I’d argue that it is actually more rational to question one’s experience of the world specificallybecause brains are unreliable.
There are times in altered states in which I am very much aware that I am experiencing the world in a way that is quite outside the normal bounds of my everyday lived experience. I’ve made the mistake of having one too many cannabis edibles a couple of times; the first time the sensations were so intense that I thought I was literally going to die. We’re talking that heart-squeezed-in-the-chest-cold-sweats-can’t-move level of high. The second time I felt the exact same way, except now I was armed with both the trigger and prior experience to lean on such that I knew I was just along for the ride until the high wore off.
In knowing that I was altered, I could reliably doubt my experiences without doubting the ability of instrument to examine itself, especially in post-experience reflections.
Self-examination is a checking loop, and the outcomes don’t have to be binary. The important thing is that you can’t grade the instrument from the inside, you have to have external anchors (and preferably those anchors are different in kind, like checking if a voice you heard could have come from something nearby and also asking anyone else around if they heard that voice). You might find that you reliably experience the world differently than other people, and that’s incredibly important for grounding rational thinking. If your brain is unreliable, it’s counterproductive to try to reason yourself into a believing that it is.
Refusing to update/examine your priors (eg. refusing to entertain that your instrument might be miscalibrated) is itself a form of dogma.
I think drugs make this a lot easier because they give a clear context for the altered experience. Like you said you can easily dismiss the effects as temporary, and even if you do take them seriously at the time you can easily dismiss them retrospectively once sober. Even without drugs if the altered experience happens in the context of a specific ritual or practice such as meditation that creates an inside/outside distinction relative to which you really can seek external anchors.
The important thing is that you can’t grade the instrument from the inside, you have to have external anchors
I think the challenge is if you don’t have clear context markers surrounding the experience then this becomes difficult or impossible to do. Ultimately grading your own instruments ‘from the inside’ seems pretty fundamental to the human experience, there is nowhere else to grade them from.
You might find that you reliably experience the world differently than other people, and that’s incredibly important for grounding rational thinking. If your brain is unreliable, it’s counterproductive to try to reason yourself into a believing that it is.
But if your experience is reliably different from others then deferring to them (besides being a huge loss of agency) requires you not only to trust them more than you trust yourself, but also to trust your experience of them more than you trust whatever experience is contradicting them.
I’d argue that it is actually more rational to question one’s experience of the world specifically because brains are unreliable.
There are times in altered states in which I am very much aware that I am experiencing the world in a way that is quite outside the normal bounds of my everyday lived experience. I’ve made the mistake of having one too many cannabis edibles a couple of times; the first time the sensations were so intense that I thought I was literally going to die. We’re talking that heart-squeezed-in-the-chest-cold-sweats-can’t-move level of high. The second time I felt the exact same way, except now I was armed with both the trigger and prior experience to lean on such that I knew I was just along for the ride until the high wore off.
In knowing that I was altered, I could reliably doubt my experiences without doubting the ability of instrument to examine itself, especially in post-experience reflections.
Self-examination is a checking loop, and the outcomes don’t have to be binary. The important thing is that you can’t grade the instrument from the inside, you have to have external anchors (and preferably those anchors are different in kind, like checking if a voice you heard could have come from something nearby and also asking anyone else around if they heard that voice). You might find that you reliably experience the world differently than other people, and that’s incredibly important for grounding rational thinking. If your brain is unreliable, it’s counterproductive to try to reason yourself into a believing that it is.
Refusing to update/examine your priors (eg. refusing to entertain that your instrument might be miscalibrated) is itself a form of dogma.
I think drugs make this a lot easier because they give a clear context for the altered experience. Like you said you can easily dismiss the effects as temporary, and even if you do take them seriously at the time you can easily dismiss them retrospectively once sober. Even without drugs if the altered experience happens in the context of a specific ritual or practice such as meditation that creates an inside/outside distinction relative to which you really can seek external anchors.
I think the challenge is if you don’t have clear context markers surrounding the experience then this becomes difficult or impossible to do. Ultimately grading your own instruments ‘from the inside’ seems pretty fundamental to the human experience, there is nowhere else to grade them from.
But if your experience is reliably different from others then deferring to them (besides being a huge loss of agency) requires you not only to trust them more than you trust yourself, but also to trust your experience of them more than you trust whatever experience is contradicting them.