Modes of Sentience: Psychedelics, Metaphysics, Panpsychism

by Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes

Modes of Sentience: Psychedelics, Metaphysics, Panpsychism (2021) is an essay collection by philosopher of mind Dr Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes.

It explores the extraordinary intersection of psychedelic experience with philosophy, the analysis of mind in relation to panpsychism, multiple dimensions of space, time, and other metaphysical matters. Keeping apace with the psychedelic renaissance in science and medicine, this collection proposes new philosophical models for discerning altered and alternate modes of sentience.

Genres: Philosophy

222 pages, Hardcover

Published December 14, 2021

Reviews

[William Adams · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is a defense of the philosophical position called panpsychism which claims that everything in the universe, from the atom to the human being, and even the stars themselves, is sentient, or conscious. Of course, that does not mean that everything is conscious in the way we introspectively understand our own consciousness. Sentience commonly means “able to feel things," which would seem to require some kind of consciousness, though not a socio-linguistic, intellectual kind like our own.

The book derives from the author’s (S-H’s) doctoral dissertation, earned under the supervision of Galen Strawson, the foremost advocate today for panpsychism.

S-H notes the compound of pan (everywhere) and psyche (sentience) in the name of the thesis. Sentience is defined in the text by implication to mean alive and conscious, but none of those terms are explicitly defined in the book. There is no glossary. He also does not define matter, except to equate it to physical, also not defined. It’s hard to believe that a dissertation could get away without defining its topic.

S-H states the problem as “The question is how something describable in physical, spatiotemporal terms, such as neuronal activity, can relate to something that cannot be described spatiotemporally, such as melancholy or curiosity.” (p. 2).

The problem of a something with two incompatible descriptions is neatly handled by a dual-aspect approach that does not entail panpsychism. Dual-aspectism is a kind of identity theory, saying that both aspects describe one and the same basic entity, typically, a brain.

But S-H says identity theory suffers the problem of multiple realizability. For example, a given brain state can manifest as any number of different mind states. Hence there is no clear mapping between the aspects so they cannot reasonably be said to describe the same thing.

A mental state, such as hunger, can be correlated to a human brain state or to an octopus brain state, the author says, “…thus indicating that the mental state cannot be identical to a human brain state.”

I do not see the “thusness” of his “thus.” All mental states are tightly correlated with embodied (brain) states. We know of no free-floating, disembodied hunger.

Like all mental states, hunger is experienced by a particular experiencer. That my hunger might be correlated to an octopus’s brain state is bizarre. To S-H, apparently, hunger can be self-existent, not the content of anyone’s experience, or perhaps the content of any random brain, regardless of who “has” the experience. His refutation is implausible and does not refute identity theory.

Nevertheless, S-H insists on a material foundation of the world, but insisting that all matter is sentient.

Idealism (denying the irreducible existence of matter), he says, is “darkly solipsistic.” I don’t agree. Intersubjectivity is the basis of socialization and the foundation of social order and civilization itself.

Imagine a non-intersubjective courtroom trial where each participant was aware only of their own subjectivity. Evidence would be mere opinion, and laws would be arbitrary rules without moral basis. A jury would do well to toss a coin to determine culpability, as there would be no agreed-upon facts (because any agreement requires intersubjectivity).

Idealism, the assertion of the primacy of subjective experience over matter, necessarily extends beyond the individual into intersubjectivity.

Subjectivity does not lead to solipsism. It is naïve to suppose that “subjectivity” means a windowless monad. A fair criticism of subjective idealism is to say that if it denies matter and intersubjectivity (because “others” are mere figments), then the position is oxymoronic. Anything said in defense of such a position is self-refuting.

S-H tries to overturn the intersubjective objection by stating that intersubjectivity is merely an inference from observed behavior. But that is logically invalid. To discern the meaning of observed behavior (which is required to make any inference about it) requires intersubjective intuition in the first place, so the argument is circular. An idealist position stands unrefuted by S-H.

In accord with his mentor, S-H insists that we do not know enough about what matter is to say that it could not possess the attribute of sentience. That is true, but it's not a very strong argument. It’s like saying you can’t prove that you aren’t living in a virtual reality simulation or that aliens aren’t living among humans on Earth right now. There are a lot of hypothetical things one cannot disprove.

Despite having failed to overturn competing theories, S-H simply declares that all material reality is alive and sentient.

“There is no natural delineation between what we call the living and the non-living. If we attribute sentience to a fungus, to a cell, to a virus, to an “organic molecule” then the continuation to other types of molecule with their quasi-autopoietic, systematically maintained characteristics and behavior faces no natural barrier …[therefore] the inference of sentience is extended all the way down through Nature: panpsychism.” (p. 14)

This admirably clear proposition left me pondering a reductio ad absurdum definition:

A corpse is a disagreeable kind of person.

A corpse is made of matter, and all matter is alive and sentient. The only real problem with a corpse-person is that it does not use adequate deodorant. Other than that, it’s just like everybody else.

It is only necessary to assume sentience goes all the way down if you attach it to “matter,” which most people agree does go all the way down. But why attach it so? Sentience could be a natural phenomenon like electromagnetism which manifests in certain physical contexts, and is not necessarily “pan.” Just as not all metals are magnetic, not all objects are sentient.

In conclusion, I remained unpersuaded by this book that panpsychism is the best, or even a plausible solution to the mind-body problem. That conundrum still lurks out there in the weeds, very much alive.

Sjostedt-Hughes, Peter (2021). Modes of Sentience. London: Psychedelic Press, 204 pp.

[Parallel-Aesthetics · Rating 5 out of 5]

Six years after the publication of Noumenautics (2016) Dr. Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes brings us a new collection of essays, Modes of Sentience, in which he continues his exploration of Psychedelic experience, Metaphysics and Consciousness. Unlike this previous book there is no exploration of Meta-Ethics.

Many of the chapters are deeply complex such as “The Great God Pan is not Dead,” which explores Whiteheads Metaphysics in relation to Psychedelics perception and “Deeper then Depth,” which explores space and sentience. I don’t want to summarise these more complex essays here. Doing so would take up to much space for this to remain a simple review and I do not think a short summary would present such ideas adequately. Instead I will briefly discuss what could be seen as the more “approachable” essays.

“The Concrescence of Dissent” is a fantastic essay exploring the development of Alfred North Whitehead within the Religious and Philosophical context of his time – showing that Whitehead stood as a heretic amongst his contemporaries. An interesting article for those both new to Whitehead and those already knowledgeable of his work.

The book also contains perhaps one of Sjöstedt-Hughes most significant essays: “The Psychedelic history of Philosophy.” Which gained almost instant popularity after its original publication in Mid-2016. This essay explores the hidden influence of Psychedelics have had on Western Philosophy exploring usage from Plato to Foucault. Here Sjöstedt-Hughes provides us an alternative view of Western Philosophy and discusses figures both well known and obscure.

One such obscure figure is Sir Humphry Davy, who is further discussed in the essay “The First Scientific Psychonaut.” Davy is best remembered for inventing the miners lamp and isolating several elements however he went on to experiment heavily with Nitrous Oxide – inspiring a poetic philosophy of Metaphysics of which Sjöstedt-Hughes explains in detail.

Modes of Sentience is a compelling and complex read. I wish not to discourage or criticise by mentioning its complexity – I enjoy a challenging read. I don’t think ideas like these can be presented simply and in many ways I feel this book continues on from the writing he presented several years earlier – Modes of Sentience brings us deeper into Sjöstedts Psychonautic voyage. But we have further to travel yet as in the past Dr. Sjöstedt-Hughes has stated that he hopes to combine the metaphysics of Whitehead with the philosophy of Nietzsche.

[Gregory Nixon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes has brought together a collection of essays that on first glance seem to be about disparate subjects – the process metaphysics of A. N. Whitehead, the philosophy and phenomenology of psychedelic experience, and the ontological worldview of panpsychism. Yet, the book is thematically united, and Sjöstedt-Hughes impressively weaves these philosophical threads together to produce a rare fabric, a fabric of universal sentience that comes together in a refreshingly new worldview in his final chapter. The book has significant depth yet is written in as non-obscure a fashion as any book that deals with such abstruse matters can be.

The author outlines the much-respected but not widely read philosophical metaphysics of philosopher and mathematician A. N. Whitehead. (The more famous Baruch Spinoza was probably the second most-cited philosopher). He elucidates various historical writings based on personal psychedelic experience to suggest how both philosophy and such experience are alternative mirrors for the same revelation, which includes the fundamentality of time – a preconscious, intuited creative process forever unfolding into an undetermined future. This leaves perceived “objective” reality as a secondary effect, more mutable than current physics can know. Both are real, however. This is panpsychism, not idealism. This I understood and happily embraced, but the author challenged my boggle limit by also indicating multiple dimensions of reality and even of other realities with other sentient beings, neither of which is perceivable with our everyday senses, but both of which are possible in a panpsychist universe and directly experienceable for the attuned psychonaut.

I missed having an index, however, and I am not convinced the book has the best title. Modes of Sentience is descriptively accurate but might have worked better as part of the subtitle because it does not capture a browser’s attention with a dramatic declaration. Something like Cosmic Process— Psychedelic Panpsychism would also have indicated the book’s subject matter, but perhaps would have been more attention-grabbing. And, with regard to the cover image, in spite of its symbolic significance, moths are not liked by everyone, so perhaps something more colourful? Still, I found the book itself intellectually exciting, which only proves the old adage about covers.

Let me briefly outline my own responses through its ten chapters, some of which are longer with more detail and others that are more or less short outlines. Please note that my summaries in no way indicate the nimble prose of the actual book, which needs to be read in its original context.

Chapter 1,“Panpsychism: Ubiquitous Sentience”, is the keynote. It is also a good, basic introduction to panpsychist thinking, the possibility that all entities or systems in what we term the objective physical world are in reality also subjectively experiencing. The author also provides an introduction to the ultimate metaphysical categories in general. I very much liked how the author immediately cleared up his use of the term“sentience” by identifying it (to my mind) with non-conscious or unconscious (or pre-conscious) experience, as in Whiteheadian panexperientialism or pancreativism: “In the hierarchy of states of mind,‘consciousness’ is an uncommon complex crown of sentience. All has mind though not all has consciousness, let alone self-consciousness” (p. 2). My only difficulty with this is that some equate mind with consciousness, so it might be more accurate to say, “All have experience though not all have conscious experience.” He follows this with a deft deconstruction of emergentism and the assumptions of physicalism, as well as an excellent summary of why panpsychism is so abhorred by physicalists. The evidential proofs required by science are not enough to reach a deeper understanding, for “beyond proof we must employ evidential reasoning (inference to the best explanation) rather than inductive empirical verification,” including the“experience of other experience” (p. 10). Early on, I might suggest, the experience of other experience is all we have, what we are, which indicates primary empathy may precede individual selfhood. This primary empathy might help explain the self-transcendence and universal love experienced by many on psychedelic or entheogenic journeys.

Chapter 2, “Conspectus of A. N. Whitehead’s Metaphysics”, is another attempt to provide a very brief point-form summary of the vast canvas of Whitehead’s complex thinking. I would say he is more successful here than most, but for the uninitiated, such a sudden introduction of new terminology will be confusing; still, as an outline, it serves its purpose. It was necessary for the author to attempt to
simplify Whitehead’s cosmic process philosophy, so at least it could be basically approached before he demonstrates how well it works as a psychedelic metaphysics.

Chapter 3, “The Concrescence of Dissent”, is a succinct discussion of Whitehead’s life, his place in the history of philosophy, and his rejection of the orthodoxies of both science and religion, “Whitehead as the arch-heretic” (p. 30). This was most intriguing to me as it fleshes out Whitehead’s complex concept of “God”, which is associated with the ultimate creative dynamic (i.e., process) of reality, making Whitehead more pagan than Christian (despite determined attempts by the latter to claim him, as in process theology). According to his biographers, it is unlikely that Whitehead had any experience with drugs beyond Earl Grey tea or, at his wildest, a sip of Bristol Cream sherry (see, e.g.,
Lowe, 1985/1990), but the depths of his insight and the extent of his imagination seem to have quite made up for it. His“God” seems to be the process of time in nature and creativity itself, with which many have felt participation during psychedelic trips. Experiences of supernatural deity seem to be more rare.

Chapter 4, “Psychedelic Experience” is an introduction to just that. The author asks if such experience is“revelation, hallucination, or otherwise” (p. 57). He notes that discovering the neural correlates of psychedelic experience does not imply that the experience is hallucinatory. He rather dismisses ontological physicalism entirely, noting that if the hard problem of consciousness indicates that physicalism can’t explain consciousness, “it cannot be an adequate understanding of reality” (p. 61). He lists the usual criteria to determine if an experience is veridical – sensibility, shared objects of experience, coherence with other beliefs, and rationality – but notes that, even combined, they can’t disprove the reality of someone’s experience.“However, the fact that many types of psychedelic experience have shared objects of experience – such as the unreality of time, or the unity of subject and object – is suggestive of veridicality” (p. 60).

Thankfully, he also notes that such shared experiences are often contingent on culture. “Thus we see that one’s underlying ideology subjectively determines whether or not we understand psychedelic experiences as hallucinations or revelations” (p. 62). Later, however, he makes it clear that on many occasions the “doors of perception” are cleansed, and other realities, including panpsychist realities (mentality in other than the expected organisms) are experienced.

Chapter 5,“The Psychedelic Influence on Philosophy”, if taken at face value, would place psychedelic experience as the foundation of all philosophical thinking, if not of human consciousness itself. He includes his pick of major philosophers and scientists whom he considers to have been influenced by psychedelic drugs (which includes here nitrous oxide and opium). I found this chapter a bit of a stretch for my sense of credibility and the thinkers mentioned do not have viewpoints that readily congeal (e.g., Spinoza and Foucault). He ignores many of the big names explicitly doing psychedelic-influenced philosophy or science in the contemporary era, but such may be coming in the future.

Chapter 6, “Substance and Process” is a chapter as brief as a flashback on the important difference between those two ideas. “Does some thing underlie, or sub-stand, change – or is change itself fundamental without need for a substratum?” (p. 87). A very big question indeed. Of course, the world is deterministic if it’s based solely in substance, which is subject to the laws of physics. But since the unexpected – creativity – is the essence of process, “The future is theoretically unpredictable, and the possibilities for experience are infinite” (p. 97). Essential reading for those who sense the limitations of reductive physicalism.

Chapter 7, “The Great God Pan is Not Dead” had special relevance for me since I, too, have written of the return of Pan (Nixon, 2009), including as a prefix, in our cultural consciousness. “Pan-” is a refreshing, if wild, antidote to both physicalist reductionism and the nihilistic cultural fragmentation of the prefix “post-” in recent thought. For me, this was the best chapter in the book (though the first and last are close seconds). Here, Sjöstedt-Hughes no longer speaks through the viewpoints of others but comes to the fore in his own voice, which is both original, engaging, and zesty. I deeply appreciated his reconceptualization of Whitehead’s process cosmology in a more mythic (i.e., archetypal) context, “…with its panentheism, panexperientialism, divine mischief and intense hedonism, kinship to pagan animism and its Romantic nature worship, we are better to re-designate the god of Whitehead’s philosophy of organism, as Pan. We thereby paganize Whitehead under the symbol of this seducer goat-god.” Then he sums up this line of thinking of a renewed worldview, “The decline in Christian belief and its offspring, modern cosmology, allows for a revival of a truly naturalistic ontology. God is dead; Pan returns” (p. 105). Rousing stuff! Not the Whitehead – the staid, elderly (he didn’t begin doing philosophy until he was over 60 years old) British philosopher -mathematician without a scandal or social controversy in his life (Lowe, ibid.) – many would recognize. But I recognize him and certainly enjoyed the chapter.

Chapter 8, “The Penology of Perception”, Sjöstedt-Hughes analyzes the various ways of fundamental
experiencing, i.e., perceiving in the broadest sense: sensing, “the temporal action of being sentiently affected by the spatiotemporal environment” (p. 117); perception, “the atemporal qualitative object or type of a perception” (p. 117); ecto-physical correlate, “the physicality external to the perceiver that is partly causative of the perception” (pp. 117–8); endo-physical correlate, “bodily correlates of sentience” (p. 118); and demeteption, the last a neologism meaning “perceptions that are not sensings of the physical environment” (p. 138). The last one should be much appreciated by those of us who have experienced inexplicable apprehensions; in fact, I wonder that Sjöstedt-Hughes did not use that word, apprehension, instead (though his term includes the important category of imagination). He notes that it’s also important that Whiteheadian “prehension” be understood as the foundation of all sensing, for any thing or any system, even without sense organs, may prehend its environment.

Chapter 9, “The First Scientific Psychonaut: Sir Humphrey Davy” is the longest chapter, but it’s engaging as it is mostly a narrative. I admit that I found Davy’s life story and his deep engagement with nitrous oxide very interesting, but I fear not as fascinating as the author himself did. “I am one
of the Roman deities!” Davy heard a voice declare one stoned night in the ruins of the Roman colosseum (p. 146). Nitrous oxide is not chemically a psychedelic, but it does seem able to produce entheogenic experiences. The chapter includes a good discussion of “cosmic consciousness”, the loss of individual identity in becoming “one with the universe”. Best was that the author embraced the direct apprehension of the reality of panpsychism via empathic awareness in highly attuned people in non-ordinary moments (demeteption?). Indirectly positing panpsychism by default (consciousness is otherwise inexplicable) is the lesser route to understanding.

Chapter 10, “Deeper than Depth: N-Dimensional Space and Sentience”, is indeed the deepest chapter, sometimes baffling but most often quite soaring. It is a wonderful combination of the frontiers of science and the considerable expanse of Sjöstedt-Hughes’s own intuitions. He embraces rational speculation “though hyperspace” to explore “1. Mind, Matter, and Space, 2. The Varieties of Space, 3. The Dimensions of Space and Sentience” (p. 156). In another of his groups of three, the author asserts a“threefold space: physical, perceptual, and conceptual” (p. 159), a triangle. He presents deft critical comparisons based on the triangle among substance dualism, “the triangle and the neural correlates are separate substances, not dependent on each other”; emergentism, “the triangle emerges from the neural correlates”; idealism, “the neural correlates emerge from the mind”; psycho-neural identity theory, “the triangle is the neural correlates”; and the More-Broad-Smythies Theory, “the triangle and the neural correlates are both cross-sections of a deeper hyperspace” (p. 162). Needless to say, he leans toward the latter, which is the one that indicates each dimensional world is nested within worlds of higher dimensions, up to that of the posited n-dimensional “world”. He concludes, “This is all to say that the More-Broad-Smythies Theory… is one, albeit radical, way to respond to the mind-matter mystery. It is a radical monism of space and sentience” (p. 181). To examine the details of this proposition, you’ll have to read the book, and, most likely, go well beyond that.

I was enthralled but also mystified by these conclusions and I admit it. However, the implications are that psychedelic experience may lead to ways of knowing and revelations that exceed rational explanation or physical reductionism. The “hard problem” in this case is to express such revelations in a manner that all can grasp, question, or embrace, as they see fit. This is a short but often quite wonderful book that I sincerely recommend to open-minded, intelligent readers, so it may also challenge your assumptions and lead to unexpected experiences in heretofore unrealized worlds. It
may well help one understand oneself, but also provide a fine philosophic support system for those of the psychedelic community who have experienced what they’ve experienced but have been unable to find a mode of expression, explanation, or argumentation that is communicable to the rest of us back here on Earth.

REFERENCES

Lowe, V. (1985, 1990). Alfred North Whitehead: The man and his work (2 vols., 1861–1910 & 1910–1947). The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Nixon, G. (Sept, 2009). Skrbina’s Mind that Abides: Panpsychism in the New Millennium (review article). Journal of Consciousness Studies, 16(9), 116–121.

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Favourite chapters:

III. The Concrescence of Dissent:
Whitehead as Religious, Scientific, Philosophic
Heretic

V. The Psychedelic Influence on Philosophy

VII. The Great God Pan is Not Dead: Alfred North Whitehead and the Psychedelic Mode of Perception

IX. The First Scientific Psychonaut: Sir Humphry Davy

[Jeremy I Skipper · Rating 5 out of 5]

🤔🍄🌌🐐🪈👏🎉

[Beth Bonness · Rating 5 out of 5]

Now THIS book on consciousness was #3 on my journey down the consciousness rabbit hole. I needed to read Conscious by Annaka Harrisa and Being You by Anil Seth plus a bit of caffeine while sipping the chapters over several weeks.

One of my favorite lines (there were many):
“Demetepts include more than mere imaginations: they include dreams (lucid or not), episodic memories, hallucinations, hypnagogic hallucinations, psychedelic landscapes, subconscious phenomenon, and other ‘mystical states.’”

I’ll admit, I did a lot of looking up of terms, but enjoyed the poetic nature of many of them like “demetepts” reminded me instantly of Harry Potter dementors (couldn’t help it).

Thank you Peter for such a delightful course in modes of sentience. Your book is quite marked up.