Does knowledge gained from psychedelia truly count as knowledge?

[Solipsis]

He says 'truly counts', how is that not a colloquial synonym of legitimate?

Even if it evokes some semantical discussion, it seems clear enough a least to try to comment on it meaningfully right?

 

[Kl519]

Whatever we gain from any experience should count as knowledge in my view, sober or not. I'm not sure where the proof idea came from, but I think all of us follow whatever works for ourselves. Subjectivity is near impossible to prove, but when the topic interests me...I guess I like to go on a tirade. So I hope nobody is condemning me for this, heh.

So, I was able to gain valuable information while going through these forced perceptual changes, and for me sobriety never allowed me to access these unique view points in my 21 years of life before then. I think that's the beef of everything I gained from these psychedelic experiences, and I would contend that not only are they very real, they are very useful. The different perspectives on psychedelics are truly unique compared to anything else except certain traumatic experiences, which also were an eye opener too in a very different way.

I remember one of Transform's posts, and I think it was something to the effect of whatever we perceive becomes real to ourselves, and that stuck with me. That's because I always tried to understand the 'world' view point as I got older, but these trips would force me to examine my own. I would notice some bit of info on a psychedelic I didn't realize before, then apply to it to my everyday sober life, and just like that...it works! The ones that are ingrained into me have never failed me, and have allowed me great improvement in my quality of life, but I guess only time will tell. Nevertheless, this change has been a very real and positive experience for me, despite the fact that the counter argument has some real, legitimate points too.

So, I'm a bit stumped in my current train of thought.

Of course, I don't speak for anyone except myself. If others can jive with it, then I'm flattered more than anything...no worries, my ego didn't get any bigger. I am nothing but a speck in the dust cloud, and always will be.

 

[Kittycat5]

The model of DNA was hypothesized on LSD. Anyway, psychedelics put you into alpha/theta brain wave states, and studies showed that people in these states while sober were able to learn/master tasks 30% faster than people in ordinary waking states. Non-linear thinking can lead you to valid conclusions you never would've reached with a linear thought process. There is some science behind it.

Sorry but the DNA thingis probably false. Francis Crick's biographer said he didnt try it until 1967, 14 years after he and Watson's discovery. The timeline is bad too as LSD didnt arrive in England until roughly 1950 and was never in widespread use during the time Crick was researching the structure of DNA.

I dont know what to say on this subject. I do believe the things we experience on psychedelics are "real" but not always a justified belief. Only insights about oneself can be really thought of as valid in your defintion of knowledge because we can justify anything to ourself.

 

[neurotic]

Nobody said it was inferior, but when you are talking validity, truth and knowledge (let's put aside the sage wisdom and insights) "messing with processing of information" as you say could be easily seen to suggest that the knowledge we may think we gain may be compromised as it is by definition also messed with.

i had the impression that OP was insinuating that actually, hence questioning if something (in this case, acquiring knowledge) happened during that state would perhaps "not count". and may be i should've used a word different than "messing". i didn't mean it is an in "scrambling" (and compromising) but rather "tweaking/changing some parameters".

on the "experiencing more sensory illusions and cognitive delusions can give us a whole lot of insight into the illusory nature of many things we experience sober and take for true and for granted." paragraph: man, THIS! personally the most mind-blowing thing tripping showed me, i wouldn't have known how to put into words...

and on the 'learned whilst tripping vs. knowledge from psychedelia', fair point. it's just that it's hard to debate these things: one would have to define what is knowledge gained from psychedelia, what makes knowledge from different things truly count, etc...

BTW do you mind if i send you a PM sometime to talk about your tangent there (and may be a few other stuff i've read before from you that interested me )?

 

[Kl519]

...because we can justify anything to ourself.

I'm sorry, but that's not true for me. That's the purpose of listening to a conscience; not everything can be justified. That sort of thinking is what leads to immoral acts imo, so be careful with that line of thinking.

 

[gevo]

I'm a she

 

[gevo]

Nobody said it was inferior, but when you are talking validity, truth and knowledge (let's put aside the sage wisdom and insights) "messing with processing of information" as you say could be easily seen to suggest that the knowledge we may think we gain may be compromised as it is by definition also messed with.

While psychedelia is different from "true deleriant hallucination", I'm - for example - still pretty sure the explanations for seeing kaleidoscopic colors are much more plausibly found in the affected visual cortex processing; considering one of the most certain thing we know about psychedelics is that they are chemicals that influence brain function... more plausible than, say, that we can finally "see colors in a wider spectrum that is ultimate reality". That is definitely a more romantic idea, but there are many more similar phenomena like migraine aura's with zigzag OEVs, and those also only tend to be explained as magical or divine by tribes unaware of neuropharmacology. Ancient beliefs will also have to confront Occam's razor.

The point of that is: while seeing things like colors you've never seen before is interesting and offers insight in many things like the workings of our visual cortex in different modes, any knowledge we think we gain from that is tentative and instead more likely to be misinterpreted in ways we would love to be the truth.

In that sense, experiencing more sensory illusions and cognitive delusions can give us a whole lot of insight into the illusory nature of many things we experience sober and take for true and for granted.
Therefore I agree with you(!) that when sober we don't have a true picture of reality either because it is always subjective to begin with, observation in itself is empty (as a machine may do) and pointless; interpretation always colors our perception, once we determine what we choose to look for, functionally, we are already filling in things that are not strictly there.

Learning how to cook while tripping is not knowledge gained FROM psychedelia but a skill / information gained WHILST tripping. Psychedelia can stimulate creative imagination, that can allow us to come up with for example ideas for recipes we never thought of before but that again is not something we suddenly know, just something we intuitively think could be interesting to pursue and it very well may be.
But if during a trip you have CEVs of something compelling happening, that is not necessarily more or less true that something different we imagine or dream even if it more complex, novel or convincing than normal.
What should actually be convincing is what holds up when we test it and attack it. How many people have the guts to really experiment, test and attack their beliefs and see how well they hold up?

As I said a few times now: the issue is with filtering what is sensible which is very hard or impossible to keep up with realtime. I have extensive experience with losing skepticism in favor of creative imagination (during periods of very frequent tripping), and that is not supportive of theories or models that are true or purposeful. More on this as a tangent:

NSFW:

In my experience I had a lot of ideas and plenty of them were unfounded even if they became very intricate.. I could easily see how further down the road you might find delusional schizophrenics who may have incredible ideas which are alas not properly filtered properly to distinguish consensus reality (best we got to stay somewhat sane) from pure fantasy. Cf. John Nash. Some theories are exceptionally elegant and prove to hold up when you test them. I occasionally have/had just regular level good ideas [nothing that worldchanging] but hardly if ever knowledge that was 'revealed' to me. Instead I just found I had to parse my ideas all over again with due skepticism to test them and throw all the rubbish out.
Since then I vowed to stick closer to theories that are skeptical and honestly admit our limits, human blind spots and logical fallacies, and other big traps that we fall into en masse (similar to things illusionists exploit). It costs more energy and is sometimes sadly disillusioning (which is the point as the word itself says!), but I feel there is always more merit in those theories that hold up much longer than the wild fantasies that are the very first resort for most people. For example to explain DMT trips as truly alien / other-dimensional, which just like many religious revelatory myths need fargoing assumptions that have absolutely zero basis other than that they are compelling. When you start picking at wild theories like that they fall apart unless you make even more incredible assumptions. I appreciate that believers of that, like religious people, may be glowing with wonder... and I also appreciate that the world is infinitely more bizarre, and wondrous and complex than we fathom.... but that does not give us a carte blanche to just come up with whatever... instead what we provisionally take as true and scientifically founded is built on progressively testable hypotheses.

I don't prefer to boldly defend science but instead as I suggested I take pride in being humble about what we may hope to actually take for knowledge. That is a much healthier vantage point than any arrogant or greedy relishing of complex unchecked ideation. We can all feel blessed to have psychedelics but let's not congratulate ourselves with just any psychedelic revelation thinking that a compromised filter means that true reality can finally be seen unbridled and in all its glory.

It's not all illusion and hallucination either.

Just take advantage of all psychedelic inspiration, honest self-inquiry and skepticism and sieve until you retain only what is agreeable with all modes.

So yes: creative imagination for ever more farfetched, complex, interconnected ideas certainly happened when I tripped a whole lot, but none of it was gained knowledge until I combined it with skepticism and research. That is why I conclude that insight can be gained and creativity in art, science, philosophy and other fields may be stimulated... but knowledge is not gained FROM psychedelia, just a jumble of ideas both valid and invalid that need to be filtered sooner or later, because deep, profound and out-of-the-box thinking may be awesome but it is just from big leaps between neuronal branches of your mind that is indifferent to validity. And that is why it starts counting as knowledge only when it is processed some more and reality-checked.
One of the nice things it did for me is catalyze my tendency to think of absurdist jokes and cartoons fueled by hyperassociation.

This has been really helpful, full appreciation.

 

[gevo]

The question is completely illogical, IMO. Or at least, the way it's stated. Is knowledge knowledge? Is a cake a cake?

A better question would be, "Is it possible to gain legitimate knowledge via psychedelics?"

I'm not dissing your idea, by the way, I'm just saying you need to reword it.

Noted, much better!

 

[SKL]

I post relatively recently in the PD Social thread:

(regarding dreams...) I'm not into any kind of dream analysis, either Freudian or mystical, but damn it felt like there was a lot of content in there. No discernible message, overarching structure or suchlike, although a lot of expressionistic ruminations about things I tend to preoccupy alot about (This isn't surprising to anyone who dreams, of course), although I'm sure Freudians would have a field day with the content. However I think Freudians are full of shit. Yes, I've read my Freud and my Jung too, I prefer the latter, but also think Jungians are full of shit.

Which makes me think about the poster above, ~, who was inquiring about how a psychedelic trip can be profound, and I think that the answer to both questions is sort of the same.

I am well known around here for promoting the view that there is no content and most emphatically no message from drug-taking. This is my hard position. However, there are some nuances ...

(a) There is a subjective impression of depth to hallucinatory and oneiric experiences, yet also
(b) These experiences derive entirely from neurons firing more or less randomly, therefore
(c) There is no specific content to be derived from these experiences in the strict sense, but
(d) Your consciousness is a phenomenon we still don't understand, souls or strange loops or whatever, and
(e) Your consciousness is "you" having the experience and perceiving it to be profound/have content, because
(f) These experiences can be actually worthwhile by virtue of allowing introspection with an element of distance from the ordinary.

The idea of extrinsic messages from psychedelics from extraterrestrials, spirit elves, plant spirits, jaguars, Vishnu, whatever, is nonsense. There is nothing to be gained in terms of knowledge from psychedelics that is not already in your mind, or that comes into your mind during the experience as mediated by the drug. The epistemological utility of the psychedelic experience is not that drugs metaphorically "download" any sort of information in your brain, but they offer to your consciousness (soul, homunculus, ghost in the machine, insert what you will here) what's already there, served up in a different manner and through the lens of an altered cognitive process.

This is due to the random firing of neurons and the activation of certain receptors in your brain that lead to certain subjective feelings. Let's make up a useful lie, or metaphor, and say that there is somewhere in your head a "salience receptor" that is touched by psychedelics, the "wow, I see things anew, but this is how everything has always been" receptor. Much of what it is going to tell you, of course, is static, nonsense, and delusion, and believing that you are in contact with entities or receiving transmissions of some kind is dangerous, the path of delusion, but using some of the insights and the shifting of emphases onto different parts of your own knowledge and mentality may in fact be very useful, e.g. in the discovery of DNA, in the creation of music,