Sic et Non self deconstructs

[_Maksutov]

Maksutov, you were too quick on the keyboard for me. I truncated the original post above because the chemical structure graphics did not display properly. Might try again later. The structure that did display properly is DMT.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_Chapel_Experiment

The Marsh Chapel Experiment, also called the "Good Friday Experiment", was a 1962 experiment conducted on Good Friday at Boston University's Marsh Chapel. Walter N. Pahnke, a graduate student in theology at Harvard Divinity School, designed the experiment under the supervision of Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, and the Harvard Psilocybin Project.[1] Pahnke's experiment investigated whether psilocybin (the active principle in psilocybin mushrooms) would act as a reliable entheogen in religiously predisposed subjects.[2]

Upon ingestion, psilocybin is rapidly converted to psilocin, which is the hallucinogenic agent. Psilocin is 4-hydroxy DMT. That is, DMT with a hydoxy group added in the 4 position on the benzene ring.

LSD, DMT, psilocybin (psilocin), and 5-methoxy DMT are tryptophan based hallucinogens that exert their activity via a group of receptors for the neurotransmitter serotonin (5-hydroxy tryptamine).

Several popular pharmaceuticals for treating depression, anxiety and mood disorders, including Paxil, Prozac and Zoloft, are selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRIs). These act to increase the amount of available serotonin in the brain. They can substantially improve mood and affect.

As Gadianton and DrW indicated, it's all down to the "blind forces of atoms".

I find it difficult to fit the "soul" into a scientific discussion. Strassman and Rick Doblin, Shulgin and others have stimulated interesting discussions re: entheogens. It's a subject that's often plagued by cranks and cultists (Leary, McKenna, Castaneda, etc.). But of interest.

[Guest]

Arc
As Gadianton and DrW indicated, it's all down to the "blind forces of atoms".

An interesting assumption based on incomplete knowledge. I see no reason to accept it at this point.

Philo,

Your statement is somewhat of a surprise coming from a relatively recently converted and vocal advocate of the scientific method on this board. Do you not agree that the evidence offered in my post upthread is best explained by the theory that brain is mind? Do you have a better explanation?

I find it difficult to fit the "soul" into a scientific discussion.

Me too.

Are you really a substance dualist, Philo? Do you believe that the pineal gland is the seat of the soul and that a group of indole amines made by the pineal (or not) are responsible for helping the soul enter and exit the body as suggested up thread?

If you do, then I would be glad to provide you with a scientific paper reading list. To get you started if you are interested, here is a relatively recent survey of the field for lay readers by Michael Pollan:

How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence

When Michael Pollan set out to research how LSD and psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms) are being used to provide relief to people suffering from difficult-to-treat conditions such as depression, addiction and anxiety, he did not intend to write what is undoubtedly his most personal book. But upon discovering how these remarkable substances are improving the lives not only of the mentally ill but also of healthy people coming to grips with the challenges of everyday life, he decided to explore the landscape of the mind in the first person as well as the third. Thus began a singular adventure into various altered states of consciousness, along with a dive deep into both the latest brain science and the thriving underground community of psychedelic therapists.

If you wish, you can download a free PDF version of Pollan's book from here:

http://thetps.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/howtochangeyourmind.pdf

This PDF version looks to be fully referenced and indexed with page links as well. Great reference for someone wants to learn a bit more about the science.

[_Arc]

I find it difficult to fit the "soul" into a scientific discussion. Strassman and Rick Doblin, Shulgin and others have stimulated interesting discussions re: entheogens. It's a subject that's often plagued by cranks and cultists (Leary, McKenna, Castaneda, etc.). But of interest.

It is of great interest to drug manufacturers. Psychoactive tryptamine based compounds (indole amines) are relatively easy to synthesize and their structure activity relationships are well understood. By the way, the SSRI drugs mentioned upthread, such as Prozac and Zoloft, are not indole amines.

To give you an idea of the work that chemists have put into this area of research, here is a website that lists 75 tryptamine derivatives along with their structures and biological activities, if known. Most have some biological activity. You will see that several were synthesized by Shulgen, who you mentioned.

I have synthesized a few as well, including 6-methoxytryptamine, 5,6 dimethoxytryptamine, and N-propanoyl-5-methoxytryptamine. They were all biologically active in standard lab animal tests at the time, but I never had the courage to test them for hallucinogenic potential. Their synthesis and mass spectra were reported in the literature, but I do not see them listed on the website.

[_Gadianton]

Just to clarify, I'm not claiming that love (or whatever) is "atoms in motion", I'm claiming that Sic et Non is claiming this, based on its claim that science claims are fully reductionist, and that pet scientists have an array of arguments demonstrating dogs love us.

I'm sure he threw it out there because it seemed innocuous. In order to maintain credibility as a detractor to science, he must show his enthusiasm for run-of-the-mill science that doesn't pose a threat to the sanctity of his favorite sky avatars, and save his distrust for where it counts. But learning and accepting even basic science can be dangerous. He better be cautious.

[_Arc]

Just to clarify, I'm not claiming that love (or whatever) is "atoms in motion", I'm claiming that Sic et Non is claiming this, based on its claim that science claims are fully reductionist, and that pet scientists have an array of arguments demonstrating dogs love us.

I'm sure he threw it out there because it seemed innocuous. In order to maintain credibility as a detractor to science, he must show his enthusiasm for run-of-the-mill science that doesn't pose a threat to the sanctity of his favorite sky avatars, and save his distrust for where it counts. But learning and accepting even basic science can be dangerous. He better be cautious.

Are we hedging bets on the fully reductionist view because of consciousness? While recognizing that science does not yet fully understand consciousness, the hypothesis that consciousness is an emergent property of a material soul would be a difficult one to support with any hard data of which I'm aware.

[_Gadianton]

Are we hedging bets on the fully reductionist view because of consciousness? While recognizing that science does not yet fully understand consciousness, the hypothesis that consciousness is an emergent property of a material soul would be a difficult one to support with any hard data of which I'm aware.

Well yes, that's what I'm talking about, especially given the context of reducing human or animal feelings of love, but i got cut off last night and had to go so I left it at what I wrote.

I don't personally have a commitment here, and I don't expect that you or Dr. W really care either, but then again, you guys aren't "posting up a storm" and grandstanding like they do in certain other areas of the Internet and winding up in a self-contradiction.

The SeN doctrine, that all the apologists I've ever read associated with the blog accept, is that atheism = reductive materialism = nihilism.

You and Dr. W appear to accept the first equivalence, which would make a certain blog proprietor out there happy. Eliminative materialism, notably P&P Churchland, explicitly makes the case that folk psychology is eliminated reducing mind to atoms. To borrow Physic's Guy's "synthesis" terminology, The A version of mind, our common sense beliefs about who we are as people interacting with each other, the B version of mind, our knowledge of brain chemistry, cannot find a synthesis in a "C" version. Folk psychology is eliminated.

If the atheism in the public square they respond to daily were this, then at least they'd be on the right track. But it isn't. New Atheism, notably influenced by Dan Dennett and Steven Pinker, is not reductive materialism. They are functionalists (of some variety), most importantly for Dennett, and I think severely important for atheist culture which tends to be futuristic: the belief that computers could be as conscious as humans is the basic intuitive principle. To put it as simply as I can: if one believes that transistors can fulfill the same functional role as neurons, then they have abandoned reductive materialism. This does cause confusion for atheists, because I do think most atheists would contradict themselves and say that they are both reductive materialists and that strong A.I. is possible.

The proprietor and his merry men could actually score a point against Gemli; I'm pretty sure he's wide open. But instead of educating themselves, they talk less about substantial ideas, and more about people, as Gemli points out. They continually accuse Gemli of ignorance of Popper and Kuhn, without having any idea what ideas of Poppers would be a problem for Gemli.

[_Arc]

Are we hedging bets on the fully reductionist view because of consciousness? While recognizing that science does not yet fully understand consciousness, the hypothesis that consciousness is an emergent property of a material soul would be a difficult one to support with any hard data of which I'm aware.

The proprietor and his merry men could actually score a point against Gemli; I'm pretty sure he's wide open. But instead of educating themselves, they talk less about substantial ideas, and more about people, as Gemli points out. They continually accuse Gemli of ignorance of Popper and Kuhn, without having any idea what ideas of Poppers would be a problem for Gemli.

As you no doubt would, I'd bet that Gemli has a better understanding and appreciation of the philosophy of science than Dr. Peterson and the SeN crowd. However, having an understanding of Popper and Kuhn does not preclude taking into account that there are no credible data out there to use in a refutation or paradigm shift. Were data such as a reproducible loss of 21 grams in human body weight at death available, then it could be argued that a material soul might exist, or that consciousness is somehow independent of the body and not a wholly emergent property of brain physiology.

The fact that science does not yet fully understand, or cannot fully explain, consciousness is not a good argument for substance dualism. It doesn't mean that God did it. To argue otherwise at this point would be nothing more than a "god of the gaps" position.

[_Gadianton]

The fact that science does not yet fully understand, or cannot fully explain, consciousness is not a good argument for substance dualism.

right, but, as you (possibly) allude to in your previous paragraph, a Mormon material soul, or a "spirit body", or "something" that has a location in a material realm, just adds another turtle to the stack, it does not help the case for consciousness as a non-physical substance, which is required for all the appeals to C. S. Lewis and others constraining physical to atoms in motion. it really makes it worse, as the interaction problem (non-physical mind interacting with physical brain). The pineal gland, which made the connection before perhaps facilitates the spirit to body, but what about mind to spirit, or worse, mind to "intelligence" to spirit to body? it's a catastrophe.

[_DrW]

Saw this morning that Philo Sofee has not been back to post on this thread since my post questioning whether he considers himself a substance dualist. I have been following Philo's expressed growing appreciation of science and the scientific method with great interest on this board and was a bit taken aback by what I saw as questioning of the mainstream science interpretation of the available data in favor of religion.

In re-reading the my last post, I realized that it probably came across as more confrontational than I intended, and am writing here to apologize to Philo Sofee.

I hope that Philo will download the free PDF of Pollan's book and at least have a look inside.

[_Physics Guy]

If spirit/whatever is a substance which can interact with ordinary matter then I think that means that it is matter, just of a somewhat more exotic kind than garden variety atoms and such. "Matter" is actually a very broad category. So I think substance dualists are actually materialists who simply don't realize it.

It still bugs me though to hear anyone sound triumphal about knocking down substance dualism in the name of science. The fact that we don't understand consciousness really at all doesn't mean that substance dualism is right, but to me it does mean that we have no business crowing about the power of science in any connection with consciousness. We might be a little better than folk psychology, but we're not enough better to boast. I think of science as having higher standards than that.