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)

IV.  The Problem of Consciousness

In 2018 Michael Pollan published a remarkable book (How to Change Your Mind, New York: Penguin Press) in which he documents the 21st century renaissance of interest and success in the use of psychedelic drugs for the treatment of numerous widespread clinical psychiatric disorders, including addiction, depression, and the suffering associated with terminal medical diagnoses and conditions (see also Pollan 2015 for an abridged version of this).  I will eventually have more to say about what Pollan reports here, but at the moment I want to cite him in a more limited and precise way:  to provide a specific definition of what we mean when we refer to the problem of consciousness.

What neuroscientists and philosophers and psychologists mean by ‘consciousness’ is the unmistakable sense we have that we are, or possess, a self that has experiences.  Let us call this ‘the subjective quality of experience.’  It is frequently referred to as ‘the hard problem,’ or ‘the explanatory gap’:  how do you explain mind–the subjective quality of experience–in terms of the physical structures or chemistry of the brain?  (293-94)

Here, we have the definition of a problem that is clearly, integrally related to what we have also just been talking about as the problem of social ontology.  We could even call it the problem of self-consciousness or, as Pollan describes it, ‘the hard problem.’  It can also be usefully and succinctly characterized as ‘the subjective quality of experience’ (or, perhaps, ‘the subjective quality of the experience of self.’)

Now, what I propose to do in the remainder of this essay is to recommend a solution to the problem of consciousness as just defined.  That solution lies in developing an accounting of both the reality (i.e., the ontology) and the value (i.e., the axiology, or utility) of what are commonly referred to as altered states of consciousness.  Pollan’s work, not too surprisingly, will be of considerable interest in this regard, but it is not by any means the whole story of it, nor is it the place where the story begins . . .

V.  We Are Not What We Think We Are

Table of Contents

Conceptual Schematic of the Argument

Abstract

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