There's a very simple thing that needs to be recognized: drugs are just that, drugs. They interact with our physiology. They affect our brain in a variety of ways. And we need to be informed of those ways properly before "experimenting" with any. They don't unlock any mystical understanding of the world, because everything that happens while on drugs is still subjective experience.
I'm all for people taking whichever drug they wish to take, but they need to stop peddling bullshit pseudoscience. Thank you for writing this. (And the Hitch quote was well-chosen)
I believe Sam Harris is someone with valuable insight into this. He is very open to them and ways in which a variety of drugs can affect or enhance our cognition, without falling into pseudoscience and mysticism.
Is that not an assumption?
Give me a definitive answer to what consciousness is and I'll give your words credence. Until then, your guess is as good as anyone else.
There needn't be anything other than a single subject for there to be an experience of "reality", just give it a mind with an imagination and, all of a sudden, "objects" can spring up. Don't believe me? Look no further than your dreams. Imagined objects in a dream are good enough to pass as real, separate, unconnected objects while dreaming. When we wake up, it becomes obvious that it was all imagined -- the whole world in the dream was our own mind. A whole universe inside of a subject's mind!
In other words, perhaps all you need to understand the nature of the universe (reality) is to understand yourself. Or perhaps not.
It may be an assumption with bodies of evidence to support it, but an assumption nonetheless.
Radical relativism gets you nowhere. Ultimately, EVERYTHING is an "assumption" or "guess". That's how it works. We never have ALL the information, and even if we did, we would have to question our perception of it.
We go with the most reasonable one that has the best evidence supporting it and discard the others. so I am going to discard unfounded claims about the mystical nature of experiences created by drugs. Is there a possibility I am wrong? Yes. There always is.
And it's a tiny enough chance to declare anyone believing in that mysticism to be utterly confused just as I would declare anyone believing in homeopathy to be utterly confused.
Not to be an ass, but that's an assumption.
There's no question that we were dreaming when we wake up, no? Maybe we need to wake up another level, that's all I'm saying.
well said.