THE SOUL OF REASON

The material presented here is taken from a working paper titled The Soul of Reason:  An Argument for a New Post-Modern Realism in Social Theory and Philosophy.  (D. H. Bowles 2020)

IX.  The Renaissance

Fifty years on now, and the fortress walls of prohibition are starting to crack.  Marijuana, subjected to widespread suppression beginning in the 1930s, was listed as a Schedule I substance (no accepted medical use) with passage of the Controlled Substances Act of 1970.  In spite of this, as of today, twelve states in the U.S. (inclusive of the District of Columbia) have defied federal statutory authority and fully legalized marijuana use.  It remains fully illegal in only eight states, while in the remainder it is either ‘decriminalized’ or has been legalized for medical use.  Those substances identified here as constituting the ‘core’ psychedelics also remain on Schedule I, but are increasingly the subject of sanctioned research.

One of Pollan’s principal purposes, as I’ve stated earlier, is to tell the story of the 21st century renaissance in psychedelics research.  He traces its beginning to the report of a study published in Psychopharmacology (Griffiths, et al. 2006) conducted by a research team at Johns Hopkins University led by Roland Griffiths, a prominent and highly respected investigator in the field.  One of the most unusual aspects of the study, Pollan notes, was that it focused, not on any potential therapeutic application of the drug, “but rather on the ‘spiritual’ effects of the experience on so-called ‘healthy normals.’” (30)

Though no one knew it at the time, the renaissance of psychedelic research now under way began in earnest with the publication of that paper.  It led directly to a series of trials–at Hopkins and several other universities–using psilocybin to treat a variety of indications, including anxiety & depression in cancer patients, addiction to nicotine and alcohol, obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression, and eating disorders.

What is striking about this whole line of clinical research is the premise that it is not the pharmacological effect of the drug itself, but the kind of mental experience it occasions–involving the temporary dissolution of the ego–that may be the key to its efficacy. (11)

Another research thread featured by Pollan (Chapter 5) of particular interest in this regard is currently underway at the Centre for Psychiatry on the Hammersmith campus of Imperial College in West London, where a neuroscientist named Robin Carhart-Harris has been working since 2009 to identify the neural correlates, or physical counterparts, of psychedelic experience. (296)

One of the most notable of Carhart-Harris’ findings from his early research with psilocybin was that the steepest drops in default mode network (DMN) activity were correlated with his volunteers’ subjective experience of ego dissolution. (304)  Shortly after he reported these results in a 2012 paper, a researcher at Yale (Judson Brewer) noticed that his own scans of experienced meditators and those of Carhart-Harris’ psilocybin subjects looked remarkably alike–the transcendence of self reported by expert meditators showed up on MRI scans as a quieting of the default mode network.  “It appears that when activity in the DMN falls off precipitously, the ego temporarily vanishes, and the usual boundaries we experience between self and world, subject and object, all melt away.” (305)

Carhart-Harris’ vision of a “grand synthesis” of psychoanalysis and cognitive brain science is laid out in “an ambitious and provocative paper” (Pollan 311) titled “The Entropic Brain: a Theory of Conscious States Informed by Neuroimaging Research with Psychedelic Drugs” (Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2014).

The question at its heart is “do we pay a price for the achievement of order and selfhood in the adult human mind?  The paper concludes that we do.  While suppressing entropy (in this context, a synonym for uncertainty) in the brain “serves to promote realism, foresight, careful reflection and an ability to overcome wishful and paranoid fantasies,” at the same time this achievement tends to “constrain cognition and exert a limiting or narrowing influence on consciousness.” (Pollan 311)

According to David Ott, director of the Hammersmith Lab, “in the DMN, we’ve found the neural correlate for repression.” (307)

The Griffiths study could be described as an investigation into the qualitative experience of temporary ego dissolution which, it turns out, could also be characterized as the subjective experience of ‘spirituality.’  The title of the 2006 article reporting on the study published in Psychopharmacology, after all, is “Psilocybin Can Occasion Mystical-type Experiences Having Substantial and Sustained Personal Meaning and Spiritual Significance.”

William James’ work in Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), now almost 120 years down the road, still constitutes the gold standard for describing the definitive characteristics of the mystical, or transcendental, state, and provides the starting point for construction of the Mystical Experience Questionnaire (MEQ), used by investigators to both qualify and quantify subjects’ experience.  The essence of James’ description is to be found in what he refers to as the four “marks.”  Of the first two, James says “These two characters will entitle any state to be called mystical, in the sense in which I use the word.”

          Ineffable – the subject immediately says that it defies expression, that no adequate report of the experience can be given in words.  It immediately follows from this that its quality must be directly experienced; it cannot be imparted or transferred to others. In this peculiarity, mystical states are more like states of feeling than like states of intellect.

          Noetic – Although very much like states of feeling, mystical states seem to those who experience them to be also states of knowledge.  They are states of insight into depths of truth unplumbed by the discursive intellect.  They are illuminations, revelations, full of significance and importance, all inarticulate though they remain; and as a rule they carry with them a curious sense of authority that persists with return to ordinary consciousness.

Two other qualities, transience and passivity, are “less sharply marked, but are usually found. . . . These four characteristics are sufficient to mark out of group of states of consciousness peculiar enough to deserve a special name and to call for careful study.  Let it then be called the mystical group.” (James 380-82)

Pollan conducted extensive interviews with the 2006 Hopkins study subjects.  “Even years after their experiences in the trials, the volunteers I spoke to recalled them in vivid detail and at considerable length; the interviews lasted hours . . . these people had big stories to tell.” (63)

And it wasn’t just the subjects who were affected.  Katherine MacLean, who guided dozens of sessions during her time at Hopkins, told me “I started out as an atheist, but I began seeing things every day in my work that were at odds with this belief.  My world became more and more mysterious as I sat with people on psilocybin.” (74)  Mary Cosimano, one of the most active of the Hopkins study guides, said “To listen to these people describe the changes in their lives inspired by their psilocybin journeys is to wonder if the Hopkins session room isn’t a kind of ‘human transformation factory.’” (73)

Pollan also reports on his extended interviews with Roland Griffiths, the principal investigator of the 2006 Hopkins psilocybin study:

“For me, the data were . . . I don’t want to use the words ‘mind-blowing,’ but it was unprecedented the kinds of things we were seeing there, in terms of the deep meaning and lasting spiritual significance of these effects.  I’ve given lots of drugs to lots of people, and what you get are drug experiences.  What’s unique about psychedelics is the meaning that comes out of the experience.” (75) . . . As a scientific phenomenon, if you can create a condition in which 70 percent of people will say they have had one of the most meaningful experiences of their lives . . . well, as a scientist, that’s just incredible.” (77)

X.  A New Postmodern Realism

Table of Contents

Conceptual Schematic of the Argument

Abstract

Download Working Paper (PDF)