Is there a physical basis for psychedelic experiences?

[pandaproducts]

Thank you everybody for your swift replies and (if I understand DandelionSoul correctly) we can´t come to a conclusion whether idealism or materialism is valid based on the results of the study.

However, there is another question that I would like to ask: If I understand Dr. Kastrup correctly, he says that brain activity under the influence of psychedelic drugs should be reduced. But this is only partialy the case here. The authors of the study state: "Psilocybin reduced associative, but concurrently increased sensory, brain-wide connectivity.". So in other words, there is also a increased brain activity occuring here. How does this result fit into the prediction that Dr. Kastrup makes regarding the use of psyedelics on the brain? Or am I getting something wrong here?

Connectivity is not activity. Connectivity is synonymous with entropy, random patterns of activity. How this could give rise to rich, coherent experiences such as that of the psychedelic state is something the physicalist has to deal with.

[SanteriSatama]

Thank you everybody for your swift replies and (if I understand DandelionSoul correctly) we can´t come to a conclusion whether idealism or materialism is valid based on the results of the study.

However, there is another question that I would like to ask: If I understand Dr. Kastrup correctly, he says that brain activity under the influence of psychedelic drugs should be reduced. But this is only partialy the case here. The authors of the study state: "Psilocybin reduced associative, but concurrently increased sensory, brain-wide connectivity.". So in other words, there is also a increased brain activity occuring here. How does this result fit into the prediction that Dr. Kastrup makes regarding the use of psyedelics on the brain? Or am I getting something wrong here?

Connectivity is not activity. Connectivity is synonymous with entropy, random patterns of activity. How this could give rise to rich, coherent experiences such as that of the psychedelic state is something the physicalist has to deal with.

Maybe connectivity has some specific meaning in brainy science, but in math and formal language, I don't see how ability of strings to be concatenated - connectivity in that sense - according to some generative algorithm, has anything to do with entropy? Interesting thought, though...

[pandaproducts]

Thank you everybody for your swift replies and (if I understand DandelionSoul correctly) we can´t come to a conclusion whether idealism or materialism is valid based on the results of the study.

However, there is another question that I would like to ask: If I understand Dr. Kastrup correctly, he says that brain activity under the influence of psychedelic drugs should be reduced. But this is only partialy the case here. The authors of the study state: "Psilocybin reduced associative, but concurrently increased sensory, brain-wide connectivity.". So in other words, there is also a increased brain activity occuring here. How does this result fit into the prediction that Dr. Kastrup makes regarding the use of psyedelics on the brain? Or am I getting something wrong here?

Connectivity is not activity. Connectivity is synonymous with entropy, random patterns of activity. How this could give rise to rich, coherent experiences such as that of the psychedelic state is something the physicalist has to deal with.

Maybe connectivity has some specific meaning in brainy science, but in math and formal language, I don't see how ability of strings to be concatenated - connectivity in that sense - according to some generative algorithm, has anything to do with entropy? Interesting thought, though...

Essentially, 'brain connectivity' is a fancy technical term for how when brain activity gets disorganised and incoherent, connectivity between regions of the brain isn't filtered. So entropy is a perfect term for this phenomenon, and it's even been called 'the entropic brain theory'. Which of course, is total nonsense to anyone who's not completely married to physicalism.

[SanteriSatama]

Connectivity is not activity. Connectivity is synonymous with entropy, random patterns of activity. How this could give rise to rich, coherent experiences such as that of the psychedelic state is something the physicalist has to deal with.

Maybe connectivity has some specific meaning in brainy science, but in math and formal language, I don't see how ability of strings to be concatenated - connectivity in that sense - according to some generative algorithm, has anything to do with entropy? Interesting thought, though...

Essentially, 'brain connectivity' is a fancy technical term for how when brain activity gets disorganised and incoherent, connectivity between regions of the brain isn't filtered. So entropy is a perfect term for this phenomenon, and it's even been called 'the entropic brain theory'. Which of course, is total nonsense to anyone who's not completely married to physicalism.

I wonder how they define "organized" and "coherent".

[pandaproducts]

Maybe connectivity has some specific meaning in brainy science, but in math and formal language, I don't see how ability of strings to be concatenated - connectivity in that sense - according to some generative algorithm, has anything to do with entropy? Interesting thought, though...

Essentially, 'brain connectivity' is a fancy technical term for how when brain activity gets disorganised and incoherent, connectivity between regions of the brain isn't filtered. So entropy is a perfect term for this phenomenon, and it's even been called 'the entropic brain theory'. Which of course, is total nonsense to anyone who's not completely married to physicalism.

I wonder how they define "organized" and "coherent".

The spontaneity and variety of brain signals in comparison to normal states of consciousness, I believe.

[Jim Cross]

Connectivity is not activity. Connectivity is synonymous with entropy, random patterns of activity. How this could give rise to rich, coherent experiences such as that of the psychedelic state is something the physicalist has to deal with.

Maybe connectivity has some specific meaning in brainy science, but in math and formal language, I don't see how ability of strings to be concatenated - connectivity in that sense - according to some generative algorithm, has anything to do with entropy? Interesting thought, though...

Essentially, 'brain connectivity' is a fancy technical term for how when brain activity gets disorganised and incoherent, connectivity between regions of the brain isn't filtered. So entropy is a perfect term for this phenomenon, and it's even been called 'the entropic brain theory'. Which of course, is total nonsense to anyone who's not completely married to physicalism.

Actually I think BK uses a lot of entropic brain theory in his discussions of Markov blankets and alters.

Compare to this by Kastrup:

Approaching the problem from a different angle, Karl Friston and collaborators have shown that, if an organism is to represent the states of the external environment in order to properly navigate this environment, it must to so in an encoded, inferential manner. The reason is that, if the organism were to simply mirror the states of the external environment in its own internal states, it would not be able to maintain its structural integrity; its internal states would become too dispersed and the organism would dissolve into an entropic soup. Perceptual encoding is necessary for the organism to resist entropy and thus remain alive.

What both of these lines of argument suggest is this: the screen of perception is much more akin to a dashboard than a window into the environment. It conveys relevant information about the environment in an indirect, encoded manner that helps us survive. The forms and colors we see, the sounds we hear, the flavors we taste are all like dials: they present to us, at a glance, information that correlates—in a manner fundamentally beyond our ability to cognize—with the mental states of the environment out there.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/ob ... dashboard/

[pandaproducts]

Maybe connectivity has some specific meaning in brainy science, but in math and formal language, I don't see how ability of strings to be concatenated - connectivity in that sense - according to some generative algorithm, has anything to do with entropy? Interesting thought, though...

Essentially, 'brain connectivity' is a fancy technical term for how when brain activity gets disorganised and incoherent, connectivity between regions of the brain isn't filtered. So entropy is a perfect term for this phenomenon, and it's even been called 'the entropic brain theory'. Which of course, is total nonsense to anyone who's not completely married to physicalism.

Actually I think BK uses a lot of entropic brain theory in his discussions of Markov blankets and alters.

Compare to this by Kastrup:

Approaching the problem from a different angle, Karl Friston and collaborators have shown that, if an organism is to represent the states of the external environment in order to properly navigate this environment, it must to so in an encoded, inferential manner. The reason is that, if the organism were to simply mirror the states of the external environment in its own internal states, it would not be able to maintain its structural integrity; its internal states would become too dispersed and the organism would dissolve into an entropic soup. Perceptual encoding is necessary for the organism to resist entropy and thus remain alive.

What both of these lines of argument suggest is this: the screen of perception is much more akin to a dashboard than a window into the environment. It conveys relevant information about the environment in an indirect, encoded manner that helps us survive. The forms and colors we see, the sounds we hear, the flavors we taste are all like dials: they present to us, at a glance, information that correlates—in a manner fundamentally beyond our ability to cognize—with the mental states of the environment out there.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/ob ... dashboard/

I don't think that's the entropic brain theory. The entropic brain theory states that when entropy in the brain increases, so does conscious experience. In other words, a conscious experience is heavily correlated with the state of entropy in the brain.

This is about active inference, in which organisms must encode their perception in representational icons to maintain their structural integrity and not dissolve into an entropic soup.