Idealists need a metatheory, not a metaphysics
It’s been some time since I posted as I’ve been at a crossroads. Perhaps if I play with madness more, I can unlock some potentialities…
Filter theories of consciousness posit the brain’s dynamics constrain (“filter”) sensorimotor information and affordances into increasingly complex wholes, which then synchronize into a spatiotemporal frame of reference. That frame is often called a “representation” by cognitivists and computationalists, or the “phenomenal self” by various phenomenologists and enactivists. Regardless, filter theories imply that brain metabolism (e.g. electrical activity) does not per-se “produce” phenomenal consciousness but rather “receives” it (e.g., from affordances) depending on the form of the brain or body’s current state. That is, when particular neural networks become disrupted, de-synchronized, de-coupled, or disintegrated, then – according to the logic of filter theories – more phenomenal consciousness follows. Those with a “deflationary” approach may demand “But what IS consciousness?”. Fine. By “phenomenal consciousness” I simply mean “that which can be experienced by an agent” and in turn “affect the agent”. And by affect I literally mean felt-sensation rather than “struck by”; I do not mean “being caused upon by an ‘external’ agent against one’s will”. Indeed, affections to the 4E cognition crowd refer to sensorimotor phenomena, or what Indian scholars historically called vibrations.
So, phenomenal consciousness refers to the perceptible qualities of objects (and self-causing subjects), that is, inherent to those objects or subjects (rather than the brains of observers). Aristotle called this koine-aesthesis (see Modrak, 1981).
Filter theories thus imply ontic (metaphysical) idealism because they assert that “mind”, phenomenal qualities, qualia, and so on do not ultimately originate in the brain nor body. Here, the brain and body are mere mediums. And this statement can hold true despite that brains re-organize consciousness into contextualized, body-specific, frames and re-presenations. Empirical support for filter theories can be found from psychedelic research, as Bernard Kastrup (2019) and Macro Masi (2023) have argued at great length.
If one were instead a materialist (physicalist) about consciousness, they believe more brain metabolism automatically and always means more consciousness. That is more information richness, more imagery, more sounds, more salience, more “depth”, more meaning, more categorization processes, more “computation”, more symbol crunching, and so on, should follow from more electrical activity or metabolism with few exceptions. The idea is that more matter, more electricity, and more chemical going-ons automatically lead to more phenomenal qualities.
For example, materialist theories of psychedelics always adopt the view that psychedelics quantitatively “increase” or “add” something to brain metabolism, such as neurotransmitter volumes and electrical activity and such and such, which are claimed to add experiential qualities (e.g. hallucinations).
To their devastation, this is not what is found in neuroscience based psychedelic literature at all. Instead, neuroscience based psychedelic literature shows that these drugs effectively disable, “turn off”, or de-couple various large scale neural networks (Carhart-Harris & Friston, 2019; Gattuso et al., 2022). And as this occurs, research participants simultaneously report more information richness in the form of imagery (‘hallucinations”), “impossibly complex hyberbolic geometries”, sounds, vibrations, synesthesia, a separation or acceleration of space and time (the absence of categorization processes), mystical visions, mystical beings, and so on. That is, more phenomenal consciousness arises when neural networks are de-activated. More ruinous to the materialists, experiential richness (aka, more consciousness) during psychedelic states is “unexplained” by neurotransmitter levels or their electrical activity (Herzog et al., 2023). Therefore, neurotransmitter complexity is causally unrelated to quantitative increases in the variety and intensity of qualities. As Kastrup (2019) and other filter theorists point out, this is the opposite direction of causality that would be predicted by materialist theories of consciousness.
So, if a hand-grenade were to impact next to a brain and hence obliterate it, then that person ought to experience more phenomenal consciousness, including post-death. Poetically, those with near death experiences (minus frag grenades) often report this, regardless of whether they’re atheist, theist, deist, or agnostic beforehand (Kastrup, 2019, p. 173-77). This implies beliefs, re-presenations, and other cognitive going-ons must be causally irrelevant to the content of experiences. If just one filter theory is true, this suggests consciousness is not entirely produced by brains. Perhaps it is rather bodies that produce sensorimotor information – qua “raw” qualities – and then brains constrain this information, and “out emerges” phenomenal consciousness (a “softer” theory aligned with physicalist varieties of enactivism, e.g. non-reductive physicalists who believe in strong emergence on each occasion). On the other hand, it is prima facie plausible that brains or bodies do not produce consciousness. In this “harder” view, consciousness is a pre-given, non-local “field” of potentiality, or “being”, independent of bodies or brains. The so-called disembodied spirit, the nous, the One, and such and such is really “out there”. And it can only be actualized with a suitably complex material substrate, e.g., a body bound by a soul.
There must also be a reason why people say things like “I do not have anything on my person”. They are speaking as if they are not, themselves, made of physical matter, but rather, are themselves a spirit that has taken possession of a physical body. Hence, “not on my person”, as in, “not on the body that I have possessed this whole time”. Elsewhere, people say things like “I have been informed on the matter”. My claim is that they’re not being metaphorical, rather, this is actually a metaphysical claim. They are literally saying their soul has non-locally “entered” into, and infused (formally), the subject-matter of the topic they were referring to. Indeed, the original - Aristotelian - meaning of the word “in-formed” refers to formal causation. Hence: to be “informed of the matter” does not refer to the going-ons of a brain, but rather, a soul that has traveled into and infused - structurally - the entity they were referring to.
I digress..
On one hand, one might experience a field of “pure potentiality” (disembodied consciousness), say, during a DMT trip. But in practice, may only do, that is actualize anything with such potentiality by (instrumental) means of a physical body. In this sense, bodies and brains cannot be the “ultimate” source of consciousness anymore than a guitar plays a song.
This is what I call ontic idealism: the claim that consciousness is primary and matter is secondary or that matter emerges from consciousness (the opposite of materialism, including the non-reductive kind). Likewise, generic idealists studying cosmology often hold that consciousness is “prior” to the Big Bang. As it were, consciousness “came first” and then “caused” the Big Bang, that is, “afterwards”. Then consciousness manipulated the resulting fragmentations of matter into things like gravity, blackholes, galaxies, planets, organisms (see Koons, 2018, p. 14).
(No less, those complaining about the absurdities of materialism on Substack).
Perhaps all we really need, then, is a framework as to how this all would work for recent and future millennia, not some temporary fad like Newtonian mechanics.
Cortical Deterioration-Enlightenment Theory (CDET) is a metatheory (that I just made up) whose ultimate function is to support metaphysical varieties of idealism. Thus, it’s a metatheory that argues that brain matter or activity (“metabolism”) across particular (discrete, not continuous) occasions results in persons rationally concluding that mind is ontically primary and matter is secondary, emergent, or derivative.
I’ve been accused of being vague recently, so to be clear:
Mind —> Matter
Like filter theories of consciousness, CDET first posits that the lifespan allostatic loads on various brain (and bodily) regions ultimately result in quantitative decreases in their volume, mass, metabolism, electrical activity, and hence incrementally dis-organizes emergent larger-scale neural networks involved in micro-categorizations (e.g. quantifications) and parts-to-whole categorization processes (contra to emergentism) as well. The second postulate is that these same quantitative decreases in volume and activity should correlate with increases in phenomenal qualities along with increases in holistic perception, as in the tendency to perceive wholes without parts. These would include all altered states of consciousness, such as flow, hypomania, mania, mystical experiences, psychoses, trance, along with increasingly associative (holistic) forms of analysis, meaning-making, and (incrementally) dis-organized cognitive patterns and behaviors. The extreme examples are those who assert they have “become the universe” or that celestial going-ons are somehow related to the economy (e.g. astrology). However, because this is a metatheory, I’m not making any theoretical commitments. CDET is only predicting the direction of causality with which individual persons would make claims relative to their own neural organization and lack thereof, but not on the veracity of those claims. The third postulate is that nations, cultures, religions, philosophies, value systems, and theories of mind, as mediums themselves, causally influence the rates of these material changes top-down such that their (individual) values and behaviors either privilege “increasing” brain matter and electrical activity, or maintaining existing brain matter and electrical activity, or “decreasing” brain matter and electrical activity. That is, three sorts of life history strategies would emerge depending on their contexts, action-perception cycles, and values.
Building off the third postulate, for example, an Eastern philosophy that privileges becoming “One with the universe”, by way of promoting practices that induce ego-dissolution would therefore promote theories and practices that decrease brain matter or the activity of the very networks that cause one to have a localized (“smaller”) spatiotemporal reference frame at all (e.g. a first-person perspective emanating from the default mode network).
Likewise, a stereotypical Western or Abrahamic civilization that privileges worshipping “God” as an external object (rather than a subject or being) would promote practices that increase or maintain existing brain matter and activity by way of forbidding alcohol, particular drugs, or by promoting particular diets or routines that prevent their deleterious effects.
But under CDET, the reason for forbidding the latter has less to do with the behaviors that substance abuse is associated with. Instead, the reason for why they are called detrimental in CDET is because alcohol decreases brain matter and electrical activity in various brain regions, which therefore cause increases in phenomenal qualities, and this very sequence would contradict the (Abrahamic and Western) notion that “God is an external object without subjectivity” (e.g. panentheism as opposed to pantheism).
A third example can be found in Western neuropsychiatry, whom privilege interventions that produce increases in brain matter or electrical activity if and only if they enforce the very social norms or virtues that they (materialistic psychiatrists) already value. But this is a meta-theory about the negative associations between brain metabolism versus qualia (phenomenal consciousness), it is agnostic to claims we often find in psychiatry, such as:
“More brain matter or activity is morally good”
“More brain matter or activity means ‘better’ cognitive capacities”
“More brain matter or activity is the best definition of ‘health’ or healthiness”
“More brain matter or activity predicts existential fulfillment”
And so on…
Indeed, the word materialism means the accumulation of material-stuff is what’s doing all the “heavy lifting”, such that meaning, interpretation, volitional action, and rationalism are all “epiphenomenal” and are identical to matter. For reasons still unknown, the materialists have confused what is (the claim that matter is primary) with what should be (a prescriptive statement about the best life).
But I find C.S. Pierce’ take more sensible:
“Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts”.
Following Pierce’ quip, to deny affective experiences implying idealism (e.g. non-local experiences, synchronicity, action at a distance), is to betray one’s own experience, which is widely known to cause broad psychopathology (Fesinger, 1957; Gross & John, 2003) and especially dissociation (Putnam et al., 1996). Of course, there are other options: that more brain matter or activity is always neutral (Garcia-Garcia, et al., 2023), or, is qualitatively negative (CDET). Depending on one’s goals, then, so-called social norms do not “cause upon” individual persons, rather, individual persons under CDET, at all times, including during psychosis, have a choice in the matter (pun intended).
So, people under CDET do, on average, one of three things: They engage in patterns of behavior that increase, maintain, or decrease brain matter and activity. But the reasons for why they do this is irrelevant to brain matter and activity “itself”. For “brain matter and activity” does not sign legal contracts, pay taxes, nor commit crimes according to our justice system. Instead, people do such things for some reason located elsewhere. To the ire of “mental disorder realists” throughout big psychiatry (e.g. Iliadi, 2024), when James Holmes, the mass murderer of Aurora, CO committed his deeds, the District Attorney did not charge “Schizophrenia” with murder charges. Nor did “Schizophrenia” goto jail. Instead, “James Holmes” - which does not refer to a body but a soul in possession of a particular body - did.
Hence also, persons choose to engage in binge drinking because they have too much brain matter and activity. That is, something preceding relapse must itself correlate with “too much brain matter or electrical activity”. Some choose to become sober because they realize, implicitly, they lack enough brain matter and activity to sustain their other goals. And those with some alleged middle ground choose moderation. Likewise, those with too much brain matter and activity might find mainstream academia too tiresome, and so, will burn social bridges where needed – which ought to correspond with a statistical decrease of the neural signal associated with it’s original action-patterns, and so on.
These are highly testable hypotheses with unambiguous interpretations. That is what CDET here is trying to sell. Once more: materialism posits that “not enough brain matter or electrical activity” causes such and such mental disorder that unambiguously correlates with decreases in “psychological functioning” (aka, the status quo that depends on materialism and the accumulation of material stuffs) or so-called “distress”. But CDET is a-priori arguing the reverse - like any good, honest scientist would. Unlike mainstream psychiatry, there is no room for post-hoc claims as per some so-called “social norms”; CDET renders this maneuver impossible.
What does this have to do with the theme of this blog?
If substances are the only entity throughout the universe with causal powers, and mental disorders are “not substances” according mental disorder realists, then surely, mental disorders must lack the majority of the statistical weight of causation. It must be the case that embodied souls are doing all the heavy lifting, causally speaking, rather than idealized statistical composites during a replication crisis. And if Plato’s idealism and Aristotle’s hylomorphism lasted thousands of years, but a dataset’s replicability may only last months, who is American psychiatry or neuroscience to make any claims about what is “law-like”, a so-called “fact”, or what is eternal?
Carhart-Harris, R. L., & Friston, K. J. (2019). REBUS and the Anarchic Brain: Toward a Unified Model of the Brain Action of Psychedelics. Pharmacological reviews, 71(3), 316–344. https://doi.org/10.1124/pr.118.017160
Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
García-García, I., Donica, O., Cohen, A. A., Gonseth Nusslé, S., Heini, A., Nusslé, S., Pichard, C., Rietschel, E., Tanackovic, G., Folli, S., & Draganski, B. (2023). Maintaining brain health across the lifespan. Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews, 153, 105365. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2023.105365
Gross, J. J., & John, O. P. (2003). Individual differences in two emotion regulation processes: Implications for affect, relationships, and well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85(2), 348-362.
Gattuso, J. J., Perkins, D., Ruffell, S., Lawrence, A. J., Hoyer, D., Jacobson, L. H., Timmermann, C., Castle, D., Rossell, S. L., Downey, L. A., Pagni, B. A., Galvão-Coelho, N. L., Nutt, D., & Sarris, J. (2023). Default Mode Network Modulation by Psychedelics: A Systematic Review. The international journal of neuropsychopharmacology, 26(3), 155–188. https://doi.org/10.1093/ijnp/pyac074
Iliadi, S. (2024). Psychopathology and Metaphysics: Can One Be a Realist About Mental Disorder?. The Journal of medicine and philosophy, 49(3), 283–297. https://doi.org/10.1093/jmp/jhae013
Kastrup, B. (2019). The idea of the world. Iff books.
Koons, R.C. (2018). Against emergent individualism. In Jonathan J. Loose, Angus John Louis Menuge & J. P. Moreland, The Blackwell Companion to Substance Dualism. Oxford, U.K.: pp. 377–393.
Masi, M. (2023). An evidence-based critical review of the mind-brain identity theory. Frontiers in psychology, 14, 1150605. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1150605
Modrak, D.K. (1981). Koinē Aisthēsis and the Discrimination of Sensible Differences in de Anima III.2. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 11, No. 3 (Sep., 1981), pp. 405-423. <https://www.jstor.org/stable/40231205>
Putnam, F. W., Carlson, E. B., Ross, C. A., & Stein, M. D. (1996). Trauma and dissociation in patients with dissociative disorders. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 52(5), 555-567.