Chapter 11 The Dialectical Self: Contradiction, Change, and Holism in the East Asian Self-Concept Julie Spencer-Rodgers, University of California, Berkeley Kaiping Peng, University of California, Berkeley Cultural psychology is broadening our understanding of the self-... Show
AbstractFinally, the human mind faces its own nature. By extending the information-theoretic paradigm, the informational nature of consciousness is uncovered. This gives rise to the very first formal description of consciousness. In attempts to bridge the chasm between the objective and subjective, scientists and philosophers have opened up to the unspeakable. The nature of consciousness, as has been suggested by ancient Eastern and shamanic traditions, is necessarily universal and primal. The notion of spirituality is creeping back into science. Moving towards a more empirical analysis, the enigma of intelligence is discussed, arising in decentralized systems and even in inanimate structures. Then, the surprising therapeutic effects of psychedelics is discovered, next to a myriad of transcendental planes of being, accessible to pure consciousness. Moreover, peer-reviewed studies are appearing in the physics literature describing mind-matter interactions in double-slit quantum experiments—a long suspected connection by many pioneers of quantum mechanics. As the cracks in the current edifice of science continually grow, the new information-theoretic paradigm is embraced. Beginning with an information ontology, a radical participatory ontology is hinted at. In essence, the human mind is witnessing the most radical paradigm shift in its own history. The well-served and previously glorious materialistic and reductionistic scientific worldview is yielding to a novel scientific conception of subjective consciousness and objective reality—and their unexpected intimate kinship. Level of mathematical formality: low. Consciousness is a truly puzzling phenomenon. For one, my own consciousness is the only element of existence I am personally aware of. Through the flow of subjective experiences I perceive an external reality and myself demarcated from it. I assume that other human minds—and to some extent non-human minds—experience a similar structure in this eternal moment of “now.” Strangely however, the subjective itself is very hard to objectify. The totality of perception, including every memory, is notoriously unreliable and misleading (Chap. 11). How then, should one try to comprehend the fundamental nature of consciousness? Moreover, is the external world our senses are seemingly reporting to us about really “out there?” The latter question of how consciousness can acquire knowledge about the external world has a long history in philosophy. According to René Descartes and John Locke, a distinction needs to be introduced when thinking about material entities. In detail (Baggott 2009, p. 99):
This view is compatible with empiricism and rationalism (Chap. 9). However (Tarnas 1991, p. 335):
Indeed (Baggott 2009, p. 100):
So, why do we appear to witness the same objective reality, if all things are intangible? For Berkeley it was clear (Tarnas 1991, p. 336):
The next iteration in this line of reasoning came in the form of David Hume’s skepticism (Tarnas 1991, p. 337):
He drove the critique of empiricism to its final extreme (Tarnas 1991, p. 339):
All is contingent. Hume’s philosophy stimulated “Immanuel Kant to develop the central philosophical position of the era” (Tarnas 1991, p. 340). In effect, Hume awakened Kant from his “dogmatic slumber.” The result was an existential blow (Tarnas 1991):
In detail, Kant argued the following in his Critique of Pure Reason (Kant 1781). The Transcendental Aesthetic reads (translated by Meiklejohn 2003):
In a nutshell (Tarnas 1991, p. 343f.):
A contemporary interpretation of this line of thought is provided by the philosopher Hilary Putnam. He pondered about the notion of brains in a vat (Putnam 1981):
The question now is (Baggott 2009, p. 105):
Putnam tried to argue that the brain-in-a-vat scenario is impossible. His reasoning is based on the idea that brains are usually in causal connection with real objects in the real world, making the statement “I am a brain in a vat” a self-refuting proposition. Not everyone agrees (Baggott 2009, p. 115):
Such musings about the nature of the objective world our subjective experiences seem to bear witness to—from Berkeley to Putnam—only represent the tip of the existential iceberg. Some other radical explanations for the content of my personal conscious perception in this very moment have been listed in the introductory part of Chap. 1. Needless to say, all of the alternative explanations of existence cannot be proven or disproven. To recapitulate: E1 :It is all just one big coincidence and happened by pure chance. We know the fundamental laws of nature and consciousness is simply the result of how the brain works. There is no mystery and that is all there is to say. [Materialism, scientific realism] E2 :A God created the universe. Perhaps 13.8 billion years ago or perhaps 6,000 years ago with fictitious properties making the universe appear older (or even 5 seconds ago, with false memories implanted in all human minds) . [Creationism in Abrahamic religion] E3 :Reality is a vast and impermanent illusion (anicca) comprised of endless distractions and suffering. The quest of the mind is to cultivate a state of awareness, allowing the illusion to be seen for what it is. Then the enlightened mind can withdraw from the physical realm and enter a state of pure bliss. [Buddhism] E4 :Only the Self exists. Life is the endless play of the Self (lila) losing itself only to find itself again in a constant game of hide-and-seek. [Hinduism] E5 :Only pure consciousness exists. In endless cycles, it manifests itself as separate physical embodiments, allowing for an experiential context, only to merge in unity again and start afresh. [Spirituality, panpsychism] E6 :We are dreaming this life and will some day “wake up” to a richer reality which is unimaginably more lucid and coherent. Physical death marks the transition of consciousness from the dreaming state to a higher-dimensional reality or maybe a reality entirely outside the realm of space and time. [Esotericism variation] E7 :We live in the multiverse, the infinite set of all possible universes. As a consequence, we naturally find ourselves in that corner of it which allows for intelligent and sentient life. [String/M-theory, cosmology, many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics] E8 :Our physical three-dimensional universe is an illusion. It is a hologram that is isomorphic to the quantum information encoded on the surface of its boundary. [Holographic principle, AdS/CFT duality] E9 :We inhabit a simulation that has these features programmed. [Simulation hypothesis] The human mind’s scientific quest to comprehend the world and its own nature is detailed in Part I. The limits of the current materialistic and reductionistic scientific worldview are outlined in Part II. Then, Chap. 13 offers a novel scientific understanding of the world, based on an information ontology. Creationism is discussed in Sect. 12.2.2. Buddhism appeared in the context of mindfulness (Sects. 7.4.2.1, 9.3.5, and 11.1). The Hindu concept of lila is discussed below, as is the notion of panpsychism. Recall the words of the philosopher of the mind Thomas Metzinger, reminiscing about his experience of an episode of false awakening (Sect. 11.2.2):
Elements of string/M-theory are introduced in Sects. 4.3.2, 10.2.2, and 13.4.1.2, while the notion of the multiverse is discussed in Sect. 10.3.2.2. The holographic principle is introduced in Sect. 13.4.1. It is motivated by theoretical findings related to the novel information-theoretic paradigm outlined in Chap. 13. So too is the simulation hypothesis, which is explained in Sect. 13.4.2. In conclusion (Baggott 2009, p. 228):
How should the human mind proceed from here? Should we simply concede that information is the fundamental nature of physical reality and that our minds are forever unknowable enigmas? In other words, subjectivity allows the objective to be grasped while remaining ethereal itself. This chapter argues that the human mind can take a final step in understanding itself. It is a small step within the informational ontology, but a huge step conceptually. Only the brave mind can reach the destination, as it requires a radical reassessment of all things believed to be true. For one, radical open-mindedness is asked for (Sect. 12.4.4). Indeed (deGrasse Tyson 2007, p. 305):
In the words of an influential neuroscientist introduced in the next section (Koch 2012, p. 134f.):
Finally, the list of phenomena which are deemed impossible requires a re-evaluation. In essence, to understand itself, the human mind needs to entertain “crazy” ideas and break taboos. The Nobel laureate Francis Crick once gave the following advice (quoted in Bilger 2011):
Only now, freed from prejudice and preconceived notions, can the information-theoretic paradigm shift become truly earth-shaking by encompassing the human mind. 1 Formalizing Consciousness: Integrated Information TheoryIn Sect. 11.1 SeeSeeintegrated information theory , the history of the scientific study of consciousness is outlined. Notably, research on the topic was dormant until Crick, together with the now eminent neuroscientist Christof Koch, published an article called Towards a Neurobiological Theory of Consciousness (Crick and Koch 1990). Then, four years later, the young philosopher of the mind, David Chalmers, introduced the “hard problem of consciousness.” Slowly, the notion of consciousness, a vague concept unworthy of any scientific attention, started to captivate scholars. However, it would take another 10 years before attempts were made at mathematizing consciousness—in an information-theoretic framework. 1.1 The Taboo of SubjectivityIt is an interesting observation that the human mind’s most effective tool has only now been employed to analyze its own nature. The power of utilizing formal thought systems in decoding the workings of reality, thus unearthing knowledge, has been nearly exclusively applied to the external world. This is the essence of science’s success: the human mind has the capability to encode aspects of the physical world as formal representations which inhabit an abstract world of their own and can be manipulated by the mind and decoded back into the physical world, yielding predictions. Knowledge generation is a result of acts of translation between the physical and abstract realms of existence. This process has been detailed in Chaps. 2 and 5, and applied in Chaps. 3, 4, 6, and 7. While discussing the nature of consciousness in Chap. 11, many philosophical ideas were presented, next to the neuroscientific knowledge gained about the workings of the brain—specifically, the flaws and shortcomings of consciousness. However, a formal approach has been lacking. The nature of consciousness appeared to challenge the scientific worldview. Even the very notion of subjectivity has been banned from science. In the words of Koch (2012, p. 8):
Science is understood as being concerned only with the tangible world, not the inner world of the subjective. Physicists inquire about the nature of objective reality without factoring in their own existence. This is also why philosophy is seen as essentially futile. A sentiment conveyed by a quote from the eminent theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson, found in Sect. 9.1.4:
In essence, scientific materialism divided the world into two domains: the objective and the subjective. B. Alan Wallace is a scholar concerned with the nexus of science, philosophy, and religion—specifically also focusing on the relationship between science and Buddhism. In the book called The Taboo of Subjectivity he writes (Wallace 2000, p. 123):
Furthermore (Wallace 2000, p. 145):
Koch succinctly captures the essence of this discrepancy (Koch 2012, p. 23):
1.2 The Mathematical EngineIn 2004, for the first time, consciousness was formalized. Now a quantitative theory began to emerge which could be potentially falsified. Koch observes (Koch 2012,p. 8):
He has been collaborating on a mathematical theory of consciousness, based on information, first introduced by the neuroscientist and psychiatrist Giulio Tononi. In the publication with the title An Information Integration Theory of Consciousness, Tononi first outlined the thesis (Tononi 2004):
Integrated information theory (IIT) SeeSeeintegrated information theory has been developed further since then (Tononi 2008, 2011; Oizumi et al. 2014; Tononi et al. 2016). IIT makes two assumptions. Conscious states are informationally rich and they are highly integrated. In general (Tononi et al. 2016):
To this end, IIT defines a set of axioms (Oizumi et al. 2014):
These axioms are then formalized into postulates relating to physical mechanisms, such as neurons or logic gates. The properties the configurations of mechanisms must satisfy, in order to generate experience, are analyzed. In a first step, the trivial postulates of the existence of mechanisms in some state and the composition of mechanisms into systems are stated. The postulates of information, integration, and exclusion apply both at the level of individual mechanisms and at the level of systems of mechanisms (Oizumi et al. 2014):
Fig. 14.1 Integrated information theory example. The network is comprised of a set of mechanisms A, B, and C, which are logic gates (e.g., OR, AND, XOR, ...) . The configuration is a candidate set for IIT analysis Full size image Consider the fully connected network of three logic gates, seen in Fig. 14.1. Each mechanisms can be on (1) or off (0), allowing the whole system to be in one of eight (\(2^3\)) states at time \(t_0\), defined by three bits: \(ABC=\{000\}\), \(ABC=\{100\}\), ..., \(ABC=\{111\}\). Let A be an OR gate, meaning that the inputs from B and C at \(t_0\) will determine its state at \(t_1\) accordingly. Specifically, \(BC=\{11\}\), \(BC=\{01\}\), and \(BC=\{10\}\) results in \(A=1\). The simplest quantity to compute is the cause-effect information (cei) for the mechanism A in a specific state. Constrain A to be on: \(A^c=1\). The probability distribution of past states \(ABC^p\) that could have been potential causes of \(A^c\) is the cause repertoire \(cr = p(ABC^p|A^c=1)\). cr is an 8-dimensional vector labeled by the possible states of ABC, in the following order: \(\{000\}, \{100\}, \{010\}, \{110\}, \{001\}, \{101\}, \{011\}\), and \(\{111\}\). It is computed to be \(cr=(0,0,1/6,1/6,1/6,1/6,1/6,1/6)\) (Oizumi et al. 2014, Supplementary Methods). The amount of information that \(A^c\) specifies about the past is its cause information (ci). It is defined as the distance \(\mathcal {D}\) between the cause repertoire cr and the unconstrained past repertoire \(p^{uc} (ABC^p)\). Formally $$\begin{aligned} ci(ABC^p|A^c=1) = \mathcal {D} \left[ p(ABC^p|A^c=1), p^{uc} (ABC^p)\right] . \end{aligned}$$ (14.1) \(p^{uc}\) is given by a uniform distribution (i.e., all components are 1/8). Note that the utilized distance measure between the probability distributions is what is known as the earth mover’s distance. Other options are discussed in Tegmark (2016). Similarly to ci, the effect information (ei) can be computed for the future states \(ABC^f\). This allows the cause-effect information to be determined $$\begin{aligned} cei(ABC^{p,f}|A^c=1) = \text {min} \left[ ci(ABC^p|A^c=1), ei(ABC^f|A^c=1) \right] . \end{aligned}$$ (14.2) Step by step, the integrated information \(\varphi \), and the maximally irreducible cause-effect information \(\varphi ^{\text {Max}}\), can be derived for the mechanisms, yielding concepts. Moving to systems of concepts, the (conceptual) integrated information \(\varPhi \) is specified for constellations, i.e., conceptional structures. Finally, the maximal integrated information \(\varPhi ^{\text {Max}}\) can be found, yielding a complex. There exists an online tool for performing example calculations.Footnote 2 Formally, integrated information \(\varPhi \) is a measure of the cause-effect power of a physical system. Intuitively, a system has a higher \(\varPhi \) the “richer” its interconnection structure is.Footnote 3 IIT posits that the larger \(\varPhi \) is, the more conscious the system is. In other words, a thermostat has incremental consciousness, while a room full of human minds does not have more consciousness than the individual minds. With respect to the notion of information, IIT has the following to say (Tononi et al. 2016):
Recall Claude Shannon’s information theory, introducing the concept of binary digitsSeeSeebit, or bits, in Sect. 13.1.2. In contrast (Tononi et al. 2016):
Thus, we are presented with the inner and outer aspects of information (Sect. 15.1). In summary, in the words of Koch (2014):
Qualia are subjective conscious experiences, like the greenness of green, see Chap. 11. Information geometry is a contemporary framework for scientific analysis and it unifies statistics with geometry. Specifically, it examines the geometrical structure of the manifolds of probability distributions (Amari and Nagaoka 2000). In essence, IIT offers a formal mapping of a system’s causal power upon itself, quantified as integrated information, to geometric structures. Hence the phenomenology of a system can be seen as being isomorphic to the mathematical abstractions. The idea of mapping reality aspects onto higher-dimensional geometric shapes has also emerged in quantum gravity with the discovery of the amplituhedron (Sect. 10.4). Books outlining the history and ideas of IIT include (Edelman and Tononi 2000; Tononi 2012; Koch 2012). 1.3 Putting It to the TestIn 2016, a study tested a complexity metric in the context of IIT (Casarotto et al. 2016). A threshold was derived, above which consciousness emerges. Patients may be misdiagnosed as being in a vegetative state due to their lack of expressing signs of consciousness, although they are experiencing the world. This can result from brain injury. Locked-in syndrome is the tragic condition in which a patient is completely paralyzed and unable to communicate while being fully conscious. Recall the devastating and inspiring story of Martin Pistorius recollected in Sect. 11.3.3. In the study, healthy subjects were measured as being conscious during:
Note that Ketamine anesthesia and REM sleep are “conditions in which consciousness is present but is disconnected from the external environment” (Casarotto et al. 2016). Brain injured patients with the following conditions were determined to be conscious:
In the contrast, no signs of consciousness in healthy subjects were found during:
Older and more restricted research had reached similar conclusions (Casali et al. 2013; Sarasso et al. 2014, 2015). In another study, subjects were shown three films: a movie, a scrambled movie, and TV noise. Their neural responses were measured utilizing fMRI images. The researchers found that the meaningfulness of the stimulus was associated with higher information integration among cortical regions of the brain. This could be measured without any assumptions about the stimuli and how they are represented in the brain. See Boly et al. (2015). Moreover (Tononi 2015):
Then (Tononi 2015):
Finally (Tononi 2015):
Maybe the most outlandish prediction of IIT is that any sufficiently complex and integrated system “feels like something.” Physical entities can possess interior mental aspects. Recall the discussion about animal consciousness in the introduction of Chap. 11. Now we are potentially faced with the dilemma of a conscious Internet or a conscious computational device. And what about black holes (Sect. 13.4.1.1)? 1.4 The OppositionTononi has received support from some notable scholars. In particular, the help of Koch and Chalmers. Another influential supporter is the cosmologist Max Tegmark. He was introduced in Sect. 13.4.3 with his mathematical universe hypothesis. Tegmark proposes the following in a recent publication called Consciousness as a State of Matter (Tegmark 2015):
Naturally, not all agree. For instance, the quantum computer scientists Scott Aaronson. He was introduced in the last chapter, specifically in Sects. 13.2.1, 13.4.1.2, 13.4.2, and 13.4.1.4. In a blog post from May 21st, 2014, he argues thatFootnote 5:
In detail, he observes:
Aaronson invokes the example of a two-dimensional grid (of logic gates) which would render \(\varPhi \) a function of its size. One could shrug and wonder about the relevance of a blog post. However, Aaronson enjoys a high level of visibility. In the comments section of his posts we find active engagement of the likes of Koch, Tegmark, and Chalmers. A week after Aaronson’s critique, on May 28th, Tononi sent him a 14-page rebuttal, titled Why Scott Should Stare at a Blank Wall and Reconsider (or, the Conscious Grid).Footnote 7 There we can read:
Tononi explains and outlines other aspects of IIT with respect to the critique. Two days later Aaronson replied. He lists four arguments for IIT he believes Tononi provided and explains why he finds them unpersuasive. In the end, Aaronson concludesFootnote 8:
In November 2015, a two-day workshop on integrated information theory was held at New York University. The speakers included Tononi, Koch, Tegmark, Chalmers, and Aaronson as skeptic. The science writer John Horgan reports (Horgan 2015):
In any case, IIT has and will continue to face criticism (Cerullo 2015). Also the philosopher John Searle had already chimed in and provoked this response (Koch and Tononi 2013). A recent overview of the evolution of IIT can be found in Moon and Pae (2018). Yet again, the detailed technical discussions about theoretical concepts threaten to become postmodern narratives, where meaning, clarity, and understanding is at stake. Recall the Sokal hoax and the Bogdanov affair discussed in Sect. 9.1.4. Time will tell if IIT will survive and evolve through different embodiments of formal structures. For the moment, one must ask what is happening with grids in IITFootnote 9:
Maybe there exists a link to the holographic principle outlined in Sect. 13.4.1 or the geometric entities encountered in altered states of consciousness (discussed below in Sect. 14.3.2). At the end of the day, IIT helped open Pandora’s box of radical postulates about consciousness. Within the time-span of 28 years, it is today not only acceptable to talk about consciousness, but also about the notion of universal consciousness—a topic that would otherwise make many scientists recoil in utter disgust. 2 The Cosmic Nature of ConsciousnessNow that the floodgates have been opened, the recalcitrant nature of consciousness can be viewed in a novel light. In a remarkable turn of events, the seemingly isolated phenomenon of consciousness reemerges within the structure of the cosmos itself. 2.1 Panpsychism: The Universality of ConsciousnessThe cognitive scientist Donald D. Hoffman argues that what we perceive of reality is nothing like reality itself (Sect. 11.2.1). In a Kantian twist, evolution maximizes evolutionary fitness and not veridical perceptions. Hoffman also holds other “crazy” ideas (Hoffman 2015):
Chalmers is also thinking about such outlandish properties of reality (Chalmers 2014):
The notion of panpsychism is introduced in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy as follows (Goff et al. 2017):
More specifically, in the words of Koch (2014):
More personally, he adds (Koch 2014):
For many, the notion of panpsychism sounds simply ludicrous—a metaphysical aberration. Even if some great thinkers in history have tinkered with panpsychism, today, we should know better. Indeed (Goff 2017, p. 170):
The philosopher Philip Goff retorts (Goff 2017, p. 170):
The science writer Amanda Gefter also reminds us (Gefter 2012):
One could argue that, overall, the skepticism towards panpsychism is rooted in the prejudices of the prevailing materialistic and reductionistic scientific worldview. The renowned philosopher Thomas Nagel wrote a controversial book in 2012, where he attacked this worldview (Horgan 2013):
In the words of Nagel (2012):
Nagel already started to write about panpsychism in 1979 (Nagel 1979). It may come as a surprise to some, that such seemingly unscientific views were also held by a few of the pioneers of modern theoretical physics. For instance, Dyson, who expressed his distaste for philosophy above, also observed in 1979 (quoted in Schooler et al. 2011, p. 169):
So too the eminent physicist David Bohm, who contributed unorthodox ideas to quantum theory (Bohm 1980). He noted (quoted in Schooler et al. 2011, p. 169):
Unnoticed by the scientific mainstream, the specter of panpsychism has been haunting intellectually inquisitive—and open—minds for decades. In April 2014, the conference Toward a Science of Consciousness , in Tucson Arizona, celebrated its 20th anniversary.Footnote 15 Notably, at its first gathering, Chalmers presented the “hard problem of consciousness” (Sect. 11.1). Twenty years later, ideas related to panpsychism were discussed. Attempts at incorporating such a view into science—as panpsychist realism—were presented, especially related to relativity and quantum mechanics (Graubart 2014). Panpsychism could indeed be the key finally concluding the information-theoretic paradigm shift initiated in the previous chapter (and brought to full fruit in Chap. 15). In conclusion (Goff 2017, p. 170f.):
Within the set of ideas related to panpsychism, one can find variations which too have found a place in the history of human thought. For instance, in Hinduism, the notion of lila (explanation E4 listed above and discussed in Sect. 15.2.2) is akin to the concept of pandeism. In detail (Mapson 2017, p. 5):
Staying within this theist realm, in contrast (Russell 2004, p. 330):
Albert Einstein once remarked “I believe in Spinoza’s God” (Sect. 9.2.1). Then (Culp 2017):
In summary, while pantheism equates the divine with the cosmos (“all is God”) , panentheism allows for a distinction between the divine and the non-divine. Some have argued for a reconciliation of science and theism along these lines (Griffin 2014 p. 275):
2.2 The Primacy of ConsciousnessChalmers mentioned the notion of consciousness being fundamental above. Some scholars have tried to conceptualize around this idea. For instance, the eminent philosopher of science and systems theorist Ervin Laszlo. In his book with the title The Systems View of the World: A Holistic Vision for Our Time (Laszlo 1996), Laszlo outlined a systems-based view of nature, based on over three decades of research. In essence, he advocated a complexity-oriented understanding of reality (see Chap. 6, especially Sect. 6.2). In 2006, Laszlo published Science and the Reenchantment of the Cosmos (Laszlo 2006). Peter Russell contributed an essay (Russell 2006, p. 144):
Russell has degrees in theoretical physics, computer science, and experimental psychology, next to having studied meditation in India. He is the author of The Awakening Earth: The Global Brain (Russell 1982), predicting the Internet and its impact. Russell argues for the primacy of consciousness—mind is more fundamental than matter. Consciousness is the most fundamental essence of existence out of which comes the experience of material reality. This is the exact opposite of the materialistic scientific paradigm, where matter/energy and space/time is said to reside at the foundation of reality and consciousness emerges out of it. The problem with this is, however, that neither does this scientific worldview predict consciousness, nor can it explain it. Something appears to be missing. Others don’t go as far as Russell, by placing consciousness at the center of the ontology, but give it the same status as the scientific fundamental properties of reality. Chalmers explained this stance above. In the introduction to Chap. 11, the Swiss Biennial on Science, Technics + Aesthetics was mentioned, focusing on contemporary challenges in quantum physics, cosmology, and consciousness. In 2018, the topic of the conference was The Enigma of Consciousness. Speakers from different disciplines were presenting. Among them were Hoffman; Wallace; Horgan, who is well-known for his book The End of Science (Sect. 9.2.2); the theoretical physicist Marcelo Gleiser, known for his writing about truth and knowledge (Gleiser 2010, 2014); Bernardo Kastrup, who has a Ph.D. in computer engineering, is an entrepreneur, and writes about metaphysics and the philosophy of the mind; and the cosmologist Martin Rees. In former years, the mathematical physicists and cosmologist Roger Penrose presented his views on consciousness (Penrose 1989, 1994, 1997). Other speakers were scholars of anthropology and psychology. One specific topic gravitated around non-ordinary states of consciousness found in the Peruvian shamanic traditions, discussed below. Relating to the concept of primal consciousness, the notion of the ontological primitive was discussed. This describes the irreducible components of reality. Next to matter/energy and space/time it was agreed that consciousness should also be a potential candidate. The challenge this poses to the prevailing materialistic worldview was acknowledged. Wallace invited the audience to ponder the following. In our scientific quest to understand the universe and ourselves, we implicitly incorporate a Eurocentric perspective. Specifically, older truth-seeking traditions found in the East are discarded as being pre-scientific and thus invalid. Wallace argued that any inquiry into the nature of consciousness requires introspection, focus, and awareness. Meditators in the East have been cultivating mindfulness form millennia. In detail:
Could it be that these ancient truth-seekers have discovered aspects of consciousness, and thus reality, without the Western mind even knowing? Wallace reminds us:
In these ancient contemplative traditions consciousness is understood as primordial:
Essentially, Buddhism is “empirical,” as every practitioner is invited by the Gautama Buddha to check the claims themselves. “Do not believe anything that you have not experience yourself!” is a foundational principle of the philosophy. Overall, topics related to the exploration of vast inner realities were discussed at the conference—relating to contemplative and shamanic traditions, next to psychedelic explorations. Kastrup outlined his skepticism of materialism. His books are titled Why Materialism is Baloney (Kastrup 2014) and Brief Peeks Beyond (Kastrup 2015). There we can read (Kastrup 2014, p. 215):
Horgan summarized his experiences at the conference in Horgan (2018). 2.3 The Taboo of SpiritualityThe journey outlined in this chapter began with a formal theory of consciousness. Soon, however, the narrative left this scientific footing and explored the non-scientific realms of theism and spirituality. The term “religion” refers to a set of teachings and rituals laid out at the conception of any specific theist doctrine. Religions are geographically constrained and mostly conceived to be static worldviews. However, religion represent the human mind’s very first attempt at deciphering the universe it awoke to. Indeed, religion appears to be the matrix out of which the modern human mind—with its complex socio-cultural structures—would eventually emerge and conquer the cosmos (Harari 2015, p. 100ff.):
Furthermore, the origins of domesticated wheat could be traced to a region about thirty kilometers from Göbekli Tepe. All of this suggest the unconventional view “that the temple may have been built first, and that a village later grew up around it” (Harari 2015, p. 102). Science and religion always appeared to be natural enemies (Sects. 5.3.1 and 12.2.2). However, some scientists can assimilate both aspects with ease (Sects. 12.4.4 and 15.3). One can argue that religion mostly requires the submission of its believers to an external authority. Spirituality, in contrast, can be understood as the quest of finding a source of authority within one’s own inner reality. Indeed, a strong definition of spirituality could be summed up as the conviction of the ontological reality of one’s personal consciousness, reigning supreme over the objects which appearing within it. More generally, spirituality can be defined as (Walach et al. 2011, p. 6):
Within a scientific worldview, spirituality is mostly seen as being just as villainous as religiosity. Even the empathetic words of the physicist Carl Sagan, revered in the scientific community, have not changed much about this attitude (Sagan 1996, p. 29):
However, slowly the scientific taboos are beginning to tumble. The monograph called Neuroscience, Consciousness and Spirituality outlined an example of this (Walach et al. 2011, p. v):
The monograph contains essays from various scholars. One specifically outlines the following (Schooler et al. 2011, p. 157):
However, the book’s editors admit (Walach et al. 2011, p. v):
The essence—or crux—of spirituality is its experiential dimension. If a person has experienced an episode so real, so intense, that ordinary events appear bland and inconsequential in comparison, it is hard to talk them out of it. Even knowing that by simply exposing my brain to a magnetic field can induce a mystical experience (Sect. 11.3.1) will in no way diminish the experiential reality of such an episode. The same is true for “hallucinations” experienced while the brain is flooded with psychoactive molecules, from psychedelics to empathogens or entactogens. Commonly, a mystical experience—spontaneous or induced—will leave a mark on the psyche for years. The fascinating story of the neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor was told in Sect. 11.3.3. While the left hemisphere of her brain was being damaged by a hemorrhage, she experienced the most profound mystical experience. Space ceased to exist as her consciousness united with all of existence. “I found Nirvana” (Bolte Taylor 2008). In his controversial end-of-science book of 1996, Horgan reports about a mystical experience in the epilogue. We can read (Horgan 2012, p. 261):
Some years later Horgan published the book called Rational Mysticism: Dispatches from the Border Between Science and Spirituality. There he updates the reader as follows (Horgan 2003b, p. 4):
Finally, the neurosurgeon Eben Alexander reports his near-death experience during a coma in his book Proof of Heaven (Alexander 2012a). In a nutshell (Alexander 2012b):
Alexander’s book became a New York Times bestseller. He recalls a very remarkable experience (Alexander 2012a, back cover):
In more detail (Alexander 2012a, p. 47):
Despite the commercial success of the book not everyone was convinced (Alexander 2012b):
Indeed, the Esquire reported critically about Alexander, questioning his credibility (Dittrich 2013):
Alexander retorts (quoted in Bercovici 2013):
2.4 Non-Human IntelligenceAfter the excursion into the unscientific dimensions accompanying the enigma of consciousness, this section ends by returning to the terra firma of the objective realm. At this point, it is justified to contemplate the following. If consciousness really is a fundamental and/or universal phenomenon, then one would expect such characteristics also to be manifested in the cognitive capabilities of consciousness—specifically, in relation to the puzzle of intelligence. Kevin Warwick is a scholar of cybernetics and robotics. In his book, called QI: The Quest for Intelligence, he writes (Warwick 2000):
Before diving into the ocean of the many expressions of non-human intelligence, one fact should be recalled. In Sect. 11.3.3, two cases were reported, where seemingly normally functioning humans—expressing no obvious signs of intellectual disability—lacked most of what constitutes a brain. Such cases appear to break the expected correlation between cognition and neural complexity. 2.4.1 Collective IntelligenceCollective Intelligence is an abstract form of disembodied intelligence. It can be manifested without any individual cognitive capacity accompanying it. Many social insects can exhibit astonishing expressions of collective intelligence. In other words, each individual entity has very limited capacity for cognition, if any, but as a swarm the system functions as a single, intelligent superorganism. For instance, insect colonies that engineer air-conditioning capabilities or farm and milk other species (Sect. 12.4.1). In particular, the superorganism comprised of ants has been studied with great detail (Hölldobler and Wilson 2009). Indeed (O Shea-Wheller et al. 2015):
Another fascinating aspect is collective decision-making. For instance, when colonies of honey bees choose among nectar sources (Seeley et al. 1991) or select new nest-sites (Britton et al. 2002). Collective decision-making has also been argued to underlie flocks of starlings while performing collective turns as a swarm. Essentially, swarm intelligence (Bonabeau et al. 1999) is another explicit manifestation of collective intelligence. Within the study of complexity (Chap. 6), self-organization, structure formation, and emergence are often encountered phenomena. These can give rise to adaptive, resilient, and sustainable behavior. In other words: to collectively intelligent systems. A hallmark of such collective intelligence is a decentralized blueprint for the interactions of the system’s components (Sect. 5.2.4). This key feature is mostly missing in the collective system’s we humans design (Chap. 7)—at least until very recently (Sect. 7.4.3). In conclusion, intelligence can be divorced from electrochemical processes appearing in a biological neural network. This raises the question, what, then, the essence of this collective intelligence is? Where is it located? Analyzing a colony of ants does not reveal incremental units of intelligence distributed among the individual insects. Collective intelligence is an emergent phenomenon, suddenly appearing at a threshold where the whole is literally more than the sum of its parts. Moreover, what is the substrate for this intelligence? How does it come to be, how is it physically embodied, and how is it sustained? Perhaps it is encoded in the fabric of reality itself, as we today know that at the heart of complexity resides miraculous simplicity (Sect. 5.2.1 and Chap. 6). 2.4.2 Animal IntelligenceThe question, if animals are intelligent, is a thorny one. The culturally normalized act of eating animals suddenly poses a potential ethical challenge. How intelligent must an animal be, before I refuse to consume its flesh? How much non-human suffering am I willing to induce for my subjective sensory pleasure?Footnote 19 This is a culturally charged topic (Harari 2015, p. 382):
The dimensions of this ethical conflict are truly mind-boggling. Recall from the introduction to Chap. 11 that in 2016, approximately 65.8 billion chickens, 1.5 billion pigs, and 302 million cattle were slaughtered globally. Anyone who ever had a pet knows for certain that animals are very intelligent and appear to have a rich inner life. Dogs and cats seem to also understand the inner life of humans—although cats often appear less interested. But not all. Oscar is a therapy cat living in a nursing and rehabilitation center. He is quite special (Dosa 2007):
A book was written about his abilities (Dosa 2010). Another prominent feline is Bob. The street cat was adopted by the homeless heroin addict James Bowen and essentially helped him turn his life around. A Street Cat Named Bob: And How He Saved My Life appeared on the New York Times bestseller list and recounts this story (Bowen and Jenkins 2012). Perhaps the most astonishing feat of animal intelligence is the comprehension of human language. For instance (Williams 2004):
Also birds appear to have a grasp on human language. Alex is perhaps the most famous parrot, studied by Irene Pepperberg at Harvard (Pepperberg 1999). She bought him in a pet-shop in 1977. On September 6, 2007, Alex is reported to have uttered the following last words to her before his death at the age of 31 (Philipkoski 2007):
Koko was a gorilla who achieved proficiency in conversing with signs. “Her total vocabulary now approximates that of human toddlers” (Fischer 1999, p. 27). Koko also adopted a kitten during her lifetime (Patterson and Cohn 1985). She taught the gorilla called Michael how to utilize sign language and thus communicate with her and humans (Fischer 1999). Other signs of animal intelligence include tool use. Perhaps the ability of primates to make and utilize tools does not strike one as particularly extraordinary (Boesch and Boesch 1990). Tool use by birds may appear more exceptional (Emery 2006):
It seems amazing, that an overall small avian brain could outperform a much larger primate brain. Especially, as birds lack arms, hands, and fingers. See also Lefebvre et al. (2002) for more on avian tool use and brains. Indeed, Sect. 11.3.2 baffled with the insight that pigeons are better equipped at intuitively grasping probabilities than humans. Then, octopuses (Sect. 11.3.2) are truly bizarre organisms (Courage 2013):
They are also very intelligent—perhaps even the earliest manifestations of intelligence. Albeit a very unusual one (Reynolds 2015):
A deeper look at the lives and brains of octopuses is found in Godfrey-Smith (2016). Then, mirror self-recognition, the self-identification of the specular image, is known for apes, monkeys, dolphins, and elephants. It is believed to be associated with empathy and aiding behavior (de Waal et al. 2005). With respect to fairness (Brosnan 2013):
Chimpanzee have far superior short-term memory than humans (Inoue and Matsuzawa 2007). Perhaps the most striking indication of the rich inner lives of animals is the capacity for play (Boyd 2004):
Today, with the ubiquity of recording devices and streaming platforms in the Internet, we can witness behaviors of animals which perhaps no researcher has ever been able to analyze. For instance, inter-species “friendship” among animals. The video-sharing website YouTube has many videos showing capybaras bonding with an array of different animals. Again, all of this suggests that intelligence is not simply a function of complex neural connectivity, with the human brain eclipsing all animal brains. In detail (Brockman 2015a, p. 29):
In the final analysis, we appear to be confronted with the challenge of having to modify our cherished notion of superior anthropocentric thinking and intelligence. Somehow, intelligence is akin to “software” that can be run on different neural wetware—even on a distributed system of insects. We are, yet again, invited to formulate our understanding within an information-theoretic paradigm, embedded in a computational framework (Sects. 13.1.2 and 13.2.2). As an example, how is intelligence inherited? On the face of it, individual intelligence is encoded in the genes and unravels as the cognitive apparatus of the offspring develops. However, looking at animals constructing very complex and elaborate nest structures, the exact way this knowledge propagates seems mystifying. The behavioral skill-set is physically encoded as information in the fertilized zygote’s genes. It is then decoded and programs the young animal’s developing brain to allow this instinctive knowledge to manifest. And so an animal constructs a physical structure it has never encountered before in its life. The more intricate the nests, the greater the potential computational complexity of the programming which was transmitted. For instance, this applies to the huge geometric circular structure the male pufferfish creates (Kawase et al. 2013), as it does to the intricate and ornamental nest the male bowerbird assembles (Borgia 1985). We are also gently invited to reconsider what is deemed food and what represents creatures quipped with rich, subjective inner spaces of sentience, capable of great suffering. From such considerations a potential intrinsic moral right of a species could be derived, to not be subjected to factory-farming in enormous numbers. A simple exercise in empathy is to imagine being the other creature. This is obviously hard to imagine for non-human animals. Nagel wrote a much-noticed piece called What Is It Like to Be a Bat? (Nagel 1974), also relating to the philosophy of the mind (Sect. 11.1). 2.4.3 Plant IntelligenceDo we also face a potential ethical challenge by consuming plants? Alan Watts, a philosopher, psychonaut, mystic, and interpreter of Eastern philosophy, observes in his essay, titled Murder in the Kitchen, the following (Watts 1971 p. 23f.):
Plants represent the only ubiquitous, terrestrial, biological interface to the sun, harnessing its energy by transforming solar radiation into life-sustaining chemical energy. Thus, the fundamental question is: Do plants feel pain and can they suffer? In Switzerland, the Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology discussed the ethical status of plants in the 2008 report The Dignity of Living Beings With Regard to Plants. Moral Consideration of Plants for Their Own Sake.Footnote 20 The topics of ownership, instrumentalization, patenting, and genetic modification were discussed. Specifically:
However:
Other researchers disagree (as quoted in Koechlin 2009):
Plants lack a standard central nervous system able to process information and generate complex experiential inner landscapes. But this does not mean that plants are not intelligent. Intriguingly, there exists striking similarities between plant cells, especially in the roots, and neurons (Baluška 2010). Forests are sustained by vast underground networks, comprised of fungi and the roots of trees and plants, all existing in a symbiotic equilibrium transferring nutrients (Simard et al. 2012). More generally (Koechlin 2009):
Plants can express a wide variety of intelligent behavior. The biologist Florianne Koechlin, member of the Federal Ethics Committee, explains the following about plants (quoted in Reissman 2016):
Plants cry for help, ward off bugs, and save each other using molecular codes based on what are known as volatile organic compounds (Preston 2018). Finally (Pollan 2013):
Slowly, the true extent of plant intelligence is being comprehended (Mancuso and Viola 2015; Trewavas 2016; Haskell 2017). Indeed (Calvo et al. 2017):
Once again in the history of the Western mind, a cognitive blind spot resulted in myopia towards the surrounding wonders. The Sanskrit word ahiṃsā encapsulates the doctrine of non-violence and it applies to all living beings. For instance, the followers of the Indian religion of Jainism (Sect. 3.1) go out of their way so as not to even hurt insects. One of the central tenets of Buddhism is compassion—again, without an anthropocentric prejudice. 2.4.4 Non-sentient IntelligenceRemarkably, intelligence is an intangible phenomenon that can appear in very different biological configurations. However, in the discussion up to now, intelligence was incorporated in either complex organic matter—including plants—or in societies of insects with complex social structures. Can we find intelligence in other creatures? Slime moulds are organisms that can live as single amoeba-like cells or can aggregate together to form multicellular structures. “Slime mould is effectively a supercell—a bunch of dumb cells that gather together to form a seemingly smart and mobile superorganism” (Collins 2015). Surprisingly, slime mould can solve mazes. Specifically, it can “find the minimum-length solution between two points in a labyrinth” (Nakagaki et al. 2000). “Slime moulds aren’t just capable of learning, they can teach each other too” (Tennenhouse 2017). Perhaps the biggest enigma related to intelligence is that it can latch onto non-organic matter. Even samarium nickelate oxideSeeSeesamarium nickelate oxide (SNO) , a synthetic crystal, can mimic learning (Zuo et al. 2017). Indeed (Garisto 2017):
Indeed, the human mind unlocked unprecedented levels of non-organic information processing by engineering computers. Or perhaps the universe is guided by an invisible force driving it to ever higher levels of self-organized complexity and information processing—first organic, then mental, and finally digital (this raises the question of teleology, discussed in Sect. 15.2). The fields of artificial intelligence (AI) SeeSeeartificial intelligence and, specifically, machine learning, are currently exploding. Indeed, deep neural networks are being framed within an information-theoretic context, slowly shedding light on non-human learning mechanisms (Shwartz-Ziv and Tishby 2017):
In 2016, a threshold was reached (Granter et al. 2017):
Metzinger points out the following (Metzinger 2009, p. 187):
Furthermore (Metzinger 2009):
Lipson is featured in the 2018 documentary Do You Trust this Computer?Footnote 21 and recalls the following episode from a year earlier. He and his team were training an AI system for a live demonstration. Specifically, they were testing how the objects waved in front of the AI’s camera were being recognized. On a side screen, the researchers could observe how certain neurons in the AI were responding to the stimuli. At 53 min and 37 s Lipson remarks:
The 2015 Edge annual question (Sect. 9.3) was: “What Do You Think about Machines that Think?” The psychologist Tania Lombrozo cautions: “Don’t Be A Chauvinist About Thinking.” Specifically, (Brockman 2015b, p, 337):
A potential future in which the human mind is faced with non-human and non-organic intelligence is unsettling to some and fascinating to others. The term (technological) SeeSeesingularity singularity (Vinge 1993; Kurzweil 2005) encompasses this ambiguity. It is the hypothesis that one day, soon, artificial superintelligence will surpass human intelligence. Effectively, the human era will end. This challenge is analyzed by both Tegmark and the philosopher Nick Bostrom (introduced in Sect. 13.4.2 with his simulation hypothesis):
The notion of posthumanism is invoked (Herbrechter 2013, p. 3):
Tegmark founded The Future of Life Institute.Footnote 22 It is concerned with potential existential risks approaching humanity and its motto reads:
Advisors include the entrepreneur Elon Musk and, prior to his death, Stephen Hawking. In an open letter, signed by 3,978 AI/Robotics researchers and 22,541 others,Footnote 23 it is warned of the dangers of weaponizing AI. However, even without the existence of artificially-intelligent autonomous weapon systems, the following question stands out: How should true artificial superintelligent assess the role and utility of humanity, given its global political and religious ideological entrenchment (Chap. 12), its faulty economic and financial systems (Chap. 7) resulting in unimaginable inequity (Sect. 7.4.2.3), the tendency of the strong to exploit the weak, the globally prevailing cruel treatment of countless sentient beings, and the systematic destruction and pollution of the entire biosphere (Epilogue)? At the moment, the challenges we face with respect to AI are similar to the general societal challenges. The current level and utilization of AI threatens democracy and increases inequality (O’Neil 2016). Moreover, if human online interactions are taken as a training set for AI, the results are unsavory. In 2016, Microsoft unleashed its chat bot Tay, supposed to mimic a 19-year-old US American girl, on social media. 24 hours later, the AI was shut down and Microsoft issued an apologyFootnote 24:
In effect, mirroring the normal, daily behavior witnessed on social media, Tay quickly manifested abusive fascist, racist, and misogynist traits. We will never know how much this reveals about humanities dark side, thriving in anonymous online interactions, and how much is due to mischievous behavior—trolling. In closing, intelligence is an emergent property of reality itself, being manifested in very different material and computational structures. It can be localized or distributed and it can be embodied within a conscious mind or not. Having said this, consciousness itself is still an enigma. Do any tools exists, which could help the human mind understand its own conscious nature? 3 Enhanced Consciousness: The Psychedelic RenaissanceUp to now, the enigma of consciousness was discussed with respect to three of its manifestations: sober waking consciousness, dreaming, and meditative states. However, since the dawning of the human mind it has been known that there exist radically different states of consciousness—often induced chemically. As these have been deemed harmful, most modern societies have banned any substances causing altered states of consciousness—with the exception of ethanol, nicotine, caffeine, and psychiatric medication. Yet again, a consequential blind spot emerges in the collective vision of humanity. However, slowly the prohibition of, and the stigma associated with, psychoactive substances is today being reevaluated—with profound potential for understanding consciousness and reality. In 1980, the eminent psychiatrist Stanislav Grof observed (quoted in Carhart-Harris et al. 2014):
The influential writer Aldous Huxley is on record saying (in the 1958 BBC program MonitorFootnote 25):
Huxley famously documented his mescaline experience in the book The Doors of Perception: And Heaven and Hell (Huxley 1954)—the inspiration for the US American rock band’s name, The Doors. LSD was a serendipitous discovery with great cultural ramifications. At first (Kaiser 2011, p. xxii):
However (Kaiser 2011, p. xxi):
Indeed, the US Drug Enforcement Administration specifiesFootnote 26:
The ethnobotanist and psychonaut Terence McKenna is doubtful of this explanation for banning psychedelics (Lin 2014):
The chemist Alexander Shulgin, who had synthesized and tested hundreds of new psychedelic substances, also observed (Shulgin and Shulgin 2017b, p. 385):
He was the most prolific psychedelic chemist in history (Horgan 2014b):
Today, experts realize (Boseley and Glenza 2016):
Surprisingly, medical experts call for global drug decriminalization. A panel of 22 medical experts called together by Johns Hopkins University advocate this stance in a publication in the leading medical journal, The Lancet (Frenk et al. 2010). Indeed (Tatera 2016a):
In the early 1990s, Zurich was plagued by Europe’s biggest open drug scene. Over decades, misery, suffering, and death became ever more visible in an otherwise affluent city. Evictions by the police resulted in relocation. In 1992, a pragmatic drug policy was enforced,Footnote 27 allowing for heroin distribution under medical attention. Despite certain political opposition against “the government supplying junkies with free heroin,” the pioneering program was a success (Neue Zürcher Zeitung 2013). Having lived in Zurich since the early 1990s, the transformation is astonishing and the former conditions unimaginable. In 2016, a landmark study was published in the prestigious journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Carhart-Harris et al. 2016). For the first time, modern brain scanning techniques were applied to the brains of humans under the influence of LSD. The study was crowdfunded.Footnote 28 Senior researcher on the study, the neuropsychopharmacologist David Nutt, explained (quoted in Sample 2016):
Specifically (Reynolds 2016):
The study concludes (Carhart-Harris et al. 2016):
This line of research is being actively pursued (Atasoy et al. 2017):
The psychiatrist Franz X. Vollenweider has been studying the effects of psilocybin, especially in the context of meditation, for over 20 years at the University of Zurich (Vollenweider et al. 1997). He is one of a few researchers in the world holding such a track record. However, a senior member of the Swiss People’s Party (SVP) —a right-wing populist political party—opposes his research (Tagesanzeiger 2014, translation mine):
Notwithstanding, psychedelics are experiencing a cultural renaissance—from their usage at transformational festivals (Leung 2010), like Burning Man, to Silicon Valley tech geeks microdosing LSD (Leonard 2015; Solon 2016; Hogan 2017). In Switzerland, a faction of the center-right, pro-business party FDP is discussing the legalization of all illegal drugs (Simonsen and Ballmer 2018). 3.1 Healing the MindPerhaps the most astonishing aspect of the increased research activity into psychedelic substances is their therapeutic effect. In stark contradiction to the definition of a Schedule I drug, an array of substances, formaly only utilized as recreational or party drugs, is showing very promising signs of healing capacity (McClelland 2017). Indeed (Wordsworth 2017):
Specifically, successfully treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) patients with MDMA (Mithoefer et al. 2018), alleviating the symptoms in depressed patients with Ketamine (Berman et al. 2000), and reduced anxiety in terminally-ill patients utilizing LSD (Gasser et al. 2014). Moreover (Horgan 2010):
Such chemical support comes at a crucial time (Wong 2017):
Moreover (Tatera 2016b):
Johns Hopkins researchers report on a study with psilocybin (Medicine 2006):
In 2016, a new psychedelic science group was formed at Yale (Gardner 2016):
Other psychedelic research group include MAPSFootnote 30 and ALIUS.Footnote 31 What about all the negative effects of such drugs? In 2010, a study was published in The Lancet , analyzing the dangers of various drugs along two dimensions: harm to user and harm to others. A ranking by overall harm score (in parenthesis), revealed: alcohol (72), heroin (55), crack cocaine (54), methamphetamine (33), cocaine (27), tobacco (26), amphetamine (23), cannabis (20) , GHB (19), Ketamine (15) , ecstasy (9), LSD (7), and mushrooms (6) (Nutt et al. 2010). It is ironic, and troubling, that two legal substances are leading the ranking. Notably, alcohol scores disproportionately high in the measure of harm to others, while crack cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine reach high scores for the harm to the user. The 2017 Global Drug Survey,Footnote 32 the world’s largest drug survey with over 110,000 participants from over 50 countries, reported the following post-consumption emergency treatment seeking (percentages in parenthesis): methamphetamine (4.8), synthetic cannabis (3.2), alcohol (1.3), MDMA/ecstasy (1,2), amphetamine (1.1), cocaine (1.0), LSD (1.0), cannabis (0.6), and mushrooms (0.2). However, as most users of illegal substances can never be sure of the exact composition of the drugs purchased from the black market,Footnote 33 it is unclear how many of these emergency treatments were due to contaminated or entirely different chemical compounds. In terms of overall dependence scores—averaging physical and psychological dependence and factoring in pleasure—where 3.0 represents the maximum, one ranking is found to be: heroin (3.0), cocaine (2.39), nicotine (2.21), barbiturates (2.01) , alcohol (1.93), cannabis (1.51), LSD (1.23), and ecstasy (1.13) (Nutt et al. 2007). Yet again, nicotine and alcohol emerge as very potent and addictive substances, while psychedelics appear benign. In the late 1970s, the psychologist Bruce Alexander separated rats into cages and gave them a choice of two water bottles to drink from—one of them laced with morphine. The cages were either isolatory ones or stimulating ones with playing opportunities and fellow rats. The latter became known as “rat park.” Alexander wanted to measure the effect of the environment on addiction rates. In isolation, rats tended to overdose and die, while in “rat park” the drugged water appeared uninteresting (Alexander et al. 1978). This highlights the importance of social connection in the context of addiction. Next to the details of a person’s brain architecture, the integration within a healthy web of interpersonal relationships can determine the fate of a drug user. In general (Hari 2015):
In this context, incarcerating drug users appears as the worst possible solution to the problem. Moreover, the current rampaging opioid crisis in the US is perhaps indicative of the disintegration of the social fabric. However, in a potentially bright future, the healing powers of psychedelics can also be utilized to break the gridlock of political ideology and help cultivate empathy, understanding, and social connectivity—reducing the fear driving people to embrace fascist ideals (see also Sect. 11.3.1 for the neurophysiological role of fear in political ideology formation). The stigma associated with psychedelics still runs deep. Simply the word “psychedelic” conjures up the image of a drug-crazed hippie in many minds. A better word is “psychotropic,” alluding to the capacity to affect the mind or mental processes. The journalist and author Michael Pollan is currently on a quest to correct the misinformation associated with psychedelics. Indeed, he observes (quoted in Oaklander 2018):
In his book, persuasively titled How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us about Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence (Pollan 2018), Pollan presents a combination of science, history, medicine, and personal experiences related to this new frontier of understanding. The science writer Jennifer Ouellette devoted a chapter, called Feed Your Head, in her book Me, Myself, and Why: Searching for the Science of Self (Ouellette 2014) to the troubled history and bright future of psychedelics. Then, the New York Times bestseller Stealing Fire: How Silicon Valley, the Navy SEALs, and Maverick Scientists are Revolutionizing the Way We Live and Work (Kotler and Wheal 2017) chronicles the phenomena of human peak performance. Psychedelics play an important role and we meet Shulgin and his wife Ann. He has been called a “genius biochemist”—or, alternatively, “a dangerous criminal” by the US Drug Enforcement Agency—and was the first to resynthesize ecstasy,Footnote 34 next to over 200 psychoactive substances (Petridis 2014). The Shulgins tested, and diligently documented, all the psychedelic substances themselves, specifically phenethylamines (Shulgin and Shulgin 2017a) and tryptamines (Shulgin and Shulgin 2017b). The resulting two books are called PiHKAL and TiHKAL, acronyms for Phenethylamines/Tryptamines I Have Known And Loved and total 1,782 pages. It is a safe guess that their minds have experienced states of being few other human minds will ever know. They also “argued passionately for the rights of the individual to explore and map the limits of human consciousness without government interference” (Power 2014). Finally, the psychiatrist Rick Strassman writes in his book DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor’s Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences (Strassman 2001, p. xviii):
3.2 DMT: Down the Rabbit HoleDMT is a simple organic chemical found in many plants and some animals (Carbonaro and Gatch 2016). Specifically, it occurs as N, N-dimethyltryptamine, seen in Fig. 14.2, or as 5-methoxy-N, N-dimethyltryptamine (5-MeO-DMT) . It is a psychedelic tryptamine (Shulgin and Shulgin 2017b) and probably the most powerful psychedelic substance known to the human mind. DMT is also produced by the human brain, although it is not clear where and for what function. Endogenous DMT is hypothesized to be synthesized in the pineal gland and related to dream states and near-death experiences (Strassman 2001). DMT has been utilized in Amazonian shamanic traditions as ayahuasca—a brew from two plants, drunk as a sacred medicine—since ages ago. Indeed, in these cultures the associated plants are understood as being connected to the origin of the world (Rätsch 1998, p. 9). In general (Horgan 2010): Fig. 14.2 The shape of DMT. The two-dimensional structure of N, N-dimethyltryptamine. Source: Wikimedia Full size image
DMT-induced visions can include—next to transcendental geometric shapes—robots, insects, and reptiles. McKenna coined the term “machine elves” for such apparently conscious entities inhabiting the psychedelic realm (McKenna 1993b, p. 114):
One may wonder about the possible implications of endogenous DMT release in the human brain. How much of mythology and how many reports of alien abduction could be the result of this? Horgan reports his own experience (Horgan 2010):
In more detail, he explains (Horgan 2014a):
Others have probed the DMT realm with greater success and reported about its myriads of facets. For instance, the entomologist Adam Oliver Brown (Brown 2014):
A synthetic form of DMT can be smoked as a crystalline substance. After a sucession of tokes the effects set in, lasting about ten minutes in physical time. In comparison, an ayahuasca journey can last up to twelve hours. The effects includeFootnote 36:
There are countless personal reports of DMT-induced experiences posted online.Footnote 37 The magazine Vice interviewed people who had just smoked DMT (Barclay 2012):
Another user reportsFootnote 38:
AndFootnote 39:
Finally, Pollan reports his experiences with 5-MeO-DMT in the smoked venom of the Sonoran Desert toad (Pollan 2018):
An interesting observation is that the human brain appears to have the final authority with respect to its own experience creation. Not always do psychedelics result in altered states of consciousness. I have been confronted with anecdotal evidence that the ingestion of LSD or ayahuasca left the consumer waiting in vain for the psychotropic effects. It seems as if, some days, the brain simply refuses to change gears. Also, there could exist a personal predisposition or affinity with respect to how drugs are experienced. This can perhaps explain why the avid psychonaut Watts surprisingly assesses DMT as “amusing but relatively uninteresting” (Watts 1971, p. 82). It is truly astonishing that a single molecule, ubiquitous in nature, has the capacity to hijack our entire cognitive apparatus and “teleport” our consciousness into a realm transcending space and time, sometimes inhabited by alien entities of consciousness. What is also intriguing, is that these are entirely subjective experiences made by individual minds. One cannot share them. Any attempts at communicating their contents are severely restricted by our “normal” conceptuality, shaped during sober waking consciousness, thoroughly inadequate at capturing the reality of these transcendental realms of consciousness. Either a human mind has experienced such otherworldly states first-hand—harboring faint memories of the events ever after—or creative attempts at imagining the ineffable are made. Similarly to the abstract notions of infinity and zero, my mind can at best speculate about what it could mean to experience a non-material reality outside of space and time. However, people are attempting to contextualize the DMT realm (Kotler and Wheal 2017):
Psychonauts recount their observations of grids, mathematical structures, or the machine code of reality lurking behind the veils of physical reality, next to interacting with alien conscious entities. Within the prevailing materialistic and reductionistic scientific worldview, such narratives are understood as being absurd. However, we have seen that this paradigm is currently crumbling (Chap. 10) and being replaced (Chap. 13), opening up the possibility of pragmatic and impartial explorations of these outer realms of existence. Furthermore, the various different pieces of understanding which could be brought back to the “normal” realm of reality that our minds inhabit, speak of the same architecture of these netherworlds. This can be seen by the similar “sacred geometries” expressed in different cultures. Indeed, how much of the awakening of the human mind has been influenced by certain chemical substances? 3.3 Cultural RootsThe human species is not the only one that knows about altered states of being and craves them. Within the animal kingdom, “getting high” is no rarity. For instance, early primates’ ethanol consumption from fermented fruits (Carrigan et al. 2015); alcohol self-administration by elephants (Siegel and Brodie 1984); vervet monkeys on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts and their problems with alcohol (Palmour et al. 1997); the effects of catnip on most domestic cats; opium-eating wallabies (Williams 2010); jaguars consuming Yage vine, one of the ingredients of ayahuasca (Anderson 2013); and dolphins consuming the toxins of pufferfish (Nuwer 2013). McKenna put forward the “stoned ape” theory of human evolution (McKenna 1993a). He argues that the key driver of Homo sapiens’ remarkable explosion of cognitive capabilities was due to the influence of psilocybin mushrooms. As McKenna’s thesis cannot be substantiated by much evidence, it has been ignored by the scientific community. However, as shamanic traditions emerged around the globe at the dawn of the modern human mind, it is perhaps not all too unreasonable to expect at least some cultural influence from the use of psychedelics. For instance, the anthropologist and ethnopharmacologist Christian Rätsch—who traveled the world to partake in a great number of psychedelic shamanic rituals of many indigenous peopleFootnote 41—observed the following (Rätsch 1998, p. 635, translation mine):
Perhaps only people who have themselves ventured into the psychedelic realm are open to such fantastic ideas. In his book, called A History of the World in 6 Glasses, Tom Stanadage recounts the importance of certain psychoactive beverages since the dawn of humanity. In particular (Standage 2006, p. 134f.):
Perhaps even the computer revolution has some of its roots in psychedelics. In 2008, the programmer Dennis R. Wier made a confession. He was the chief architect for one of the biggest programming projects in 1975. Then (Wier 2008):
Steve Jobs and other computer pioneers believed that LSD helped their creativity (Grossman 2011). 3.4 Plant ConsciousnessAt the 2018 Swiss Biennial on Science, Technics + Aesthetics ,Footnote 42 Susana Bustos, a psychologist and scholar of Amerindian shamanic traditions, explained the concept of Vegetalismo . This is the process by which the shamans are said to gain their knowledge and power to cure diseases. This knowledge originates from the plants—specifically the transcendental states induced by ayahuasca. A central element is the icaro , a “song” of the plant which the shaman tries to get to resonate in the sick person, inducing healing (Bustos 2004; Callicott 2013). In effect, the plants are at the center of the Amerindian cosmology. Indeed, “Mother Ayahuasca” is reported as being the spiritual source of divine insights. In detailFootnote 43:
In a therapeutic context (Labate and Cavnar 2013, p. 141):
In detail (Kent 2010, p. 116):
The author Claus von Bohlen explains the followingFootnote 44:
Sitting in the Amazon rain-forest, engulfed by countless shades of green representing a myriad of botanical diversity, the following question seems naturalFootnote 45:
Indeed, if humans directly ingest the DMT-containing component of ayahuasca, nothing will happen. Monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs) SeeSeemonoamine oxidase inhibitors are required to unleash the psychedelic effects. These are found in the other ingredient. If this knowledge was not received by otherworldly means, then one is faced with uncountable possible combinations of plant substances which would have to be tested by trial and error for their psychedelic effects. Why does such an abundance of chemicals exist in nature which can alter—and greatly enhance—the normal functioning of the sober waking state of the human mind? Why did this chemical affinity emerge? Some psychedelic substances are toxic, but others, like psilocybin, are not. DMT is even produced by the human brain. What is their function? Indeed, in the book The Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Plants: Ethnopharmacology and Its Applications , Rätsch describes a breathtaking array of psychoactive plants in a thousand page tour-de-force (Rätsch 2005). The human brain is immersed in a vast chemical landscape able to contest the primacy of sober waking reality. In contrast, a world in which no plant component has the power to modify human cognition could easily be imagined, where intoxication simply leads to unconsciousness. In detail, why do specific receptors in mammalian cells exist that recognize a plant-derived substance? As an example, the endocannabinoid system in the human brain is important for various physiological functions. It is surprising that the brain has a complex system of interacting chemicals related to cannabis (Pacher et al. 2006). Interestingly (Pacher et al. 2006):
The reality we perceive is a function not only of our neural hardwiring but crucially also of the chemical substances present in the brain. The evolutionary optimized state of sober waking consciousness is only one in a vast array of possibilities. Synthesized by plants, animals, and even the human brain, such chemicals can appear to give access to novel realms of reality. Finally, the plant “consciousness” encountered in ayahuasca is currently also cultivating an emerging global environmental sensibility, a much needed antidote to the threatening environmental crises humanity is instigating (Hill 2016):
3.5 The NoumenonFor Kant, the human mind can ever only access the phenomenal world of the senses. Even space and time are categories of the mind and not features of true reality (see introduction to this chapter). The underlying reality, called the noumenon—the thing-in-itself—can never be known. DMT users have reported of glimpsing the noumenonFootnote 46:
People talk about notions like “the control room of reality” and “behind the veils of reality” when describing the DMT realm. Taking a step back (Gallimore 2014):
Most people who have journeyed to the DMT realm argue that what they have experienced is just as real as experiences made during the sober waking state—if not much more so. As mentioned, it is tempting to disregard such experiences as hallucinations—nothing more, nothing less. However, this raises philosophical questions. Recall that neuroscientists are quite clear: Our perception of reality is a hallucination tethered by a bit of sensory input (Sect. 11.2.1). What I experience through sober waking consciousness is an elaborate virtual reality rendering in my brain. The nature of this hallucination can be modulated by the chemical composition of the brain. Crucially, the DMT produced by my own body has the potential to intrinsically and naturally modify the contents of my consciousness—by “teleporting” my mind to the DMT realm. Indeed, simply by shutting down the left hemisphere of the human brain appears to induce travels of the mind, allowing consciousness to access a “place” of peace and euphoria (recall Bolte Taylor’s experiences in Sect. 11.3.3). How can I then be certain that the fidelity and truth content of the one hallucination is superior to the other? What epistemic guarantee do I have that would allow me to negate the reality of the DMT realm? How can I exclude the possibility that reality is indeed “queerer than we can suppose” (Sect. 12.4.4) and everything I have ever known about is metaphorically restricted to a tiny isolated island in a vast archipelago of transcendental existence? Moreover, we are faced with the startling possibility of otherworldly knowledge generation. Next to the amazing mechanisms of knowledge generation utilizing formal thought systems (Chaps. 2 and 5), these transcendental sources of information represent an orthogonal approach to understanding. Medicine men in shamanic traditions have been utilizing otherworldly knowledge for healing purposes for millennia (Luna and White 2006, p. vii):
Roland Loomis, also known as Fakir Musafar, was a US American performance artist and a pioneer of the modern primitive movement. He was known for extreme body modifications, including tattooing, body piercing, scarification, and flesh hook suspension. Loomis personally explored many rituals and built, for instance, a bed of nails and a bed of blades on which he would lay. “After an hour of surrender to the blades, I drift off and forget where I am” (Musafar 2005, p. 46). “After an hour, I trance out and feel like I am floating about 30 cm above the wicked spikes. I am warm and comfortable. I have visions and inner travels” (Musafar 2005, p. 50). His book, called Spirit and Flesh, opens with: “The images in this book may disturb you” (Musafar 2005, p. 8). He recounts a journey of his consciousness, initiated by extreme physical tourment, and the obtaining of otherworldly knowledge (Musafar 2005, p. 83):
The seasoned psychonaut Rätsch explains in an interview (Mingels 2013, translation mine):
In summary (Kent 2010, p. 158):
Metzinger asked, “How do you know that you actually woke up this morning?” (Sect. 11.2.2). Perhaps the more accurate, and pressing, question is “How do you know that you are not ‘high’ right now?” 4 A Participatory OntologyIn Chap. 13, specifically Sect. 13.4, the case for an information ontology was made. At the intersection of theoretical physics and theoretical computer science a new paradigm is emerging, replacing the current materialistic and reductionistic scientific worldview. In this novel understanding, information is the ethereal building block of reality. The very real possibility that our universe is a hologram, or even a simulation, was discussed. In this chapter, the idea that information has an inner aspect was introduced, giving rise to the subjective world emerging in minds. In this paradigm, consciousness is understood as primal and distributed. Indeed, panpsychism offers a solution, albeit an unexpected one, to the age old challenge of unifying the subjective with the objective (Sect. 11.1). It was also discovered that intelligence is an emergent phenomenon which can attach itself even to non-living matter (Sect. 14.2.4). Finally, psychonauts have been speaking of transcendental realms of existence since the beginning of time—planes of reality which can be accessed by disembodied consciousness. We find ourselves being conscious actors on a vast, intricate, and multifaceted stage of reality, comprising countless ineffable otherworldly realms. However, what if we are in fact not actors at all, but creators? What if we inhabit a reality with a participatory ontology? The eminent physicist John WheelerFootnote 47 was instrumental in initiating the information-theoreticSeeSeeparadigm shift paradigm shift (Sect. 13.2). In the same sentence where he introduces this outlandish idea—it from bit—he also outlines the notion of metaphysical participation. He explains these notions as follows (Wheeler 1990):
In more detail (Horgan 2011):
As a consequence (Heaven 2015):
Remarkably, Wheeler’s delayed choice experiment (Wheeler 1978)—where a choice made now by an observer can change or edit the past of a photon—has been experimentally confirmed and published in the prestigious journal Science (Jacques et al. 2007):
The philosopher of science, Paul Feyerabend, harbor a similar intuition with respect to the participatory nature of the universe (Feyerabend 2008, p. 270):
Indeed, the notion of a participatory reality is also found in Kant’s philosophy. In summary (Tarnas 1991):
This astute and eloquent summary of Kant’s ideas was given by the historian Richard Tarnas. In his bestseller, called The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World View, he analyzes the thinking of the last two and a half millennia. His powerful and penetrating analysis immerses the reader in the epic journey of the human mindgrappling with reality and its own existence. In the chapter, called The Postmodern Mind, Tarnas observes (Tarnas 1991, p. 396):
He outlines his conclusions in the epilogue, where he empathetically and persuasively argues for a participatory epistemology (Tarnas 1991, p. 396):
Within the information-theoretic paradigm, the jump from a participatory epistemology to a participatory ontology is perhaps only a small one. Wheeler once mused (quoted in Horgan 1997, p. 84):
By thinking the idea of an information-theoretic reality to its radical conclusion, he realized (paraphrased in Gefter 2014):
Fig. 14.3 A participatory universe. Wheeler’s illustration of the notion, taken from Wheeler (1980), Fig. 22.13 Full size image The drawing is depicted in Fig. 14.3. We all are the universe observing itself. This conclusion has not escaped others. Recall from the Preface the insight of Sagan:
Also, the musings of Watts:
In the words of an entirely different paradigm (Harvey 2005):
In the final analysis, panpsychism offers the conscious fabric from which the universe is tailored. 4.1 The Quantum ObserverThe reason physicists wade out into the murky waters of metaphysics is driven by quantum mechanics (Sects. 4.3.4 and 10.3.2). The emergence of an observer has vexed the physics community since the discover of the quantum realm of reality in 1901. Indeed (Rosenblum and Kuttner 2011, p. back cover):
This goes to the heart of Cartesian dualism: the inexplicable schism between the physical body and an ethereal mind (Sect. 11.1). In summary (Stapp 2009):
Henry Stapp was a collaborator of Wolfgang Pauli, Werner Heisenberg, and Wheeler. He is known for the development of the axiomatic S-matrix theory (Stapp 1971). Stapp probably was the first US American physicist to popularize Bell’s theorem in the early 1970s (Stapp 1975), then still obscure, and thus bring the issue of entanglement to attention (Sect. 10.3.2.1). He has also been working on the connection between quantum mechanics and consciousness for decades. In his book Mindful Universe: Quantum Mechanics and the Participating Observer he summarizes his research (Stapp 2011). In essence (Stapp 2011, p. 160):
Again, we are confronted with a participatory role of consciousness. Stapp also criticizes the philosopher Daniel Dennett, famous for “explaining consciousness away” (Sect. 11.1). Specifically (Stapp 2011, p. 2):
To the point (Stapp 2011, p. 9):
Stapp also sees an information-theoretic relevance (Stapp 2014, p. 148):
Wheeler’s thinking was also influential for a modern alternative interpretation of quantum mechanics (Sect. 10.3.2.2), called quantum Bayesianism, or QBism (Fuchs et al. 2014). Bayesian probabilities are understood as subjective degrees of belief about a system (see Sect. 11.3.2 for Bayesian inference) . In QBism, the quantum wave function’s probabilities are interpreted as Bayesian probabilities. One of the founders of QBism admits (Fuchs 2017, p. 113):
In more detail (Gefter 2015):
QBism also gives rise to a participatory realism (Fuchs 2017). The science writer and author Amanda Gefter takes the criticism of a single universe shared by multiple observers a step further. In her 2012 FQXi essay Cosmic Solipsism she elaboratesFootnote 48:
4.2 Psi: Measuring the TranscendentalIf anything written in this chapter and the last is true, then one should expect some experimental support. Specifically, an influence of the mind on physical reality seems a pertinent area of research. Alas, any suggestion of a direct connection between subjective consciousness and objective reality conjures up the final taboo of the supernatural. Parapsychology is the study of paranormal and psychic phenomena, refereed to as psi research in the following. There probably exists no other topic that triggers as much disdain, animosity, and contempt in scientists, philosophers, and theologians alike. Psi research is an off-limits subject matter obviously unworthy of any serious attention, as it has allegedly been debunked ages ago. Furthermore, it is seen as a threat to the prevailing materialistic and reductionistic scientific paradigm, which confidently dictates what is possible and not. For instance, scholars can propose the following speculative traits of reality, without fearing any professional backlash or public ridicule: reality is (up to) eleven-dimensional (Sect. 10.2.2), where the additional dimensions conveniently curl up and become undetectable; there exists a mirror world of supersymmetric particles (Sect. 4.3.2); the universe is a hologram (Sect. 13.4.1); we live in the multiverse, an infinite collection of parallel universes (Sect. 10.3.2.2); causality is an illusion (Sect. 10.3.2.2); time is an illusion (Sect. 10.4.2); consciousness is an illusion (Sect. 11.1); free will is an illusion (Sect. 11.4.1); and panpsychism. However, exclaiming that the subjective could potentially have a direct influence on the objective is professional suicide.Footnote 49 Of course, it does not help that history is fraught with charlatans and fraudsters preying on the gullible and uninformed. The investigation of psi phenomena has not always been stigmatized. The psychiatrist Carl Jung famously introduced the notion of synchronicity (Jung 1952). This is the idea that events can be related, even if there exists no causal relationship. In essence, consciousness has the power to meaningfully arrange physical reality. In the words of Tarnas (2006, p. 50):
Pauli was one of the pioneers of quantum mechanics. He is also known for an “effect” named after him. The theoretical physicist George Gamow once wrote the following about Pauli (Gamow 1985, p. 63f.):
Indeed, the Nobel laureate Otto Stern forbid Pauli from entering his laboratory (Mallonee 2016). The physicist and historian David Kaiser meticulously researched the history of quantum mechanics in his book How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival (Kaiser 2011). Sections 4.3.4 and 10.3.2.1 contain important information provided by Kaiser. He traced the origins of the study of quantum information, the revival of research into the foundations of quantum physics, and the popularization of Bell’s theorem and entanglement to a group of hippies, calling themselves the Fundamental Fysiks Group . However, their “contributions lie buried still, overlooked and forgotten in physicists’ collective consciousness” (Kaiser 2011, p. xvii). Perhaps the reason is all too obvious (Kaiser 2011, p. xvii):
Stapp, himself not a hippie, was a charter member of the group (Kaiser 2011, p. 101). His experiences with psi research is also recounted (Kaiser 2011, p. 254ff.). He was approached in the early 1990s by a physicist-turned-parapsychologist. Skeptical but open minded, Stapp, agreed to an experiment. To his great surprise, there was a statistically significant trend in the data, which should have been random. Kaiser, then an undergraduate at Berkeley, remembers discussing these results with Stapp. A formal approach aimed at this “causal anomaly” yielded the following (Kaiser 2011, p. 256):
He proceeded to write an article and submitted it to a physics journal in 1993. Stapp received a letter from the journal’s editor, asking him to shift the emphasis from psi phenomena to theoretical physics. After complying, another letter arrived, asking him to remove all details of the experiment. Stapp, amused and aggravated, agreed and the paper was published (Stapp 1994). However (Kaiser 2011, p. 257f.):
However, in the end, “the statistical effect had entirely washed out” (Kaiser 2011, p. 258) leaving Stapp most likely in a state of puzzlement. Today, only a few brave scientists exist who openly admit to researching psi. The biochemist Rupert Sheldrake proposed the concept of morphic resonance—a kind of information field or collective memory—to account for phenomena like collective intelligence next to psi phenomena (Sheldrake 1988). He claims that dogsFootnote 50 telepathically know when their owners are coming home (Sheldrake 1999) and that humans can sense when they are being stared at Sheldrake (2005). For this, he offers experimental evidence. In 2008, Sheldrake was invited to give a Google Tech Talk.Footnote 51 In the Q and A session, around 1 h, 27 min, and 14 s, he recalls the following anecdote:
Dean Radin is one of an estimated 50 doctorate-level scientists engaging in full-time psi research (Radin 2006, p. 7). In 2008, he also gave a Google Tech Talk.Footnote 52 Radin has held appointments at Princeton University, Edinburgh University, University Nevada, and Las Vegas.Footnote 53 He believes that scientific inquiry should not be restricted by a taboo, i.e., by preconceived ideas of what is possible or not. The scientific consensus that consciousness cannot possibly have a direct influence on physical reality is seen by him as prime example of such a taboo. Indeed, he claims that many people have experienced such phenomena—which they only communicate in private. He has written three books on the subject, where he presents empirical evidence (Radin 1997, 2006, 2013). For instance, in a skeptical publication on telepathy, called Finding and Correcting Flawed Research Literatures, the authors report (Delgado-Romero and Howard 2005):
Faced with having reproduced the phenomenon, they continue (Delgado-Romero and Howard 2005):
Then they run another experiment, using an ad hoc and untested methodFootnote 54 and received a significant negative result. In conclusion (Delgado-Romero and Howard 2005):
Radin elaborates (Radin 2006, p. 120):
In 1995, the American Institutes for Research performed a review of remote viewing for the CIA (Mumford et al. 1995).Footnote 55 In conclusion (Mumford et al. 1995):
The statistician Jessica Utts writes in her review (Mumford et al. 1995):
Another reviewer, the psychologist Ray Hyman, observes (Mumford et al. 1995):
A meta-analysis on dream extrasensory perception (ESP) , considering 37 studies from 1966–2002, find a median effect size of 0.255, indicating an overall medium sized effect. The study concludes (Sherwood and Roe 2003):
In a study, where two isolated people were requested to think about each other, the EEG data showed a statistically significant correlation of brain activity, unnoticed by the subjects themselves. This was done with 13 couples (Radin 2004). Then there exists a wealth of academic research that is published in journals committed to studying fringe science or in proceedings of parapsychological conventions. For instance, a study showing that when two isolated people are asked to think of each other and the “sender” is stimulated by a light flash, the “receiver’s” brain shows corresponding activity (Kittenis et al. 2004). Similarly, another study selected one couple out of 30 and, again, asked the participants to focus their attention. When the “sender” received a visual stimulus, neural activity was reported in the “receivers” fMRI data of the visual cortex (Standish et al. 2003). Precognition has been reported in Bierman and Scholte (2002). A result relating precognition to electrophysiological aspects of the heart has been published in a peer-reviewed medial journal (McCraty et al. 2004). More recent research in more established journals include telepathy (Tressoldi et al. 2011), ESP (Storm et al. 2010), and precognition (Radin 2011; Mossbridge et al. 2012). More publications can be found on Radin’s webpage.Footnote 56 Another line of research analyzes random number generators. In essence, the notion that the human mind can change the performance characteristics of computers is researched. This was performed at the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) laboratory. In detail (Van Bakel 1995):
PEAR closed in February 2007. Efforts to reproduce and validate their claims have been unsuccessful or inconclusive. The Global Consciousness Project Footnote 57 is a psi experiment which begun in 1998. The project monitors a network of geographically distributed random number generators in order to detect anomalous output which correlates with global events of emotional importance. For instance (Radin 2006, p. 203):
In response to these claims (May and Spottiswoode 2001):
Perhaps the most compelling, and reproducible, psi effects appear in studies of human consciousness interacting with experimental quantum devices. For instance, a study appearing in the Center for Open Science’sFootnote 58 Open Science FrameworkFootnote 59 in 2017 (last updated in March 2018), reports (Guerrer 2017):
Other, related research, was previously published in peer-reviewed scientific journals, demonstrating the robustness and reproducibility of these double-slit quantum experiments (Radin et al. 2012, 2015, 2016). Earlier experiments had been done using interferometers (Radin 2008). The Global Consciousness App Footnote 60 is an attempt to bring psi research to your smart-phone. The controversy surrounding psi research is deep-rooted. The situation is very similar to the political entrenchment discussed in Chap. 12, especially related to open-mindedness (Sect. 12.4.4). In essence (Van Bakel 1995):
In 1986, an article appeared in the prestigious science journal Nature summarizing (Marks 1986):
However, the journal also has a somewhat troubled history with the subject. In 1974, it prominently published a psi study by the physicist Russell Targ and the engineer Harold Puthoff, offering compelling evidence of a subject’s psi powers (Targ and Puthoff 1974). It was later found out that the subject was the illusionist Uri Geller. The physicist Jack Sarfatti, a leading member of the Fundamental Fysiks Group , was at first impressed by Geller’s apparent psi capabilities. However, after the magician James Randi was able to demonstrate similar feats as the ones performed by Geller to him, Sarfatti exclaimed (quoted in Kaiser 2011, p. 82):
Moreover (Kaiser 2011, p. 98):
At the end of the day, the following can be concluded. There appear to be effects happening which require an extension of the current scientific worldview. These effects are mostly very small and hard to reproduce. Nonetheless, the claims that psi is ruled out by what we know about the workings of nature is based on a belief—a belief inspired by science, but nevertheless a belief. The implicit ontology that is invoked with such claims is based on a materialistic and reductionistic scientific worldview. However, as more and more cracks appear in this specific edifice of science—and an entirely new information-theoretic and participatory ontology seems to be emerging—the certainty and justifiability associated with these assertions can only be upheld on ideological grounds. Certainty is an elusive notion (Sect. 8.1.1, Chap. 9, Sects. 10.4, 11.2.1, 11.3, and 14.3.5). Then it is perhaps not really intellectually honest to categorically exclude that reality is “queerer than we can suppose” (Sect. 12.4.4). In stark contrast (Ribur Rinpoche 1999, p. 56):
Finally, every paradigm is afflicted by blind spots. Currently, this relates to the taboo of subjectivity (Sect. 14.1.1) and spirituality (Sect. 14.2.3), the pointless nature of psychedelics (Sect. 14.3), the unnoticed insights gained by ancient Eastern truth-seekers and shamans (Sects. 14.2.2 and 14.3.4), the possibility of gaining knowledge through unorthodox channels (Sects. 14.3.5 and 14.3.4), and the ridiculous idea of psi phenomena. Moreover, astute scholars have suspected from the very beginning that quantum physics should be understood in the context of establishing a link between consciousness and the cosmos. The cosmologist and psi skeptic Sean Carroll reminds us (Carroll 2016):
And as a result, the emergence of important knowledge has been deferred. The tragic story of Ignaz Semmelweis comes to mind. He claimed that simply washing hands could significantly reduce mortality in obstetrical clinics. He presented empirical evidence to substantiate his claim (Semmelweis 1861). Alas, his insights were ridiculed and rejected by his peers. He turned to alcohol and suffered from mental breakdowns. It did not help his cause that he wrote angry, bitter, and accusing letters to professors refusing to accept his ideas. See Obenchain (2016). Notes
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Corresponding authorCorrespondence to James B. Glattfelder . ConclusionConclusionThe question “Could there be something we don’t yet know about ourselves and the universe, the knowledge of which could change everything?” is beginning to be answered. In the last chapter, an information-theoretic ontology was outlined. Guided by cutting-edge theoretical physics and theoretical computer science an unlikely foundation of the world was glimpsed: the fabric of objective reality is woven out of threads of information. Intriguingly, the notion of information is also understood as being central to the subjective and recalcitrant phenomena of consciousness. Information possesses an inner dimension giving rise to experiences. A truly outlandish world emerges, where consciousness is part of the cosmic fabric. Now, a participatory ontology arises, where the ultimate taboo within the current materialistic and reductionistic scientific worldview is being broken by exposing a mind-matter relationship—or more succinctly: mind over matter. Only very few great scientific minds ever had the courage to uttered such heresies. Slowly the blind spots within the current scientific paradigm are being exposed. Previously demonized substances are rediscovered in a therapeutic context and the experiences they are able to relay speak of a multiverse. However, one comprised of transcendental universes beyond space, time, and matter, accessible to pure consciousness. In the recent peer-reviewed physics literature one can find multiple double-slit quantum experiments, showing reproducible hints of a direct mind-matter connection. A feature some of the great pioneers of quantum mechanics had always suspected. Finally, intelligence can be a decentralized and non-sentient phenomena, latching onto various configurations of matter. Given these newly emerging surprising insights it is perhaps not all too puzzling that the prevailing scientific paradigm failed to uncover this ultimate nature of reality and the human mind, as outlined in Part II. In contrast, this knowledge some ancient Eastern truth-seekers and shamanic traditions appear to have had access to for a long time. In a strange twist of events, the human mind was first dethroned and banished from the center of creation only to reawaken in the fabric of existence. These new advances in understanding have been criticized as neo-geocentrism (Horgan 2016). However, perhaps the most common, pervasive, and overlooked manifestation of geocentrism relates to our sober waking state of consciousness. We take this mode of subjective experience as the defining and default one. By ignoring all other states of consciousness—induced by meditation, trance, chemicals, pain, brain trauma, sleep, or spontaneously—we are placing our so-perceived reality at the core of existence, denying the possibility of vast and rich alternate realms of reality, only accessible by silencing the sober waking mind. Moreover, in a peculiar turn of events, we indeed do appear to be at the center of the universe. Humanities most advanced experimental and theoretical cosmological proficiency has resulted in two truly puzzling observations: the “axis of evil” and the “coincidence problem” (Sect. 10.3.1). In essence, given the entire context of the universe, “right here” and “right now” appear to be very special coordinates. In the words of the cosmologist Lawrence M. Krauss (Krauss 2006):
Yet another such enigma is the way the universe “conspired” to give rise to this very moment in time—including sentient and inquisitive minds inhabiting a neural network based on organic matter—through a series of breathtaking coincidences (Sect. 8.1.3). Is the universe perhaps more than a cold, pointless, callous, cruel, and cynical place? Is it being driven by an innate ordering force ever higher levels of computation resulting in emergent complexity? Is each human mind an author of its own “Book of Nature?” In a final synthesis, the next chapter unifies the information-theoretic and participatory ontologies. The entelechy of existence emerges, containing all the rhizomes of reality comprising the transcendental multiverse. Rights and permissionsOpen Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. Reprints and Permissions Copyright information© 2019 The Author(s) About this chapterCite this chapterGlattfelder, J.B. (2019). The Consciousness of Reality. In: Information—Consciousness—Reality. The Frontiers Collection. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03633-1_14 Download citation
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