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0 pointsn4r91y ago0 comments

How do you mean?

I can conceive of scientific experiments involving consciousness. For example:

Hypothesis: Consuming LSD gives me a hallucinatory experience.

Method: Randomized, blind trial. Every Saturday morning I consume one tab of either LSD or water, sit in a blank white room with a sitter (who does nothing), and record my experience.

Results: Every time after consuming water, I have no visual hallucinations and get bored. Every time after consuming LSD, I see shifting colour patterns, imagine music playing on the walls, and feel at one with the world.

Conclusion: Results strongly support hypothesis.

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falcor841y ago

If I recall correctly, a true hallucination is one that the person cannot distinguish from reality, so at best you'd measure "pseudohallucinations". But even then, your approach would suffer from all the limitations of phenomenology.

n4r9OP1y ago

I see what you mean about "hallucination"; I guess I was using the looser definition as per Wikipedia of a perception that "has the compelling sense of reality".

I'd be keen to understand those limitations of phenomenonology and how they apply to this specific experiment, if you have an opportunity to expand.

falcor841y ago

I'm not that knowledgeable about this particular area. My familiarity in this area is mostly around confabulations[0] and false memories[1] such as those studied by Elizabeth Loftus[2].

I'm not sure if that would apply directly to your proposed experiment, but my concern is that what we experience as memories can sometimes apparently be generated on the fly rather than accessing something that was there before.

In general, these kind of phenomenological studies suffer from subjectivity, and are very difficult to connect to explanatory mechanisms, without additional objective evidence. One relevant approach to deal with this is Dennett's Heterophenomenology[3], which seeks to combine the subject's own impressions with other external evidence - so in your case, instead of having the sitter do nothing, you may want to pay them to gather additional objective evidence.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confabulation

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_memory

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Loftus

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterophenomenology

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0 pointsn4r91y ago0 comments

How do you mean?

I can conceive of scientific experiments involving consciousness. For example:

Hypothesis: Consuming LSD gives me a hallucinatory experience.

Method: Randomized, blind trial. Every Saturday morning I consume one tab of either LSD or water, sit in a blank white room with a sitter (who does nothing), and record my experience.

Conclusion: Results strongly support hypothesis.

0 comments

falcor841y ago

n4r9OP1y ago

I see what you mean about "hallucination"; I guess I was using the looser definition as per Wikipedia of a perception that "has the compelling sense of reality".

I'd be keen to understand those limitations of phenomenonology and how they apply to this specific experiment, if you have an opportunity to expand.

falcor841y ago

I'm not that knowledgeable about this particular area. My familiarity in this area is mostly around confabulations[0] and false memories[1] such as those studied by Elizabeth Loftus[2].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confabulation

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_memory

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Loftus

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterophenomenology

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