Week 7: Neuroscience + Art

This week's topic, neuroscience and art, should once again be introduced with a definition. This time, it's crucial to define "consciousness", as the exploration of the human consciousness and psyche is at the center of the bulk of the research surrounding neuroscience. As defined by Merriam-Webster, consciousness is "the quality or state of being aware especially of something within oneself", "the state of being characterized by sensation, emotion, volition, and thought", and "the totality of conscious states of an individual" (Merriam-Webster). Provided that the understanding of the human mind is limited, and we do not truly understand what it is that causes us to be conscious, to be able to perceive ourselves and the world around us, I personally believe in dividing the effort of understanding consciousness into two fields: psychology and biology. Some people look down on psychology as a soft science, especially when isolated from proper psychiatry, but I find it serves as a valuable source of theory from which to explore many mysteries of human behavior and physiology. Biology and chemistry, on the other hand, can only go so far as to explain what neural connections and chemical reactions must occur for consciousness to exist. These "scientific" fields fail to quantify the human experience innate within the understanding of consciousness. 

There have been countless experiments done, or at least proposed, by individuals around the globe. In my opinion, many of these "experiments" on consciousness, are nothing more than quack science. They prove mothing, they tell nothing, they don't meet the standards for what an experiment should even be. Moreover, they're done by amateurs in uncontrolled environments, or intentionally attempt to skew results and publish misleading data to come to a conclusion that satisfies them. An example of an organization that does this, which I vehemently despise, is the Global Consciousness Project. My issue is not with the fact that they're attempting to study consciousness through unconventional methods, but that they uphold the facsimile of "science" to further their means. They describe themselves as a "international effort involving researches from several institutions and countries, designed to explore whether the construct of interconnected consciousness can be scientifically validated through objective measurement", the measurement being "experiments conducted... demonstrating human consciousness interacts with random event generators, apparently causing them to produce non-random patterns" (GCP). Without going into excess detail about their spurious practices, their most notable attempt to prove a collective consciousness was after the 9/11 attacks, which I found not only disrespectful, but ultimately fruitless. Their claims of statistical significance were found to be fraudulent, and the means by which they collect and interpret data is wrought with bias (Skepdic). 

"Data" from the GCP Post-9/11 
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/no-longer-science-fiction_1_b_4688935

On the other hand, social psychology has attempted to explain consciousness. Famous examples are Freud's belief in the Id, the Ego, and the Superego, and Jung's collective unconscious rooted in human archetypes (Lapsley). These, on the other hand, I consider to be less deserving of criticism. Without injecting my personal bias on whether these concepts make sense to me, I appreciate that they don't attempt to claim authority beyond the speculations of the individuals proposing the concepts. Freud and Jung both largely drew from their experiences as psychiatrists/psychotherapists and formulated the hypothesis around observation and patient interaction (Elkind). The unverifiability of these theories imply that they're no more than theories, interesting thought experiments to be ruminated upon. 


Diagram of Jung's Collective Unconscious
https://ancestorsandarchetypes.weebly.com/uploads/1/2/4/8/12480897/5236569_orig.png


A third, intermediate group of individuals who explore consciousness, do so through the use of mind-altering substances. Though I do not formally identify with these people, and I cannot say whether I participated in recreation substance use, I see how its accessibility and effects could pique one's interest. And I think that both in a scientific and artistic sense, these experiments in neuroscience provide valuable inside to the chemistry of the brain and our human experience. Hallucinogenics such as LSD and DMT alter the user's neural chemistry and cause reactions that are visually and auditorily  perceivable (Vesna). There are numerous reports from DMT users who all claim to have seen an entity while high. These reports stem from cultures all around the globe, and though the phenomenon has been widely discussed, it has been woefully neglected by proper researchers (DMT Times). Though I don't think that DMT is necessarily a gateway to contact with extra-dimensional entities, I think that neurologically, correlating accounts between unrelated individuals, and to some extent human experimentation, is a valid means of exploring the uncharted recesses of the mind, and expressing the hidden beauties locked behind the visage of a conscious reality.


"Net of Being" by Alex Grey
DMT Entity Art
https://kahpi.net/meeting-the-dmt-trip-entities-in-art/


I have been all over the internet, in various unscrupulous circles, interacting with people who haven't the most basic understanding of physics, talking with people who genuinely have adopted a philosophy that posits themselves at the center of existence, hearing all sorts of opinions on the nature of consciousness. Though I am extremely skeptic of the existence of "vibrational frequencies found in nature" and pseudoscience of the like, I hold the attempt to explore neuroscience through the understanding of consciousness in high regard. Only so much can be learned from studying synapses and impulses and the techniques of traditional neurology, and I genuinely believe that everybody has a different perception of reality, regardless of the physical neuroscience. The only way that anyone can ever come to terms with their own existence, the very concept that they "are", is through discovering their own mind. And neuroscience, no matter how advanced it may ever become, can't do that for them.



Works Cited

Carroll, Robert Todd. “Global Consciousness.” Global Consciousness - The Skeptic's Dictionary - Skepdic.com, 27 Oct. 2015, www.skepdic.com/globalconsciousness.html.

“Consciousness.” Merriam-Webster, Merriam-Webster, www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/consciousness.

Elkind, David. “Freud, Jung and the Collective Unconscious.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 4 Oct. 1970, www.nytimes.com/1970/10/04/archives/freud-jung-and-the-collective-unconscious-jungs-has-been-the-only.html.

Global Consciousness Project collected data "Combined RNG Behavior Surrounding 9/11." The Huffington Post. 29 Jan. 2014, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/no-longer-science-fiction_1_b_4688935.

Grey, Alex. "Net of Being." Kahpi The Ayahuasca Hub. 19 February 2018, https://kahpi.net/meeting-the-dmt-trip-entities-in-art/.

Lapsley, Daniel K., and Paul C. Stey. “Id, Ego, and Superego.” Encyclopedia of Human Behavior, 2012, pp. 393–399., doi:10.1016/b978-0-12-375000-6.00199-3.

Luke, David. “DMT Entities.” DMT Times, dmttimes.com/dmt-entities.

Miller, Iona. "Collective Unconscious (Archetypes)." Ancestors and Archetypes, 2017. https://ancestorsandarchetypes.weebly.com/collective-unconscious.html.

Nelson, Roger. “The Global Consciousness Project Meaningful Correlations in Random Data.” The Global Consciousness Project, The Trustees of Princeton University, noosphere.princeton.edu/index.html.

"Neuroscienec pt3." Youtube, uploaded by UC Online, 16 May 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5EX75xoBJ0.




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