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Re:Psychedelics alter metaphysical beliefs by guythedudebro on Tuesday December 07, 2021 @10:57PM (#29481104)
Not only that, but the fact that consuming a chemical can make your consciousness feel so different always felt to me like pretty good evidence that consciousness is material.

I do think there are rational realizations that rational people can come to under the influence of psychedelics, that they might not otherwise, though.

Re:Psychedelics alter metaphysical beliefs by TimTheTinker on Wednesday December 08, 2021 @12:38AM (#29481590)
Why can't consciousness be from both the material and the immaterial?

If a chemical alters perception, that just shows that consciousness is strongly affected by the material, but other non-contradictory hypotheses aren't thus disproven.

Re:Psychedelics alter metaphysical beliefs by guythedudebro on Wednesday December 08, 2021 @01:16AM (#29481792)
Sure, it could be. I never said otherwise.

However, I am unsure what good evidence for a corresponding immaterial part might look like.

Re:Psychedelics alter metaphysical beliefs by TimTheTinker on Monday December 20, 2021 @02:02PM (#29628637)
If you're looking for physical evidence, perhaps brain signals that don't have a material origin? But that would be very difficult to establish.

I think a better approach is philosophical, by considering the nature of thought and the spoken word.

Re:Psychedelics alter metaphysical beliefs by monktastic1 on Tuesday December 07, 2021 @11:10PM (#29481173)
I'm not sure I see why. Dreams tend to be unstable, but if a dream were particularly stable, and a certain behavior in the dream reliably triggered a certain insight (say, a dream sign that triggered lucidity), would that be evidence that consciousness was produced by the "material" in the dream?

In the same way, if this is a dream of sorts, the fact that certain dream behaviors can trigger certain changes in experience is also internally consistent. Of course, this "dream" has much greater stability to it, but the basic idea holds.

Re:Psychedelics alter metaphysical beliefs by guythedudebro on Wednesday December 08, 2021 @01:30AM (#29481847)
If you can develop a robust system of testable explanations for the material reality of your dream world that hold consistently true where/when this is all happening then maybe your question would be useful.

There is complex physiology going on producing a consciousness (so it seems to me) that can be altered when that physiology is altered. We can see at least some of this physiology. Suggesting all that physiology in our world is actually happening in the dream world of some other being doesn't seem very interesting as it still leaves us here in the same material (as we can measure it) reality that science is... still pretty damn good at describing. So why even bring it up? If there's evidence that points us that way, cool, otherwise, Occam's razor seems better.

Re:Psychedelics alter metaphysical beliefs by kritiko on Tuesday December 07, 2021 @11:04PM (#29481140)
Why do you believe in rational people?
Re:Psychedelics alter metaphysical beliefs by guythedudebro on Wednesday December 08, 2021 @01:06AM (#29481753)
I thought it was a useful label to describe a set of people who would make an effort not to settle for supernatural explanations
Re:Psychedelics alter metaphysical beliefs by weq on Wednesday December 08, 2021 @01:17AM (#29481798)
We only use a minute amount of our brain. Supernatural is a state of dystopia set out by the Religious zealots to rationalise their inability to understand anything not fed to them by their sacred books.
Re:Psychedelics alter metaphysical beliefs by weq on Wednesday December 08, 2021 @01:14AM (#29481781)
Rational rediscovered the power of psychedelics that aboriginal cultures all over the world have been using since the dawn of time to bring clarity to nature, ones place in it, and the universe.

https://maps.org/2004/08/08/nobel-prize-genius-crick-was-hig...

Simple put, psychedelics are used throughout the animal kingdom by all species for this same type of enlightnement. Arguments can be made that mushrooms brought about human evolution by waking us up to our own conciseness. We are the first generation of people to be tainted by the War On Drugs. And we will be the last to have forgotten it.

https://www.inverse.com/article/34186-stoned-ape-hypothesis

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/dolphins-seem-to-u...

Unfortunately, our generation has grown up being fed properganda about how Drugs are bad and religious is the saviour and the only pure way to live.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesar%27s_Messiah

One just needs to look at MDMAs effectiveness on treating PSTD with Gods version of treatment that covers up the trauma with religion instead of unwinding it from the mind.

https://adf.org.au/insights/mdma-ptsd/ Source from gods chrous themselves where they claim MDMA and ecstasy arn't the same thing now because science is showing its "positive uses" - even though every "Just Say No" ad i saw as a child insisted they were both going to fry my brain into an egg.

These substances will not produce profound effects when taken recreationally - no healer from any aboriginal culture will claim that. They are to be taken with intent, with specific settings under specific conditions in a variety of doses for you to gain a better understand of oneself.

Re:Psychedelics alter metaphysical beliefs by guythedudebro on Wednesday December 08, 2021 @01:21AM (#29481809)
> These substances will not produce profound effects when taken recreationally

This claim, at the very least, is false.