I'm a strict materialist in terms of like 'where consciousness comes from', but a strictly "bottom up" model, I think, is the wrong way to think about mind, because while yes, mental states are caused by physical changes in the brain, but you can very well reverse it and show that mental states cause physical change in the brain in return. When you learn how to add 2+2, that surely corresponds to physical changes in the brain, but it would be very weird to think about that as the physical changes causing the learning of 2+2, rather than the other way around.
In computer terms, while yes, everything that happens in a computer is a result of the physical activity of its components, if you try to understand the activity of the computer while completely ignoring _the code_, you are going to have a very incomplete model of what the computer is doing and what it's going to do in response to changes.
The idea of trying to reduce "what psychedelics do" to strictly the action of chemicals causing physical changes in neurons and the pursuit of psychedelics that don't cause a subjective experience seems to very much misunderstand what the mind is. Surely you can cause physical changes in the brain with a chemical change, but it's the subjective experience itself and the mind that drives a _particular beneficial change_.
It's like trying to teach someone math without cracking a textbook or something. The fundamental thing the mind does is _learn_, and I don't think that you can learn anything beneficial from the psychedelic experience without the actual, you know, psychedelic experience.
For me, the big thing I took away from psychedelics was a new understanding about the nature of how I perceive things and the nature of reality and my place in it. It was like a conscious learning process based on experience. If you take away the experience, what are you learning?
In computer terms, while yes, everything that happens in a computer is a result of the physical activity of its components, if you try to understand the activity of the computer while completely ignoring _the code_, you are going to have a very incomplete model of what the computer is doing and what it's going to do in response to changes.
The idea of trying to reduce "what psychedelics do" to strictly the action of chemicals causing physical changes in neurons and the pursuit of psychedelics that don't cause a subjective experience seems to very much misunderstand what the mind is. Surely you can cause physical changes in the brain with a chemical change, but it's the subjective experience itself and the mind that drives a _particular beneficial change_.
It's like trying to teach someone math without cracking a textbook or something. The fundamental thing the mind does is _learn_, and I don't think that you can learn anything beneficial from the psychedelic experience without the actual, you know, psychedelic experience.
For me, the big thing I took away from psychedelics was a new understanding about the nature of how I perceive things and the nature of reality and my place in it. It was like a conscious learning process based on experience. If you take away the experience, what are you learning?