The map is not the territory. The modelled brain is not consciousness. ‘This’ – the ineffable quality of subjective experience – is consciousness. No scientific description can ever reach it. The psychedelic experience allows us to get behind our models, and provides us with a special, unitary knowledge of consciousness; shedding new light on the infamous hard problem, writes Jussi Jylkkä.
This, my experience right now, is what it feels like to be alive. But this cannot be inferred from science alone. David Chalmers calls this the “hard problem” of consciousness. Psychedelic experience can shed light on the problem, as it demonstrates how I know my consciousness in a non-conceptual and non-reflective way through being it. I call such knowledge “unitary”, as it is not about anything. It is simply the brute happening of a process: this. In contrast to unitary knowledge, scientific models and observations only give relational knowledge that is about something distinct. Thus, psychedelic experience shows that consciousness is part of the concrete reality that science merely models. This is what science models as “physical”.
The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of why it is that any physical processes feel like anything ‘from the inside’. A closely related problem is the epistemic gap, or why it is impossible to infer from science what experiences feel like, or that subjective consciousness exists at all. Psychedelics can shed light on these problems through demonstrating a categorical difference between how I know my own consciousness, and what type of knowledge science gives.
Psychedelic experience shows that consciousness is part of the concrete reality that science merely models.
To understand the relationship between consciousness and matter, we must understand what consciousness is, and what matter is. To begin with the latter, matter (or the physical; I take these to be synonymous) is whatever it is that physics models. As Galen Strawson puts it, “matter” is the ultimate natural kind term: it refers to that something, whatever it is, that produces observations of atoms and molecules, and that modern physics models as, say, interaction between quarks. [1] However, “interaction between quarks” is merely a theoretical model in our minds, which refers to that something that matter truly is. Observations of atoms and molecules are merely sensations in our minds. The word “matter” does not refer to these sensations, but instead to what produces them. Beyond our observations and theories, matter is a mystery.
What is consciousness? For me it is this, sitting in front of my computer, thinking about philosophy at 9am on a Saturday morning during my summer vacation. Consciousness is this thinking process now, the ache in my back, the sound of the refrigerator, the sight of trees trembling in late summer breeze. The slight fear of deadline. Consciousness has been characterized in countless ways throughout history, as “qualitative”, “non-spatial”, “soul”, “Brahman”, etc., but all these are merely words, and the word is not the object. Beyond words, consciousness is simply this, what is immediately present every moment. This is consciousness when it is not called “consciousness”, this is the flow of experience when it is not called “the flow of experience”. It is this when it is not called “this”.
Beyond words, consciousness is simply this, what is immediately present every moment..
6th August 2021
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