical intervention can create this effect, that it is the television set that is generating the content.
 
Ripheus23 said:
The artifactual state might be compared to an electron microscope?
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That would be to assume that it is in fact an artifactual state. If that were the case, then perhaps, but I don't fully follow the logic. Being that DMT is produced endogenously in humans as well as by a plethora of plants and animals, I don't see why it couldn't be natural. It's hard to pin anything definite on the experience because it is so expansive. Even keeping the user and as many variables as possible constant, the experience can be so incredibly unpredictable that the way it presents itself on one occasion may be the antithesis of the way it presents itself on a successive occasion either on the same or different day.
 
I suppose what I'm saying involves a certain use of the word technology. My original suggestion might even then be recast as: "To what extent are psychedelics able to be reasonably interpreted as technology?"
 
Ripheus23 said:
I suppose what I'm saying involves a certain use of the word technology. My original suggestion might even then be recast as: "To what extent are psychedelics able to be reasonably interpreted as technology?"
Click to expand...

I do believe that the psychedelic chemicals themselves are reasonable to interpret as a technology. There is certainly technological elements within the experience like machines, cogs, electronic audio sequences, rocket ships, etc...If you refer to the DMT experience itself and whether it's a technology, I suppose we would have to agree on a definition of how we're going to use the word technology. It can be helpful in achieving certain things like healing, creativity, philosophical endeavors, etc...and in that sense may qualify as a technology because of its utility.
 
I could also see the use of them in context as a technology, sort of like a rock, it is just a rock, but when you use it to do something, maybe sharpen a stick or hammer a tent peg in, then it becomes technology. For me the psychedelics have this same technological capacity,
 
I think my take on this have been covered, but i think that on a personal level, psychedelics - given the right set and setting - can encourage a person into facing questions that are totally novel, possible with no cognitive precedent. On a global scale, i think the questions that arise are novel personally, because we each are a messenger of humanity so messages we receive, if in good heart, are messages for humanity. I, for one, have 'been posed' questions in other realms that hold a lot of weight because htey are specific to my time. Issues of 2012, shadowy government figures, mass-media-hysteria, archaic and violent religious expression etc...A lot of the questions that come up for me are so directed at me AT this point in time that i know no one has answered them before. SWIM probably has a significantly lower experience rate than most here...twice a year if SWIM's lucky(all substances). But even still, i tend to think the information coming through is an amalgamation and somewhat of a cobbling-together among our ancestors to give us some sort of help-guide or manual for our experiences here.
Sorry if this is a load of bollocks!

take care
Amadeus
 
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