Chrissy's Share: Between Neuro-Skepticism and Ultimate Liberation
- 6 days ago
- 2 min read
From Chrissy: I’m using a gift link from Tricycle Magazine - let me know if you have trouble. I think he published it elsewhere as well. Let me know also if you’re already tired of me submitting things! ;) So, this article…why am I sharing it? First, I loved the clear, concise, and cheeky writing style. The first sentence had a great hook that I realized was more than good writing in hindsight. It also perfectly foreshadows the thesis — that our modern idea of free will seems to prioritize a worldview rooted in objective, academic pursuits while discounting the mind-shifting, subjective realities that dropping acid lays bare. I’m a sucker for neuroscience so have read my fair share about how our moment to moment reality is constantly constructed and refined through predictive models based on the past. But I’m also a sucker for mindfulness and the contemplative sciences in which growth mindsets, neuroplasticity, and metacognition can interrupt these predictive models, allowing different moment to moment subjective realities. So I guess my first question is whether both things can be true at the same time…and if not, why? Another question I had while reading is whether science and philosophy can ever be truly distinct from one another. Before the first scientific revolution, before the word “scientist” was even coined, there were only natural philosophers. In fact in the article, Karr goes even further to argue that the purely scientific argument against free is actually theological in its refusal to believe in the influence of mental states. Given the confidence scientists have in modern technology to answer almost every empirical question we’ve ever had, at what point does their confidence become religious in its fait acompli?
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