GEORGIOS MAVROUDIS Research on Consciousness via Psychedelics

8/13/2019 GEORGIOS MAVROUDIS Research on Consciousness via Psychedelics

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GEORGIOS MAVROUDIS *******

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Research on Consciousness

by the Aidof the

Psychedelic E!erience"E#

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"ORE'ORD

Bewilderment; confoundness; mystification; infantilism those are the words that best describe thecontemporary condition in science when it comes to the issue of consciousness. In an age when we appear tohave reached an immense sophistication of knowledge over the nature of matter, the cosmogonic evolution,the life, the society, we remain almost speechless against the slippery inquiry of the nature of consciousness.If mathematical formulation is to be the bedrock of ideological and scientific certitude then we have nocertitude whatsoever in the realm of what is the mind. We endorse to all of kind of hypotheses unconsciously

but when we are pressed, we cannot defend our position. It is not an eaggeration to report that allrationalistic formulas seem to fail on the probing of this strange, yet overwhelming, phenomenon.In contrast to the natural sciences, psychology is still suspended by the lack of dare or innovation to

overcome the challenges, which come out from the mystifying darkness of consciousness. While physics havealready made their great leap towards the quantum indeterminacy and biology has penetrated to the spinalcord of life, the !"#, psychology is still under their capitulation, with a deficiency of its own originalmethodology for the investigation of the phenomena that is concerned with. $f course, we can give themitigation that psychology is still a young a science, an immature discipline against an incredibly perpleedproblem% &he question of what mind is, what consciousness is and what behavior is for. &hose are not simplequestions. &hose enigmas delegate the humankind to the dangling enterprise of discovering the truth formillennia. We are not really much progressed since 'eraclitus, #ristotle, and (armenides had postulated theirfirst speculations on the nature of consciousness. We might have progressed in methods of probing the brainbut our theories on the issue are, all in all, a drama of discrepancies and crudeness.

$n this paper, the reader will find that there is a general apprehension against obsolete theories thatgovern stubborningly the field of psychology. Both )artesian dualism and cognitive theories will have to bestrictly critici*ed. # new skepticism will stand against all present assumptions with the premise of a moreradical revaluation of the mind and consciousness. "o doubt, it is a dauntingly difficult task to face most ofthe new cognitive doctrines and the physicalist map of the philosophy of science. &heir descendance fromthe traditional rationalism guarantees their full consistency and thus their undefeatable status to any rivaltheories. +es, naiveties of the embodied soul and the )artesian theater kind, as !ennett designated, areforlorn by their fallacy when they are put net to the reductionistic cartography of the brain. 'owever, thetriumph of the cognitive research is surprisingly undermined by the parade of brand new ideas coming fromthe field of the natural sciences. While, ournals and books proclaim that the time of naivety is over andconsciousness becomes accessible to obective research, yet in compliance with the quantum physics, chaostheory and morphogenetic fields in biology, this very proclamation seems to oin the same naiveties. &hemessage that we got from new approaches in other levels of our reality is that any udgment which rushes to

be established over an obsolete or yet incomplete conception of the universe and life is doomed to failure bya humiliating canceling. &hat and only that should keep us open to new approaches and ideas, to newtheories and philosophies and at the same time uncommitted to any present ideologies. $therwise, our hopesfor unraveling the nature of consciousness or any other phenomenon that stands beyond our grasp will beafflicted by a terrible suspension of progress.

&herefore, in this paper the research will march in the darkness of consciousness equipped with adifferent verdict. &his verdict will be shaped by two inescapable factors that, in a way, condition the issue ofconsciousness. &he transcendental eperience and the quantum mechanics will intricate the question andwill feed us with an abundance of new ideas and notions about the mind. &hey will send us farther away for adeeper comprehension of consciousness. &heir unanimity to each other and, most importantly, theirunanimity to the sense of having a mind, their amenability to the old suppositions of our pristine imaginationincite me to use them for the enterprise of transcending obscuring and disorientating notions on thescientific safari of consciousness studies.

-ntil now, science has been regarded as the road that leads away from the traditional modes of thinkingabout the self and the universe. cience is known as the highway to the truth, which is supposed to be

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diametrically opposed to the archaic accepted wisdom, many times called superstitious or raw. But as moreinformation is gathered from various sources, a cosmos is build that gets increasingly akin to the old goodcommencements on our nature. It is not an overstatement the fact that new scientific reports returnhumiliated to many initial theses that were held centuries ago. &hey do not proved necessarily identical totheir initiations but analogous to them and that leads one to think that this highway is a roundabout, really. Ido not take the position of an etremely radicalism in the following pages. I do not imply that all the current

science is square to one and, hence, that we need to return to mysticism in order to resolve the problem ofconsciousness. /y proposal is an attack against the reluctance of cognitive scientists to comprise on theirinvestigation of mind the antipodes of human eperience that have been reported as long as we possess thelinguistic capacity and the novel revolutionary knowledge that they, averagely, insist on refusing to use.

0uantum physics and the psychedelic eperience figure out as the most promising elements for theunraveling of consciousness1 nature. (erhaps, not all philosophers, scientists or trouble2free people can seethe reason for the psychedelic or quantum usage in such a research. "evertheless, once they obligatethemselves in a deep study of these issues they will concede that their hesitation was based on theirignorance on the offerings that those sources of information give to the pu**lement of contemporaryepistemology and psychology on the issue. It seems that a big eureka waits us all there. &he enigma ofconsciousness can be thoroughly understood in a more substantial way, as long as we enlarge both the map ofcausalities in our theoretical analysis through quantum mechanics and the spectrum of our cognitiveeperience by the use of psychedelic compounds. &herefore, the research will go hunting for a sufficient

answer to the mystery of consciousness via the 3ungle4 of the transcendental eperience and its verifyingaccompaniment of the quantum physics.

It should be evident already that here we are talking about the spirituali*ation of science or, maybe, thescientific concreti*ation of spirituality. Well, that kind of compromise should transpose the problem giving usthe chance to gather all the useful data in a landscape of dissipative ideas and to structure a theory ofconsciousness that will not steal away from us the uniqueness that we feel as human beings; neither themagnitude of our being. uch an endeavor can only provide us both with an anthropical optimism and a set ofknowledge that will be adequate to the probing of the meaningful nature of possessing a consciousness.

&he paper is punctuated in three main parts that confess the problem of consciousness from threedifferent perspectives. 5irst, cognitive theories, based on physicalistic notions, will give their own popularaccount. #s we will apprehend, though, their incompatibility and the wide variation of their direction gives avacillating disposition that pilots not in a secure way to the understanding that we are searching for.#lthough, cognitive scientists like !aniel !ennett and teven (inker have written powerful books that shed

light to numerous previous uncertainties on how the mind works, nevertheless, their versions ofconsciousness are really superficial, as they neglect aspects of the issue that in any way defy eplanation.'owever, an eplanation is not given, apart from a short comment of superiority against ostensibly naivetiesthat entrench the question. &hey are truly tentative on diving in for a deeper eplanation of consciousness.#n eplanation that will grant us the sort of approval that comes when an eplanation really fits with thesubect of its inquiry.

#nd since consciousness is not only the frantic firing of the neurons 6at least to our 3illusory4 eperience,as many scientists want us to believe, we will ump to the second part on an issue that still, in the dawn ofthe third millennium, remains largely uneplored. &he psychedelic eperience, albeit as ancient as ourspecies and our cognition, has not yet been eplored in an ample way. &he governments suspend our formalknowledge on the issue and hence we linger on in not a particularly more advanced level than the primates1knowledge. We are infantile on the pu**le of the psychedelic ecstasy in an analogous way to our bafflementabout the nature of mind. It seems that once we take the admission to go forward on such an eerieeperiment, we will be able to unravel the greater mystery of them all. It is that revelatory the psychedeliceperience and that misconstrued from our contemporary culture. &he aim of this paper is to show evidentlyhow psychedelics can reorient us in the study of consciousness and how can counter the questions that stillhave been left unresolved by the physicalism of cognitive science and psychology. &he transcendentaleperience will epose the partial meagerness of the physicalism on consciousness by introducing us to theundeviating method of introspection and its supremacy against neuropsychology. "o need to say that I do notepect immediate approval, since any introspective approach is not easy to be, consistently, transferred towords, ust like neurological events cannot be consistently eposed to eperience. )onversely, I would notventure a research of consciousness from such a route, if I did not had a kind of backup, a stance thatguarantees the verification of several daring propositions and speculations that dwell up from thehallucinogenic eperience. &his is the naturalistic approach that will close the paper.

0uantum mechanics, among other new2fangled scientific theories, have brought things upside2down quite

impressively. &he twist of this novel theory has not left the epistemology and philosophy unaffected. &heconceptual changes on the nature of matter, brought by quantum physics and the recognition of the activeparticipation of consciousness in any empirical observation of any physical eperience has settled an avant2

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PRE(UDE

&he 8everted Intrusion

In the perpetual turmoil of human history, on a planet of regular changes and cultural 3cooking4, therehas been recorded a polarity between the centrali*ed 7uropean culture and the rest continents that were,for the most part, the background in the interaction between the civili*ations. 7urope was always moreprivileged due to its small si*e and its high density of its population. $n the other hand, #sia, #frica, and thepre2discovered #merica were too vast to allow its peoples to come together and labor their cultural gems.&he enormous distances isolated ideas that were ought to become known by their fermentation with foreignones, something that did not happened, effectively, until fast transportation was invented. 7urope, though,flourished from the dawn of history until its culmination when its civili*ation epanded to all directions bythe imperialistic purports of its ambitious citi*ens. &he short distances worked as a kind of a lubricant in itscultural growth, as ideas, philosophies, religious beliefs, and scientific dictums collaborated to each other,breeding new waves of knowledge and upgrading the life standards and the range of the 7uropeancivili*ation.

When the eplorers discovered the "ew World, when /arco (olo trekked the #sian depths, when #fricawas mapped, the 7uropean culture, with all its vigor, met the other face of the world. &he less thrivingcontinents, where people and customs were very different and the rationalism was somewhat at odds withthe one 7urope inherited from the 9reeks. &he eotic beauty of the new lands was accompanied by eotic

traditions, myths, and religions. 'owever primitive, they had an essence of truthfulness and precision that,unconsciously, pushed the 7uropean conquerors to violently dictate their own customs, religions, and truths.It is true that the "ative #mericans, or the #sians did not had any acceptable science 6their minds and theirculture, according to early reports from the conquerors, were blurred by supernatural incoherencies. adly,those assumptions were the trigger for one of the greatest lapses of the 7uropean civili*ation, and that is thehorrific Inquisition against people who were forced to abandon their own belief systems for the superiority oftheir conquerors.

In parallel with this, 7urope was arising from the superstition and demonology of the ages. :inneusinitiated a process of scientific labeling of nature and rationalism soon overshadowed the 7uropeancontinent, and later, its colonies. We could conceive the epansion of the Western civili*ation towards othercontinents as synonymous to the epansion of rationalism towards the medieval darkness. (hysical laws,chemical reactions, astronomical calculations, medicinal therapies, anatomical probing, all were sources of anew light that was enlarging the scope of our understanding in the nature of the cosmos, the life and the

psyche. $ur sight became less nebulous by the acquisition of coherent knowledge and, thus, any intuitionalsense of the truth was to be surrendered to a misfiring state against the 3imperialism4 of science andrationalism. ust like the Incas, the /ayas, the /iddle 7asterners, the Indians and the #fricans did togetherwith their cultural fruits.

'owever, as they say, time is the highest udge of all. 'istory is always flowing to the right pathways andsides with the ones that deserve of vindication. Beliefs and theories that do not have an acquaintance withthe truth are troubled by the progression of the humanity. /ore or less, this is what is happening the lastcentury in the world culture. I think that the Western world is at the point of a monumental regress from itsconvictions due to the emergence of several belying factors that happen to condition the scientific,philosophical, and social development. 5rom the beginning of the particle state of theatom. #s if an alchemical process, physics pushed forward the revelation that the ostensible rigidity ofmatter has actually an almost metaphysical fluidity closely related to mind. &hat was a maor conceptual

transformation, which brought a revolution in the natural sciences; a revolution that has not yet displayed itsradical influential power to make a breakthrough in the epistemology. &hat is either because few scientists

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cultivate an interest to keep up with the advancement in knowledge to physics or because they do not spendtime to really understand the implications with an open and critical mind.

&he Western world had to retreat and in the religious dimension apart from the philosophical. )hristianityloses ground, while 7astern religions ?apart from Islam@ gain the interest of westerners due to their softerdogmas and their tolerance. -nfortunately, )hristianity has proven to lack the adusting balance with thereal meaning of its real teaching and, hence, unforgettable crimes have been committed out of bigotry and

refusal to accept the beauty and the necessity of multiplicity and variance of cultures and their beliefs.&hose very mistakes together with the present insufficiency and utopianism of 7uropean religions, forced thepeople of this formerly supreme continent to seek for better solutions and salvation from distant culturesthat once humiliatingly succumbed under the threat of the sword and the gun of the 7uropean conquerors.Buddhism, shamanism, &aoism, +ogic, and &antric practices, gradually, take a central position in the stage ofour cultural interests. &he Western world opens the doors to a colorful parade of foreign ideas and habits.#ctually, it did opened the doors from the very beginning of the coloni*ation but not in the way it does today.+esterday this opening was mainly towards to trade and philosophies, although they never took themseriously. &oday this opening is a more significant one, since we do not only accept foreign influences, both inthe -# and in 7urope, but we renounce most of our own philosophies, religions, and cultural ethics.

#s I did paralleled the 7uropean imperialism with the prevalence of rationalism and positivism in the fieldof science, I have no choice but to do accordingly and with the veering of these eventful historicalcircumstances. Indeed, what any reader of popular cosmology and physics recogni*es is the stunning

meltdown of the western rationalism. #lmost forty years ago, this ama*ement was coupled with theannouncement of the resurrection of the transcendental eperience via the use of hallucinogenic agents. Inthe beginning of the A=s, famous ethnobotanologists rediscovered in the mountains of /eico and therainforest of #ma*on the properties of hallucinogenic plants and ecited claimed that, at last, we found thekeys to open the (andora1s bo. &he secrets of consciousness and mind were no longer inaccessible to ourintrospection. #ccording to them, the hallucinogens offer an incomparable shortcut to the reaching of oureistential truth. &he far2fetched statements and reports of people who eperienced the psychedelic ecstasywere falsifying many of the rationalistic assumptions to which science is build on. $f course, they were nevertaken any seriously, but that does not prove their lack of validity, as the critici*ers of the psychedeliceperience were people who did never considered to see by themselves what it is all about. 'ence, theircriticism was and still is sand2boed.

With all that, in the first light of the


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&'7 )$9"I&IE7 #((8$#)'

)TheCognitive

Battlefields

Lalande, or whoever it was, who searched the heavens with his telescope and could find no God, would not have found

the human mind if he had searched the brain with a microscope.

Geor!e "anta#ana

$ philosoph# whose principle is so incommensurate with our most intimate powers as to den# them all relevanc# in

universal affairs, as to annihilate their motives at one blow, will be even more unpopular than pessimism%&hat is wh#materialism will alwa#s fail of universal adoption.

'illiam (ames

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I+RODUC+IO

A Definition of Consciousness)onsciousness is not a phenomenon that easily can be studied. If we consider that the presupposition

of the study is the possession of consciousness, then what we really have is consciousness studyingconsciousness. &hat, as we will see in the net pages, is not an easy enterprise. It brings us to all kind ofparadoes and mysteries. $r then again, when we decide that we can do a more coherent study byprobing the physical brain, then we end up with a deficient theory, which are poles apart with theanswer that we actually seek. &hus, the mind2body problem places us in between of a forked theoreticalpathway and the result is to get even more perpleed when we accumulate more knowledge on thisdisputed issue. &he phenomenon is so difficult that even eperts, devoted to its resolution, likeneurologists, seem baffled by it.

Before beginning piercing deeper in the problem, it would be much helpful if we make a first andrather simple definition of consciousness. 5irst, the most general portrayal would be the fact that all

consciousness is consciousness of something; it always has an obect. 7perience and behavior intend, orare directed toward, an obect, a goal, or a comple situation outwards in the world. #lthough, simplethis description as it seems, 'usserl, the founder of phenomenological philosophy, regardedconsciousness 3that wonder of wonders4. &hat conclusion was generated by the indefiniteness of thequestion. It is much easier to answer what an atom, a cell, or even an organism is but when we questionthe nature of consciousness, we marvel among slippery notions. We confusingly come upon the kernel ofthe eperience of our question, the source of our curiosity itself. )onsciousness is never merely a thingor event in the research field of the scientist; it is rather the condition for the possibility of researchitself. It is that by virtue of which we can observe, classify, and interpret. &he consciousness of theresearcher establishes a field of intelligibility within which observable facts emerge.

&he net question that comes to mind is% Is consciousness a thing or an ideaD &he response ofphenomenology is neitherF )onsciousness seems to be a third kind of phenomenon, for which ourintellectual tradition does not prepare us to understand. uch an idea is not always bad even for the

cognitive scientists, regarding that they too accept that matter is not sufficient to generateconsciousness without a certain kind of compleity, which assists to eceed its dullness. "evertheless,phenomenologists and cognitive scientists differ enormously on the further details of their study.

$ne meaning of possessing a conscious mind, however, is simply the non2automatic responsiveness ofan organism to its environment. #nyone reading such an eplanation, though, would find it somewhat flatand scarce comparing to the whole of the human conscious eperience. &herefore, in a different sense,consciousness occurs when we not only see but see what we see, or have knowledge of seeing, inspectedeven more by metaknowledge of having the knowledge of seeing. &he phenomenon is considered as suchwhen we are in a multilevel way self2aware of what we are about to do ?intent@ or of our preparation ofevents ?epectancy@, or of our motivational or emotional conditions ?3wants4 and 3feelings4@.#dditionally, this comple reflection is not always directed towards the self but, most of the times, it isdirected towards the outer world, as it is obvious from its openness. &o become conscious, ultimately, itmeans to have a world, to find oneself thrust into a macroscopic world of people, things, and events.

#pparent as it is by now, the problem remains unsolved. We say that consciousness is the perceptionof the world and the self, the responsiveness to outer pressures and the willful settling of the behaviortowards the environment. omehow, we are still to scratch. omehow, we have not walked even a meteraway from our initial position. &he perpleion still remains, as we have not really grasped thefundamental essence of the phenomenon. What we rather described is the surface of consciouseperience, something that even an idiot can accomplish quite easily. #t such a moment, we do not havea better answer to the question than :ouis #rmstrong had when a reporter asked him what a** is.

"aturally, this intricacy of the issue incites an analogous complicatedness in the field of psychology,which is the main science that has undertaken the solving of the problem. (sychologists and cognitivescientists are often daunted by many of the easperating questions that concern this basic phenomenon.When they work out to give answers only by a phenomenological perspective, they are accused ofinconsistency to the physical part of causalities; they are supposed to take a fictional position on the

problem. $n the other side, when others devote their researches to a purely physical investigation ofconsciousness, they are regarded as missing the point of the wondrous eperience of the humanindividual. &hus, cognitive science has bridged those two etremities to the so2called

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heterophenomenology, in hope of a more in2depth probing of the mind and its qualia. -nfortunately, thisposition is also among inetricable problems that drive us away from the actual matter. Because it is notenough to know how consciousness is channeled and eploited in the physical brain, we need a morepragmatic eemplification that will validate our meaningful eistential eperience. &hose are issues thatwe will have to trace in detail at the following pages. &he bewilderment of science has a reason, nodoubt, but it is not going to last for long. "ew perspectives are coming stormingly from various fields and

once we will take decision to usurp them and interconnect them, perhaps we will elevate psychology andconsciousness studies to an appropriate position for giving its real definition.

&o understand this variability of opinions we ought to mention ulian aynes1 speculation thatproposes us a new way of seeing things. &his is a proof of how radical theories can oin the battlefieldand inspire us with entirely different orientations. ulian aynes claimed that consciousness is a recentinvention. &he people of early civili*ations, including the 9reeks of 'omer and the 'ebrews of the $ld&estament, were unconscious and that the sense of ego is a new trait acquired in the last two threethousand years. 7ven !aniel !ennett is sympathetic to such, phenomenically, preposterous claim; hebelieves that consciousness might be a product of cultural evolution that gets imparted to brains withearly training, something which is closely related to the above speculation.

9iven this fluctuation and instability, we should outline the maor theses that flirt with the solution.tarting with the argument that consciousness is synonymous with its contents ?qualia@, cognitivescientists have initiated a thorough study to understand how mind represents those contents and how

conscious cognitive eperience arises. It is a fact that they do a good ob, but they seem sometimes, aswe said, to walk through a wrong territory. )onversely, another argument supports that one must addressa more basic and fundamental pre2reflective level in order to truly understand its actual nature. 'erethere is a bursting of theories, not all deserving our attention since they bear the spirit of vaguenessinherited by old disoriented theories. 'owever, there are some suppositions coming from transpersonaland folk psychology that do have to be scrutini*ed, as they are in compliance with new theories fromother disciplines like physics.

artre refuses to consider consciousness as a function of character or of a person. &hus, artre insiststhat consciousness is responsible for the totality of human eperience, and hence, it is the bedrockrather the epiphenomenon. &hat is not a fortuitous view. It is elicited by the genuineness of theconscious eperience and a philosopher who adapts an eistential approach has no choice but to embraceit. &he foremost point of this research will be to validate such an assumption. 7ven if currently the windis blowing opposite to an endeavor like this, as cognitive science progressively gets attached to a

conservative mentality ?if we neglect doctrines like emergentism), I epress my confidence that asurprise is around the corner. "ot only statements like artre1s are closer to the truth, but I bet ones thatare even more radical.

o, now that we have given a first definition of consciousness and its epistemology, we can begin thedispute between rivals, seeking for the best candidate to eplain us what consciousness and mind isbeyond simple designations.

DUA(ISM VS, MOISM

A #rid-eless Ga!

#s far back as we can recall in history, humankind was perpleed by an etremely hard to tackleproblem, over the issue of mind and consciousness. # problem that is permitted, by all kinds of logicaldeductions, to figure as almost not viable. It is not feasible to give an answer without boggling yourmind, as it contains several contradictions or, simply, eplanations that are derived without anehausting thinking are incompatible with the consciousness2eperience. &hat is the old mind-body

problem, which occupied philosophers for millennia, whom most of them end up with fruitlesseplanations. &he range of their opinions begins from vain dualistic notions, like the embodied soul andend to strictly and hyperbolic materialistic monism of the contemporary predisposition. &he eplanationgap between mind and body remains as a chasm, a big ravine that separates, and yet connects, twoessentially diverse substances% the mind and the body. # bridge needs to be build, and many have

attempted to do so; but many failed and thus confined themselves on popular elucidations of no practicalvalue, of no eperimental consistency. &he ghost in the machine is an idea that should be left in the

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museum long ago; we should be able to reali*e that the phenomenal gap between mind and body is aconceptual misunderstanding and nothing more.

&his problem has both a metaphysical and an epistemological side. $n the former, there arearguments that purport to show that mental states could be reduced to physical states, and hence, someform of dualism must be sought in order to ustify this assumption. 'owever implausible this directionseems to the modern science, I do not intend to reect this side of the problem, as it is not completely

erroneous and if it is eploited in the right way, there are many chances that it will stand as useful to theeploration of consciousness.

$n the epistemological side, there are arguments that even if in fact mental states are reali*ed tophysical ones, there is still a big problem about how we can eplain the distinctive features of mentalstates in terms of their physical properties. &herefore, this incapability of epistemology to suggest apowerful clarification, feeds even more the metaphysical side, inspiring various a decentrali*ed anddissipative condition of consciousness theories, until now.

But lets focus on the nature of the problemper se. &he cra*e is caused to all of us when we come tothe critical point to think what affiliation oins the physical brain with the empirical mind. In otherwords, we do not really know why our systems give rise to conscious eperience of any sort. 'ow a firingneuron can trigger a part of the thriving conscious eperienceD 'ow the cluster of neurons can generatethe eperience of admiring a beautiful lady or of listening pleasantly to the Beatles1 songsD What is theintermediate that filters the dull physical motion to the elating mental eperienceD )onsidering these

questions, it is not weird the fact that the gap augments and the bridge is becoming more difficult to bebuild on such a large ravine.

&here are various responses to the eplanatory gap. $ne view ?/c9inn, CGGC@ is that it reflects alimitation on our cognitive capacities. $thers argue that the gap is real but that it is to be epectedgiven the peculiarities that are associated with our first2person access to eperience ?:ycan, CGG@.'owever, no theory has achieved to penetrate deeply into the problem. &hey only assume, hypothesi*e,and make udgments ust as if a person would make them about a far mountain in the hori*on.-nfortunately, we have a long distance of anguishing efforts to cross before we are ready to say the longepected% A#haF1

A Critical Dissension

/any features have been cited as responsible for our sense of the problem. 'ere I will concentrateon two% the apparent causal interaction of mind and brain, and the distinctive features of consciousness,which motivate us to believe that it is a separate substance. 5rom this dissension begins an old debate, afluctuation that drives us between monistic and dualistic conceptions, unsettled yet to a definiteconclusion. # long tradition in philosophy has held, culminating with 8enH !escartes, that the mind mustsomehow be a non2bodily entity% a soul or a mental kind of substance. &his thesis is called substancedualism or, most popularly, Cartesian dualism because it says that there are two kinds of substance in theworld, the mental and the physical. Belief in such dualism promotes the metaphysical idea of theimmortal soul and the free will, which seems to require that mind is a non2physical thing and thus it isnot affected by the laws of physical nature, like decay.

&o say that mind is a substance is to distinguish it from the physical world. &he term substance isused in the traditional philosophical sense% a substance is an entity that has properties and that persists

through change in them. If we accept this notion, though, then we postpone the trouble and we find it abit further when we ask ourselves% If there are such non2physical obects, how do they interact with thephysical onesD ome philosophers have thought that mental states are causally related only to otherstates, and physical states are causally related only to other physical states. In other words, the mentaland physical realms operate independently. &his 3parallelist4 view has been unpopular in the


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not rush to ump to conclusions about the orientation of this paper. In the accumulation of more data, wewill establish a different estimation on the dissension between the dualist and monist. &his quarrel isabout to end, we are about to reconcile them and make them drink this glass of wine, at last, with amutual toast.

&o accomplish that, we ought, to vindicate, in some points, the dualist, and accept that he too has akind of superiority over the monist. #ccording to many philosophers, physicalism is not the solution to

the mind2body problem, but something that, actually, gives rise to a particular version of the problem.Because we know that the world is completely physical ?at least, to the limited perceptive spectrum@, ifthe mind eists, it too must be physical, as any monist intransigently claims. 'owever, it is inconceivableto understand how certain aspects of mind 6notably, consciousness2 could ust be reduced to physicalfeatures of the brain. #s /c9inn ?CGG@ puts it, neurons and synapses seem the wrong kindof material toproduce the miraculous consciousness. o here we face a grand2scale problem of intelligibility. Becausewe evidently know that the mental is sourced by the physical, consciousness must have its origins in thebrain. But once we acknowledge that, we turn again against it by clinging to a more dualistic account,because we cannot make sense, in any way, of this mysterious fact.

ackson ?CG


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&wo distinct things, with different properties, no matter how they depend to each other. &herefore, ifthe self ?the very me@, has the sense that it is distinct from the brain, then it must be made from mind-stuff ?!ennett, CGG=@. #lthough, !ennett readusts his opinion as one goes on with his book, and he endsup decisively to a purely physicalist view by neglecting important and unusual features of the mind, hisindication of mind2stuff is quite right. 'owever, his indication was based on a crude consideration of thematter; that is why he failed to see the importance of the quickly passed argument.

&he fact that there is an abstract kind of mind stuff can be pointed out by the following deduction%&he sleepwalker, although, unconscious of his movements and his deeds, he is involved in variousactivities that could be performed by him consciously. 'e might kill somebody, if he subconsciously hassuppressed a lot of anger and still be regarded as almost innocent, since his consciousness was absentduring the murder. &hus, quite confoundedly, we reali*e that consciousness is something additive to thebrain activity. It is not simply the resultant of enlivening activity in the neuronal level. &he eampleimplies that, although triggered by the physical brain, consciousness must be something different from it.&his assumption leads one to think, literally, that mind is not after all totally reducible to the brain. o,as !aniel !ennett correctly believes, the conscious mind is not ust the place where the qualia andthought are proected, but it is the place where supplementary appreciation begins and verifies theproected phenomena. &his sounds as a kind of dualism, indeed. +et, as we strongly supported, adiametrically opposed dualism to the )artesian one, since it prerequisites the physical source before thesplitting.

#t this point, I will make a step further to introduce another aspect of this new type of dualism thatscience and philosophy only the last decades start to recogni*e as substantial. &he etension of theabove consideration is to concede that this dualism has different counterparts than the traditional one.In this dualism, the separation is between the physical brain, meaning the neuronal activity, and thesymbolic mind, meaning the 3software4 of language and ideas that are encoded in the synaptic level. Inits broadest sense, in the brain we ust do not know how to find the high2level structures that wouldprovide a read2out in 7nglish of the beliefs stored in the brain. $r rather, we do 6we ust ask the brain1sowner to tell us what he or she believes. But we have absolutely no way of physically determining whereor how beliefs are coded. 'ence, we have the undeniable sense that we are different from our brains, asif we are rooted elsewhere. 'ow outlandish would it sound that we are mere language, our ideas, andour symbolic realm that inhabits the brainD It might be still early to give an answer. 'owever, though, wewill see that this is eactly what cognitive science seems to argue by the meme2theory.

&o those that this idea is not any progression for the improvement of the soulless mind, then I bet

that the net aspect of the new dualism will be much satisfying, although to be grasped one needs tofollow with the paper and see the direction that I actually suggest. It is not going to be evident from thefirst part. We need to pass throughout if we wish to ascertain the kind of suggestion that I signify.

&here is empirical evidence that the stuff of consciousness is the interpenetration of its rich content,that is, the perceived eternal world, and the hierarchy of cognitive and metacognitive conceptiveudgments that established over it. &he stuff of consciousness is nothing but the properties of the"ewtonian in one level, and the 0uantum space, in another, channeled by commenting systems of thebrain. &herefore, presumably, we are both the eternal environment and the processing filtering of thebrain over it, something that is broadly supported by the doctrine of superenience, as we will see. &hisaspect of the new dualism brings together the environment and the receptive brain, in a sense that weare sited on both. &his idea remains largely uneplored, due to the reluctance of psychologists toconsider eogenous features in the study of consciousness. &hey turn their back when they are pressed toadapt a position that gives a noteworthy importance on the environment to the origins of consciousness.(atience and the paper will prove that the environment and, generally, space, is the maor generator ofthe controversial phenomenon.

&he implications of some very important data suggest that there is first scientific evidence for adualist kind theory of consciousness. It is a theory that has a 3mind4 or 3life4 component that is of a verydifferent nature than known physical systems, and thus implies that at least some transpersonaleperiences are not merely interesting illusions, unusual patterns of neural firing, but actually give usconfirmation about the potentiality for truly transcending our ordinary physical limits. I reiterate,though, that those assumptions are not related to the outdated )artesian dualism. &hey are forcefullyverified by novel theories of the physical sciences.

#ndrew 9reeley in his eperiments found that J K of his sample believed that they had eperiencedtelepathic, mind2to2mind contact with someone at a distance at least once in their lifetime. /any otherkind ofparaconceptual phenomenaor 7( occur, undeniably, in everyday life. &hese kinds of 7( seem to

fit with this type of dualism that I promote, and they are possibly very important in deciding between amonistic and dualistic view; but as we know, the scientific investigation of 7( and related phenomena isnot only not eactly in the mainstream of world psychology, it is an etremely small2scale activity.

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7vidently, what consciousness requires, in order to become a more accessible issue for a suitablestudy, is some basic enlargement of the ontology of the physical sciences. #uspiciously, this will be thebumping of our finger onto to the light2switch. $nce the light is on, the new type of dualism or a rathermentalistic type of monism will be fully eposed beyond mere speculations. But before we get deeper tothis issue, we need to pass by the essential evolutionary theory, if we want to walk on a stable ground.

+0E EVO(U+IOAR$ SPEC+AC(E

+he E1ol1in- Consciousness

"owadays, the theory of evolution is the prominent choice for the research of every conceivablephenomenon in the universe. &he biblical creationism has been substituted by a new breadth ofunderstanding that has been set off after !arwin1s book !he "rigin of #pecies was published. 'isdeduction inspired, the following decades, the natural sciences, as they proved to be much more reliablein comparison to the previous immature beliefs on the nature of life. #lthough, !arwin has not beenfaultless in his theory and much had to be revised, he did brought a new landscape in the marathon ofscience. # new era begun, as the mysterious compleity of life, which discouraged many intellects forcenturies, became more approachable to a consistently rudimentary analysis. )onsequently, anincreasing number of living organism1s aspects are scrutini*ed and perhaps accurately eplained.

5rom this development of evolutionary knowledge, consciousness would not be an eemption, albeit,it is an impregnable phenomenon to any inquiring approach. 7specially the last century, evolutionarypsychology has defined the role of evolution in the emergence of mind. If we disregard the fact that mostof the assumptions of evolutionary psychology are based on yet unfinished data on the nature of reality,which should be considered as prerequisite on any verdicts over the issue, the range of its lightilluminated several basic questions. &he doctrine of evolution has given critical answers and has offeredvaluable outlets to psychology. In a way, we now possess the guideline that guarantees an appropriateunderstanding of mind and consciousness. We no longer have to make far2fetched guesses that involve

nebulous and impeding assumptions. We no longer walk in a dark territory. &he more knowledge we gainon evolution, the less indefinite the question becomes.'uman consciousness, the one of the great reflectivity, is an emergent property, arisen from the

eceedingly comple edifice of the physical brain. &he brain2hardware is the vestige of the millenarianprocess of natural selection1s sculpting. &o reach this almighty convolution and sophistication the 7arthhad to spin around the un for almost a billion times. &he human brain is the actual depository ofprimordial memory, collected by reptilian, amphibian, mammalian, and hominid designs. &hrough thegenerations, the flower of human consciousness advances on the bedrock of brain due to the ever2growing richness of the surrounding environment, both physical and linguistic. &herefore, it is hard toavoid the inference that consciousness is the cherry on the ice cream, a cherry that gets sweeter andsweeter as time unfurls.

"ro/ 0ard.are to Soft.are

Before we cover any further the evolutionary theory, we ought to make an important distinctionbetween the brain and the mind with the help of an important analogy. &he computer provides asupportive illustration of how to envisage the mind2body problem, since it is generally accepted that it isan approimate simulation of our brains. It is a brain machine, which functions in a very relevant way tothe obect of its simulation, nevertheless, with some crucial disparities.

We all have used computers and we must acknowledge the difference between hardware andsoftware. &he former refers to the arrangement and configuration of the apparatus, the interconnectionsof the cables, the capacity of the hard disk, the selection of the chips in the motherboard, etc. $n theother hand, the latter refers to the programs, structured by information that can be installed on the

hardware without having any physical body, apart from its device. &hey are actual bits of informationthat can be imparted on the receptive division of the material equipment. -nlike hardware, software isdefined by its fleibility and its mutability of usage. )omparing them one reali*es that their relationship

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is akin to the relationship between mind and brain. &he brain is the unchangeable, in one1s lifetime,hardware where the patterns of neuronal arrangement are stable no matter how much the mind adheresto new habits. 'owever, mind, albeit closely related to the neuronal architecture, is the one that canturn the eperience from green to red, from tears to laughter, from arousal to dullness. ust like thesoftware can make the hardware play a song, or play a good game of chess or process pictures, or write atet.

#s !aniel !ennett puts it, computers were originally ust supposed to be number2crunchers, but bynow, their number2crunching has been harnessed in thousands of imaginative ways by the installment ofthe software. imilarly, our brains were not designed for the activities we are now involved. :anguage,etra reflectivity, poetic prose, visionary planning were not promoted in the level of the hardware, asmuch as in the software level, which has enriched the former in undreamed ways.

&he reason I encompass this analogy on the section of evolution is that, perhaps, we require a betterunderstanding of the distinction between mind and body. We need to deeply comprehend that mind is,primarily, information and that it is the fruit of a long and 3epensive4 evolutionary process that tookplace over the physical brain. "ow, if we inspect the coalition of evolutionary knowledge together withthe above analogy, we will come on a vital supposition. Beyond the discursive methodologies of neo2!arwinian deductions and estimations, there is hanging a reali*ation of a strange emergent structuring,which is amenable to daring considerations.

"ro/ #ios!here to oos!here

7volution of organic matter began millions of years ago literally from the soil. 8udimentary lifeforms, like bacteria, amoebas, and proto*oa were the only inhabitants of this primordial world. &herewas utter simplicity on a dimensionless plane; there was no perception, no sensation and most basically,no consciousness in the form that we know. &he first multicellular organisms were lacking even of thesimplest functional properties that define the possession of mind. &hey were not moving by any kind ofudgment. &hey were, in a way, 3lifeless4 life forms. Whatever food was on their way, they wereabsorbing it and if not, they would not bother to search for any. #s the organic matter formed, by themillennia, comple organisms, this 3lifelessness4 turned to an animation of a more responsive type. &he

fishes, the reptiles, the amphibians were possessors of a brain that was filtering, in a way, perceptuallythe environment for their own uncomplicated eperience. #t that point, the biosphere was dressed by afaint first light of some kind. &his is the so2called noosphere, which by years got more vivid and morefunctional over the bedrock of the biosphere, due to the emergence of mental reflectivity. We will keepcompunctions for the hypothesis that mind emerged subsequently of matter, because an important partof the paper1s intentions is not yet been eposed. 5or now, I can only tell that there is a possibility thatmind and matter, noosphere and biosphere might be identical. &herefore, the designation of noospheremight be ust the emergence of high and comple reflectivity, rather than the raw properties of mind andsentience.

#nyway, as centuries went by and the hominid line passed to the point of super2compleity, as the$omo sapiensbegan to communicate to each other with symbols and the fructification of culture startedto emerge, this noosphere became increasingly more crucial to evolution. /ind, consciousness, language,all concreti*ed its essence and advanced it to the actual realm of human eperience.

&oday the noosphere is passing to another level, that of the electronic dimension, where informationtravels all across the world in the speed of light and mind is been channeled to the digital realm, which isgradually growing in magnitude to our mental lives. It is not eaggeration to say that the noosphere isswiftly in the process of a kind of 3materiali*ation4. &hat is not something we would overlook; it isactually a very significant twist of evolution that concerns in a swamping way the human consciousness.#lready we can make guesses of the evolutionary track. &echnology, increasing mental agility, the coilingof the abundant information, scientific progression, they all lead to an ever2accelerating advancement ofthe noospheric field and, possibly, the transmutation of human consciousness.

#ccording to &erence /cLenna ?CGGC@, the famous #merican scholar, the noosphere is a kind of anemergent platform, a structure destined to support an even higher dimension, which is assumed atopical.Without becoming unacceptable mystical, this is perhaps of what it most can be said at this unctureregarding the hypothetical function of the notion of noosphere and its evolving ontology. Whatever thetrue implications of such an emergent structuring and the hypothetic further emergence over the

noosphere, via maybe the utility technology, it would appear that under its enormous shadow life on7arth and conscious human life becomes but a substructure within some awesome pattern of growth,

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which is grasping and etending itself to realms never dreamed of in traditional philosophies. &his issomething that we will revisit on the issue of emergentism and there will still more left to say in myspeculative approach of the assemblantism%

$ne thing that we should have derived from such a hypothesis is the anchoring idea thatconsciousness, even though, perhaps, a subsequent property in the richness of the planet1s biome, issuperior to matter. "oosphere is superior to biosphere. &he focal point of human and non2human

eperience is on the mental emergence. &hat assumption is already in undisputed verification from thecognitive sciences through the meme theory.

Indeed, evolutionary psychology regards that the comple of information digits, called by 8ichard!awkins memes, are the new genes of the noosphere. &hey propagate mind in an epidemiological mannerand they are regarded as possessing their own independent purpose, which is the increase of theirreplication and, hence, their influence on the human minds. &heir policy is to epand in culture, bybuilding their own structures that find their nest in our brains, in the form of ideologies, attitudes, songs,recipes, religious beliefs, etc. !ennett has asserted that the human consciousness is formed by theirinfluence, in a way, that what we are is the entirety of their organi*ation in the brain. &herefore, ust asgenes are the kernel of our physical bodies, memes are the kernel of our mental eperience, the spinalcord and the flesh of our personalities. /emes are superior to genes and that can be proven by !ennett1sfollowing eample. &here are memes that push their carriers to their physical elimination. &hat seems asparadoical, since as we know from genes they promote the fitness for their survival. 'owever, memes

seem not to be depended on the fitness and the survival of the physical vehicle. # meme, for instance,that would tend to make bodies run over cliffs would have to be eliminated from the meme pool.'owever, this does not mean that the ultimate criterion for success in the meme pool is gene survival.$bviously a meme that causes individuals bearing it to suicide has a disadvantage but not a fatal one,since the suicidal meme can easily spread, as the well2published martyrdom is regarded virtuous and,thus, inspires others to die for a loved cause, and this inspires even more people, and so on ?!ennett,CGG=@. &his seems as a first class proof of the superiority of memes over the genes and of mind overmatter.

#t last, one more thing that we cannot pass over is the strange change of usability of traits in ourspecies with the progression of the mental evolution. (art of the critical necessity of survival turns,auspiciously, to the enoyment of the eperiential aesthetics. &he civili*ed $omo #apiens is no longerstruggling in the theater of natural selection, as many features of our culture, like advanced medicine,have build a protective wall around us. By the years, we become more independent and more privileged

against the environment. In contemplation over that, we come to the unavoidable conclusion thatevolution is a voyage to greater degrees of freedom. #t least, to our species and our culture we witness aconstant increase of leniency towards the decisiveness of survivability. $f course, fitness and fitnessmaimi*ers will never become obsolete in the evolutionary development, but by time, they turn out tobe less 3epensive4 to be obtained and their usefulness in the repertoire of our species clings to a ratheraesthetic value, comforting away from the breathtaking game between life and death.

&hat should be considered as very relevant to the evolution of consciousness, because many, if notall, of its features have been shaped by natural selection through the millennia. By that spectacle, wehave to concede that the modern man uses relics of old weapons of survivability for mere benefit frompleasure. &he significance of staying alive has transfigured to the significance of staying happy. 5orinstance, what we want when we sip a glass of wine is not the analysis of its chemical substances butrather the pleasure, which can be acquired from those substances. $ur preference is based from thosebiases that are still wired in our nervous systems, which their ecological significance has lapsed long timeago ?!ennett, CGG=@. &heir role was to inform our primates to avoid inedible foods, but now this functionhas degraded ?or upgraded@ to mere channels for hedonic labor. &he same is valid and for the colors.$nce they were in service for our survival in the massive forests of the prehistoric era. &he first signs ofdanger were perceived by the alarm of colors. +ellow for a tiger, emerald green for the serpent, red forthe poisonous mushrooms, and so on. &hankfully, today we have became skilled at avoiding such dangersand, besides, our environments are more appropriate for a comfortable life, and hence for manycenturies now the evolutionary usability of colors has digressed to mere aesthetic pleasure. Indeed, wedo not need a second thought to reali*e that our world from a terrain of survival2battles has turned to aworld of art.

What does this mean for consciousnessD We should not underestimate this emancipation ofevolutionary necessities. It is not accidental the fact that freedom is the crowning aim of theevolutionary teleology. &herefore, our species advance and reach a plane where evolutionary pressures

decrease, rocked down by the counter2weight of the gratuitous gratification. 5rom that viewpoint,surely, we should epect a radical surprise in the future of consciousness, an emergent which hatchedamong threatening forces, where it had to shield itself, and its evolutionary course, currently, seems to

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proclaim a forthcoming fundamental change on the rules of the game, where consciousness arises in an7lysium of freedom and omnipotence, high above from any physical peril.

"et to such a potentiality, cognitive theories appear too conservative. &hey strive to eplainconsciousness by reductionist methods, which are highly interdicting to such holistic postulations.'owever, I suggest that once we will bridge opposed theories, in an attempt to wed them, the wish tobridge the gap between mind and body, phenomenology and physicalism will be, triumphantly, carried

out.

DIGGIG I MA++ER

On the Constellation of Physicalis/

&he heyday of science, which took place in the


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cognitive battle by the help of the contet of the other components that are used in the investigationand eploration of consciousness. But before we do that, let1s have a laugh with the hopeless incipiententerprise of physicalism.

#eha1ioristic #lunders

&he thirst for reliance that took place in the last two centuries in the scientific pursuit did not leftunaffected the discipline of psychology. (ositivism and obective assessment eradicated the ha*iness ofthe uvenile methodologies. Introspection was distrusted as a disorienting means to gain access to thefunctions of the mental machinery and, hence, to the true essence of the conscious manifestations.&hus, early psychologists sought a method that would give them the power to probe obectively themind, so that they could come up with trustworthy results with a status that could fit with theobectivity of the natural sciences.

Behaviorism, which ignores mental processes and declares that eternal behavior that can beobserved more easily and reliably, should be the main tactic of psychology, flourished for a short period./any psychologists, however, still accept that position and define their science as the study of themanifestation of behavior, rather than the study of mind. &he appropriation for such a stance was given

by the survey, which declared that C==K agreement among observers is possible, at least for simplebehaviors, and therefore, this determined the fortune of the approach, which was widely preferredamong other nebulous philologies over the nature of psyche.

&hose familiar with kinner1s radical behaviorism are well aware that he has provided a means foranaly*ing the private events or eperiences of people in the contet of a non2dualistic, naturalisticscience. &he obect was to show that subective behaviors and eperiences are ust like any otherbehavior, to demystify the problems of consciousness, and to remove consciousness from a separaterealm of the mind with which science is not supposed to be able to deal. kinner, in a manner, has laidthe ground for a revolutionary behavioral semantics capable of providing a behavioral account ofcognitive functioning without mentalistic terms.

But how well placed was this approachD Whoever believes that behaviorism is the eureka of thenature of mind, is a laughing2stock. We should not lose time on grasping the fact that consciousness iswidely different from any other subect we study. Its idiosyncrasy demands an approach that varies from

purely materialistic methods of assessment we use to probe matter, in the natural sciences.)onsciousness is a matter of eperience, of emotional vigor, of visions, of beliefs and desires, of therelentless stream of thought and of the peculiar I2ness. It appears that it is highly unsuitable toinvestigate this prominent phenomenon mainly by the equipment of other physical sciences. Whatbehaviorism achieves is merely the analysis of its epressive surface. # third person approach ignoresfundamental features of its reality, which are invisible to an eternal observer. &herefore, one of thegreatest blunders of the last century, was the naMve belief that behaviorism is the antidote to theineorable mystery of consciousness and that we are behavioral robots, automata that are identifiedwholly with their eternal behavioral manifestation, and hence lacking of any psychic depth. &hisabsurdity still pertains, partially, the cognitive sciences and psychology, in a powerful contrast to thesense of everybody1s personal eperience of consciousness, which is, actually, deliriously deep and rich.&he net step is to go for shooting any such blunders in cognitive doctrines, which haunt the vital studyon consciousness.

Reductive Physicalisms2Eli/inati1e Materialis/2 +he Illusi1e Mind

&he most etreme doctrine of physicalism is the eliminatie materialismor 3eliminativism4, as it issometimes called. It is the claim that one or another kind of mental states invoked in commonsensepsychology does not really eist. 7liminativists believe that mental states are classified in the samecategory to the gods of ancient religions, witchcraft, alchemy. &hey simply deny the eistence of purelymental phenomena as ludicrous and superstitious. 'owever, far2fetched this thesis is, it has beenaccepted to a large number of psychologists the previous years. /ind, they think, is a non2eistent positof a seriously mistaken theory. &he most widely discussed version of eliminativism takes as its target the

intentional states, the beliefs, the thought, and the desires ?)hurchland, CGC@. &he eistence of qualiasuch as pain and visual perceptions has also occasionally been challenged. $bviously, this premise leads

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us to the conclusion that all those states that pass from the spotlight of consciousness have no validity,no essence, and no meaning. &herefore, we are pushed to accept that consciousness is nothing but afictional eperience without any particular significance on its content and on the 3illusory4 self. In otherwords, eliminative materialism is blind on important ingredients of conscious eperience, due to itspreoccupation with the confirmistic physiological probing, which, as we mentioned before, are polesapart with the empirical facet.

&he cognitive sciences that ultimately give us a correct account of the workings of the humanmind>brain will not refer to commonsense mental states as beliefs and desires; these states will not bepart of the ontology of a mature cognitive science, as eliminativism wants to believe. $ne family ofarguments, which tries to bridge this chasm, follows Wilfred ellars ?CGJ@ in maintaining that folkpsychology takes thoughts and other intentional states to be modeled on overt linguistic behavior.#ccording to this account, common sense assumes that beliefs are quasi2linguistic states and thatthoughts are quasi2linguistic episodes. But if this is right, one eliminativist argument continues, theneither non2human animals and pre2linguistic children do not have beliefs and thoughts, or they mustthink in a kind of inner language of thought. #nother argument, though, notes that neuroscience has thusfar failed to find syntactically structured, quasi2linguistic representations in the brain and predicts thatthe future discovery of such quasi2linguistic states is unlikely ?Ean 9elder, CGGC@.

"evertheless, there are many cognitive scientists who support the view that semantical properties,and thus mental, cannot be reduced to the physical properties and, thus, cannot have a causal

connection in between them. If this is true, here again we are taking a taste of a new dualism, thanks tothis causal irrelevance ?Ean 9ulick, CGGN@. ome authors have urged that the deepest problem with thefolk psychology is that semantic properties cannot be 3naturali*ed4 6there appears to be no place forthem in our evolving, physicalistic view of the world, and that is something we should stress because ittroubles generally the ambitious enterprise of physicalism, in important conceptual ways. &he problemseems to require a completely different approach 2a crucial approach, which takes its chance in thispaper.

E!i!heno/enalis/2 +he #rain3s Shado.

&he traditional doctrine of epiphenomenalism is that mental phenomena are caused by physicalphenomena but do not themselves cause anything. &hus, according to this doctrine, mental states andevents are causally inert and impotent; their role is that of effects rather than causes. 'uley ?COP@earlier discussed that the implications of epiphenomenalism is that consciousness is an automatonbecause it lacks causal efficacy on the physiological generator. $n that assumption, 'uley added hisclaim that epiphenomenal properties, like the mind, cannot be eplained in terms of natural selection,since they are non2functional and, therefore, invisible to the forces of evolution. &he standardphilosophical meaning of the concept follows as such% 3Q is epiphenomenal means Q is an effect but itselfhas no effects in the physical world4 ?Broad, CG


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events either ?a@ do not function at all as causal factors or that ?b@ if they do, they do so in virtue oftheir physiological characteristics and not in virtue of their mental characteristics.

In reection of epiphenomenalism, some philosophers argue that sensory concepts are ratherequivalent to functional concepts ?White, CGGC@. #nd some argue that although sensory concepts are notequivalent to functional concepts or physical concepts, nonetheless, sensory properties are identical withneural properties ?'ill, CGGC@. &hat a nagging headache can cause a bad mood and that the scratching

can cause one to itch seem to be intuitive cases of mental causation as one can find. 7piphenomenalismin comparison to our mental eperience seems to be out of tune. Its functional version is more intimateto truth and any attempts to eplain the mind should begin from that avenue. If we wish to avoid thedevaluation of conscious eperience and, thus, the devaluation of the human eistence, then either wemust eschew the traditional version of epiphenomenalism or to reform and etend it to a more functionalversion as White suggests, because it is not obectionable the hypothesis that mind can be accurately3translated4 to the brain processes, but rather the implication that the mind is nothing morethan thebrain. (erhaps, the functional factor is the essential device where consciousness arises.

Su!er1enience2 +he "loatin- Mind

'ere we have a more suitable eplicative version of the problem, to the orientation of the paper1s

approach. #uperenience is a determination relation, often thought to hold between physical and mentalcharacteristics. In philosophy of mind, the concept of supervenience is sometimes employed as a way ofarticulating the metaphysical thesis of physicalism. &his concept was first formulated by !onald !avidson?CGON@% 3It is impossible for two events ?obects>states@ to agree in their physical characteristics and todiffer in their psychological characteristics4 ?!avidson, CGON@. &his supervenience claim is weaker thancertain other claims about physical2mental relations sometimes advocated in the philosophy of mind.'owever, my belief is that this is so because we have a low appraisal on the functional role of theenvironment and of macro2temporal relations on the genesis of consciousness. #lbeit the concept ofsupervenience is a bit generic and lacks the focal consistency of other doctrines, it is more viable to newpioneering approaches that are offered from physics, due to its relation to the environmental influence.

upervenience inspires one to think that the environment is an actual etension of the brain. It is theetra space where information is stored, of an important functional role to the properties ofconsciousness. In short, the thesis includes certain relational connections between the person and the

wider environment. 5or instance, the supervenience base for an intentional mental characteristic likewanting some water involves not merely the current intrinsic physical properties of the person whocurrently has this mental property, but also certain relational connections between the person and theperson1s physical, social, historical, and evolutionary environment. uch mental properties are said tohave wide content, because the supervenience base for such a property etends beyond the merephysical characteristics of the person. 5rom that perspective, beliefs, desires, emotions, and so on, arefloating almost independently on the physical processes. In other words, the phenomenon of consciouseperience is only partially depended on the events that take place in the neuronal web. &he stigma ofsupervenience is the proposal that mind is something much more wider and etensive from themachinery of the brain; something that in order to be understood we have to epand the guiding field, insearch for historical, environmental, and evolutionary causalities that supervene the frantic micro2processes of the brain. #ll in all, we are one step closer from epiphenomenalism to the desired aim.

Non-Reductive Physicalisms:"unctionalis/2 +he S!rin-in- Processes

)omparing neutrons and neurons to pendula and planets, we, inevitably, confront a categoricaldistinction. Whereas neurons and neutrons must be composed of distinctive types of matter structured inruthlessly precise ways, individual planets and pendula can be made of widely disparate sorts ofdifferently structured stuff. &herefore, neurons and neutrons are eamples of physical kinds, whileplanets and pendula eemplify functional kinds. 5unctional kinds are not identified by their materialcomposition but rather by their activities or tendencies. &hey are about the state and direction ofmotion, the effect of kinetic states. -nder that category, cognitive science puts the mind. &hat isbecause the mental eperience arises not from merely the neurons and the synapses but from theirmutable activity. By virtue of this dictum, we must accept that the conscious eperience can bereproduced or replicated in a device that is not organic. ince the function of the brain is the ground ofconsciousness, then it would not be an unreali*able dream to purport the carrying out of artificial

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intelligence and artificial consciousness. 5rom that we infer that the mental eperience can be madevirtually from any kind of material as long as it is organi*ed to process information and support the sortof performances that are indicative to minds.

)oncerning the fact that mind is a functional kind, the significance of functionalism is profoundlysignificant, for it liberates cognitive science from the question of how mind is embodied or composed bymatter. &he study of consciousness passes to another level, which is more facilitating to the deductions

that rationalism gives confidence to. 8egarding all the interconnectedness of the brain modules and theirresultant comple power, it is not an overstatement to note that cognition1s most general featurescannot be reduced to mere neurology.

Before, though, we rush to ump in conclusions and postulate that functionalism is the matureresolution on the problem, it should be stressed that there are some serious flaws on the argument. Itseplanatory power is not entirely satisfactorily, something that is proven by virtue of the skepticism thattested its faultlessness. $bections against functionalism indicate the disturbing inconclusiveness on itsplausibility, especially on the matter of artificial intelligence. 5or instance, how could be possible thatconsciousness could arise by merely mechanical processesD &here are misgivings on the idea that we willbe able to concoct a machine that will be sentient, simply because we lack the knowledge of how eactlythis reflectivity comes to place. 5urthermore, the obections are focused especially in the ignorance ofthe doctrine against the centrality of consciousness in cognition. #s a successful argument has claimed,two functionally identical persons could differ in how they feel, that is, in their conscious, qualitative, or

affective states. 5or eample, two isomorphic persons in the presence of a stimulus could react widelydifferent, and that would epress the variance between of the two conscious eperiences. If theconscious qualitative differences differentiate our mental states, functionalism would seem unable torecogni*e them.

!espite the persisting debate, though, over the doctrine of functionalism, it figures as the mostusable in cognitive sciences and in the research on consciousness. &hat is because it is certainly moreopen to a computational theory of mind, giving an impetus to the dream of artificial intelligence. Inaddition, it skips the overwhelming problems of how consciousness could be one and the same with thebrain. &he idea that organi*ed functions spring up the conscious eperience appears to cognitivescientists as the boat that will help them cross the river of uncertain thinking. 'owever, here again weare confronted with the same problem. 'ow is it possible for functions to generate awareness andconsciousnessD If the problem has been surpassed in the leap we made with functionalism, it is,nevertheless, waiting us a little bit further. Is mind, in a way, the sparks from the 3heat4 of the brain

processesD &he question will be left open, as still the ace in the sleeve have not been eposed. 5or now,we partially discard the absolutism of functionalism and keep it back, until we put on the table moreideas about consciousness and gain a spherical view. (erhaps, then functionalism will find a place toserve us for an ample comprehension.

E/er-entis/2 atural Ma-ic

&he doctrine of emergentism is very different from the rest theories that outsmart the study ofpsychology, although it is quite relevant to the theory of supervenience. What makes it distinct is itsgenuine version of reality, which we never met before in previous conectures. We do not have a longhistory of focusing on the self2organi*ing and non2linear systems. &he thorough study on ant colonies,societies, cities, software, and brains has bred new unepected notions, which enlarged the field of

causalities. &he first British emergentists declared that the comple interaction between units that forma collectivity, under some conditions, tend to emerge a higher2order phenomenon with its own distinctsuperorganicproperties by possessing a sort of independency. &he most famous eample of an emergentphenomenon, which stimulated the interest of many philosophers, is that of the ant colony. It was aconfounding reali*ation the fact that an ant colony ehibited a behavior of its own, widely different fromthe individual ants. &here were some resonant conclusions from observations that evidently indicatedthat a colony is an entity with its own volition, its own will, its own intelligence, and its own life cycle.!espite the fact that such a postulation came out of the blue and was not assorted to the traditionalepectations, both in philosophy and epistemology, however there were not few who embraced it andbegan to formulate the doctrine of emergentism, confident that they ust stepped on a new peninsula ofknowledge.

#s with the ant colony, which is now regarded as an individual organism, the same is valid with cities,nations, the Internet, and, of course, the brain. It is shockingly true that emergent behaviors are

autonomous and alive. We have ust faced the manifestation of the rest of the spectrum, where

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individual agents of any kind are no more self2contained, but they are components of emergentphenomena that, in their turn, function and behave as units, in a higher2order.

# better designation of emergence can be understood by the movement from low2level rules tohigher2level sophistication. # system with multiple agents dynamically interacting in multiple ways,following local rules and oblivious to any higher2level interactions. But it would not truly consideredemergent until those local interactions resulted in some kind of discernible macro2behavior. &he

emergence is defined by a higher2level pattern arising out of parallel comple interactions between localagents. $ut of low2level routines, a coherent shape emerges. #leander ?CG


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with the subective sense that we get from the eperience of consciousness. &he reason that Idifferentiate the doctrine of emergentism is because it offers the margin to be less restricted inmaterialistic concepts. #s a matter of fact, it opens up a new hori*on of conceiving the relationshipbetween matter and mind, where new ideas taken from chaos theory, as we will see in the net part, canmakeup the way for an eotic understanding of consciousness in conunction with cosmology."evertheless, emergentism is still not studied as deep as to become familiar enough to psychologists, so

that they can illuminate themselves in the desired level. &he implications of such non2reductivephysicalisms is that we begin to entertain further the new type of dualism, the idea of anomalousmonism, a thesis that mental entities ?obects and events@ are, indeed, identical with physical entities,but under their mental descriptions mental entities are neither definitionally nor nomologically reducibleto the vocabulary of physics. In that respect, we have the partial devaluation of the materialism1sintransigence and the indication of the futility of reductionism, at least in the investigation of mind.

#t this point I will reinforce this argument and I will seek to prove that physicalism and reductionismmight not only be the not eactly right approaches to probe the subective mental states but the whollyunfortunate ones. &he thesis that I take is grudgingly opposed to this camp of potential cognitivesolutions. Beyond doubt, any attempt to unravel the deep mystery of consciousness by merelymaterialistic methods is on the wrong way, with no chance to encompass the facets that, in principle,become manifest to empirical inquiring only by introspection. -nfortunately, there are many brainresearchers today who pretend that the brain is ust another organ, like the stomach and the pancreas,

which should be described and eplained securely in physical terms. &he actual essentiality of mind iseempted as nothing more than an irrelevant and etraneous shadow to the brain, or in the best case, anadditional semi2functional floating emergent property. I counter this meager approach with the vitalistversion of what mind is, in dealing with the blindness of materialism toward the rich depth of consciousand subconscious eperience. (erhaps, it is about time to leave behind our reluctance to dive deep,beyond the superficial appearance of mind, which happens to be obectively observed. /aterialism is likea language that recogni*es only nouns; but reality, like language, contains action as well as obects,verbs as well as substantives, life and motion as well as matter.

"ew evidence from physics drives psychology to underemphasi*e the need to be limited in conceptsof matter. &he theoretical development in physics in the last decades shows the beginnings of a change indirection. In the concepts of space and time, mass and force, action and reaction, as defined once by"ewton, the basic framework of physical reality seemed to be established once and for all. &oday,though, the immanent progress in natural sciences has opened up new destinations, radically different

from what we were used to. In the place of a rigid ground of reality, we now have a fleible and mobileone that does not allow the founding of rigidmaterialistic theories in the field of psychology. &hatchange has brought the recalling of the independency of the concept. &he new perspective of physics, aswe will reali*e in depth in the third part, has given back the importance to conceptual meaning. &herelationship between a physical obect and its conceptual copy have been eamined and it showed thatthere is a necessity to evaluate the conceptual part as more significant than the obect, because it isthat which mind lives with and that which mind is filled with. &o that view, /ach, a physicist,psychologist, and epistemologist altogether, added that matter must be no longer regarded as asubstantial something 6it should be understood as a comple of simple sensations and defined as theirmere utaposition. &his was an attempt to correct the dogmatic materialism of "ewtonian physics bythe help of psychology. &hus, in a way, the atom was replaced by sensation. #pparently, those were theuvenilia of a more mental2oriented science, in the study of mind and consciousness. It is a slipperytopic, indeed, and it is quite easy to blur the distinction between mind and matter or to neglect mentalterms altogether in mind1s eemplification. 'owever, this separation must be drawn when we want toeamine and analy*e the composition of mental phenomena, in their own right.

If physicalism is to be defended, the phenomenological features must themselves be given a physicalaccount. But when we eamine their subective character, it seems that such a result is impossible. &hereason is that every subective phenomenon is essentially connected with a single point of view, and itseems inevitable that an obective, physical theory will abandon that view. #s "agel maintained, thereare things about the world, life, and the self that cannot be adequately understood from a maimallyobective standpoint, because a great deal has to do with a particular point of view and the attempt togive an account of consciousness in obective terms detached from these perspectives inevitably leads tofalse reductions or to the outrageous denial that certain phenomena do not eist at allF &hat is, the leastto say, madness with the license of rationality; a dead2end in the understanding of mind, a suspension inthe attainment of the skills to face the mystery of consciousness.

/ost physicalistic theories are entangled with the methodology of reductionism. It is the positionthat holds that theories or things of one sort can ehaustively account for theories or sorts of anotherkind. o, for eample, reductionism within the cognitive sciences holds that neuroscientific theories will

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eplain the psychological theories and, therefore, will reveal that psychological states and processes arenothing but bodily states and processes. &he reason that reductionism is used to be so thriving in the lastdecades is because, in its traditional form, it promotes a theoretical and ontological unity of sciencebased on a series of reductive eplanations of the theories at each level by the theories at the smallerscale level so that all theories in science, finally are reducible to the theories of physics.

)onversely, this facilitation in the deductive systems of science should not stand as an obstacle to

reali*e that, ultimately, reductionism is a curbing methodology, an unsubstantial way for any kind ofsynthetic deductions. &he analytic manner of making reductive theories about obects locks away theholistic part. ubsequently, reductionism is a dangerous view, since the way we respond to our fellowhuman beings is dependent on the way we conceptuali*e them in the our theoretical formulations. If wefell in the bad temptation to envision our fellows solely as animal machines, we lose the essential humanrichness and we turn to meaningless robots. 8adical reductionism offers very little in the area ofmorality. 5urther, it presents a wrong glossary of terms for a humanistic pursuit. omeone who wishes tobe conscientiously scientific and keeps an anchor to the humanistic foundation of research, must havealready postulated that the study of physiology in the issue of consciousness reduces it to absurdity,undermining itself.

&he results that loom are not positive. &he most important and characteristic feature of consciousmental phenomena is very poorly understood. /ost reductionist theories do not even try to eplain it.#nd careful eamination will show that no currently available concept of reduction is applicable to it.

&herefore, a new theoretical form is epected in the future to be devised for that purpose. &he way toescape this impedimental state of the consciousness studies is the adapting of a more holistic approach,which will be mainly supported by phenomenology. &he most adequate, the most promising way tocorrespond to the high compleity of the higher2level phenomenon of consciousness can only follow sucha route. While reductionism is the idea that of predicting the future from the past without regard to the3goals4 of organisms, holism is the idea that only inanimate obects can be so predicted. In contrast, inthe case of animate obects, purposes, beliefs, goals, desires, and so on are essential to eplain theiractions. &his view is often called 3goal2oriented4 or 3teleological4 ?'ofstadter, CGG


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of consciousness is nothing more than fictional. #pparently, we have a divergence betweenphenomenology and physiology, a gap that is as difficult to bridge as the gap between mind and body.&he dissension will keep on triggering opposed views, as long as we remain speechless on the issue of themind2body problem. &he cognitive theories that grow like mushrooms on the field of research reproducethemselves blocked by the same obstacles and obscurities. &herefore, phenomenology is for once more inthe focus, no matter how nebulous and deceptive. (erhaps, the reason that we disclaim the assumptions

that come out from introspection is because we, really, have not grasped yet the essence of mind.(erhaps, we are still blundering as we distance our methods and our science from the long2desireddestination% &he source of consciousness.

&he single most significant divergence is the tendency of eistential2phenomenology andneuropsychology to emphasi*e different levels of analysis. &hey misinterpret each other. 7istentialphenomenology involves a passionate dedication to the phenomenal world, the macroscopic level, theprimary level of everyday life. "europsychology, by definition, is concerned solely with the microscopicbrain processes. 7ven if, though, we acknowledge that a behavior is neurally structured, that does noteplain away or refute the significance or meaningfulness of the behavior as a response to themacroscopic level. 'ence, the two opposed methodologies

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GEORGIOS MAVROUDIS Research on Consciousness via Psychedelics