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)
X. A New Postmodern Realism
“My encounters with the Hopkins volunteers,” Pollan writes, “had left me feeling not only somewhat envious, but also with a great many more questions than answers.” (75)
Hard questions arise about the meaning and authority of such experiences, especially the ones that appear to convince people that consciousness is not confined to brains and might somehow survive our deaths. (79) . . . How are we to evaluate the ‘insights’ these people bring back from their psychedelic journeys? What sort of authority should we grant them? What do these mystical states of consciousness ultimately mean for our understanding of either the human mind or the universe?” (75)
In other words, how are we to deal with the postulate of disembodied consciousness?
I set out earlier to provide an accounting of both the reality and utility of altered states of consciousness. We have now arrived at a point where we must consider some of the philosophical implications of this. And this is the point at which I will argue that while a productive accounting of both the reality and the significance of altered states is entirely feasible from within a strictly materialist ontology of embodied consciousness . . . this is not the only way–nor even necessarily the best way–of approaching the issue.
In a journal editorial that accompanied the publication of Griffiths’ paper on the Hopkins study, Harriet de Wit (a University of Chicago psychiatrist, and another prominent figure in the study and treatment of drug addiction & abuse ) wrote the following:
To a large extent, this type of subjective and uniquely human experience has enjoyed little credibility in the mainstream scientific world and, thus, has been given little scientific attention. However, it may be time now to recognize these extraordinary subjective experiences, even if they are, at present, not directly verifiable by objective measures and even if they sometimes involve claims about ultimate realities that lie outside the purview of science. (de Wit 2006)
Grinspoon, writing about the psychedelic experience back in 1979, had this to say:
There can be no doubt that the language of psychedelic drug users is much more vivid, colorful, eloquent, and seductive than any “neutral” analytic terms. Most attempts at rephrasing to eliminate the emotional charge produce results that seem inept, impoverished, and fragmented–like a dull literary analysis that drains the meaning out of a captivating story. That “neutral” kind of analysis would have to justify itself by some superior power of explaining the drug effects. Explanation is hard to define in this field, but a growing consensus about the nature of the drug experience would be one sign that we are moving closer to it. Unfortunately, no consensus has appeared. That is one reason for the intuition that most analytic language is being imposed as a means of denial or dismissal. On the contrary, it is the drug users’ language that suggests a potential consensus, as of travelers to different parts of the same country . . . the obverse of the great variability of psychedelic experiences is their basis in the common features of the human mind: the gifted man, the ordinary man, and the madman are traveling through the same regions, and their tales are recognizably similar. Whatever modifications we introduce [in our analysis], we must begin by taking seriously, on its own terms, what the drug users say . . . (91-92)
And here is William James, from Varieties of Religious Experience in 1902:
The world of our experience consists at all times of two parts, an objective and a subjective part, of which the former may be incalculably more extensive than the latter, and yet the latter can never be omitted or suppressed . . . What we think of may be enormous–the cosmic times and spaces, for example–whereas the inner state may be the most fugitive and paltry activity of mind. Yet the cosmic objects, so far as the experience yields them, are but ideal pictures of something whose existence we do not inwardly possess, but only point at outwardly, while the inner state is our very experience itself; its reality and that of our experience are one. A conscious field plus its object as felt or thought of plus an attitude towards the object plus the sense of a self to whom the attitude belongs–such a concrete bit of personal experience may be a small bit, but it is a solid bit as long as it lasts; not hollow, not a mere abstract element of experience, such as the ‘object’ is when taken all alone. It is a full fact, even though it be an insignificant fact; it is the kind to which all realities whatsoever must belong; the motor currents of the world run through the like of it; it is on the line connecting real events with real events.
If this be true, it is absurd for science to say that the egotistic elements of experience should be suppressed. The axis of reality runs solely through the egotistic places. They are strung upon it like so many beads. To describe the world with . . . all the various spiritual attitudes left out from the description–they being as describable as anything else–would be something like offering a printed bill of fare as the equivalent for a solid meal. Religion [when it is grounded in ‘spiritual’ experience, that is] makes no such blunder. The individual’s religion may be egotistic, and those private realities which it keeps in touch with may be narrow enough; but at any rate it always remains infinitely less hollow and abstract, as far as it goes, than a science which prides itself on taking no account of anything private at all . . . It does not follow, because our ancestors made so many errors of fact and mixed them with their religion, that we should therefore leave off being religious at all . . . (498-500)
In other words, what is required is a methodological approach capable of interpreting and counting the phenomenology of altered states, as evidentiary. But there’s more to it than that. Because, as we undertake this accounting, we find that–as investigators–the peculiar quality of our own experience of altered states tends to affect our assessment of the evidentiary value of altered states in general: that is, the subjective experience of altered states tends to weaken an individual’s firm commitment to a strictly materialist perspective.
We have seen this phenomenon in operation throughout the preceding narrative, going all the way back to the beginning, with James, and including both Wright and, by the time he finishes his own research, Pollan as well. Griffiths, the Hopkins study PI (who acknowledges “a funny kind of awakening” achieved through meditative practice) adopts an agnostic position: “The phenomenology of these experiences is so profoundly reorganizing and profoundly compelling that I’m willing to hold there’s a mystery here we can’t understand.” (79) In contrast, Robin Carhart-Harris (the neuroscientist investigating altered states through neuro-imaging) is described by Pollan as having “little patience for the sort of ‘magical thinking’ and metaphysics that psychedelics nourish in their acolytes–such as the idea that consciousness is ‘transpersonal,’ a property of the universe, rather than the human brain.” It’s worth noting, however, that Carhart-Harris, who had originally offered himself as the first volunteer subject in his original psilocybin study, was dissuaded from this by his supervisor (David Nutt) who argued that participating in the experiment might compromise his objectivity. So, we may presume, his own experience of altered states may indeed be negligible. [1]
This leads me to propose the employment of a potentially useful ontological typology that I will characterize as entailing a new postmodern realism: 1) materialist, 2) immaterialist, and 3) agnostic. To support my argument for the legitimacy (and value) of such a typology, I’ll first take recourse to a comment in Pollan attributed to the Dalai Lama: “the idea that brains create consciousness–an idea accepted without question by most scientists–is a metaphysical [that is, an ontological] assumption, not a scientific fact.” (41) Given that, let us consider Stephen Pepper’s powerful critique of dogmatism, from World Hypotheses: a Study in Evidence (1942):
We shall define a dogmatist as one whose belief exceeds his cognitive grounds for belief. By this definition, dogmatism is a cognitive error, that is, a fallacy. It is clear from our remarks in the previous chapter [Chapter I, The Utter Skeptic] that belief here covers also disbelief, since the latter seems to be simply belief in some negative condition . . . [Chapter II Dogmatists, 11]
What this suggests is that, with regard to our investigations of the reality and significance of altered states of consciousness, we can be materialists or we can be immaterialists, or we can–perhaps most honestly of all–find ourselves positioned somewhere along a continuum of agnosticism, even to the vanishing point of certainty (or uncertainty) in either direction. Griffiths affirms the spirit of this in one of his final interviews with Pollan:
“So what happens after you die? Does consciousness survive? What are the chances . . . one percent? That’s enough for me. I can’t think of anything more interesting than what I may or may not discover at the time I die. That’s the most interesting question going.” For that reason, he hopes he isn’t hit by a bus but rather has enough time to “savor” the experience without the distraction of pain. “Western materialism says the switch gets turned off and that’s it. But there are so many other descriptions. It could be a beginning! Wouldn’t that be amazing?”
This is when Griffiths turned the tables and started asking me about my own spiritual outlook, questions for which I was completely unprepared.
“How sure are you there is nothing after death?” he asked. I demurred, but he persisted. “What do you think the chances are there is something beyond death? In percentages?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I stammered. “Two or three percent?” To this day I have no idea where that estimate came from, but Griffiths seized on it. “Two or three percent? That’s a lot!” he exclaimed. (79-80)
Before concluding this section and moving on to the next, there is one final task at hand for me. William James has long been acclaimed as one of the grandfathers of the uniquely American school of philosophical pragmatism, a distinction he shares with Charles Peirce and John Dewey. As it happens, his Principles of Psychology (1890) is also regarded as a significant antecedent to the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2013) But James’ position in the firmament of American pragmatism has been discounted–for reasons that have always seemed unclear to me–but always having to do with a vague charge of “vulgar” pragmatism circling around his attitude toward “religion.” I am going to defend James now against this charge, with reference to the excerpt below from VRE; let me point out that by this point in his narrative, James has already explicitly cited Peirce’s pragmatic maxim in full (444-45), and referred to it extensively in preceding discussions.
I believe the pragmatic way of taking religion to be the deeper way. It gives it body as well as soul, it makes it claim, as everything real must claim, some characteristic realm of facts as its very own. What the more characteristically divine facts are, apart from the actual inflow of energy in the faith-state and the prayer-state, I know not. But the over-belief [i.e., the ontological commitment] on which I am ready to make my personal venture is that they exist. The whole drift of my education goes to persuade me that the world of our present consciousness is only one out of many worlds of consciousness that exist, and that those other worlds must contain experiences which have a meaning for our lives also; and that although in the main their experiences and those of this world keep discrete, yet the two become continuous at certain points, and higher energies filter in. I can, of course, put myself into the sectarian scientist’s attitude, and imagine vividly that the world of sensations and of scientific laws and objects may be all. But whenever I do this, I hear that inward monitor of which W. K. Clifford once wrote, whispering the world ‘bosh!” Humbug is humbug, even though it bear the scientific name, and the total expression of human experience, as I view it objectively, invincibly urges me beyond the narrow ‘scientific’ bounds. (519)
In reading the preceding passage, what are we to make of James’ stated position? The most plausible reading would seem to be that James is affirming himself, in the typological context just suggested, to be an unmitigated immaterialist. An alternative reading could classify him, somewhat ambiguously to be sure, as agnostic. In no reading, however, does it seems plausible to attempt to classify him as a confirmed materialist. Even if it were possible to do so, however, none of these classifications would support the charge of “vulgar pragmatism” typically leveled against James on this topic. In fact, I would argue that such charges result from an inappropriate application of prevailing modernist[2] views to James’ actual position, rendering his ‘pragmatic’ regard for both the reality and utility of altered states suspect. For James, however, we can now see that the “pragmatic way of taking religion” is clearly and necessarily related to its concrete grounding in both the reality and utility of altered states, whether ultimately material or immaterial, not any genuflection to the “historic incrustations” of superstition and authoritarian dogma (455) that regularly evolve from them.
Footnotes
[1] At this point I should probably acknowledge my own history of experience with altered states, which you will find reported in the essay ‘Autobiography of an American Yogi’ (D. H. Bowles 2018).
[2] This would be in terms of the anti-subjectivist position staked out in modernist science.
XI. The Soul of Reason: Love vs. Fear
Table of Contents
Conceptual Schematic of the Argument
Abstract
Download Working Paper (PDF)