A new paper exploring the role of psilocybin mushrooms in the evolution of human consciousness says the psychedelic has the “potential to trigger significant neurological and psychological effects” that could have influenced the development of our species over time. The literature review, which authors said draws on “a multidisciplinary approach spanning biology, ethnobotany and neuroscience,” […]
i guess i liked this theory when i was in college eating mushrooms on the regular, but isn’t it kind of weird? like, is a dog not conscious? or did they suddenly become conscious from mushrooms too? to me it feels like tool usage that enables written language is by far the biggest differentiator between humans and “lower” species. i mean, dolphins may be as smart as humans but they have no fuckin clue what their great great grandmother’s name was and have little hope of solving differential equations trying to draw in the sand with their flippers.
maybe this is just my belief system, but i don’t think eating a mushroom gave anyone a “soul”. i know the feeling of coming down and feeling like you’ve left the cave and everyone else is just looking at shadows on the wall, but those people are conscious of the shadows at least.
It is human consciousness and self-awareness that is being talked about. While some animals express signs of self-awareness, none do it to our degree.
i don’t think eating a mushroom gave anyone a “soul”
Not immediately, of course. Psychedelics essentially put the brain into overdrive and open connections in the brain that normally aren’t active. If psilocybin use was able to enable even a little higher intelligence in primitive humans (that also happened to have larger brains), it seems that evolution would favor creatures with larger brains. It’s not that psilocybin immediately gave humans a soul, it’s that it enabled us to use our brains more creatively which improved survivability.
it does feel like that nuance was lost in the article. i’m personally a fan of panpsychism, which posits that everything is conscious but to degrees. i think with our current scientific understanding it doesn’t make sense to try and define a line between conscious vs primitive or “soulless” or whatever when we don’t even have a good definition of consciousness to begin with.
i mean, they didn’t use the word, but it does seem like the authors want to be able to draw a hard line somewhere, which seems like more of a religious/spiritual/philosophical argument than a scientific one
i guess i liked this theory when i was in college eating mushrooms on the regular, but isn’t it kind of weird? like, is a dog not conscious? or did they suddenly become conscious from mushrooms too? to me it feels like tool usage that enables written language is by far the biggest differentiator between humans and “lower” species. i mean, dolphins may be as smart as humans but they have no fuckin clue what their great great grandmother’s name was and have little hope of solving differential equations trying to draw in the sand with their flippers.
maybe this is just my belief system, but i don’t think eating a mushroom gave anyone a “soul”. i know the feeling of coming down and feeling like you’ve left the cave and everyone else is just looking at shadows on the wall, but those people are conscious of the shadows at least.
It is human consciousness and self-awareness that is being talked about. While some animals express signs of self-awareness, none do it to our degree.
Not immediately, of course. Psychedelics essentially put the brain into overdrive and open connections in the brain that normally aren’t active. If psilocybin use was able to enable even a little higher intelligence in primitive humans (that also happened to have larger brains), it seems that evolution would favor creatures with larger brains. It’s not that psilocybin immediately gave humans a soul, it’s that it enabled us to use our brains more creatively which improved survivability.
it does feel like that nuance was lost in the article. i’m personally a fan of panpsychism, which posits that everything is conscious but to degrees. i think with our current scientific understanding it doesn’t make sense to try and define a line between conscious vs primitive or “soulless” or whatever when we don’t even have a good definition of consciousness to begin with.
I always heard that a dog will know that they’re in a room, but a human knows that they know they’re in a room.
Tool usage is a nice gauge for intelligence, but may or may not have any key indicators in terms of consciousness
Who said anything about souls before you did? Until it can be proven otherwise, I don’t see why anyone should believe anything has a soul.
i mean, they didn’t use the word, but it does seem like the authors want to be able to draw a hard line somewhere, which seems like more of a religious/spiritual/philosophical argument than a scientific one