Psychedelics, symbols, and the most famous philosopher in the world
(A)
There has been a recent burgeoning of scientific interest in the clinical applicability of psychedelics. Researchers have been trying to answer questions such as: Can psychedelics help people with depression feel better? Can we understand what effects they have on the brain? Could psychedelics ever be medicines?
There is a great deal that we do not know, not least through a lack of understanding of how psychedelics enact their effects. Anecdotally, some people feel better after psychedelic administration. Nevertheless, why they might do is a complicated and unresolved conundrum.
(B)
Aspects of the psychedelic experience are famously difficult to put into words. Following a trip, people may describe themselves feeling ‘lighter’, as if some unknown aspect of themselves has been blown away in a breeze. Some describe a sense of change, without being able to put their finger on what that change is. Some describe truly understanding something about themselves; something which they knew in the abstract beforehand, but now know. It is as if these realisations are understood intuitively rather than intellectually.
Despite this ineffability, there is a long history of psychonauts grappling with the limits of language to pen written accounts of their experiences. Indeed, it is a truism that nobody in the modern West has had an original psychedelic experience since the publication of The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley’s popular phenomenological (and semi-scientific) account of a mescaline trip, published in 1954.
In the Doors, Huxley suggested that the human mind functions as a ‘reducing valve’, which in normal circumstances filters out some of the content of reality in order that experience does not becoming overwhelming. Psychedelics, he argued, lift off this filtering valve. Although recent research has shown his interpretation had flaws, Huxley leant on the output of French philosopher Henri Bergson as an impetus for this idea.
(C)
Henri Bergson (1859–1941) was, for a period, the most famous philosopher in the world. His mid-career lectures in Paris were so well-attended that students would sit through hours of preceding talks before he arrived, simply to reserve a seat. People brought ladders in order to listen to him speak through open windows. He is thought to have caused the first traffic jam in New York when he was invited over in 1913 to give a keynote speech.
Bergson’s popularity waned as the twentieth century dragged on. This probably happened for a combination of reasons, including the rise of positivism which portrayed his philosophy as ‘feminine’ (not helped by the fact that many of his lecture attendees were women), antisemitic attacks from French media in the time of the Dreyfus affair, his publicly shy persona, and perceived nationalistic outbursts during the Great War.
Since his death, Bergson has since received relatively limited attention from non-specialist audiences. He apparently left behind no systematic framework of his philosophy, which instead was explicated across a number of partially-related written works. He has also intermittently been criticised for being unscientific or even illogical in his thought by some (particularly the popular philosopher Bertrand Russell), which does nothing for his appeal. These criticisms, on the account of experts, miss their mark.
(D)
One of Bergson’s most accessible essays is his short Introduction to Metaphysics. This 1903 piece summarises some of his thoughts on the nature of reality. In this essay, he introduces the idea of intuition and explicates a distinction between absolute and relative forms of knowledge.
For the purpose of this essay, let’s assume that we are more interested in the epistemological repercussions (i.e. what it says about what kind of knowledge is possible), as opposed to the metaphysical repercussions (i.e. what it says about the fundamental nature of reality) of the idea of intuition. Nevertheless, it might be worth briefly reviewing two key aspects of Bergson’s metaphysics first, because it could help to contextualise things.
Firstly, Bergson argues that there is a world, a fundamental reality, outside of human consciousness which is fully knowable and completely comprehendible. He saw mind and consciousness as phenomena that co-evolved with the universe, and which are hence a direct part of it. This puts him in contrast with other thinkers who have argued that there is a fundamental difference between the things that we experience (or the ‘appearance of things’, the phenomena) and the things in-themselves (that which actually exists, the noumena).
The second important aspect of Bergson’s metaphysics is his belief that reality consists solely of change and flow, of a dynamic process which cannot be atomised or split into parts. This is illustrated by his idea of durée (duration), his version of subjective time, which contrasts with the divisible linear time of physics. For Bergson, time as experienced — duration — was something which existed outside of the grasp of mathematics and science. It required another form of knowledge to grasp it: intuition.
Bergson elaborates on this idea in Introduction to Metaphysics, in which he makes a distinction between relative and absolute forms of knowledge. Absolute knowledge is gained via intuition, and relative knowledge is obtained through what he calls analysis, or what we might call rational or logical thought.
Relative knowledge is always incomplete, Bergson explains, because relative knowledge is contingent or dependent on symbols, which represent but are not in themselves part of the object of understanding. Metaphysics is the science which claims to dispense with symbols, Bergson writes. In making this assertion, he is also suggesting that there might be boundaries to systems of analytical knowledge.
(There is a crucial distinction here between Bergson’s idea of intuition and the intuition of more common definition, which is decision making based on gut instinct or pattern recognition. An example might be an experienced doctor making a split-second diagnosis as soon as she clasps eyes on a patient. Although there may be overlap, this form of intuition is often based on years of assimilating analytical knowledge and hence is still ultimately reliant on symbols).
Bergson gives some examples which illustrate what he might mean by relative knowledge. Imagine somebody photographing a city you’ve never visited from every possible vantage point. Even if you were to study these photographs for years, there would still be something missing from your knowledge of the city that you would get from actually visiting it.
Similarly, imagine a character in your favourite novel, and then imagine then that the author writes thousands upon millions of pages describing them. The character will be extremely familiar to you, but always incomplete; incomplete in comparison to if you were to actually enter into the character themselves.
Bergson continues:
“All the things I am told about him provide me with so many points of view from which I can observe him. All the traits which describe him, and which can make him known to me only by so many comparisons with persons or things I know already, are signs by which he is expressed more or less symbolically. Symbols and points of view, therefore, place me outside him; they give me only what he has in common with others, and not what belongs to him and to him alone. But that which is properly himself, that which constitutes his essence, cannot be perceived from without, being internal by definition, nor be expressed by symbols, being incommensurable with everything else. Description, history, and analysis leave me here in the relative. Coincidence with the person himself would alone give me the absolute.”
Bergson describes his intuition — his coincidence with the person himself — as a form of ‘intellectual sympathy’, a way of knowing which requires immersion within another object; an entering into it. Unfortunately, how it might be practically possible to coincide with — or become — another object is something that is not made explicitly clear.
Nevertheless, intuition, Bergson might argue, remains the only way to absolutely know something. This is because there is always an inexpressible or ineffable quality to every being which arises from its uniqueness. It is impossible to create a meaningful sign for something that has no referent except itself, when it itself is unique and inaccessible to others.
It is precisely because of this uniqueness that absolute knowledge cannot be transferred into signs. I cannot know what it is like to be you, because there is nothing suitable that can act as a symbol or sign for what it is like to be you. Hence absolute knowledge of you is not fully accessible to me by analytic forms of knowledge.
(E)
The idea of intuitive knowledge is obviously open to criticism. Is it correct that intuitions are conclusively called knowledge, if by themselves they are symbol free, personal, and hence not shareable? I think the strength of that criticism depends on how you define knowledge in the first place.
But it might be worth dwelling briefly on where Bergson might be getting it right. As has been alluded to, something he argues that we do fundamentally grasp via intuition, rather than analysis, is our own selves in time (or, indeed, duration). The constant flux — the what it feels like to be us moment by moment — is not something obviously transferrable to images or symbols.
This is not really saying anything new, and has, indirectly and in other ways, been formulated as the hard problem of consciousness; how can we understand the what it is like to be us — the subjective qualia of our experience — in an analytical or symbolic sense?
We can try, with language, but that again takes us back to the problem of signs. Language, by definition, requires shared assumptions. Words represent things without actually being them. The most exquisitely precise set of terms that we could use to describe a bat (e.g. a complete scientific understanding of a bat) would get us very close to fully understanding it, but we would never have absolute knowledge of it.
As an analytical discipline, science inherently relies on symbols. Because of this, scientific thought is always at least one remove from the world. It is this distance — this step backwards — which allows for observation and intellectual knowledge. But that is for Bergson not the same as living ‘through’ the world. That requires intuition.
(F)
What might this have to do with psychedelics?
As we have seen, there is a fundamental ineffability to the psychedelic experience; much that is difficult, if not impossible, to put into words. In clinical trials, some people who take psychedelics seem to intuit things they had already known conceptually — I am a person who deserves love as much as the next, for example — but had never truly aligned with before. In a sense, knowledge which had only previously been relative becomes absolute.
These insights — or new forms of knowledge — can have what William James, a follower of Bergson, calls a noetic quality. His definition of the term, which he related mostly to religious or mystical experiences, is a fundamental feeling of knowing something, perhaps a realisation, which goes deeper than the intellect. This concept of noesis leans heavily on Bergson’s idea of intuition, but is perhaps a little more specific to transcendental or metaphysical experiences.
(A brief diversion: Psychedelics can sometimes lead to realisations (or revelations!) which are metaphysical in quality, for example a sense of connectedness to the universe, to nature, or to humanity. This can be interpreted in myriad ways, perhaps as something spiritual, transcendental, or just stoner talk. Whether or not we think that psychedelics facilitate access to the fundamental fabric of reality might hinge on how acceptable we find the idea that drugs can engender forms of special knowledge.
That psychedelics may lead to people intuiting knowledge about the fundamental substances, or reality of things — a metaphysics of psychedelics, if you will — is something that has been taken seriously by other writers, but is beyond the scope of this essay. That is, except to say, that a Bergsonian perspective might be that if psychedelics facilitate greater intuition, then they might indeed engender a greater ability to know absolutely what is out there.)
Bergson and James’s idea say nothing, really, about the veracity of any intuitions which arise during the psychedelic experience. In fact, there is good evidence to show that psychedelics can elicit patently false beliefs or insights. Nevertheless, these intuitive insights from psychedelic experiences may be some sort of evidence that Bergson’s idea of intuitive, non-symbolic, forms of knowing exist.
One tentative suggestion based on this: psychedelics may put users into a more intuitive state, whereby thinking is less reliant — or perhaps even less constrained by — symbols. Perhaps some of the ineffable qualities of the psychedelic state results from the fact that the experiences are simply untranslatable because they are intuitive, not analytical, forms of knowledge. Perhaps that is why people sometimes feel different in ways they cannot readily put into words.
(G)
Bergson argued that the intellect (the analysing part of our being) evolved for pragmatic reasons, in order to manipulate the physical environment to ensure our evolutionary survival. Perhaps intuition is an older knowledge system, something possessed by many animals, and at some point in the evolutionary pathway, analytic forms of cognition emerged, bifurcating into a separate stream from intuition.
For Bergson, then, much of our underlying cognitive structure is analytic. His suggestions here fit in well with modern scientific paradigms, theories of language, and even competing theories of mind which state that experience is constrained by the categories to which we assign our sense experiences.
Bergson would not deny the utility of analytic knowledge, which “substitutes for the continuous the discontinuous, for motion stability, for tendency in process of change, fixed points marking a direction of change and tendency. This substitution is necessary to common-sense, to language, to practical life, and even, in a certain degree, which we shall endeavour to determine, to positive science.”
But, to Bergson, this evolved intellect has limits. To reformulate him: whilst our enormously successful intellect has led to rational thought, science, and a seemingly boundless capacity to understand the world, it is relatively poor at intuiting our dynamic, flowing consciousness.
(H)
What potential does Bergson’s idea of intuition have for us? If it is indeed a separate stream of knowledge to analytical thinking, how easy might it be for us to utilise it?
We’ve seen that analytical thinking is representational, something wholly dependent on symbols that refer to something without actually being that thing. So, perhaps the ease to which we can access intuitive forms of knowing depend on how fundamental representations are to our consciousness.
Let’s look at some arbitrary examples of the fundamentality of representations, using a roughly hierarchical approach:
a) Representation is only fundamental to specific knowledge systems, such as science, and is not required in less structured, shared, or formal systems. This would make it easy to access intuitive knowledge, all we would need to do would be to use ‘non-scientific’ modes of enquiry.
b) Representation is fundamental to language, but not to other aspects of human cognition or consciousness. This would make it trickier to access intuitive knowledge, but might mean that it can be accessed via forms of expression which do not require language: perhaps visual art, music, dance, et cetera.
c) Representation is fundamental to evolutionarily-newer aspects of human cognition, such as rational thought, logic, planning, decision making, executive function, mental time travel, self-awareness; but is not fundamental to evolutionarily-older cognitive or conscious functions, such as movement, pain, emotions, et cetera. This might set limits on what can be intuited, but doesn’t render intuition useless to a psychiatrist.
d) Representation is fundamental to all aspects of consciousness, whereby the self and the world are always re-presented to the conscious creature. There is always an ‘about-ness’ to consciousness, it is always directed towards something, which itself is represented and not experienced directly. These about-nesses are inescapably symbolic. The phenomenologists called this intentionality, and the philosophical position that the mind exhaustively uses representations to perceive external reality is called, inventively, representationalism (aka indirect realism).
e) We live in a simulation, the whole universe is representation.
f) Nothing exists, not even representation…
Our experiences with psychedelics suggest that we might be somewhere around point c, whereby intuitive knowledge about the lived self is possible, but it remains difficult to apprehend and communicate this knowledge in words due to the difficulties in switching between intuitive and analytical ways of thinking.
Bergson explains further the difficulties of forcing oneself out of analytical forms of thinking, which “is extremely difficult. The mind has to do violence to itself, has to reverse the direction of the operation by which it habitually thinks, has perpetually to revise, or rather to recast, all its categories. But in this way it will attain to fluid concepts, capable of following reality in all its sinuosities and of adopting the very movement of the inward life of things.”
Extremely difficult… but impossible?
Perhaps psychedelics help to facilitate this process of doing violence to the mind, allowing us more easily to fall into the slipstream of our intuitive consciousness. One neuroscientific interpretation of psychedelics is that they reduce the influence of top-down ‘priors’ on conscious experience; that is, they allow for an experiencing which is less constrained by prior concepts which originate from the brain.
But what if this was not quite it? What if, instead of loosening priors, psychedelics render analytic and symbolic forms of knowing less useful (or perhaps just more difficult to hold on to). They thus re-direct the mind, for a few minutes or hours, partly into a more intuitive way of thinking. Perhaps Huxley was right in a way, perhaps the filtering valve of analytical thinking is indeed temporarily lifted by psychedelics.
(I)
Does this mean much in practical terms? It is difficult to say.
An easy conclusion from Bergson’s idea of intuition might be that analytical thinking cannot always grasp things in their totality. To take this to a logical conclusion: every mode of knowing — even analytic knowledge that we take for granted — inherently has its boundaries. Even the most basic piece of symbolic knowledge requires that we take some sort of perspective, and hence is incomplete.
Perhaps too, our scientific study of psychedelics may only ever represent what is happening to those that have been dosed, without getting to the root of absolute knowledge that’d we’d require to absolutely know. This applies to users themselves, too, who may intuit knowledge about themselves without being able to easily put this into words.
This should not make us panic, but it might make us humble.
Bergson might argue that science — a system of thought which relies on empirical, intellectual, symbol-based analysis — is by its nature an incomplete method of understanding. But what else have we got? Until an alternative method of reliably gathering knowledge by intuition is found, let’s stick with the scientific method. At least for the time being.