Conversation

Dec 23, 2021

A surprising amount of literature in philosophy of mind tries to model our internal hallucinated mental experience, vs. looking for mechanistic generators of that experience. I suspect this is largely a mistake, that some “hard questions” aren’t hard, aren’t the right questions.

Kanjun

@kanjun

Dec 23, 2021

For example, much work on consciousness & qualia tries to explain our minds from inside our experience, rather than looking at it from outside. Of course, it’s very confusing from the inside - like trying to model the hallucination instead of the generators of the hallucination.

Andy Matuschak

@andy_matuschak

Dec 23, 2021

(I think psychedelics are really good at laying that latter distinction, and its absurdity, bare!)

Kanjun

@kanjun

Dec 23, 2021

That’s a great point! I do remember distinctly thinking the first time on psychedelics that my brain was doing all this processing and I could finally see it.

Andy Matuschak

@andy_matuschak

Replying to

@kanjun

That's funny, I remember my first time trying desperately to model the hallucinations and failing, over and over again, to my increasing horror. Wrong move! 🙃

11:28 PM · Dec 23, 2021Twitter Web App

Replying to

and

The latest episode of

@overthink_pod

("Intoxication") includes some relevant discussion of psychedelics and the philosophy of mind

Kanjun

@kanjun

Dec 24, 2021

Thanks for the rec!