The goal of this article is to break down the dimensions of consciousness, attempt to reverse engineer their evolutionary function, and make sense of the origins of consciousness by breaking off those dimensions that are more likely to have arisen later. A Darwinian approach will allow us to revise the philosopher’s concept of consciousness away from a single “thing,” an all-or-nothing quality,...
CureusAugust 25, 2022Vedant N Hedau, Ashish P Anjankar5 citations
Psychedelics are hallucinogenic drugs that alter the state of consciousness substantially. They bring about psychological, auditory, and visual changes. The psychedelics act on the brain, implying that they have a powerful psychological impact. One of the main factors contributing to disability worldwide is pain. The majority of people deal with pain on a daily basis. Living with chronic pain...
The tremendous advances of research into artificial intelligence as well as neuroscience made over the last two to three decades have given further support to a renewed interest into philosophical discussions of the mind-body problem. Especially the last decade has seen a revival of panpsychist and idealist considerations, often focused on solving philosophical puzzles like the so-called hard...
The aim of this study is to investigate how the COVID-19 pandemic affects the dream content of university students. This research, which is based on a qualitative design, is based on a phenomenological approach. The group of the study was determined by purposive sampling, and 221 dreams that 115 university students had recently and that were not repetitive (it was emphasized that dreams were...
Music has often been linked to the capacity to induce trance-like states, with listeners sometimes describing their experiences as “hypnotic-like”. However, it is still unclear whether music can induce effects similar ¬¬¬to those found in response to a hypnotic induction, or whether these references rest on a metaphor. Using matched samples (n=266), this exploratory study compared the...
Abstract With novel hallucinogens poised to enter psychiatry, we lack a unified framework for quantifying which changes in consciousness are optimal for treatment. Using transformers (i.e. BERT) and 11,816 publicly-available drug testimonials, we first predicted 28-dimensions of sentiment across each narrative, validated with psychiatrist annotations. Secondly, BERT was trained to predict...
New medicines containing classic hallucinogenic and entactogenic psychedelic substance are under development for various psychiatric and neurological disorders. Many of these, including psilocybin, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), and 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) are Schedule I controlled substances of the United States Controlled Substances Act (US CSA), and similarly controlled...
ABSTRACT The "people of knowledge" of traditional Mazatec medicine have preserved until today the ritual use of psilocybin mushrooms as part of their health care systems. The renewed interest in the effect of psilocybin on human consciousness for both therapeutic and recreational purposes usually obviates the historical and cultural background of indigenous peoples, as well as the legitimation...
This study approach the critique of the transcendental ego in phenomenology in La transcendance de l’Ego, where Sartre confronts the “consistency” of a psychic and psychophysical ego. The research is directed towards understanding how a consciousness that does not have, a priori, any egological structure ends up, as “artificial functionality” and “in interiority”, constituting it as an...