I was driving in my car one night, when this thought aligned itself in my mind. That DMT is probably one of the greatest cases against mechanical materialism. One thing i would like to mention is that there is nothing wrong with mechanical materialism in understanding something in the physical world. But its when you say 'this is how its done, and that's all that it is'. this is a toxic mindset, and it takes the vigor and beauty out of life.

lets look at an example...

mechanical materialism's approach to DMT
1. DMT is vaporized and sucked into the lungs
2. DMT is then then transferred into the blood stream.
3. DMT crosses the blood brain barrier
4. DMT then connects to certain neurotransmitters causing sensory hallucination and intense thought distortion
5 enzymes break down DMT
6. brain returns to normal function
... and that's all that it is.

*I know this description is not very accurate and quite rudimentary, but it paints the picture just fine.

anyone who has smoked DMT knows this is this biggest slap in the face, but this is how the majority of scientists view it. even Michio Kaku views psychedelics in this light. I think that DMT could be evidence that there exist the human variable in the equation of reality. and that scientists can't grasp this because it it is impossible to observe the observer. not yet anyway.

its not just DMT either, think of the love between a mother and her child. it can easily be described as the release of certain chemicals and evolutionary traits. that's fine and dandy until you say that's all it is. then what do you have?

The thing is, that isn't all that it is. Yet that is all that it is.

It all depends on how you look at it. It IS just chemicals doing something to you. What that something is I dont know. But it is something crazy. Something beyond understanding, but its still just a chemical, that your body can process. The non physical aspect of the experience is something entirely unknown, incomprehensible, CRAZY, life changing, ect.

When you read a good book that emotionally moves you, one could say its just words that you have attached emotion to, thats all that it is. Which would be true objectively, but the subjective part is the untold story.

DMT and psilocybin have actually made me *more* convinced of mechanical (or medical) materialism, not less.

We don't have an explanation for exactly how DMT exerts its reality bending effects, but we're starting to develop hazy theories. DMT attacks the 5-HT2A and 5-HT2C receptors, which in turn engage in cross-talk with metabotropic glutamate receptors that change exert excitatory or inhibitory effects on local neurons.

These effects appear (from fMRI studies done on people who were tripping on 4-HO-DMT) to result in large areas of the brain becoming quiet: particularly areas of the brain that section off information flow. The end result is the brain looses the ability to discern where the boundaries of things are and what in the environment is and isn't salient. I'll dig up the various studies that have shown this later.

Now, we don't understand all the steps to this, and we're still a *long* way from figuring out how all this gets translated into a first-hand experience, but, like I said, we're getting there. A lot of it seems to involve the capacity for self referential information processing.
So it's not quite the black box you've made it out to be.

Also: if we do take your theory, you suddenly need to account for a huge number of variables. If this...stuff is some external 'thing,' how do we measure it? Where does it come from? Etc. etc. What evidence do we have that this stuff is anything other than a phenomena generated by the brain beyond first hand experience, which can be explained through other, well documented phenomena?

there are esoteric states of knowledge that you dont speak about, not because it is taboo or secret, but because when you do so, you betray what they represent by entering into the rumor of language, which gossips symbolic and stylized representations of things. This aspect of language is neutral, and to truely understand it is to hold a certain type of power.

Rationalism and materialism are two such languages.

Windows are useful, for they help us see something outside of the box which contains us. It would be sad however if we forever peer through the same window.

I agree with this.



Why do you think this? I am not disagreeing with you but if you are going to start a thread called "A case against mechanical materialism" surely you should give a theory on why you think DMT gives evidence of the human variable in the equation of reality (because it is interesting).



Do you think that scientists would be able to grasp this if, or when, it was possible to observe the observer? Or perhaps if the tools were developed for such measurements they would be able to explain it in a mechanistic context.

Its a similar and related argument about the universe as a machine or universe as an organism and how something within a system cant be truly objective about that system.

The mGluR2 research is interesting indeed however could this not be the receiver that is being switched on or off and not the generator?
Without any solid understanding of consciousness I fail to see how any conclusions of the psychedelic experience can be arrived at seeing that consciousness is such a large part of the experience. Its like saying we know what the universe is without knowing what dark matter is.
Maybe it isnt external at all maybe we are universes unto ourselves and dmt enables us to transverse this space.
The 'all in your own mind' argument often seems to be used to simplify psychedelic experiences when it could be the opposite.

I disagree with this, passionately. I think it is a far uglier theory that needs the invention of unprovable, unobservable extra accoutrements and a far more elegant theory that is simple, self-contained and backed by evidence.

It's like mathematics: the quest is always for the most elegant theory, the simplest way to tie together as many different constructs as possible and show that they are related (there's a great documentary on how Wilder proved Fermat's Last Theorum by showing that the Shimura-Taniyama conjecture was true that does a good job of showcasing the jaw dropping beauty of the proof).

I see your point and i agree with you aswell. But as far as saying "that is how it is done and that is all there is" i think that, due to the infinite nature of reality and therefore knowledge, we will never be able to say "that is how it is done and that"s all that it is".

Never confuse the map with the territory.